Over Her Dear Body

A Shell Scott Mystery

Richard S. Prather

This book is dedicated to:

Hudson's Bay Scotch

Kent Cigarettes

and

Yuban Coffee

without which it might never have been written.

Chapter One

Behind me on the yacht, gayety swirled like audible confetti. I leaned on the rail up near the bow, smoking a cigarette and finishing another bourbon-and-water, as music from the small combo drifted past me, muted and velvety.

By leaning over the rail and looking back toward the stern, I could see the tall yellow-haired gal in the blood-colored strapless swinging her chummy hips in a shocking rumba. It looked almost as if she were waving to me. Dancing like that, I thought, she'd use up several partners a night. I also thought about going back there again and letting her use me up, but I stayed where I was, waiting for something to happen.

This was the Srinagar, 160 feet of honest-to-goodness, diesel-powered, ocean-going yacht, freshly painted a gleaming white, anchored in Newport Harbor, Southern California. And while my stamping grounds are Southern California—specifically Los Angeles and Hollywood, an hour's drive away, where the office of Sheldon Scott, Investigations, is located—my stamping grounds do not usually include yachts.

In fact, I don't even look much like a man accustomed to leaning casually on yacht rails. I look more like a guy who sells hot dogs—and even tonight, in a well-tailored white tux, maroon bow tie and scarlet cummerbund, I might easily have been mistaken for one of the crew mingling briefly with real people.

The agency above-mentioned is mine. I'm Shell Scott, six foot two, loaded with 206 pounds of mostly muscle, and right at the moment half loaded with bourbon. And, at the moment, waiting for my client to put in an appearance. I'd been hired, and even my fee had been settled, but who my client was I didn't yet know. Our only contact so far had been by phone, and all I knew about her was that she was frightened, was named Elaine Emerson, and had a throbbingly beautiful voice.

Of course, sometimes voices can fool you, but I'm a confirmed optimist and thus my hopes were even higher than I was. Elaine Emerson had asked me to describe myself, and I'd gotten only about half through what I considered the vital points when she'd stopped me, saying she thought she would have little difficulty in finding me, either on the Srinagar or in the L. A. Coliseum.

Besides the fact that I'm fairly big, my hair is about an inch long, sticks up into the air as if trying to escape all at once from my head, and is, though I'm only a young, healthy and—I like to think—virile thirty, white. My eyebrows are white, too, and slant sharply up and then down as if somebody had pounded on them and broken them. They have been pounded on, in fact, but not broken; that is just the way they grew, as if springing savagely at my hairline. I didn't even get to tell Miss Elaine Emerson about my very slightly broken nose, gray eyes, the thin slice shot from my left ear, the fine scar over my left eyebrow. I barely got started. But she'd said she would find me. So far, she hadn't.

I sucked in the last drag from my cigarette and nipped the butt into black water below. It arced through the air and winked out. Near it, something white swirled in the water. Unless my eyes were still unfocusing from the waving hips back aft, and I'd merely imagined that whiteness. But I thought I'd noticed it before. There wasn't any further sign of it, though, so I turned toward the dancers again.

From here I could see only the outer slice of the small square of deck being used for the dance floor, but it was perhaps the most interesting slice. The combo was playing Siboney with liquid abandon, and those same hips were frantically attacking the air and anything else within range, which seemed virtually everything else. The red dress stood out like a flame in the light from hanging lanterns. Then she sort of catapulted herself out of sight, and it was as though the engines had stopped. A couple came into view, pressed close together in their modern version of a Polynesian mating dance, and then they too disappeared from that slice of deck. I started walking down the narrow alleyway toward the dance floor.

On my right, beyond the dark waters of the bay dotted with small craft, some anchored and some under way from one end of the harbor toward the other, the lights on the Balboa peninsula glittered like jewels. Not more than a hundred yards from me was a small sandy beach, a few feet beyond it the color and movement of the Balboa Fun Zone. Occasionally the sound of a merry-go-round there mingled raucously with the combo's more delicate harmonies, and lights from the Ferris wheel spun slowly over the amusement booths below it.

As I passed the dance area, the music stopped. I walked to the portable bar farther back on the stern and asked the uniformed bartender for another bourbon highball. I got it, went back near the dancers and leaned against the rail, looking them over. The combo swung into Manhattan, and half a dozen couples started dancing.

The gal in the red dress was sitting in a deck chair sipping from a Martini glass, her yellow hair somewhat tousled. A few minutes ago, before going up forward, I'd stood where I was now for several minutes, and we had practically become acquainted through glances. But at the moment she was talking to a heavy-set guy with a cigar waggling in the corner of his mouth, and I couldn't get a glance in. A short distance behind her, leaning against a metal beam which supported an overhead canopy, stood another tall girl. This one was dark-haired, wearing a white dress, and I recognized her, too, from my last inspection tour. This one I would recognize any time, any place, from now on.

The yellow-haired tomato was very attractive, smooth and shapely, almost too top-heavy and almost too vital and bubbling. But the tall dark lovely turned that “almost” into too much. Simply because she was in the same group with them, she made the blonde and all the rest of the women here appear to be less than they really were, as if she somehow dimmed their luster by the superabundance of her own.

But it wasn't a fiery, blazing luster—rather it was the beautiful coolness of fire imprisoned in thin ice, a controlled and graceful manner and movement, the soft shock of her deep dark eyes. She hadn't danced with anyone during the minutes I'd watched her; she had been alone most of the time. And whenever my eyes had caught her dark ones, she had looked away. Leaning back against that metal beam, the white dress hugged her fine full body in clean sweeping lines. Her hair was dark, but refulgent, a thick chestnut-colored mass behind her oval face. She was slim enough, but with almost reckless curves, lush deep breasts bursting with life, sharply incurving waist above smoothly arching hips.

She turned slightly and saw me looking at her. For a long moment she stared at me, then straightened up; I thought she was going to walk toward me. But she looked away, reached into a bag she was holding and took out a cigarette, lit it. She didn't look at me again.

This was a kind of goofy situation. The gal I'd talked to on the phone had emphasized the fact that it was imperative nobody know she was hiring a detective. That was the main reason for describing myself to her. She had said that she would locate me on the yacht and then approach me when I was alone so that we'd be unobserved by others. That was why I'd twice ogled the dancers, and wandered around a bit, and been sort of skulking in dark corners.

I was about to go off and skulk some more when I noticed the yellow-haired tomato in the red dress walking across the dance floor toward me. She caught my eye and smiled, and I grinned back at her in the most encouraging manner I could muster, which is pretty encouraging. This red-clad lovely was not only good to look upon, and shaped sensationally, but she could dance.

She stopped alongside me, rested one hand on the rail and fluttered big green eyes at me.

“You've been watching me, haven't you?” she said.

“Sure. I'm no fool.”

She smiled. “I saw you here a while ago, but you didn't dance with anybody. Don't you dance?”

“Not quite as much as you. But I enjoy dancing. All sorts of dancing. And I'll try practically anything.”

“Good. I do all sorts, too.”

“Yeah. All at once.” I grinned at her, hoping she wouldn't mind. She didn't.

“You're fun already,” she said. “I'll bet we'd have swell fun together.”

“I'll bet we would,” I agreed. “We are. And we haven't even started dancing yet.”

“We will, though. You just bet we will. What's your name?”

“Sh —” I cut it off. There were surely some people aboard who had by now recognized my chops, but an even greater number of the citizens in Southern California know my name; and, until I was sure who my client was, and what she wanted me to do, it was perhaps discreet just to be a guy named Scott.

“Scott,” I said.

“I'll call you Scotty.”

“Fine. What do I call you?”

“Arline.”

For a moment I thought she'd said Elaine, and I let out a small whoop.

“What did you say?” she asked me.

“Nothing. I just let out a small whoop. Did you say Elaine?”

“No. Arline. Arline, like in ... well, like Arline.”

“Have we chatted before? Recently? About anything?”

“No.” She shook her head, yellow hair shimmering. “I'd have remembered.” She still had the Martini glass, now empty, in her hand. She held it up and said, “Would you get me another Martini, Scotty?”

“Right away. Or I could get you shots of gin, vermouth, and an olive, and just let you mix them in you. During a rumba, say?”

“I'd rather have the bartender do them. They're wonderful—practically choke you. I think he uses gin, vermouth, and fallout. Why don't you have one with me?”

“Ah ... I'll stick to bourbon, Arline. Back in a minute.”

While I waited for the drinks I looked around a little more. I was beginning to feel marvelously buoyant, possibly buoyed up a little extra by the bourbon already in me. And I decided that if my client didn't show up for a while I wouldn't worry about it but would simply enjoy myself—rushing up on the darkened bow every ten minutes or so, and then back to where the life was.

A cute and curvy little blonde was on one of the bar stools, sipping a tall drink with fruit on top of it, and keeping time to the combo on the bar's edge. There were a number of juicy gals aboard, and she was one of the juicy ones.

“Hi,” the little one said. “Who're you?”

“I'm ... Scotty.”

“Hi, Scotty. I'm Jo. And I'm woozy!”

That answer made me feel happy and sad at the same time. This one was Jo. Well, you can't have everything. I picked up my freshly prepared drinks, said, “See you later, Jo,” and walked away as she called sweetly after me, “That's a promise!”

Arline thanked me for the drink, sipped about a third of her Martini and shook her head rapidly back and forth. “Wow. That's it, all right. Now I'm radioactive.” She blinked the big green eyes at me, smiling. “Isn't this fun?”

“Sure is.”

“I mean, the yacht and all.”

“Yeah. It's great. Everybody should have a yacht.”

She frowned slightly, sipped again at the Martini, and said slowly, thinking hard, “But ... that's—that's socialistic, isn't it?”

I grinned. “Not quite, my sweet. Under socialism, the government gives everybody an oar. But there are no yachts.”

“Oh, the hell with it,” she said. “Why don't we dance?”

“Why don't we?”

We did. We put our drinks down on the teakwood deck, stepped onto the highly polished section before the combo and danced. But it was much more than just a dance. It was like doing a fox trot and getting your pants pressed at the same time. It was a sort of anatomy lesson in four-four time, a promise for three steps and madness on the fourth, it was—well, it was too much.

Halfway through Imagination, I stopped, sort of quivering. “I need a drink.”

“But we haven't finished the dance.”

“Maybe you haven't, baby, but I've finished.”

“Oh, come on, Scotty. Just another minute.”

“Another minute would do it, all right. No. Thank you, but no.” I spoke firmly. If you can speak firmly while breathing through your mouth. “I really do need that drink.”

While she argued with me, Imagination ended and the boys in the group took a short break. Arline and I finished our drinks, then she said, “You're fun, Scotty. But I want to dance. I'm just crazy about dancing.”

“I'd guessed it.”

“So I'm going to find somebody with—with stamina. With stick-to-it-iveness.”

“Maybe if it hadn't been a fox trot...” I began weakly. Then I changed my tune and defended myself, “I've got stamina. The thing is, I've got too much stamina. I've got so much...” I paused. “Incidentally, exactly what do you mean by stick-to-it-iveness? And stamina, for that matter?”

“Oh, Scotty. Here we are arguing. Already.”

“Arguing? Who's—”

“Oh, there's Zimmy,” she cried.

“Zimmy? Who's—”

“'Bye, Scotty. We'll get together later maybe. I've got to dance a Shiffle with Zimmy.”

“Shiffle? What's—”

But she was gone. Maybe it was just as well. The conversation had become pretty disconnected. I stood there, feeling as if somebody had given me a hot transfusion and then taken it back. So I looked around, sort of sneering loftily at everybody, then walked toward the bow, having another healthy glug of my bourbon. If those glugs were really healthy, by now I would have been in perfect condition—I'd had no dinner, and I'd been pouring this healthy bourbon down quite rapidly since my arrival. And a dinner of bourbon is practically no dinner at all. Time to start taking it easy, no doubt. So I finished the last swallow, put my glass at the edge of the alleyway, and went on to the spot up forward where I'd been earlier.

No client had put in an appearance, after two or three minutes, so I lit a cigarette and looked out over the bay to the lights of the Balboa Fun Zone. The Ferris wheel was circling slowly, suspended carriages rocking to and fro as the wheel stopped for another pair of passengers. Above it the stars, distant suns sharp in the clear sky, seemed mere dim reflections of the lights below. Somewhere over on the starboard side of the yacht a gal was singing off-key, but pleasantly, happily off-key.

Then, below decks, somebody in one of the staterooms on this side switched on a light. The glow poured out of the portholes and onto the water below. And, for the second or third time tonight, I saw that swirl of white.

It looked almost like somebody swimming around down there. I shook my head. That didn't make good sense. Maybe it was a porpoise. An albino porpoise. Yeah—that made sense. I was squinting, leaning forward, and now my eyes not only focused but the vision got very clear indeed.

That was no porpoise. Or if it was, it had a beautiful bare fanny. Suddenly I didn't feel so crushed about being abandoned by Arline. Maybe the best party wasn't on this here yacht after all; maybe it was down there with the fish.

I shook my head again. This kind of thinking won't do at all, I thought. I must be drunk. I must be losing my mind. That can't be a porpoise. Porpoises simply don't have fannies like that.

And, by golly, that's what it wasn't.

As she straightened out, the contours of a shapely little gal became clearly visible just under the water's surface. She stroked toward the Srinagar. And I got a good look at it.

That's what it was, all right. I was convinced.

It was a bare fanny.

Chapter Two

That's what it was, for sure. I knew. I may not know much about porpoises, but I know a little about bare fannies. It's hard to fool me with those.

I have seen them before. In fact, when I was Health Director of the Fairview Nudist Camp, I saw more bare fannies than you would think a man could stand. Some beautiful, some only moderately pleasing, and some that should have been filed under “Miscellaneous.” For a while there I'd thought I might never want to look at one again.

But that feeling passed. And how it passed. The truth is, it just whetted my appetite. And down there was what looked like a veritable banquet. Even after Fairview, this was more than just a—well, a bottom. It was the tops in bottoms, a vision of water-kissed dandiness, sheer poetry, a fanny sonnet; all by itself, it was enough.

She had swung clear up to the side of the yacht by now, and she stopped, keeping almost motionless by dog-paddling. She raised one arm and waved.

I waved back.

Then a deliciously merry feminine voice called softly, “Hey, up there.”

“Yeah! Yeah!” I called down to her. “Hello! What's...” I couldn't think of anything else to say.

She called up, “Please help me.”

“Okay. I'll be right in. Don't panic.”

“No! Stay there,” she yelped. “I want to get back up.”

“Back up? Up here? With ... me?”

“Yes, up there. Somebody took away my ladder—never mind. I'll tell you when I get up there.” I was still leaning over the rail, so the light which poured onto the water from the portholes below was also shining up on me. She went on, “I saw your cigarette, but I couldn't see you until the light came on just now. I decided to take a chance on you.”

“You're taking a chance, all right.”

She laughed. “Don't tell anybody I'm in here.”

“Don't you worry!”

“I'd be embarrassed. Will you get my bikini for me? Better do that first.”

“Bikini?”

“My bathing suit. It's a red and white striped bikini back at the far end of the boat—where all the people are. But way farther back, clear at the end, on the deck behind some kind of storage box.”

“I can find it.” Explanations, I decided, could wait; now was a time for action.

“I can't come back aboard like this,” she said. “So run and get it and give it to me, will you?”

“Trust me. I'll do it,” I said. “Hold tight. Don't go anywhere ... don't ask anybody else!”

I heard her laugh again, but I was racing toward the stern. Alongside the dancing people I slowed down, walked on past the bar. I didn't have any trouble finding the bikini. The red and white striped wisps of cloth were in deep shadow behind some kind of chest affixed to the deck on my right, close to the edge. I picked the two small pieces up, wadded them in one hand and started back to the bow.

And now, at a time when I was in no mood for delays of any kind, there was a delay. In fact, two delays. And at least one of them was trouble.

It all happened in about a minute. As I turned and headed forward again, I saw the lovely dark-haired gal in the white dress, whom I'd earlier been admiring, step from the edge of the dance floor and walk up the darkened alleyway down which I'd just rapidly traveled. The whiteness of her dress was visible in the darkness as she walked twenty feet or so along the corridor and stopped.

It seemed more than a coincidence; there was, I thought, a chance she was waiting there for me. At any other moment I would have been overjoyed by that possibility, but at this moment I merely felt a slight queasiness come over me. Maybe, though, she was just getting some fresher air, watching the lights. I didn't get to ask her.

As I passed the dance floor and reached the alleyway a man behind me said, “Hey, you.”

I didn't know if he meant me or not, so I kept on going. He said sharply, “You. Scott.”

I was out of sight of the dancers, a few feet into the corridor's relative dimness, and I stopped and turned around. Walking toward me was a tall, thin, hawk-faced guy. I'd never seen him before. But he knew my name; and it came out of his mouth as if he didn't like it.

“Yeah, you,” he said, walking up to me. “You are Shell Scott, aren't you?”

“So?”

“So what the hell are you doing aboard?”

His voice was nasty. In fact, most things about this egg impressed me as nasty, unpleasant. He was about an inch taller than I, but very thin, and his face was sucked in at the sides of his mouth, his hairline high on his forehead, the nose hooked and sharp over a thin black mustache. Some women might have thought him sort of sinisterly handsome, but to me he looked emaciated, unhealthy. Hawk-faced, but as if the hawk were moulting.

I said quietly, “I could think quite a while without thinking of any reason why I should tell you.”

“A smart guy,” he sneered. “I heard you was a smart one, a tough boy.” He was asking for it. He went on, “There's no room on the Srinagar for no private eye, no peeper. Especially not you, Scott.”

“Well, maybe I can make room.” I took a deep breath, still managing to keep my voice calm and quiet, “So good-by.”

“Yeah, good-by all right. You're leaving, jerk.” He frowned at me, straight black brows drawing down over his eyes. “But first you're gonna tell me what brought you here tonight, of all nights.”

“What's so special about tonight?”

He chewed on his lip. “Never mind. You want to go now, quiet like, in the launch? Or all of a sudden, over the side?”

“You don't look much like the skipper of this tub. Or the guy throwing the party. Or a guy who can toss me over the side, for that matter. So maybe I'd better wait until somebody else tells me to blow.”

I was guessing. For all I knew he might have been the yacht's owner; but my guess was apparently right and he was just a punk throwing his weight around. Why, I didn't know.

He swore softly and said, “Let's say I'm a friend of a friend. And I'm telling you, beat it.”

I was tired of this egg. Guys like this one I get tired of very fast. I started to squeeze my hand into a fist, and felt the cloth in my hand. I'd forgotten the bikini, and automatically I glanced down at it. So did the hawk-faced guy.

“What in the hell—” he said explosively and grabbed at the cloth. The red and white wisps were jerked from my fingers, and he glared at them, then said, “Why, you bastard! That's Bunny's bikini. What the hell you doing with Bunny's bikini?”

He didn't know it, but that was the last time he was going to swear at me. I said softly, “Friend, watch your language. Or I'll wash out your mouth with your teeth. And who's Bunny?”

He didn't answer. He just pivoted suddenly and swung at me. Not with an awkward right. It wasn't a right, and it wasn't awkward. It was a sharp left hook launched hard and fast at my face with his body pivoting gracefully behind it.

I didn't quite get out of the way of his fist. I did manage to jerk my head back enough so the blow bounced off the point of my chin. But then I had him.

I have been hit with just about everything except a Ford's rear axle, and in the process I've developed a number of automatic reflexes. That, added to years as a United States Marine, with the Marines’ emphasis on manual self-defense, with more judo and several ideas of my own thrown in for good measure, made the rest of this practically automatic.

As his left fist bounced jarringly off my chin I brought up both arms fast, right hand closing around his elbow and left arm slapping the inside of his forearm. I turned left with him, pushing on his elbow and following the force of his blow, and his wrist slid neatly into the crook of my left elbow. With his wrist caught there, I slapped my left hand over the right one as he swung off balance, kept pulling down on his elbow with both hands now as I leaned into him. And I really leaned into him. I heard the bone pop. It hadn't broken—not yet it hadn't—but the elbow bones and tendons, bending the wrong way, were audibly protesting. And so was he.

It wasn't a loud sound. The noise was a pained grunt growing into a choking gasp. I kept the pressure on, even increased it a little as I bent forward. He was turned clear around, facing almost in the same direction I was, his knees bending. He gasped some more, went down on one knee. His right hand was still free, but he couldn't swing it toward me without breaking the other arm that I was playing with. Or getting it broken.

But he didn't wilt, or quit, or ask me to stop. He just swore at me filthily, spittle rolling over his lower lip.

I said softly, “Friend, in about five seconds I can break a couple arms and a couple legs for you, and then you wouldn't have any left. So shut that kisser and take it easy.” I leaned into him a little more and his head snapped back, mouth stretching wide. The mouth was wide, but nothing was coming out of it.

I held him that way long enough so he wouldn't forget it, then let go and straightened up. For a moment he kept his arm in the air where I'd left it, then slowly he pulled it toward his chest, grabbed it with his right hand. Breathing gustily through his mouth he got to his feet and stood facing me, staring at me.

“Okay, Scott,” he said finally. “Okay.” He swallowed. “Remember, you asked for it, Scott.” He sighed shudderingly, as if pain and hate and anger were all mixed into the sound, then added, “And you'll get it.”

Chapter Three

The hawk-faced guy wheeled and walked away, holding his arm close to him. I watched him go, wondering what that had been about, then bent forward and picked up the two pieces of cloth that had so infuriated him. He'd dropped them about halfway through the elbow-bending bit. I straightened up and started to turn when there was a sound behind me.

I swung around suddenly, stopped when I saw the white dress. I'd completely forgotten the girl who'd come up here ahead of me. She must have been only a few feet away all the time.

She said, “How do you do, Mr. Scott. I'm Elaine Emerson.”

It was the throbbingly beautiful voice I'd heard on the phone. But now, undistorted, issuing softly from her lips, it was a caress, like whispers in front of glowing fireplaces, the softly slurred laziness of a woman's words between kisses, a voice for after midnight, and cocktails, and soft music.

“Believe it or not,” I said, “I've been hoping you were. Hello.”

“Hello.”

“But my hopes were fading,” I said. “When you didn't show up earlier, I figured you were merely the owner of the Srinagar, or something equally depressing.”

She smiled. Even before she'd smiled, though, her softly modeled mouth had turned up at the corners, as if the smooth red lips were always ready to smile. There was enough light so that, standing this close to her, I could see her face clearly, the parted lips and prominent cheekbones, and the dark eyes. Especially the eyes. They were big and shadowed, deep and dark, almost like the eyes of some women of India, glowing and lustrous as if softly lighted from within. I thought again of fire in ice, but when I was this close to her, the ice seemed very, very thin.

I said, “Anyway, I'm glad you're my client instead. Or are you now?”

“Yes, of course. At least I still hope you can help me find out what's wrong.” She paused. “That man—the one you just ... discouraged. He knows who you are, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, but so do a lot of other people. That doesn't mean he can connect us. And I hope he's discouraged.”

“He should be. That was quite expert, Mr. Scott.”

“Shell.”

“Shell, then. It was somewhat unnerving, but under the circumstances I'm glad I—saw you in action.” She smiled. “You do inspire a feeling of confidence.”

I beamed. This gal was really charming. Not only beautiful, but really a remarkable female.

She said, “I noticed you earlier, of course. It would be almost impossible not to notice you, Shell.”

I beamed some more. But then I wondered, Is that good?

She went on, “A man kept hanging around and I was afraid he might follow me. When he left I took a chance on meeting you. And then that—that awful man.” She looked up at me. “Why was he so anxious for you to leave?”

“I don't know. I thought maybe you could tell me.”

She shook her head. “I haven't any idea who he is.”

“Miss Emerson—”

“Elaine.”

“Elaine, it would help if you gave me an idea of what the trouble is. What I'm supposed to do.”

“I'm terribly worried about Craig—Craig Belden. He's my brother.”

That puzzled me. Brothers and sisters usually have the same last name—unless the woman is married. I said, “Is it Miss Emerson or Mrs. Emerson?”

“Miss. Oh, Craig's really my half brother, much older than I. We have the same mother, but our mother divorced his father several years before she remarried and I was born. Clear?”

“Clear enough. And reassuring.”

She smiled again, then sobered. “Anyway, we're quite close now, and something's terribly wrong. I don't know what it is exactly, but I do know he's afraid someone is going to kill him.”

I let that hang in the air for a moment, then asked her, “How do you know?”

“He told me. Oh, he didn't say it in so many words. He said if he got killed—you know. But he is afraid, and his nerves are in awful shape. He's going to pieces more every day.”

“Who does he think wants to kill him? And why?”

“I don't know. I—” She stopped speaking, suddenly turned toward the rail and looked out over the water. Then I heard the steps of somebody on the deck. A couple had left the dance floor and were standing at the start of the alleyway, leaning against the metal bulkhead, doing something. I didn't know what they were doing, but the girl was giggling.

Elaine said softly, “We can't talk here. I just wanted to have a word with you and identify myself.” She paused. “It's about twenty to twelve now. At midnight Mr. Goss has arranged for entertainment at the dance area. A Hawaiian group from the Islands. So everybody will be there—that would be the best time for us to meet and talk. All right?”

“Sure. Who's Mr. Goss?”

“He's your host—he owns the Srinagar. And he's one of the men Craig has been associated with.”

“As friends? Or—”

She interrupted, “Oh, nothing like that. I understand they're good friends. I should go back now. At midnight I'll be in Cabin Seven. That's below this deck and on the starboard side. Meet me there then, will you?”

“I'll be there.”

“I can't really tell you a lot more, Shell, but at least we won't be interrupted in the cabin.” She turned and started to walk past, then stopped in front of me, close to me, and looked up at my face, light glowing dimly on the smooth cheeks and in her large eyes.

Then her lips curved in an odd smile, and she said, “By the way. What were you doing with Bunny's bikini?”

“Huh?” All of a sudden it was as if icy seas were washing over me. I was drowning in a cold ocean of confusion. “Bunny? Bikini?” In my mind's bloodshot eye I could see her going down for the third time. Without me. Cursing me.

“Oh ... that,” I said, as if it were nothing.

And there Elaine left it, the odd smile still on her lips. “See you at midnight.”

She went in one direction and I watched her, graceful, hip-swaying walk—and then I was going in the other direction. When I reached that forward spot and leaned over the rail, the light which previously had been shining from the portholes was out, and for a horrible moment I couldn't see a thing down there except black water.

“Hello,” I yelled. “You there? Speak to me. Hello?”

“What took you so long?” It was the same voice, and without salty bubbles in it. “I thought you were never coming.”

“Well, I'm back. Here I am. I—”

Then I could see her, dimly. She was swimming from farther to my right, almost from the point of the bow. She stopped below and said, “I forgive you.”

“That's good. I'm glad you didn't ... drown or anything.”

“Did you find my bikini?”

“Yeah, here it—”

“This is so silly. After you raced away I tried to call you, but I guess you didn't hear me. You can't hand the bikini to me, and if you threw it I'd probably miss it and it would sink. And then I'd be in an awful fix.”

“We'd both be in an awful fix.”

“So you'll have to roll over a ladder.”

“Ladder?”

“Yes, one of those rope things with wooden steps across it. There was one back aft when I jumped in earlier, but it isn't there now—I swam back and looked. There's the landing where the launch unloads passengers, but it comes up right by the dance floor. I knew I couldn't climb up there, could I?”

“I wouldn't advise it. Especially not the way they're dancing.”

“So roll over a ladder. Is there one near you?”

“Just a minute.” I ran back and forth along the rail, stooped over, looking. I was looking everywhere at once, but there wasn't any ladder. There wasn't even any rope.

I went back to my place on the rail. “We're in a hell of a fix,” I called down. “No ladder. I'll have to leave you and find one.”

“All right. But hurry.”

“I'll go like the wind. You won't ... sink or anything?”

She laughed that merry laugh again. “I could swim for hours. I can hang on the anchor chain again if I want to.”

Anchor chain. That would be near the point of the bow. “That's where you came from, huh?”

“Yes. And when I was back aft, I sat on the screw for a while.”

“You ... what?”

“Sat on the screw. The propeller. You know, the thing that goes around and makes the ship go.”

“Yeah.” Probably I could have figured that out for myself, I thought. It occurred to me that this little gal and I were almost old friends by now; I certainly felt friendly. We'd carried on practically enough conversation for a whole evening, but I still didn't know what she looked like. I knew what part of her looked like, but that's not a whole woman, no matter how you look at it.

“Say,” I said, “are you Bunny?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I got waylaid by a guy who recognized your bikini.”

“Oh, that must have been Joe. José Navarro. He's my partner.”

I said suspiciously, “What kind of partner?”

“In the act. We do an act together.”

“He swims?”

“No, we do a dance—I'll tell you when I get up there.”

I squinted at my watch. Eleven-forty-five p.m. I had fifteen minutes left. Only fifteen minutes. That wasn't nearly enough time for all I'd planned to do. “I'm off!” I yelled, and then, for the second time tonight, I was racing toward the stern.

Not yet had it occurred to me that this was a kind of madness, that nights shouldn't be like this, that there was an unreal quality about all these activities. Later it would occur to me; but right now nothing mattered but that ladder.

I found the bartender. “Where's a ladder? A ladder?”

He eyed me coldly. “Now how in hell would I know where is a ladder, Mac?” He turned back to a drink he was stirring, then stopped and slowly bent his head around to look at me again. “Ladder?”

But I was gone. I went all around the rail of the Srinagar, but there was no ladder. I knew the kind of thing Bunny had meant, the rope-and-wood affairs which can be placed, rolled up into a ball on deck and then shoved over the side when needed. But none were in sight, and I didn't want to ask too many people. This was the kind of operation where you don't need a crowd, all throwing over ladders.

Just aft of amidships, steps led down to the enclosed deck beneath. I went below and searched around for a minute or two without success, then realized there had to be some kind of storeroom here, in which items usually up on deck might have been temporarily put out of the way. So I walked along the dimly lighted alleyway until I came to a door different from the usual staterooms. It looked like a storeroom. It wasn't.

I tried the door and it opened. I started to step inside, then noted that the room's interior was lighted—and occupied. Occupied by four men, in fact, all suddenly frozen into motionlessness by my sudden appearance. Four frozen men, with four frozen faces. And one of them was the hawk face of the guy I'd bent around up on deck. Nobody had to tell me I wasn't welcome.

In that moment a lot of the zip went out of me. The happy sort of exhilaration during which I'd been charging pell-mell about drained from me slowly, and by the time one of the men spoke I was not only calmed down, but nearly sober. Those looks weren't just unfriendly. They were murderous. And that is not merely a figure of speech—murder looked out at me from at least two pairs of eyes.

One pair belonged to the man I'd had the tussle with. Joe Navarro, Bunny had called him. He must have come straight here after our beef. And that would have interested me greatly if I'd had time to think about it. But I barely had time to look the other men over quickly.

Navarro was the only one standing. The three others were sitting around a low rectangular table, in thickly upholstered chairs. Closest to me was the guy in the middle. His back had been toward the door, and he'd jerked around in his chair. He was a short, pale-faced man with thinning, sandy-colored hair, blue eyes, and a wide pointed chin.

The other two were seated at my left and right, at opposite ends of the table. The one on my left slowly rose to his feet, placing his hands—long thin hands with long thin fingers—on the table top, and looked steadily at me. He was about six feet tall, thin, with regular, almost aristocratic features, and a thin sharp nose like the blade of a knife. White hair covered his head in tight rippling waves. His black dinner jacket looked expensive, as if the material had been made by the ounce and bought by the pound, very well tailored and smoothly fitting. His black patent leather shoes looked as if they'd been manufactured within the hour. In fact, the man had a kind of shiny, new look all over. His face was tanned and smooth, barely lined, but he must have been over fifty, maybe close to sixty years old. He stared calmly at me, features almost without expression, but his dark eyes seemed to burn with the fires of hell, as though from behind them he could see me being turned by the devil on a spit and greatly enjoyed the sight. That was the other pair of eyes with murder in them.

The last of the four, at the table's right, was a big man, with big bones heavily fleshed. His hands were clasped together on the table and black hair sprouted from their backs like long whiskers. The flesh of his face sagged a little, as if too heavy for the muscles beneath; or as if the muscles themselves were too weak to hold his face firmly in place. Heavy lids half covered his eyes, and his fleshy mouth sagged at the corners. He was the one who spoke first.

“Get the hell out of here, you stupid—”

Joe Navarro interrupted him, blurting, “That's the jerk I been telling you about. That's Shell Scott.”

He might just as well have sent an electric current through them. They jumped a little, involuntarily—at least, two of them did. The sandy-haired guy's mouth popped open, and the big fleshy man's heavy hands suddenly balled into fists. Only the one on my left, the shiny, aristocratic egg, stayed motionless, eyes burning.

I carry a .38 Colt Special with a two-inch barrel. It was in its clamshell holster at my left shoulder, as always. I didn't have the faintest idea what I'd stumbled into, but for about two seconds there I thought I might have to use the gun.

The big man on my right got quickly to his feet, and Navarro took a step toward me. Then the white-haired man said quietly, long fingers gently smoothing his lapel, “Precisely why are you here, Mr. Scott?” He spoke in a quiet, clipped voice, as if asking me to join them for a game of darts.

“I made a mistake—”

Navarro said nastily, “You sure did,” but the heavy man chopped an authoritative hand at him, and he clammed.

I went on, “I'm sorry. I hope you'll accept my apology. I thought this was a ... storeroom.”

Still fingering his lapel, the white-haired guy said, “That is quite possible. We do accept your apology. This stateroom does look like a storeroom from the outside.” He glanced at the heavy man, who sat down in his chair again and glared at me.

Still glaring, he said, “What in hell did you want in a storeroom for?”

“I was looking for a ladder.” It sounded pretty silly now.

All four men looked at each other, then at me. The white-haired man spoke in his gentle, clipped voice to Navarro. “You might be courteous enough to help Mr. Scott, Joe. There must be a—” his face took on a puzzled expression—“a ladder somewhere.”

And that was all there was to it. The tension seemed to have evaporated quite a bit in the last few seconds. Joe started to say something, then shrugged and glanced at me.

I stepped back through the doorway as he moved toward me. He came into the alleyway and pulled the door shut, then pointed forward. We walked side by side along the deck—I wasn't letting this one get behind me. He didn't say anything, just walked with me to a closed door, opened it and reached inside to flip a light switch.

“If you really want a ladder, there's four of them.”

He was right. I could see the bulky coiled rolls in the room, side by side on the deck. But I wasn't thinking about ladders as I had been a few minutes ago. Right now, for the first time, I wanted off the Srinagar.

I glanced at my watch. Nine minutes of midnight. I sighed. Here I had two dates in the next nine minutes—one, the lovely, vastly intriguing Elaine; and the other, a naked tomato with very merry laughter, among other things. And I was thinking about getting off the yacht. But somehow that seemed like the wisest thought I'd had all night.

Because I was starting to feel, even if I didn't quite know why yet, as if an invisible hound, red jaws slavering, was snapping at my heels.

Chapter Four

I said to Navarro, “Thanks. I can get along without you.”

He shrugged, turned and walked away. I stepped into the storeroom, bent toward one of the rolled ladders and had my hands on it when I heard him behind me. Maybe I didn't really hear him; maybe I just sensed his presence somehow, or saw a shadow, or heard the sap whispering through the air.

My hands were on a rung of the ladder, and I shoved hard against it as I jerked my body aside. His weighted hand brushed my shoulder, and he hung in the air for a moment, off balance. I was off balance, too, but my foot hit the deck and steadied me, and I came back at him swinging. My left fist dug into his gut before he could get his feet planted, and that meant he wasn't going to get them planted. As I straightened up and cocked my right fist alongside my ear he was bending farther over, spitting air out his open mouth. And then I really gave it to him.

I tried to throw all 206 pounds into my fist as I pivoted hard and slammed my knuckles against the back of his jaw. They landed with a crack that should have been heard up on the top deck, and Navarro flew toward the bulkhead and banged into it. His head smacked against the metal wall, and he slumped silently. He'd stay slumped silently for a while.

I bent over and picked the sap off the deck where he'd dropped it. It was an ugly thing, designed to put into heads the kind of ache aspirins won't help. It was about eight inches long overall, leather thongs braided around a metal core, the last inch and a half thicker than the rest and more heavily braided—probably with lead instead of steel inside that inch and a half in order to produce a more magnificent lump. It was one of those saps referred to as “spring-loaded"; when the hand is slapped forward the spring action gives added speed to the blow. I looked at man's modern version of the stone ax, its heavy blunt end swinging back and forth with a nice balance and snap as I wiggled the grip in my hand, and I wondered: What was a dancer—that's what Bunny had called her “partner”—doing with a spring-loaded sap?

It was past time I started learning the answer to that question and a lot of others, but the place to do it did not, at least not tonight, seem to be on board the Srinagar. However, I had to meet Elaine and I couldn't leave Bunny out there sitting on the screw, or whatever she was doing.

I groaned. I no longer had the slightest doubt that the upcoming meeting between Bunny and me—if I ever actually managed to get back to her—was not going to be half what I'd anticipated. It wouldn't surprise me, I thought sadly, if Bunny hates me before we're through. But I took a last look at Navarro, dropped his sap into my hip pocket, and picked up one of the rope ladders.

I got back up onto the port side of the deck with no further mishaps or delays. Bunny was out of sight again, which didn't surprise me. I called her name a couple of times, and a white shape floated through the water once more. A bit less exuberantly this time, it seemed.

“You decided to come back, huh?” she said. She wasn't laughing.

“Yeah. I had a miserable time.”

“You had a miserable time!”

“Well ... a guy tried to hit me on the head—”

“Hah!”

“He really did.” As I talked, I was busy with the ladder, fixing it to the rail and poised to shove it over.

“You had time to get hit, recover consciousness, see a doctor—”

“Bunny, please. I really—skip it. Look out below. Here comes the ladder.”

“Show me.”

I gave it a shove, it unrolled, thudding a bit against the hull, and then splashed. In a moment the little gal started up. Silently. About halfway up she paused and said, “I suppose I should thank you.” Her tone was a little more like the old tone.

“That's ... up to ... you.” My tone was a little more like the old tone, too. She was fairly clear down there, only a very few feet away, and even though there was little light, she presented a tremendously fetching picture, leaning back a bit and hanging onto the ropes.

“Did somebody really try to hit you on the head?”

“Honest. Cross my—hell, yes, somebody tried to sap me. Do you think I'm making all this up?”

Bunny said, “I just never knew many people who got hit on the head.”

“Stick with me, kid. You'll meet more—”

“What kind of man are you, anyway?”

“My dear,” I said with what remained of calm and patience, “you are never going to find out down there on that ladder.”

She laughed a little then, the first laugh in quite a while, and it was a nice sound indeed. Then she climbed the rest of the way. As she got closer I saw her face for the first time, shadowed in the soft light, but perky, pretty, with what might have been a grin on it. And beneath her merry face, the jutting roundness of a woman's thrusting breasts, swaying with her movement; below, only dim whiteness gleaming as her legs moved.

Then she was level with me, at the top of the ladder, and climbed easily, athletically over the rail. Behind her the lights of the Balboa Fun Zone were red and yellow and green, a dotted rainbow that cast its faint reflection on her wet skin. But I must confess I caught all that from the corner of just one eye, because Bunny had her own Fun Zone.

She stood on the deck for a moment, catching her breath. “Wow ... whew!” she said.

“Wow!” I said. “Whew!”

It didn't sound exactly right, but nothing would have sounded exactly right. Standing before me on the deck, in bare feet, she appeared even shorter than she ordinarily would have. I guessed she was five-two at most. But she was merely short; she wasn't little. No, this was not a little girl, this was a wantonly shaped young doll about twenty-two or -three years old, and with a trim dancer's body, shapely legs and firm upstanding breasts—almost brushing my white jacket at the moment.

She looked up at me, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth, then said, “Well! You're not what I expected.”

“What ... did you ... expect?” Getting all that out wasn't easy.

“For all I knew, you were four feet tall and sixty years old. What are you, about eight feet high?”

“No, six-two. And I'm not even high any more. Nor am I sixty—no sixty-year-old man could have done half what I've done in the last—oh, murder. What time is it?”

Clearly, she was wearing no watch. I peered at mine. Four minutes of twelve. Well, that settled that.

“Have you got my bikini?” she asked.

“Yeah. In my pocket.” I took it out and held it before me.

“Golly,” she said, “I have put you to a lot of trouble, haven't I?”

“Not really. I just sort of ran into difficulties and delays. But ... it was all ... worth it.”

“You're sweet.”

She took the bikini from me, and started putting it on. Oddly enough, she put the top wisp, the bra, on first, reaching behind her back to tie the thing. It almost seemed as if she were going at this dressing operation backward, but backward or not it sure wasn't the wrong way. In fact, it sort of added something.

I was just about ruined, that's all. It seemed as though all my nerve endings were having little breakdowns, twirling about in tiny individual traumatic conniptions. I simply stood there, nerves wiggling, fingers wiggling, everything wiggling, and a feeling in my brain as if it were going to burn out with a mild sizzling sound, the way old light bulbs go.

“There,” she said with satisfaction, as she finished tying the bra.

“There,” I echoed.

“Golly,” she said, straightening up and putting one hand on my shoulder, “you've been wonderful.”

“Yeah,” I answered dully. “I've been ... a brick.”

“And I don't even know your name.”

“It's Shell. Shell Scott.”

“I'm Bernice Wade. Call me Bunny.”

“How do you do.”

“How do you do.”

We shook hands.

And, of course, that did it. Man, that did it. I knew that I had only two or three minutes left, at most. So I had purposely, carefully, determinedly avoided touching even one square inch of that wetly gleaming bare skin because there were so many other rounded inches wetly gleaming. I'd just stood there, an emotional shambles.

But now, with that automatic though incongruous clasping of hands, the warm touch of her palm and the friendly pressure of her fingers turned on the juice. The connection was made, the current started flowing; I really got a charge out of this one.

She said, “I do appreciate your help, Shell Scott. I really ought to give you a big kiss. Really. Just to prove my gratitude.”

She came closer to me, that one arm sliding from my shoulder up around my neck, the other soft arm rising to join the first, and I guess you know what happened then.

That was a kiss, believe me. Not even all the time she'd spent in the water had cooled Bunny down. She was a contained explosion which hadn't quite gone off, a hot, undulating, super-feminine mass of new and better sensations. It was a kiss that could scar you, maim you, cripple your lips, bend and sear them into a permanent pucker, and it lasted for quite a while. In fact, until she stopped it.

It was a good thing she pushed me away. It was a big kiss to begin with, but if it had gotten any bigger, we would no longer have been kissing. We would have been engaged.

She stepped back, and we both just stood there sort of vibrating for a few moments, then she said, “Mister. You can throw me a ladder every day if you want to.”

I sucked in some night air and started to speak, then remembered. I peered at my watch. In less than a minute, one small minute, it would be midnight.

I said, “I'll do it, too. But ... Bunny, dear. My sweet. This may sound a little strange. But I—I have to go.”

“Go?” She did seem startled. “You mean ... go?”

“Yes. I'm sorry. I don't want to—”

She interrupted me, briskly. “Well, thanks for the help. I must ... leave you cold, as the saying—”

“Bunny, you do anything but leave me cold. I simply told somebody I'd show up at the stroke of midnight, so I have to do it. Even though that midnight stroke may be mine.”

She snorted.

“I don't know how long it will take,” I said, “Maybe just a few minutes. If so, I'd like to try to find you again.” I thought of Navarro, who wouldn't be unconscious all night, and added, “Though I might have to leave in a hurry.”

By this time she had all of her bikini on. She put both hands on her hips and looked up at me, then said coolly, “I'll probably be on deck. I've had enough swimming.”

I left her, found Cabin Seven below on the starboard side, and knocked.

There was no light on inside the cabin, and I didn't hear any sound. I looked along the alleyway. About twenty feet down it was that closed door through which I'd earlier blundered. Past it another few feet and on the opposite side of the corridor was the storeroom in which I'd left Navarro. Whether he was still lying in there or not, I didn't know.

I knocked again, louder this time. There was still no answer. I didn't get it; I'd been only a few seconds late, and Elaine couldn't hold that against me. I started worrying. The way things were going on this yacht, anything might happen. I tried the knob, but the door was locked. No sound came from inside the cabin. Maybe she was still up above, with the dancers, I thought. But there was the possibility, too, that she'd come to the cabin minutes ago, to wait for me—and was still inside.

I looked up and down the alleyway; it was empty. Then I stepped back from the cabin wall, slammed my foot into the door. It gave a little, and I kicked it again, near the lock. The door sprang open, and I stepped inside, found the light switch and flipped it on. The room was empty. I figured Elaine was just a little late—then I saw something that changed my mind. In an ashtray on a small table by the neatly made bunk, a cigarette smoldered.

I walked over and looked at it. The cigarette was a filter-tip, and gray ash lay in an unbroken line along the bottom of the tray; the cigarette had remained untouched while burning itself out. But it still smoldered, smoke rising from the last grains of tobacco. A red trace of lipstick colored the filter's edge.

Pulsing Hawaiian music throbbed sensually back aft. I walked toward it. Wooden chairs had been arranged between the bar and the dance floor on the top deck, facing the entertainment now in progress. In the chairs sat most of the party guests aboard, but there was no sign of Elaine's dark hair or white dress.

Uneasiness grew in me. I knew she'd intended to meet me below; I felt sure it was she who'd been in Cabin Seven minutes ago. Something had to be wrong. Something, obviously, had happened to make her change her mind—or make it impossible for her to meet me. But I didn't have anything solid to go on, nothing to tell me what might have caused a change in plans, or who, or why. Something was sure as hell going on here besides the gay party, and I had the feeling it was something more than merely unpleasant. But it was primarily just hunch, feeling, almost a guess, despite what Elaine had told me. So far nothing fit—there wasn't any pattern.

I made a quick tour of the top deck, then went below and hurried along the starboard corridor past the closed door behind which I'd met Navarro and the three other men. I went on by and checked the storeroom where I'd left Navarro. He was still there. As I looked in he groaned softly. It wouldn't be long until he was on his feet again. Wobbly, but on his feet. And I knew in whose face he'd feel like putting those feet.

The corridor on the yacht's port side was empty, too, and I went up top and back toward the dance floor again, wondering what I'd do if Elaine were in one of the other staterooms. I couldn't kick all the doors down, and the Srinagar seemed more and more like a good place for me to get away from.

A few feet this side of the dance floor a girl was standing at the rail, outlined in the glow from hanging lanterns. The spot was about where Elaine and I had earlier stood and talked, but this was a little gal in a red-and-white striped bikini. Bunny. She faced as I walked up.

“Hi,” I said.

“Oh, hello,” she replied without great enthusiasm. “It's you.”

“Yeah. Bunny, did you notice a tall dark-haired woman in a white dress around here in the last few minutes?”

“Beautiful? Shapely? Sexy?”

“That's the one.”

She blew air out her nostrils. “So that's what took you away in such a hurry.”

“Well ... yes, but—”

“I'll admit she's much prettier than I am. But she had all her clothes on.”

“Bunny, I haven't time for games. Where is she?”

She didn't answer my question. Not immediately. Instead she said, her voice still brittle, “I realize you don't have time for games, Mr. Scott. I got the impression you don't even know how to play.”

“Honey, I invented some of the games. Where is that girl?”

“She left.”

“Left the Srinagar?”

“Yes. With some old goat. When you ... abandoned me, I walked up here. She was just getting into the launch with him.” She pointed toward the Balboa shore. “There's the launch now, starting back.”

I followed her pointing finger. Several yards to the left of the amusement center on shore, just pulling away from Greene's Boat Landing, a sleek inboard cruiser was turning to head back for the yacht.

I said, “Did you notice anything else? Were they alone when they got into the boat? Who was the guy? Did she ... look all right?”

“Of course she looked all right. Why wouldn't she? She must have looked absolutely irresistible to you. They just got on and left. I noticed them because it seemed like an odd time to leave, when the entertainment was just starting.”

“You know who the guy was?”

She shook her head. “I barely noticed him. It was a man, that's all I know.”

I didn't get it. But it settled one thing—I was leaving the Srinagar as quickly as possible. I wanted to ask Bunny about her so-called “partner,” Joe Navarro, among other things, so I said to her, “I'm getting off this tub. Want to come along?”

“Are you serious?”

“Sure.”

“I don't know.” She tilted her head back. “I like red-blooded men.”

“Honey, I'm so red-blooded even my white corpuscles are pink.”

“Well ... why did you rush off so all of a sudden?”

“I had to be at another spot on the yacht at midnight. It was business.”

“Business?”

“Primarily.”

“What kind of business are you in? You never said.”

“I'm a private detective.”

“How interesting!” She really seemed intrigued. “What are you working on now?”

“You.”

She laughed. We argued a little more, but she seemed mollified and finally said, “I came with Joe. If I left with you, he might not like it.”

“If you refer to Joe Navarro, I recently knocked him out, and about now he's coming to. He isn't going to like anything I do—but I wouldn't want him angry with you because of me.”

“Knocked him out? You hit him?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, good for you.” She glanced at the launch now nearing the Srinagar and said, “All right. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“I'll take it.”

“Let's go.” She paused, smiling. “By the way, I never went swimming in the nude before tonight. This was the first time. I wouldn't want you to think I did that sort of thing all the time. I ... got a little looped.” She paused. “It turned out to be fun, though.”

“It always is.”

“I'll have to get my clothes.” She glanced at the launch, veering in toward the landing platform at the bottom of the ladder amidships, and added, “But I'll hurry. I'll just grab them and wear my bikini ashore. All right?”

“I wouldn't have it any other way. But hurry—if I don't get away from here quick, I may leave with lead weights on me. Or in me.”

She trotted off, but was back in no more than a minute, wearing a thigh-length white beach robe over her swimsuit and carrying a small cloth bag in her hand. We went to the ladder, down it, and reached the wooden platform barely above the water as the launch bumped into the cushioned edge.

Under almost any other circumstances, that short trip from a yacht to an amusement center would have been one of the high points of the week. But even though I was much preoccupied with thoughts of lovely Elaine Emerson, the now almost surely conscious Navarro, and other people and occurrences of the immediate past, it sure wasn't a low point.

Most of the time Bunny merely lay back on the leather cushion next to me, bare legs stretched out before her, the shortie robe open and resting at each side of her bare middle, fingers patting gently as she hummed one of the tunes the combo had been playing earlier, hands resting easily on her provocatively curving body. Just that, while she looked at me and added occasional words to the conversation.

But that patting was like jungle drums going whomp-boom-smack in my ears. And from time to time she seemed to be caught up in her own rhythm and would wiggle her shoulders a time or two, as if doing an imaginary dance.

I said, “So you're a dancer?”

“Uh-huh. I work at the Red Rooster.”

“Red Rooster.” She was patting away, drumming with her fingers on that nude middle. “What kind of dance?”

“Cockfight. Joe and I do a kind of cockfight.”

“You do, huh? That's—maybe you'd better say that again. Explain it a little more.”

“We each have bird costumes—you know, feathers and everything. Joe wears a red rooster-like comb—we don't really look like chickens, but the audience gets the idea.”

Slap, slap, she went; pat-pat-pat.

“You'll have to come to the club tomorrow night.” She went on, “Shows at nine and midnight—we had tonight off. We dance around as if we're going to tear each other apart—both of us wear long spurs on our feet. They're painted silver to look like metal, but they're just rubber. We waggle all around and leap at each other, and then finally Joe wins. It's very colorful.”

“That's an act I'll catch. About Joe. I'll tell you in advance, I like him best when I'm hitting him. So with that warning, how'd you get mixed up with Navarro?”

She patted firmly and then went into one of those grand wiggles. “I was doing another act with a fellow named Mike, but he broke his leg.”

“During the act?”

“No, he fell off his house. He was fixing the roof or something. Anyway, I was planning to do a single after that, but Joe—he was emcee of the show then—talked me into the Rooster bit. He used to be a flamenco dancer, and he's still pretty good. The act looked all right in rehearsal so we tried it out, and it went over big. That was two months ago, and we're still doing it.”

“So Joe's just a partner, huh? Not the husband or boy friend.”

“Ho-ho,” she chuckled. “I don't have any husbands. And he's not the boy friend.” She had been looking at me at the time, and now she smiled slightly and said, “At the moment, you're the boy friend.”

“I don't feel much like a boy. I'll say this for, you, Bunny. You've got more rhythm than a mad bongo player.”

“I can't help it. I'm full of music. I just keep time to me.” She patted away beautifully and went on, “But Joe wants to think he's the boy friend. He's one of those guys that likes to believe he's irresistible. Believe me, he isn't. We dated a couple of times, but he didn't want anybody even looking at me. So I told him to open his veins, and he flipped. Said he didn't want me jazzing around with anybody but him. Played the big heavy—you know.”

“Yeah. Only I don't think he's playing. I think he is the big heavy.”

“He's mean, all right. Anyway, he got so ugly I told him we'd be partners in the act, but that was all, and if he pushed it I'd leave the club and do a single. So he simmered down a little. The only reason I came with him tonight is because he promised he'd play the gentleman—and I don't get invited on yachts more than twice a week.”

“Nor do I. He invited you, then? I mean, the invitation came through Navarro, not from Goss?”

“That's right. Who's Goss?”

“Guy who owns the yacht. So I hear—I don't know the man.” I described the three other men I'd seen in that room on the lower deck, but she didn't know any of them, she said.

Then with a last pat, and a culminating wiggle, the conversation stopped because we were at Greene's Landing. I helped Bunny up the steps, and we walked toward the amusement zone. My car was parked on Palm Street at the zone's far side.

As we walked, Bunny slipped her arm in mine and said, “I've been gabbing all the time. You gab. So you're a detective, hmm?”

“Yep.”

“And you really were looking for a villain or something when you abandoned me. It wasn't just some old tryst or assignation.”

“Right. Only I still don't really know what I was looking for. But as for abandoning you, you seemed quite abandoned even before I left.”

She laughed. “I must have. And I am, Shell. Only not quite that abandoned. I told you I'd never swum in the nude before.” She paused. “Have you?”

“Oh, on numerous occasions,” I said airily.

“Alone?”

I changed the subject. “You never did explain how you happened to be so delectably in the drink.”

She hugged my arm. “When Joe and I got aboard, there wasn't anybody else around. Big party, I thought. The cad's going to bring out some yard-square etchings of Sin or something. So I told him off. He said there really was going to be a very fancy party, but it didn't start for an hour or so.”

“Oh? Then why were you aboard so early?”

“I don't know. He left me. The louse just left me.”

“He say why?”

“Only that he had something to take care of.”

We were walking through the Fun Zone, bay gleaming on our right beyond the small sand beach, Ferris wheel slowly turning on our left. The merry-go-round was operating, calliope honking tortuously in the clear air. A kid hung onto the neck of a black stallion, wailing more horrendously than the calliope, and a few feet farther on a teenage couple was throwing baseballs at metal milk bottles.

Near us a group of guys in their early twenties looked at us, at Bunny, her shapely legs bare beneath the short jacket, and it was a sure thing that not one of them saw me. Two of them let out long, low whistles as we passed.

Bunny, unperturbed, continued, “Joe acted almost as if he didn't give a hoot what I did, up and left me. I told him I took it back about he should open his veins, to make it the arteries so he'd go quicker. He just went off somewhere.”

“That, Bunny, is what Navarro probably conceives of as playing the gentleman.”

“Well, it sure made me mad. The bar was set up, so I made some drinks for me, and sat at the bar all alone—feeling sorry for myself. So I had some more to drink, and suddenly it seemed like a good idea to go swimming. On impulse. Can you imagine?”

“Sure. I'm loaded with impulses.”

“It was good and dark by then. I'd put on my bikini, but I thought what the dickens, I'd go in nude. I guess, the wild feeling of being on that beautiful yacht had something to do with it. And I figured I'd show Joe, the louse.” She chuckled. “Instead, I showed you, didn't I? Well, I swam around for a while, having a ball, but all of a sudden the launch arrived with the first guests, and I started wondering about the fix I was in. I don't remember now if there was a ladder on the back end of the boat or not when I went in, but there wasn't any when I looked.” She shook her head. “So I swam and swam and—you know the rest.”

We walked to Palm Street and turned away from the water. Bunny said softly, “Do you think I'm awful, Shell?”

I put my arm around her waist. “I think you're wonderful.” We were at my car, so I stopped and opened the door for her. The buggy is a new Cad, sky blue with white-leather upholstery, and Bunny commented that it was quite a boat itself. I told her to climb aboard and we drove to Balboa Boulevard, turned right toward Newport.

Bunny had told me she lived in Hollywood, and since my apartment is on North Rossmore, only minutes from Hollywood and Vine, we were practically neighbors. She also told me she was hungry, starved, famished, so we stopped at Berkshire's in Newport for steaks and the view of harbor and boats through big glass windows, before driving to the Santa Ana Freeway. On the way in we talked easily, happily together, the wind fresh in our faces, pulling light words from our mouths. It was a pleasant drive into town.

Bunny Wade, there is no doubt, was a completely delightful little package of vital femininity. But even so, at several moments during the hour's drive into the city, I found myself thinking about Elaine Emerson. Not only because she'd hired me, spoken to me, and disappeared without another word—though that puzzled and worried me enough—but also because there was something about Elaine that stayed in me like warm wine. I'd see her as she'd looked to me from across the dance floor, tall and dark and graceful, and in the moment when she'd spoken to me in the Srinagar's alleyway—and I could see those big eyes, those deep Indian eyes, seeming to glow with a faint warm fire.

Bunny was smaller, more compact, but delightfully formed and full of fun and merriment. Elaine was more—more ample, more voluptuous in her appearance, with deeper breasts and even more flowing curves. Bunny was pep and sunshine; Elaine had more of the night about her, its velvety softness, more of darkness and mystery.

We both knew where Bunny lived, of course; but she didn't object when I drove past Clinton, her street, and on down Vine to Rossmore and the Spartan Apartment Hotel. The Spartan is where I live.

I parked at the curb before the green grounds of the Wilshire Country Club, which the Spartan faces, and turned to Bunny. “Want a nightcap?”

“Sure. Make me a big one that'll last till morning.” She paused. “You're nice, Shell. I feel ... like the sun's coming up.”

At that moment, so did I. Her sweet lips were parted, close to my face, and I leaned toward her. Those smooth white arms went around my neck again and her lips made love to mine. Her fingertips moved gently on my cheek, then one hand slipped down to my chest. She must have felt the pounding of my heart. After a while she pulled her mouth free, brushed my cheek with hers, and said almost inaudibly, “How about that drink now? That big drink.”

I put my fingers on the door handle and glanced toward the Spartan. “You shall have it in a vase ....” I stopped.

From where we were parked, across the street and a few feet short of the building's edge, I could see the bedroom window of my apartment, up on the second floor. As I'd glanced that way something had flashed faintly, glimmering behind the window.

“Either you ignited my eyebrows,” I told Bunny, “or something even stranger is happening.”

As I finished the sentence, the flash became visible again. It wasn't obvious, more of a sudden faint glow. I didn't know what it had been, but somebody lighting a match, or more probably snapping a lighter on briefly, might have caused that kind of quick, dim flare of light. But any kind of light meant people. And people in my darkened apartment, at this dim hour of morning, could mean only one thing.

Trouble.

Chapter Five

“What's the matter?” Bunny asked.

“I don't know. I ... saw something.” I thought about it for a moment, then turned to Bunny. “Look, you'll get that big drink. But right now, wait here. Stay in the car.”

“Shell, what's wrong?” Her voice was a little tight.

“I'm not sure. Look, don't get in a tizzy. I just want to check something.”

I eased past Bunny and got out on her side, pushing the door shut instead of slamming it. Then I walked in darkness up Rossmore until I was opposite the Spartan's entrance. Before crossing the street I looked around, but no other car was close, and I didn't see anybody else in the area.

I crossed the street and went into the Spartan's lobby. It was empty except for the night man on the desk, sitting before the switchboard. I stopped in front of him and said, “Anybody ask for me tonight?”

He glanced up. “Hi, Shell.” Then he pursed his lips and looked me up and down, eying the white tux and gaudy cummerbund. “You've been dancing in the streets.”

I grinned. “No, I've just been yachting again. Same old rut. Seriously, has anybody asked for me?” He shook his head. “You didn't let anybody into my apartment?”

“Of course not.” He frowned. “Why? Something wrong?”

“I'll let you know. You can douse the hall lights on my floor from here, can't you?”

“Sure.” He pointed to a switch box.

“Okay. Give me a minute, then douse them. Wait another half minute or so, then ring my room. Long rings, lean on the switch. All right?”

“Well ... sure.”

“If anybody answers the phone, pretend there's a long distance call coming in. By then it won't make any difference.”

He looked puzzled but said he'd do it and gave me my key. I went up to the second floor and down the hall to my apartment, feet silent on the carpet. I waited, key in hand, near the room. In a few seconds the hall lights went out and I stepped in front of the door.

Anybody inside might notice the sudden disappearance of illumination slipping under the door, but now at least they wouldn't notice any shadow from my big feet. I waited, listening. In a moment I heard a man with a high-pitched voice say softly, “What in hell was that?”

“What was what?” The second voice was deeper, slurred, the kind that usually comes from the side of a man's mouth.

I let out my breath easily, heart starting to pound. Well, now I knew for sure—at least two men were in there, waiting in darkness. And that didn't stack up like a welcoming party.

The one with the high-pitched voice was saying, “Didn't a light go out somewhere? Outside in the hall, huh?”

“Oh, shut up.” That was the voice with authority, the bigger voice, the tough one.

I put my left hand on the doorknob, placed the key gently against the lock but didn't insert it. In a few more seconds the phone rang stridently inside the apartment. While it rang, I turned the knob easily. The door was locked, and I used my key, turned it, cracked the door.

In sudden silence the guy with the high-pitched voice swore audibly, adding, “Geez, I liked to jumped out of my skin.”

“Shut up, I told you.”

I dropped the key into my pocket, reached under my coat, took out the Colt and held it tight in my right hand. Inside, the high-pitched voice said, almost whining, “But what if that bastard don't come home at all? This bugs me—”

The deep voice was angry this time. “Shut that damn mouth of yours or I'll carve it up with this chiv.”

Judging from the sounds, they were sitting on the long divan in my front room. It wasn't far from the entrance, only a few feet. Closer than I'd have liked, but I had to take a chance now anyway. The phone rang again, another long ring. I pushed the door open far enough so I could step inside and barely had the door shut when the ringing stopped. I froze, held my breath, pulse hammering in my ears.

There wasn't any sudden outcry or movement. At first I couldn't see a thing. And I thought I'd made it. I thought I'd managed, in the darkness and with my sounds covered by the ringing of the phone, to get inside unseen and unheard.

But as I turned to reach for the light switch in the wall, a flicker of movement caught my eye. And I heard a whispering sound, soft, as if someone were silently moving over the carpet. The movement had been on my left. The bedroom is farther back in the apartment, and dim illumination filtering in from outside fell through its window and faintly outlined the bedroom door. The movement I'd seen had been something, someone, moving between that door and me, momentarily blocking the light.

My fingers were on the light switch and I flipped it up. The sudden light was almost blinding for a moment. In that first flash I saw the room, one man half off the big divan on my right—but on my left a bigger man, a heavy, husky guy. He'd gotten to within four or five feet of me, and as light blazed he jumped toward me. A long knife—the “chiv” he'd mentioned to the other man—glittered in his fist. His hand was low, out from his body, and as he leaped forward he started to drive it up at me, slicing at my belly.

I swung my body to the left, keeping my feet planted, bending my left knee as I straightened the right one and shoving myself out of the path of the blade, turning slightly in toward the man. I know the technique, I long ago learned what a man is “supposed” to do when a knife is sliced up at his belly, and I just did it without thinking—forgetting the gun in my hand.

There probably wouldn't have been time to pull the trigger anyway; but even if there had been, the only thought in my mind was to stop the knife. I saw the knife, not the man, saw the thick wrist and burly arm behind the blade, and I reacted to it automatically.

As the steel arced up through the air where my middle had been I kept swinging in toward him and slammed the little-finger edge of my left arm down hard on his wrist. As his thick arm slowed, my right hand slapped the fist holding the knife, wrapped around it with my thumb on the back of his hand. My Colt landed on the carpet, skidded across the room. I put every bit of strength I had into twisting his hand and wrist to my left, sliding my other hand down to join the right one. I got my fingers into his palm, thumbs crossed on the back of his hand, and snapped his wrist over hard.

I heard the bone crack. The knife fell through the air but he yelled in anguish before it hit the floor. There hadn't been a sound until now except for the scuffle and the big guy's yell, no words, no voices. But now the other guy, a small pinched-faced mug, shouted and lunged at me.

I jerked hard on the arm I was holding, pulled the big man even farther off balance and around toward me enough so the little guy bumped into him. As he stumbled, falling, I let go of the arm, stepped toward the second man and hooked a left into his face. He spun away and I grabbed him, jerked him around, set myself and brought a right up from below my knee. My fist landed on his chin like a lead hammer. I could hear his jaws slam together, hear his teeth breaking. He reeled backward, arms flailing, and fell to the carpet. He lay awkwardly, silently, unmoving.

The big man was on one knee. He started up, putting his weight on his right hand, gasped in agony as splintered bones ground together, and fell. Before he landed I stepped toward him, right foot swinging. My big shoe caught him at the back of his jaw. When he landed, he didn't try to get up. I started to step on his ear a time or two, but stopped myself.

For a few seconds I stood in the middle of the room, both hands still held before me, muscles tight. Then I let out my breath in a gust, dropped my arms, felt some of the tension drain out of me. I looked at the two men, starting to think again.

I was sure as hell deep in something that could soon be fatal. I began feeling a little weak, shaky, the reaction from sudden effort and danger, the overstimulation of glands and heart, all the body's defenses working overtime.

I got my Colt off the floor, put the gun back into its holster. Then I picked up the knife and looked the thing over. It was a lethal blade I'd seen before during my years as a Marine. It was a Sykes-Fairbairn Commando knife, with a shaped handle narrowing at its base and a long doubled-edged sharply pointed steel blade. Slim, graceful, deadly—yet an almost beautiful instrument for killing. It was not a hunting knife, unless you were hunting men. That's what it had been made for—killing men.

I put the knife on the long, low, cigarette-scarred coffee table before my chocolate brown divan, then searched the men, took everything from their pockets. When I got through, arrayed on the coffee table were two automatic pistols—a .45 caliber Colt Commander and a smaller Browning 380—two wallets, a ring of keys and the knife. I still had in my pocket the sap I'd earlier taken from Joe Navarro. I added it to the pile, then went into the kitchenette and grabbed a bottle of bourbon, poured an inch into the bottom of a water glass. I seldom drink bourbon straight. I drank it straight. In the living room again I sat on the divan and looked through the wallets. They didn't tell me much. The wallets contained a total of two hundred and twenty-three dollars. There was no identification at all, no driver's licenses, nothing to finger these boys. It told me they were probably pros, hoods hired to take care of me.

I lit a cigarette, almost back to normal. The bourbon flickered pleasantly in my stomach. The only thing that hurt was my right hand. The knuckles were skinned and raw, but not nearly so painful as the little guy's chin and the inside of his mouth were going to be when he came to.

I started to get to my feet when I heard something in the hallway outside my room. There was the sound of feet on the carpet, then a soft knock at the door.

I stood up, pulled out the Colt again. There'd been two men here waiting for me; but that didn't mean there wouldn't have been another down below somewhere, maybe in a car, or just waiting. I walked toward the door, thinking. There was another possibility, too—little Bunny might have seen the lights go on and wondered why I hadn't come back for her. Maybe she'd decided to check for herself.

But I didn't take any chances. I held the gun in my left hand and with my right grabbed the doorknob and yanked it open fast.

As it opened I moved to one side, gun thrust forward before me, finger tight on the trigger.

It wasn't a man. It wasn't even Bunny.

It was Elaine Emerson.

Chapter Six

Elaine's face was pale, those big eyes looking even larger in her face, enormous dark eyes seeming somehow smeared, even darker now.

She started to step forward, then saw the gun in my hand. Her mouth stretched wide, and her face got the color of clay. She let out a tight, strangled gasp and stood motionless, staring at the gun.

I dropped my arm, put the gun away. “Elaine,” I said. “What the—what are you doing here?”

She swallowed, not answering, her face regaining a little of its composure, a lot of its beauty. I took her arm. “Come on in. Sorry about the gun—I thought you were somebody else.”

Finally she managed to speak, even mustered a faint smile. “I ... hope so.” She stepped inside and suddenly let out a wailing noise. Her face started going through those motions again. She raised a finger and pointed.

Then I remembered the two limp bodies on the floor. But I tried to play it light. If I played it heavy, it looked as if Elaine would fall down in a crumpled heap. “Sorry, Elaine,” I said. “Sorry. Excuse the looks of my apartment. It ... it's a mess.”

She dropped her arm and blinked at me. “What ... what...”

“Sit down.” I led her to the divan and placed her on it, facing away from the mugs on the floor. “Just a moment. I'll have to, ah, tidy up the place a bit.”

She didn't say a word. But I heard a groan.

I looked around and noticed the big guy on the floor wiggling feebly. The little one would be no trouble for quite a while, I knew; the knife man not only was tougher, but I hadn't kicked him as hard as I'd slugged the other one.

“Elaine,” I said gently. “Just keep looking at the wall or something. Look at Amelia.”

Amelia is the yard-square nude, garish, bawdy, the kind of oiled tomato you would find only in a bachelor's apartment. Amelia, who says “Come hither, honey,” not only with her eyes, but with a great deal of the rest of her. Amelia, whom the ladies always frown upon, lips curling and the men always examine closely, lips curling the other way.

Elaine looked at the wall and her lips began curling, and I picked up the spring-loaded sap, walked the few steps to the feebly wiggling man and clobbered him a good one above and behind his right ear. He became motionless again, like furniture.

When I straightened up Elaine was watching me, but her lips were still curling. She said, in a horrified tone, “You ... you hit him.”

“Yeah. I got him a dandy one.”

“But—that's terrible.”

“What's so terrible? I should let him—”

“But he was just lying there—”

“No, he wasn't. He was wiggling.”

“Wiggling! He was on the floor, not doing anything—”

I interrupted her again. “Honey, slow down. I know the rules, but I can't allow guys to get up and kill me. And that's what this poor unconscious man would bend every effort to do.”

“Don't be sarcast—” She stopped. “Kill you,” she said softly, her face getting blank. “Kill...”

I thought at first she was concerned about the heartrending possibility that I might have been there on the floor instead of the two thugs. I sat beside her on the divan and pointed to the two guns, picked up the knife and held it in my palm.

“These bums,” I said, “were waiting for me when I got home. The guy I just tapped tried to stick me with this.”

I didn't get it. She seemed hardly to be listening. Her face was twisted. “Shell,” she said, her voice a cry of pain, “Shell, they killed him. It was horrible. They murdered him.”

“Murdered? Murdered who?”

“Craig. They killed him. I was there. It was horrible. Horrible. Horrible!” Her voice rose, getting higher and louder.

I put my hands on her shoulders, suddenly serious. “Easy. Craig Belden? Your—your brother?”

“Yes. I—” She couldn't get the rest of it out at first. Then she pulled herself together with an effort. “You remember I was suppose to meet you on the Srinagar.”

“Yes. I went to Cabin Seven.”

“I'm sorry. But I was there, waiting, when Craig came in and said we had to leave.”

“He was on the yacht?”

“Yes. We went aboard together. He was insistent that we couldn't wait, had to leave right then. I knew I could explain to you. We went to Craig's home in Los Angeles. He said he wanted to give me some papers. Said he could trust me—but he didn't even get to tell me what they were. And he was extremely upset. There's a safe behind a painting in his living room. He got some things out of it and barely started telling me what to do with them when a car came into the drive.”

She paused, brushed at her eyes. And now I saw why they had looked darker, even bigger, as she'd stood in my doorway. Mascara was smeared around them, as if tears had moistened her lashes, and she had brushed the darkness onto her lids.

Elaine sighed heavily, shakily, then went on, “Craig got white as a sheet, told me to get into the bedroom and keep quiet. I did, and two men came in—I guess it was two, I heard two voices but I didn't see anybody. One of them said, ‘We got a message for you, Belden.’ And then ... oh, I can't!”

She stopped, pressed both hands to her face and bent forward, choking sounds coming out of her mouth, muffled against her fingers. After a while she took her hands from her face, then without prompting from me she continued. “There were three gunshots then. I heard ... Craig fall. Not a sound after the shots, just—oh, as if he were clutching at the desk, scratching, then the sound of him falling. I was petrified. I didn't even realize what had happened, not really. A voice—a different one from the first said—‘Grab that stuff and check the safe. Make it snappy.’ There wasn't a word after that. Just the men moving around, and then the door slamming. I heard a car start.”

She was silent for a long time, then said, “I just stood there. Not more than a few seconds, but it seemed forever. When I went into the front room, Craig was lying on his back behind the desk. There was blood on his chest and his face ... his face—” She stopped, then went on, her voice dull and flat. “Well, he was dead. The safe was still open, empty, and the papers were gone from his desk. I touched him, once, and then ran. We'd driven to Balboa and back in my car. I ran to it, came straight here.”

It was quiet for a while. Then I said, “It's obvious the men thought he was alone. Do you have any idea who they were?”

She shook her head. “What am I going to do, Shell? You've got to help me. I don't know what to do, I'm all—all in pieces.”

“If you've any idea what caused this, what's going on, tell me now. You left a lot of things unsaid earlier.”

“But I don't know anything. I told you most of it on the yacht, the little there was to tell.”

I was concerned about two other things besides Belden's murder. One, the fact that Elaine had been in the house when her brother was murdered, and thus would be on the spot herself if the killers ever learned of that fact; and the other item, that two more croak-and-dagger boys had been waiting here for me. It seemed too much, on one night, to check off as coincidence.

I told her that, then said, “Start at the beginning. When you first got worried and why. Why you hired me, called me in the first place.”

She told me little more than I already knew. Her brother had in the last month or so become increasingly drawn and jittery, worried, afraid of something. On more than one occasion he had told her that if he got killed suddenly—accidentally, he'd said to her—she was to take everything in his wall safe to the Los Angeles D.A. He had not explained further, merely asked her to promise she'd do that for him. Elaine had agreed. This afternoon—the previous afternoon now—he'd asked her to accompany him to a party on the Srinagar. She didn't know why. He'd acted so oddly, in such a despairing and frightened manner that Elaine had phoned me, asked me to meet her on the Srinagar.

I said, “Honey, that sure sounds like it was a pro job. And there's the business about those papers to the D.A. Could Craig have been mixed up in anything illegal?”

“I can't believe he'd have been involved in anything like that at all. But ... well, he's been a kind of promoter all his life. You know, always a big deal on the fire—but hardly any of them came to anything. Once in a while he'd make quite a lot, but spend it before he started anything else. He's been in real estate for the last few years. And...” She paused. “Well, I don't know how to put it. He just seemed to have a lot of money this last year or so. Bought a new car, expensive clothes, gambled in Las Vegas once in a while. But he never would tell me how he made the money. Just that he'd closed a couple of big deals.” She bit her lip. “And that's all, Shell.”

There were still several questions I wanted to ask Elaine, but she seemed about ready to keel over. In a moment she said, “Could I wash my face somewhere? I must look awful.”

“You look beautiful.” She did. The mascara was smeared, the thick chestnut hair was tangled, her face was drawn and pale. But she was lovely, compelling, a pleasure for eyes and warmth for hearts, more than beautiful, even at this moment.

I stood up. “Come on, I'll show you. Watch your step, though, Elaine. Don't step on any people.”

The smile was wan, but it was an improvement. She stood up, facing me. Then she bit her lip again. “I'm ... I'm asking a lot I suppose. We barely spoke earlier. Maybe you don't want to get mixed up in this now. After all, those men—”

“That's enough. I'm in it, so don't mention it again.” I grinned. “You name it, I'll try to do it. Besides—” I glanced at the mugs—“It seems very likely your problems are also my problems. And, honey, I like it that way.”

I don't know what it was that turned her on. She must have been holding back the tears for a long time, must have been hanging onto her emotions, forcing herself to drive, to come here, to tell me the story. And maybe now that she had a moment in which to relax even a little, she let go.

The tears started to well from those big dark eyes, as if squeezed out painfully, drop by drop, and then they came in a torrent, a flood. She put her hands on my chest, sobbing, her body shaking, leaned her head on my shoulder, rubbing her face against my coat.

I put my arms around her, pulled her gently against me. It was just the normal, natural thing to do. But she felt good to me, even then. Even while she was racked with sobs, only minutes from looking at her dead brother, and while two guys still lay breathing heavily on my floor, she felt good. Maybe I should have been thinking only of her troubles, and my own. But mixed with those thoughts was a kind of wonder at how firm and fine her flesh felt against my hands, her body against mine.

Her face moved against my shoulder, her big soft breasts moved on my chest, and under the white dress her flesh slid smoothly beneath my hands. Her hair brushed my chin, and I could smell the sweet perfume of her.

I'd felt it a little, earlier, at the Srinagar's rail, felt the warmth, the subdued fire, the magnetic attraction of her. But not as I did now. And I couldn't help wondering what it would be like to hold Elaine close, like this, when there were no troubles, no pains and worries, nothing but the two of us close together.

After a while the sobs stopped. Elaine sighed deeply, looked up at me. “Thanks.”

One word, soft, husky in her throat.

I didn't say anything. I held her close for a moment longer, then started to let her go.

She said, “Hold me tight, Shell. Please hold me tight. Hold me and hold me and—”

I guess I would have forgotten where the hell I was, forgotten what had happened, the unconscious slobs, even that I was on earth, I suppose. If what happened next hadn't happened next. Maybe it was just as well—but right then I sure didn't believe it.

Because there was a great crashing sound, and a volley of volubility, and then I was being pounded on the head. There was so much pounding and in so many places that for a wild moment I thought both those hoods had sprung upon my back and were banging and scratching and biting me and had been joined by company.

But then, as I reeled around, everything came into focus.

The crashing sound had been the door slammed open—by Bunny.

The volubility had been Bunny, mouthing imprecations.

The pounding had been—you guessed it—Bunny.

And there Bunny stood now, about a yard away. She stamped one little foot hard on the floor and waggled a finger at me. “You!” she yelled.

She stamped the floor again and shouted, “You—you bigamist!”

Chapter Seven

Bigamist, she'd called me.

She had me so confused that for a couple of seconds there, that's what I actually thought I was.

“Hey, hold it!” I said. “Now, Bunny. Now, Bunny.” I backed way from her, and she took a step forward, chewing on her teeth, getting ready to say some other wild thing.

Elaine was staring wide-eyed at the latest arrival, her lips forming a circle of surprise. Bunny flashed a glance at her, then burned it into me, into Elaine again, then—head turning slowly this time—speared me with it.

“So. That's it. Just like last time. Got to rush. Bunny. Business, Bunny. Wait for me. Bunny. Stay in the car, Bunny!" She was vibrating all over.

“You don't understand—”

"Don't I?”

Elaine said softly, “What in the world...”

Thoughts were racing around in my skull. There's plenty of room up there for races. Finally I said, “Look at that, Bunny,” and pointed at the two guys, still quiet on the floor.

She looked, frowned, and calmed down a bit. Just a little. “Who are they?” she snorted. “Her previous escorts?”

“They are a couple of guys who tried to kill me a few minutes ago. Believe me, when people are killing me, I forget everything else.”

She frowned some more. “How were they going to kill you?”

“With a knife.” I pointed to it on the coffee table.

“And if that didn't work, with those big guns there, I suppose.”

The knife and guns were in plain view, with the leather sap, and it must have been a rather convincing display. But Bunny was not quite convinced.

She looked at Elaine and, eyes on her, spoke to me. “And what was she killing you with? What ... what big guns was she using?”

And there she had me. In all honesty, with those big guns trained on me I had been about to surrender. And I could hardly tell Bunny that we had been dancing to distant music.

There was a sticky silence. But then Elaine stepped into the breach. “My brother was killed a little while ago. I came to Mr. Scott for help. And I ... went to pieces, I guess.”

Bunny's expression changed, her face sobered. “Your brother—oh, you poor dear. I'm ... sorry.”

It seemed like the moment for me to wrap all this up if I could, and get it over with. Those two mugs would be coming to before much longer, and I couldn't keep tapping their head like gongs. No, there was work for me to do, and it was time I began doing it. There would be no sleep for me, this night—in fact it was morning. The sun's first rays would soon be slanting through my bedroom window.

I said, “Elaine, this is Bernice Wade. Bunny, Elaine Emerson. Another time, maybe we could all sit around the apartment and...” My mind went blank. The prospect of the three of us sitting around the apartment, gabbing, was a foul one. I could hear Bunny saying, “Yes, Elaine, darling. I was swimming around in the water naked—you know, nude—and Shell was a dear, he threw me a ladder and...” My mind went blanker.

“You've got to go,” I blurted. “Leave. I mean, before the police get here. I have to call the law.”

Elaine said to me, “What should I do?”

“Nothing. Stay home—and don't tell anybody what you told me. You understand, if, uh, they found out ... it could be very dangerous for you. They'd start looking for you.'”

“Yes. I hadn't considered that part of it, but I understand. All right. And ... thank you, Shell. When will I hear from you?”

“As soon as I've got anything worth passing on.” From our original phone conversation I already had her home address and phone number, and I added, “I'll want to talk with you later today, anyway.”

I did. There were still things I wanted to ask her—and ask Bunny, too, for that matter. But this was not the time for it. I said to Bunny, “I'll—that is, I'd like to meet you later, too. Among other things, I'm curious to know how your partner acts when you see him.”

“What other things?” But then she smiled slightly. “Sure. Why don't you come to the Red Rooster tonight? We'll both be there.”

“I'll see you at the club then, unless something delays me.”

Bunny looked at Elaine. Elaine looked at Bunny. Neither spoke, but they seemed to be eying each other warily. Then Elaine said, “Bernice, I have my car here. Do you have a way to get home?”

Bunny smiled. “No. Shell was going to drive me home.”

I started getting a kind of haunted feeling. Elaine said to me, “You'll take her then?”

“I'll be talking to the police for a while. It—but I can call a cab.”

Bunny said, “I'd appreciate it if you'd drop me off, Elaine.”

“Of course, dear.”

“That won't be necessary,” I said. “I can call a cab—”

Bunny smiled sweetly at me. “No, Shell, I wouldn't think of it. Besides, Elaine and I have so many things to talk about.”

Inside, I was groaning again. This night was a ruin. So was I. There were a few more words, none of which I remember, as the three of us went to the door. As she left, Bunny said to me, “Save that vase for me, will you, Shell? The one you were going to mix that big drink in?”

“Yeah.”

Elaine said, “Do phone, Shell. You have my number, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

And they, it seemed, had my number. I waved good-by to them both, then closed the door, went to the phone and called the police.

The two mugs, handcuffed and achingly conscious, were in the back seat of a black and white radio car, not talking. They had said a little, shortly after regaining consciousness and being interrogated by the police. Their story, boiled down, went about like this: “It was just a business call. We wanted to hire this Shell Scott. The door was open, so we went in and waited. Then this ape comes in. We don't know what Scott looks like, so when he jumps us we naturally defended ourselves. Honest, officer, we thought he was a bandit.”

And then they clammed. It was highly probable that they'd keep clammed until the kind of lawyer who is always eager to be hired in advance of the crime, and act immediately afterwards in the event of trouble, got them sprung from jail.

I'd finished being questioned by the cops, and was standing alongside my Cad talking to Lieutenant Rawlins, who worked out of Central Homicide, downtown.

The radio car was from the Hollywood Division, and ordinarily Rawlins wouldn't have come out from Central. But when I'd phoned the police there'd been no great rush, since the two hoods were sleeping, so instead of putting my call through the complaint board I'd called Homicide direct, filled Rawlins in on the situation and asked him if he could come out himself.

I had told my story a couple of times, and by asking what else was doing in the wicked city, managed to start Rawlins talking about L.A.'s latest murder. We had been friends for a long time, and he spoke freely with me.

“Guy named Belden,” he said. “Craig Belden. Three slugs in him, looks like a pro job. Robbery maybe. Safe was empty.”

“Anything on Belden?”

He shook his head. “Nothing yet, be seems clean.”

“Any leads?”

“Couple.” He squinted at me a moment, as if curious about my interest, but went on. “Some of the neighbors heard the shots and peeked out windows. Saw two men run from the house immediately after the shooting. Into a car and away.”

He lit a cigarette, dragged deeply, then said, “One guy saw something else. Interesting. Probably our best lead.”

An uneasy feeling rippled through me. “What was that?”

“One guy claims he saw a woman run from the scene right after the two men. Get that. After they left.” I fumbled for a cigarette, lit it. “Interesting,” I said. “I imagine it would be wise to keep that from the news hounds, huh? Otherwise—”

He interrupted. “The press already got it somewhere. Anyway, we want to turn this gal up—she might be an eye-witness.”

My throat was suddenly dry. By the time that news hit the papers and broadcasts—probably had by now, I guessed—the killers would know they hadn't been alone when they'd knocked off Belden. They'd start spending sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day, hunting for that witness, that woman. For Elaine. She'd live—until they found her.

I almost told Rawlins the whole story, who she was and the rest of it. But I held back. So far, only she and I knew exactly what had happened. Her identity was still secret, and it might stay that way. But, if I told Rawlins, he'd have to report the info; a lot of people would learn her identity—and that kind of news has an almost magical way of reaching reporters. There's no magic about it—somebody always spills. It makes a good story. So good that there might even be another murder to write about. I kept my mouth shut.

“Any description?” I said instead.

“Not much. Guy said it looked like a woman in a white dress. Couldn't see much. She rushed to a car and took off.” He paused. “Why're you so interested, Shell?”

I grinned at him. “I'm always interested in your fascinating occupation, Rawlins. Besides, the timing's so close, I was wondering if by any chance those two hoods—” I pointed toward the men in the radio car—“might have done the Belden job and then called on me. Why, I wouldn't know. But maybe it's a possibility.”

“I don't think so. The call on the Belden thing came in at three-ten a.m. According to your story, these boys must've been here at that time. Probably before then if they meant to catch you when you walked in.”

Rawlins said they'd book the two suspects downtown and asked me to follow them in. When they drove off and around the corner, I ran back into the Spartan and upstairs, grabbed my phone. I called Elaine's number, an apartment on Santa Monica Boulevard. There wasn't any answer. Well, she and Bunny were probably still talking. Or maybe even pulling each other's hair. At least, that's what I told myself.

Central Homicide and Detective Headquarters are on the third floor of the Police Building in downtown L.A. I got there shortly after Rawlins, dictated my story and signed the crime report, then went with Rawlins down the back stairway to Felony Booking. After processing, my two mugs were put into one of the felony tanks on the second floor, with half a dozen other suspects, and while a felony tank is not the most joyous spot in the world, both of them acted as if they were going to a party, complete with cake. Obviously, neither of them was worried a bit.

I told Rawlins I wanted to check the dead man, Craig Belden, in the morgue. He lifted an eyebrow, but I took off before the questions got around to Elaine Emerson. After leaving the Police Building I phoned Elaine again, but there was still no reply. I didn't know Bunny's phone number or even if she had one, and there was no listing in the book or directory for Bernice Wade. Maybe she had an unlisted phone; or it could be that Wade was a stage name. I didn't know, but I did know I was getting increasingly worried about Elaine.

I drove to the Hall of Justice and went downstairs, walked along the corridor, past the Viewing Room. Emil, the attendant on duty, let me into the morgue itself. In a few seconds I was looking at Craig Belden.

They were already working on him, and he was on one of the high four-wheeled tables with its top set on a slant. They were draining the blood from him, which is about as pretty as it sounds. Two slugs had caught him in the chest, one in the face, but his features were still recognizable. He had thin sandy-colored hair, pale blue eyes, and a wide, pointed chin.

I'd seen him before. Only that time he'd been in the company of Joe Navarro, the heavy hairy egg, and the shiny white-haired man in that stateroom on the Srinagar.

An hour later I had visited Elaine's still empty apartment and driven to Bunny's place on Clinton. It was a small duplex. I rang, and in half a minute a sleepy voice on the other side of the door said, “Who's it?” “Shell, Bunny. Can I see you for a minute?” She opened the door and I stepped inside. She was wearing pajama tops, which came down barely far enough, but I was by now so worried about Elaine that I couldn't pay much attention to the pretty sight.

“What's the matter?” she asked. “Did she stand you up?”

“Knock it off, Bunny. I'll just be a minute. Do you have any idea where Elaine is?”

She looked at me coolly. “No.”

“This is important. Look, her brother was murdered last night; there's just a chance—never mind why—that the same guys who did the job on him might be after her, too. So have you any idea where she'd be? She isn't at her apartment, by the way. I checked.”

That woke her up. “No, Shell. I haven't. She drove straight here, dropped me off, and left. Maybe she stopped to eat or something.”

“Maybe. Don't mention this to anybody. Especially Joe Navarro.”

She moistened her lips, eyes serious. “I won't.” She paused and went on, “Why did you mention Joe?”

“He's mixed up in this. Bunny. Some way, I don't know how, or how much, but he's in it. You be careful of that boy. Don't tell him you went home with me, or even mention me—in fact, you probably should stay clear away from him, and from work.”

“No, I'm going to work tonight. But I'll be careful.”

I told her I'd see her later at the club if I could and started down the steps. She said, “Shell.”

I turned. “Yeah?”

“I hope you find her.”

By noon, I'd still found no trace of Elaine. She hadn't been to her apartment. I'd checked on the men I'd seen aboard the Srinagar but succeeded in identifying only one of the two others who'd been present with Belden and Navarro. The big egg with the loose-fleshed face and hairy hands was, it turned out, Robert Goss himself, owner of the Srinagar. Mine host last night. The fact of his presence aboard the yacht, plus the description I was able to provide, enabled me to identify him. But nobody could tell me much about him other than that he was rich—rich enough, at least, to own a 160-foot yacht and declare a gross of from half a million to a million dollars a year from “investments” and profits on various “enterprises.” What those “investments and enterprises” were, nobody I talked to was able to tell me. In fact, not much seemed to be known officially about Robert Goss.

And nobody I talked to, including the police, could tell me who the tall thin white-haired man might have been. It's difficult to identify anybody from the general kind of description I was able to give, without knowing anything about him, what he did for a living, where he lived, or any of his habits. And there seemed to be, at least so far, no evidence that any man answering his description had even been seen aboard the Srinagar. Seen by anybody but me, that is.

Friends in the police department agreed to check further—carefully, of course, because of the “eminence” of Goss—and see if they could turn up anybody else who'd seen the guy. Up to now, my efforts in that direction had drawn a blank, and I had a hunch identifying that egg might be extremely important—to me.

There was one place where I might find out. I didn't like the idea much; in fact, I didn't like it at all. But if I went back aboard that yacht again, in broad daylight this time, I might get some of the info I wanted.

I thought about it over a meal of rare prime ribs, then had coffee and a cigarette and made up my mind. Two men had tried to kill me last night. If there had been good reason to kill me then, the reason was just as good—or maybe better—now. The only chance I had of staying alive for long was to find out who wanted me dead. And why.

I called the Police Building again and talked to Rawlins. When I asked him if the two mugs had done any talking, he told me that not only had they stayed clammed, but by nine o'clock their attorney had got them sprung on a writ of habeas corpus.

That had been fast work. They'd been booked about six a.m. Three hours later they were out on a writ. Loving me.

That did it. I thanked Rawlins, hung up, went back to the Cad and started driving toward the coast.

Toward Newport Harbor, and the Srinagar.

Chapter Eight

The Srinagar was still anchored where it had been last night, white and lovely in the bay.

It looked sleek, beautiful, as if poised to cut through blue seas on its way to tropic islands, a place for laughter and dancing and light-hearted fun. But the sight of it didn't make me feel like laughing and dancing.

At Greene's Landing I rented a small motorboat, climbed in and pointed it toward the yacht. On the way I checked my Colt Special again, put it back in the holster. As I neared the boat, I could see a man standing at the rail, looking in my direction. He went out of sight, then reappeared and stood at the head of the ladder near the stern, the one which last night the guests had used to climb aboard.

I cut the engine, bumped the landing at the ladder's base, stepped onto it and tied the boat securely. The guy stood up there above me, motionless, watching me silently. I climbed the ladder and just before I reached the top he said, “Yeah?”

“Hello. Mr. Goss aboard?”

“He's aboard. Not expecting anybody, though. What's your name, pal?”

This guy didn't look like a seaman, talk like a seaman, and it was a pretty sure thing he didn't act like a seaman. He wore a brown leather jacket hanging open far enough so I could see the butt of a gun in the holster at the left side of his chest. It was also an extremely broad chest. He had the kind of face that looked as if it did push-ups, thick and hard, bulges of muscle at the back of his jaw. A faint stubble roughened his cheeks and chin, but shaving it off wouldn't mellow him; nothing would mellow him. A short cigarette butt smoldered in the corner of his mouth.

“Shell Scott,” I said. “I'd like to see Mr. Goss.”

“Hell see you.” Ash fell from the cigarette's end and spilled down the leather jacket. He didn't brush it off.

I stepped onto the deck. “Where'll I find him?”

He jerked a thumb. “Up on the bridge, pal.”

The cigarette had burned down so close to his lips he appeared to be smoking the filter, but he ignored it. Probably when they got any shorter, he just ate them. I wondered why it was turning out to be so easy for me to see Goss. I walked forward, up another flight of steps, to the bridge and inside. The deck was highly polished, the walls beautifully grained dark wood. To the left of the wheel, fixed to the forward bulkhead, was a padded red-leather bench, a small table in front of it. Sitting on the bench, hand around a half-filled highball glass resting on the table, was Robert Goss.

He looked even bigger than he had last night. The black hairs on the back of his hand seemed more wiry, like pig bristles. His heavy lids sagged, his mouth sagged, his face sagged, perhaps even more than when I'd first seen him. But the rest of him was resplendent. He wore a Captain's yachting cap on his head, dark bill decorated with gold doo-dads, a dark blue yachting jacket with gleaming brass buttons, white gabardine trousers and white leather shoes. He looked ready to steam right into the Balboa Bay Club's bar.

“Hello,” I said. “We meet again.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Scott. What brings you aboard?” His voice was pleasant, agreeable. He even tried to smile. But it was like a frown with teeth in it. He tried, but he just couldn't quite carry it off. No matter how much phony effort he put into the act, he was never going to convince me that he found me charming.

I said, “Well, several things, Mr. Goss. A murder for one. Couple of other items.”

“Murder? Who got himself murdered?”

I grinned. He wasn't very fast, but the wheels clicked in his head and he realized he'd made a tactical error right off the bat, in his second sentence to me. The corners of his mouth pulled down, and when he managed to get them back up the effect was even less gay than before.

“Maybe it was an old woman,” I said. “An old woman who got himself murdered.”

He gave me the distinct impression that he was exercising all his willpower to keep from getting up and smacking me one. But he just sat there, smiling like a man with ingrown teeth.

“I refer, of course, to Craig Belden,” I went on.

“Why of course?”

“Because he was with you last night when I stumbled in on you.”

“No, he wasn't, Scott.”

“I saw him last night. I saw him again a few hours ago. In the morgue. He looked different; but I recognized him.”

Goss reached to the leather bench alongside him and picked up something wrapped in brown paper. It had been hidden from my sight until then. He started to speak, then looked past me, toward the door.

I glanced around. The heavyweight who'd met me at the rail stood there, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his brown jacket. Goss said to him, “It's okay. Chuck. Go on back.”

The man nodded, turned ponderously and walked away.

Goss said to me, still trying to keep it pleasant, “Really, Scott, you made a mistake, that's all. I don't doubt you saw Belden in the morgue. I heard about the terrible thing that happened—it's in all the news broadcasts. Has been since early this morning. But Belden wasn't here last night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember when you came into the stateroom. I was sitting there with Joe Navarro, having a friendly drink. Just the two of us.”

“I must have been pretty drunk. I saw twice that many people.”

He grinned. It was a good one this time, like a famished wolf about to bite a fat leg. Maybe he thought I was agreeing with him, giving him a way out, because he echoed my words, “Drunk, that's it. You had too much of the free booze. Seeing double, Scott. I like that. Here.” He pushed the little package across the table to me.

As I picked it up, I said, “Just for fun, who was the other guy I imagined? The tall white-haired man. Rather a distinguished looking egg.”

He shook his head. “Just me and Navarro.”

I looked at the package. On the face of it was typed my name and my address at the Spartan.

“Open it up, Scott. It's yours. I didn't expect you aboard, so I was just getting ready to send it in to you. Figured I'd phone you and explain about it, if you didn't figure it out for yourself. But I thought you'd get the idea.”

I tore off the wrappings. Inside was a wallet, and it looked like a good one, expensive, fine-grained leather, hand-tooled and hand-stitched. It must have cost about five thousand and thirty or forty dollars.

Because inside the wallet were fifty crisp, new hundred-dollar bills. I fanned them, counting them roughly. Fifty was close enough.

And correct, because Goss said, “That's right. Five G's. Just because I like you.”

Yeah, because he liked me when I saw double. I put the money back into the wallet, placed it gently on the small table, and pushed it slowly over in front of Goss.

“Sorry, captain. I never get that drunk.”

And that was the one that did it. That was the line that let the bars down, wiped the false geniality from Goss’ face and voice. Those were the words which showed me Captain Robert Goss as he was when he relaxed and was just himself.

You wouldn't think a face which sagged in so many places could suddenly get so hard. It was a little like watching the face of a mountain change in a moment, instead of months, from the green and soft and peaceful colors and textures of spring to the harsh, hard, and ugly end-of-a-dry summer's bleakness. The corners of his eyes and mouth, the lines along his nose, the flesh of his cheeks, still slanted downward—but now not as if they sagged, but as though the lines had been carved that way with a steel chisel.

He didn't raise his voice. He didn't move a muscle except around his mouth. But the words came out with cold and threatening ugliness, nastiness, evil, as if he chewed off each word and spat it at me like a gob of phlegm. “Then this is the day you die, Scott.” He paused for a long time, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on mine. “Pick it up—and we'll forget this happened. You don't get a second chance. Pick it up.”

I let the heavy silence grow between us for a while. Then I said, “I've finally figured out what's wrong with you, captain. You need an enema.”

Well, I thought for a minute he was going to prove my diagnosis wrong right there on the bridge. I thought maybe he was going to have an apoplectic fit during a cerebral hemorrhage. His lips flapped up from his teeth and his eyes got big and bugged out as if his brain had exploded, and he shook convulsively all over. He tried to speak but couldn't get the words out at first. Then he slammed his big hands down on top of the little table and started pushing himself to his feet, eyes wild with anger and shock and hate. And as he came up, he got the words out.

He started with “You slimy bastard! You lousy stinking pile—” and went on from there, building up from an almost quiet beginning to a filthy crescendo. I told him twice to chop it off. I warned him twice. I didn't want to hit him. I didn't want anything now but about fifty miles between me and the Srinagar. I'd learned all I'd wanted to, I was in deep enough already, probably about as deep as I could get, and there was no point in digging at the bottom of the hole.

He wouldn't stop, though. Maybe he didn't even hear me at first. He stepped toward me and, for the last time, I told him to stay where he was and shut his fat mouth. Maybe I don't use the most delicate language at times, but usually my meaning is clear. I got through to him; he heard me.

But instead of calming down he cleared his throat, made a grating, choking sound deep in his throat. Then he screwed up his face and pressed his lips together.

The crazy bastard was actually going to spit at me.

But if he did, he spit at my fist. Because, of course, then I hit him.

I didn't hit him reluctantly, either, not when it became clear that I had no choice. I hit him exuberantly, expansively, enormously, almost joyously. In a word, I clobbered him. It was a long, hard right swung with my arm and shoulder behind it, body turning fast, with my right leg thrusting against the deck to help slam the blow into him. It was a blow that would have stunned an ox. And it stunned this ox.

My fist smacked into his mouth with a sound like a plank breaking, and I could feel the shock rip up my arm and down into the muscles of my back. It was like hitting a wall. But, unlike a wall, he moved. He tilted backwards and fell against the bulkhead, slid down to the leather bench. He wasn't out—but he wasn't very far in, either. I stepped close to him, raising my left arm, hand open. Then I slapped it backhand against his jaw, like a cleaver, as if I wanted to chop his jaw off. I did want to chop it off. The thick edge of my palm landed solidly and he toppled over on the bench, slid loosely to the deck. His pretty yachting cap landed upside down alongside his face.

I spun around and the Colt was in my hand before I'd turned all the way. If any of the crew was in sight, I knew they'd be jumping at me. But nobody was visible. I put the gun away, walked a few yards aft and looked around. The man Goss had called Chuck was back at his post above the ladder. Two or three other burly guys were at various points on deck, but apparently nobody had witnessed the action just ended. I mopped at sudden perspiration on my forehead, then walked down the ladder, and started up the alleyway toward Chuck.

Then I hesitated. At the moment I was puzzled most by Goss’ insistence that the shiny white-haired egg had been absent last night. I could understand why he might want it kept quiet that Belden had been aboard the Srinagar immediately before his murder. But why pretend that only he and Navarro had been aboard? Why deny the presence of that fourth man, too?

I wanted more than ever, now, to know who that shiny boy was, what he'd been doing here last night, what his business—or racket—might be. It seemed unlikely that he'd still be aboard, but there was a chance there remained some trace of him in that stateroom below. A matchbook cover, a special brand of cigarette, maybe even a glass with his prints on it. You never know till you look.

With luck, I'd have a few minutes before any hue and cry was raised; one or two of those minutes would be enough. I turned and went back to the ladder leading below, hurried to the plain, unmarked door through which I'd gone last night. It was open. I stepped inside, found the light switch. The room was empty this time.

More than empty. Somebody had gone over every inch of it. The place almost gleamed, it had been cleaned so thoroughly. Well, that told me a little more, but there wasn't a chance I'd learn anything else here.

I stepped into the alleyway, walked past Cabin Seven, where I was to have met Elaine, and on up the ladder to the top deck. A couple more heavyweights, new ones to me, lounged against the starboard railing, near where the bar had been last night. They eyed me curiously, but stayed where they were.

Only a few yards farther, to the still-shiny square of deck which had served for the dance floor, across it and a little farther to the ladder at the rail, and I'd have it made. Down the ladder, into my boat, and away I'd go.

But right then, when I was almost home free, the ax fell. Behind me a voice—a voice I knew—yelled, “There he is. Grab him! Kill the bastard!" It was Goss’ voice; he was even tougher than he'd looked.

I swiveled my head around fast, saw Goss standing twenty yards away, weaving on his feet, finger pointing and mouth bloody, still yelling. But then I was jumping forward. As I reached the edge of the dance floor the two heavies came at me, hands reaching. By that time the .38 was in my fist, pointed at them. They stopped, feet skidding.

I leaped across the dance floor, headed for the ladder. Chuck wasn't there, and for a second I thought I'd still make it. I leaped to the rail, along it to the ladder and as I reached it saw Chuck, a few feet to my right, almost as if he'd been waiting for me to reach this spot. Probably he had been, because his gun was in his fist.

Beyond him in the alleyway, coming toward me in a hell of a hurry, were three more bruisers. I couldn't shoot them all, but I didn't think these guys would do any shooting either—unless they had to. The sound of shots could bring half the citizens on shore out here, including some uniformed citizens.

I took the chance, turned and started to leap down the ladder toward my boat. But I didn't do it. There wasn't any boat.

I got a quick flash of it putting out into the bay with a big burly guy sitting behind the wheel, but I didn't have time to think about it. I could hear big feet thundering closer, and I knew about two tons of ugly people, angry people, anxious-to-pound-on-me people, were practically on my neck. When I had time, I'd be able to figure out that the first thing Chuck would have done after being alerted by his bleeding boss would be to have one of the boys quickly remove my means of flight—if it hadn't been removed as soon as I came aboard. But right now there wasn't time to consider the little things. Right now I knew just one thing, and it burned in my mind like a bright flame: This is no place for me!

So I did the only logical thing. The only sane, sensible, wise thing.

I gave a great leap, went over the rail and soared through the air like a goonybird.

Chapter Nine

I landed in the drink with a great smack, and it was only when I got about ten feet down in the water that I understood completely what it means to go swimming fully dressed, with a gun in your hand.

You don't swim. You just keep going down.

I kicked and wiggled and waved my arms and started making a little headway. But it still seemed like headway the wrong way. Down. I got a kind of all-gone feeling, and even with my eyes open it seemed that only blackness surrounded me. The horrible picture of me just going down and down and expiring feebly on the bay's bottom loomed behind my eyes. And even if I got to the surface, there was one of Goss’ men nearby in the motorboat. I'd have to be able to move, and fast. I could feel the wet, heavy clothing pulling at me, and I struggled out of my coat, fumbling for my belt. My lungs felt as if they were going to start leaking and my heart thudded in my chest, seeming to shake my whole body.

In another few seconds I'd managed to get rid of my trousers, and only for a moment did I think of the wallet in my coat—or the three hundred and forty dollars in it—or any of the rest of the stuff I'd been carrying. I swept my arms through the water, and finally my head popped up above the surface.

I was about fifteen feet from the Srinagar's hull, and snorting like a whale sneezing. I blinked my eyes, tried to take in everything at once. Several guys were up on the rail, and Chuck stood on the landing where my boat had been. The boat was about thirty yards away now, past the Srinagar's bow.

The .38 was still clutched in my fist. I would have let go of my shorts before I'd have dropped the Colt. I raised it above the water, shook it a time or two so there wouldn't be too much water in the barrel or chambers, and aimed it just to the right of Chuck.

I didn't know if this would work or not; I'd never tried it before. But I squeezed the trigger and the gun cracked, kicked in my hand. The slug banged into the metal hull of the yacht, and paint chips flew. Chuck flew too, up the ladder.

I put one foot beneath the other, kicked off my shoes, swam awkwardly, head half under the water and pulling with one arm, a little farther from the yacht. Then I stuck the gun into the clamshell holster, made sure the holster's spring-tensed sides hugged the gun firmly, and went beneath the water again.

Free of shoes, trousers, and jacket, it was easy to swim. By the time I surfaced again I'd put several yards more between me and the Srinagar. I could see men at the rail, but nobody—including the guy in my motorboat—was yet coming after me. Probably they would let me go now, rather than having the hell raised that I'd for sure raise if they came after me. And I didn't think they could afford to use me for target practice, not at this point.

Besides, they didn't have to come after me. They could try to pick me off later—or maybe just watch me drown.

I didn't drown. Swimming, then dog-paddling for a few seconds while I caught my breath, I made good time toward the little beach fronting the Fun Zone. I even had time to think a little. And every thought made me madder. Before I'd covered half the distance to shore, I was boiling, and by the time I was ten yards from the beach I was about ready to pop. If I'd had a torpedo and had known how to use it, the Srinagar would have been the first ship ever blown up and sunk in Newport Harbor.

It also wasn't until I'd reached a point ten yards from the beach that I noticed the people.

On bright sunny afternoons, like this one, there is always a pretty good crowd at that little beach, and in the amusement centers, too. And it looked as if they had all come down here to watch something exciting or unusual that was happening out there in the bay. I wondered what it could be. When I twisted my head around to look, there wasn't anything out there except small boats and the Srinagar. Of course, then I got the idea.

When I looked back at the beach, and the packed mass of people, I saw numerous expressions of amusement. A couple men were even laughing, and one of them was pointing. I made my mind as completely blank as possible. It was either that or swim back to the Srinagar. And I was pooped, too; I didn't think I could make it back.

So I swam on ahead until I could feel the sandy bottom. My hand scraped it, and when I stood up, I was in about two feet of water. The crowd seemed pleased with me. I suppose I was a kind of different sight, standing there in a long white dress shirt and maroon tie, dripping, shoulder holster strapped over the shirt. Especially with no pants on. But I tried not to think about it.

I walked toward them, and several of the people seemed to be having a swell time. One fat guy, sitting on the sand, was sort of whooping and beating his thigh with one hand. I suppose I asked him how he'd like for me to throw him in the ocean, or something like that; I don't exactly remember. But then I pulled myself together and strolled on through the crowd with as much dignity as I could muster.

I made it to the Cad and reached into my pants for the car keys. That, it may be, was the least brilliant thing I'd done all day. If I wanted to feel in my pants for keys, I'd have to go back and dive for them.

So there I stood, on Palm Street near the amusement zone, which seemed like the perfect place for it, sort of rubbing my thigh aimlessly, a stricken expression on my wet face. Actually, the situation wasn't as bad as it might have been. I don't think it could have gotten worse, even without a key, but the key part didn't worry me. I've locked my keys in the Cad a time or two, and had to take off the top to get in, so taped behind the rear bumper there's a spare set to avoid such difficulty. So there wouldn't be any trouble about getting into the car and driving away. Only that's not what I wanted to do. Not just yet, at least. There was one item more important than anything else at the moment.

I walked to the rear of the Cad, got the keys from beneath the tape, and opened the luggage compartment. In the luggage space I keep no luggage, only the spare tire—and about four thousand dollars worth of equipment I've had occasion at times to use in my work. There's electronic equipment, a snooperscope, wire and rope, a small case containing a gun kit and extra .38 Colt Special cartridges, walkie-talkie, a great many different items. Everything except a spare pair of pants.

But the gun kit was what I wanted.

I grabbed it, closed the trunk, opened the car door and climbed in. While I dripped on the white-leather upholstery I dried the Colt, cleaned and oiled it. Then, with six bright, dry slugs, I loaded the gun.

It took me over an hour to get back into Hollywood. And it was an hour during which I thought some dark thoughts. Instead of calming down as I drove, the fire seemed merely to burn hotter, barely under control. I'd had enough, more than enough. I was fed up to my tonsils. Navarro, the two mugs in my apartment last night, and now Goss and that miserable swim.... I put that part out of my mind.

But I also had time on the drive to go over everything that had happened so far. Goss’ actions had eliminated any possibility that he was merely an innocent bystander. Navarro, too, was splashed with the blood somehow. Of the three men who'd been in that stateroom with Craig Belden shortly before his murder, that left only the white-haired, tall and smooth one about whom I knew nothing. Obviously I had to find out more about him—specifically, who he was. And what he was. As well as everything else I could get about Goss and Navarro.

Maybe there was more to it than that, and other persons involved in whatever was going on, but I felt sure much of the answer was centered in that small group. Of course, someone else was in my mind, along with the rest of it. More, actually, than the others. Elaine, the lovely Elaine.

I parked directly across from the Spartan's entrance and sat there a moment. I was fairly dry by this time, but still pantsless, so I was going to make a run for it. If another gang of cretinous citizens gathered and began pointing at me, I might become unhinged and leap upon them. No, I was going to run like the wind and pray that nobody would see me.

I pushed the Cad's door open, leaped out and sprinted toward the Spartan. And then, when I wanted only silence and the absence of people, it seemed as if the gates of hell clanged open and sounds rushed at me from the pit.

I heard a shot; and then a shrill, piercing scream that started about high M and went on up wailing through N-O-P to Q or some place where sounds chill blood.

Everything happened so fast that I couldn't be sure what came first, the scream or the shot, and at first I thought the screamer must be some old bat who'd spotted me, in my state of extremely casual dress rushing across the street at her, and had jumped to a horrid conclusion.

But then the shot registered. The slug didn't hit me, but I heard it snap past—behind me, very damned close behind me—and I heard it smack solidly into something far down the street. At almost the same moment I saw the woman who was screaming, saw her face and extended arm with its pointing finger. She was pointing down the street and to my left, but that wasn't what jarred me so at first. It was the face. The woman was Elaine.

It all registered, slammed into me and sent a bolt of saw-toothed electricity raking through my nerves, but it was just sensation. And I didn't take time to wonder about anything. When I hear a shot, I move in a hell of a hurry. I was already moving in a hurry, so I just let go and dropped to the street. As I fell, I jerked my head around to my left, where Elaine had been pointing, and saw my car maybe twenty yards away. If it hadn't been for the peculiarly irritating events of this afternoon, I would probably have noticed the car sooner. But to balance that error, if I hadn't leaped from the Cad sprinting, that first slug would have done the job.

As it was, the bullet missed, but as I fell to the hard, bone-bruising solidity of the asphalt, the gun cracked again. I saw it this time. The car was in the shade of trees on the opposite side of Rossmore from where I'd parked. The gun, some kind of rifle, was thrust through the left rear window of a dark sedan facing away from me. That second bullet hit the asphalt inches from me, whined off down the street.

Then the Colt was in my right hand and I was aiming toward the car. It started to pull away from the curb as I fired. I was still moving, too, not steadied yet from my sudden dive, and I didn't even hit close to the man. I heard the slug smack the rear of the sedan, then I steadied myself and let three more shots go, with about a second to aim between each shot.

I could barely see the man holding the gun, but I aimed at what I could see, and knew my slugs went through the open window. The rifle cracked again, but the bullet was well away from me—and I could see the bore of the rifle dip, see the barrel sag. I fired once more, but the car was moving fast by then. That barrel sagged almost straight down the side of the car. I thought it was going to fall to the street, but at the last moment it was pulled back into the sedan.

So I'd hit him. I didn't know where or how badly I'd gotten the creep, but I hoped I'd killed him.

Elaine had screamed more than once since that first loud high one, but she was silent now. I heard her shoes on the sidewalk, then on the street, as she ran toward me. And that was about when the pain started, too. I'd raked flesh off one knee, and from the other thigh and ankle, when I'd hit the street hard, sprawling flat and rolling. Fire burned the raw spots, and my head throbbed painfully. But there weren't any bullets in me. I was just raw, not loaded with rifle slugs.

I managed to get up as Elaine reached me. She had on a dark skirt and white blouse, and her face was pale and twisted, looking torn with fright. Fright—and something else.

She reached me, threw her arms around me, and at first I couldn't make out the words spilling from her mouth. Then she said, “Did they ... are you all right? Shell, what—”

I pulled her tight. “Easy. It's all over. Whatever it was.” I grabbed her shoulders, pushed her away from me and looked into her face. “How'd you get here? What happened to you this morning?”

“I—” She paused, ran her tongue over her lips. More color was coming back into her face.

But then, beyond her, I noticed a couple of faces at hotel windows, saw an old gal standing in the Spartan's entrance—and I remembered a few other items. “Come on, let's get inside,” I said to Elaine. “We can't talk here, and—”

I broke it off. She was looking me up and down, with an astonished look replacing the previous fright. “How—how did it happen?” she asked in a strange tone.

She was looking at my lower extremities, which seemed awfully extreme at the moment.

“Never mind that now. Let's go.” I took her arm, and pulled her toward the Spartan.

Inside the lobby, the old gal who'd been eyeballing the action from the door moments earlier was sitting on a lounge against the far wall, talking excitedly to another gal approximately her own age, which was about a hundred and ten, I guessed. We have quite a wide variety of types at the Spartan.

Nobody else was in sight except the desk man. Jimmy. He said to me, “It sounded like the end of the world.”

“It almost was. Give me my key. Quick.”

He scooted behind the desk, saying, “What happened?”

“Somebody shot at me.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, again.” It has happened before.

He looked me over as he handed me the key, and started to snicker for the first time, but swallowed it fast. I raced up the stairs with Elaine and to my apartment. Nobody was waiting for me this time. We went inside, I shut and locked the door, then leaned back against it and closed my eyes for a moment. There was a kind of quivering sensation all over my skin, as if the cells itched and were scratching each other. I took a couple of deep breaths and opened my eyes.

And then everything was all right again. Elaine stood about a foot from me, looking at me soberly. She was now as she'd been on the Srinagar, and for a few moments here in my apartment in the early morning. At this moment she had never looked more beautiful; at this moment, no one had ever looked more beautiful.

She spoke slowly, and her voice was again the throbbingly lovely, warmly whispering sound it had been when I'd first heard her speak. “Something happened to me out there, Shell. When—they shot at you. For a moment I thought you were going to be killed. And I...”

She paused, looking up at me. Her big soft eyes, those dark Indian eyes, looked deep into my own eyes, then fell to my lips. “...I thought my heart would stop.”

“Elaine—”

She raised her hand, pressed one finger against my lips. Perhaps she meant to speak, and changed her mind. I don't know. But I know her finger slid from my lips and her hand caressed my cheek, and then my arms went around her and she was pressed against me. She raised her face, eyes closing and lips parting as I caught her mouth with mine.

We stood there, as if our bodies had fused together, mouths clinging, my hands tight against her back, her fingers curling behind my head. It was a moment like the one we'd shared this morning when I'd held her to me, feeling the surge of warmth, of fire in her, feeling the dark hair brush my face and knowing the sweet perfume of her—but more this time, much more.

When our mouths parted she rubbed my face with hers and spoke in a rushing whisper, her eyes still closed, spoke with lips like honey and words like wine. More than the closeness of our bodies, more than caresses of our lips, there was an extreme tension and excitement between us that must have been part of what had happened minutes ago in the street, the shots and violence and nearness of death. Perhaps at no other time would our being together like this have been so violent, so supercharged with emotion and a kind of savagery. But whatever the reason, that's the way it was.

When our lips parted I lifted her in my arms and carried her through the apartment into the bedroom. I lowered her gently to the bed, and her mouth found mine before I let her go. When she pushed me away, her lids were heavy and her eyes seemed almost dull, but burning from something inside her. She reached for the top button on her white blouse, fumbled with it and moved her fingers to the next. In a moment she pulled the blouse from her shoulders, pulled it completely free, then raised her body slightly, hands going to her back and freeing the clasp of her brassiere.

“Elaine,” I said. My voice was tight in my throat. “I—”

She stopped me, speaking almost calmly, but with a thread of urgency in her tone. “No, don't say anything, Shell. No ... promises, no avowals. Don't say a word.”

While I stood silently at the edge of the bed, looking down at her, she undressed. She pulled the brassiere from the firm globes of her breasts, slid the dark skirt free of her hips and whitely gleaming thighs and rounded calves, dropped it in a crumpled heap to the floor.

In a moment, her wonderful body bare, she rested her head against the pillow, lips parted, breathing heavily through her mouth. She dropped her arms to her sides and closed the heavy lids over her dark eyes, motionless except for the deep rise and fall of her breasts.

Then she was in my arms, and it was again as though our flesh fused into one flesh, our mouths into one, as if our hearts were pressed together and pounding, pounding, like one great bursting heart.

I passed a lighted cigarette to Elaine and she sucked smoke into her lungs, expelled it and dragged deeply upon it again, without speaking.

We had been talking for a while, and the ashtray was nearly filled with ashes and the stubs of cigarettes. She raised her head and placed it on one white, smooth arm, looking at me in the dim light from the small lamp. It was dark now, and quiet.

She said smiling, “I made the remark once before, Shell. I thought my heart would stop.”

I grinned at her, pushed the tangled hair up from her forehead, but didn't say anything. Elaine had already told me why she'd been away from her apartment all day, after dropping Bunny off at her duplex. She'd turned the car radio on and heard what must have been the first or second news flash to reach the air about Belden's murder. And, as I'd known it would be, the one witness’ story about seeing the “girl in white” run from the murder scene had been part of the news. After my remarks to Elaine about what the killers would do if they learned she might be able to identify them, she'd been afraid to stay in her apartment. After packing a small bag, she had checked into another apartment building, The Stuyvesant, under an assumed name, and tried to call me.

I'd been thinking about that, and now I asked her, “When did you come to the Spartan?”

“A little after noon. I couldn't stand it, waiting, phoning and phoning you. So I drove here. I knew you'd come here eventually. For hours I just sat in the car, then I went into the lobby and waited.” She stretched lazily and went on, “While I was there, watching, I saw that other car arrive. There were two men in the car, I noticed, but I didn't think anything of it then, even though they just sat there and waited. When I saw you drive up, I started down the steps, I don't know why I looked toward that other car, but I did, and saw the gun. So—I screamed.”

“Yeah, that one woke the birds in Beverly Hills. It's a good thing you did let out that blast, though. If you hadn't, I'd probably have looked in the wrong direction, or looked too late.”

“Shell.”

“Yeah?”

“What happened to your—your pants?”

That one caught me off guard. Somehow I hadn't gotten around to telling her about that. I said, “Honey, you might not believe it. I, uh, was swimming, see, and with—”

“Swimming? With your clothes on?”

“Yeah. But not as a lark. In fact, I'd just as soon not discuss it. Not ever.”

She was insistent, so I told her some of the story, hitting the high points. When I finished she merely said, “Well, if that's all it was, then all right,” and rather surprisingly let the matter drop.

At eight-thirty p.m., showered and dressed, we sat in the front room having drinks, a bourbon highball for me and a Scotch for Elaine. She'd told me all she could think of about her brother, but none of it seemed any help to me. Whatever Belden might have been up to, he hadn't told her about it.

I said, “Well, honey, I've got to leave.”

“For where?”

“The Red Rooster. I want to talk to Bunny—and her partner. I'm curious to know how he'll react when he sees me.”

“I'll get ready.”

“No, ma'am. You're not going; just me. There might be some fireworks, and—”

“Let's not argue about it. I'll just get ready, and we'll go.”

“No, it might be dangerous—”

“Shell, we've already discussed the broadcast about the woman seen running from the house where it happened this morning. We've no real reason to suspect that anybody knows I was the woman. So we won't worry about that.”

“But Joe Navarro might pull a fast—”

“He hasn't any reason to want to hurt me.”

“He might if he sees you with me. And no—”

“Why? There's nothing wrong with my hiring you. I'm your client. I want you to investigate my brother's death. It's the most natural thing in the world. Besides, I can't stay here in your apartment. You might even have some more ugly callers.”

“I suppose so. But I don't want you near me when I brace Navarro. He's an ugly character himself, and—”

“I'd be safer with you than anyplace else. So I'll just put a little powder on my nose, and we'll go to the Red Rooster."

"Elaine, I won't have it, it's out of the—”

“And don't think you're going to sneak off and see Bunny unless I'm with you. So stop arguing.”

"Who's arguing? It's settled. This is no arg—"

“Oh, I'll powder in the car. Let's go.”

We went.

Chapter Ten

The red rooster was a long low building on La Cienega just off Westmount Drive, part of Restaurant Row. It was built of stained redwood, and above the entrance was a bright bas-relief of a crowing rooster, looking so strong and virile and beautiful that wildly cackling hens should have been lined up for blocks.

I had phoned before leaving the Spartan and talked to the headwaiter, so we quickly got settled at a table away from ringside, where it was unlikely we'd be seen by the performers in the floor show and yet could see clearly ourselves. Elaine and I ordered drinks a minute or two before the show started at nine o'clock.

She reached across the table and patted my hand, saying, “Isn't this fun?”

“Grand.”

I had often spoken with more enthusiasm, but she smiled anyway as the lights dimmed. The band blared loudly in a fanfare, and from the left of the stage a toothily smiling emcee dressed in a dinner jacket, satin-striped trousers and black tie pranced onto stage center. A microphone had been set up there and he grabbed it with both hands and bent it toward the audience, leaning forward winningly, as if he were going to kiss everybody at ringside, boys and girls alike.

I didn't listen to his syrupy greeting, or the introduction to the opening act, but looked around the club. It was a pleasant place, with the smoky rose and beige tones and low ceiling that give such rooms a feeling of warm intimacy. I had been a bit provoked by Elaine's insistence that she was going to stick at my side through thick and thin, and so on, but I had to admit now that—even under the circumstances—it was quite enjoyable to be here in the Red Rooster, drinking a highball and sharing a table with the lovely Miss Emerson.

A gal was singing about a long-lost lover, and judging by her voice the singer had to be beautiful. I took a look. She was. Her lover was “gone ... gone ... go-one!” she shouted, as if hoping he'd hear her no matter how far he'd fled, and now we all knew what had chased him away. She finished the song and was replaced by a comedy team, followed by a clever tap dancer and a vocal group.

Then the toothy emcee tripped onstage to announce with strained exuberance that we had reached the climax of our festivities, and now Wade and Navarro would present their renowned Dance of the Red Rooster. With a last flash of teeth and sweeping wave of hand he cried, “Wade ... and Navarro!” then left, taking the microphone with him, as the lights dimmed again.

The table at which Elaine and I sat was to the right of the stage's center, back a few rows from the front but providing a good view of the action. A red spotlight flooded the floor, and then Wade and Navarro appeared simultaneously, one from the left and the other from the right of the stage. They ran to opposite sides of the floor and stopped, waiting for the quick burst of applause to swell and die.

The costumes were good. Each of the dancers wore about as little as the law allowed, yet enough so that it was easy to tell they represented fowl. The Red Rooster was Joe Navarro, and though cockfights are between roosters, not a rooster and a hen, Bunny was obviously the rooster's female counterpart. No type or amount of costuming, when as much of her showed as now showed, would ever make Bunny look like a rooster.

Navarro wore an erect and brilliantly red counterpart of a rooster's comb on his head, a tight cap covering his black hair, sleeves of white feathers on his arms, red, blue and yellow feathers around his knees. Bunny wore the same type of feathers on arms and knees, plus a tight cap of white feathers on her head and a very few more over her jaunty breasts. Behind each was affixed a large tail of multi-colored feathers, long and brilliant, swaying with their movements. From both heels of each of the dancers jutted long curved, brightly gleaming silver spurs.

They looked more like mutant macaws than rooster and hen, but it wasn't likely that anybody would complain. Despite the apparent profusion of feathers, there was a great deal of skin showing, gleaming in the rosy light. They paused at opposite sides of the floor, then as the applause subsided into silence appeared to notice each other and moved sideways, sliding their spurred feet. They strutted forward, danced around each other in a circle that became smaller and smaller until they almost touched.

The band, silent until now, burst suddenly into a shrill dissonant chord and the dancers leaped into the air, arms flailing like wings, spurs flashing in the light like steel knives. As the band played a wild melody, the dancers collided in air, reeled apart, swirling around in tight circles, then leaped upon each other again.

They were really good. Even Navarro. He seemed like fluid steel, graceful but strong and in complete control of every movement. Both dancers leaped through the air, barely missing each other, spinning as they leaped, the bright tail feathers whipping in colorful arcs behind them. They could have stopped then, and the act would have been a good one—but the best was yet to come.

The sound and tempo of the music changed, became more sensual—and so did the dance. Both performers stopped after a leap through the air and stood motionless, looking at each other. After a long moment, the dance began again. It was the same as before—and yet not the same. They went through almost identical motions, but it was that “almost” that made the difference. It was a subtle thing, not bold or obvious, but it became apparent that some of those notes from the orchestra must have contained the melody of a mating call.

They leaped against each other, their bodies touching, sliding, caressing in the way a man's hands might caress a woman's thigh, softly, lingeringly. The feathers touched, intermingled. Their movements became slower, more studied, increasingly erotic. And then the tempo changed again as they neared the climax of the act.

Both dancers sprang apart and reeled around as if all those feathers were sticking into them, as if they were going to become completely unstrung, and for a moment I had the weird sensation that two giant birds were going to leap out over the audience and come down on us with spurs ripping and tearing.

Then Bunny and Navarro turned to face each other again. He advanced on her with what could only be construed as grim purpose. Bunny quivered and waggled and shook as if she were going to lay an egg. A fertile egg. She leaped into the air and flapped her wings and waggled her tail and stirred up a regular storm. There was another storm of activity, and Navarro, the Red Rooster, won. At the very climax of the act. Bunny was flat on her back and the Red Rooster was crouched over her.

When the lights came on again the stage was empty, except for a few colorful feathers on the floor. The audience exploded into applause. Bunny and Navarro ran onstage, hands clasped, the tight caps removed from their heads.

Elaine said to me, “That was exciting, wasn't it?”

“Yeah. They may have to get married.”

“Oh, Shell! Why do you say such things?”

I started to answer her, but stopped.

Now that the show was over, I intended to go backstage and have a chat with Navarro. Maybe more than a chat, depending on how he reacted. Maybe I'd swat him again. But there was a hitch.

The dancers bowed, and as they straightened up Navarro turned to his left, smiling broadly, and looked straight at me. He couldn't have known I was here, at the table on which his eyes happened to fall, but he looked right at me. And if I'd thought that perhaps somebody might already have told him Shell Scott was in the audience, I would have thought so no longer.

The house lights were on now, and though Elaine and I weren't obvious in the big crowd, the combination of Navarro's accidental glance in this direction and the fact that I do not exactly melt away into the surroundings, must have made me suddenly seem to him like the whole audience. He froze. He hadn't quite straightened up, and he stopped moving while still bent slightly forward. For half a second his face held the happy expression, the smile and flush of exhilaration—and then his face fell apart into shock and surprise, a blend of incomprehension and disbelief. Slowly he straightened up, features twisted, and took two short steps toward me before he remembered where he was.

And that told me all I needed to know about Joe Navarro.

His extreme reaction couldn't have been caused by our beefs last night, by anything which had occurred between him and me. The reason for his sudden and violent shock could only have been that he thought I was dead.

He must have thought that, by now, I was shot full of holes, lying on Rossmore or in the morgue, and thus couldn't possibly be here in the Red Rooster. That meant, of course, that he had known in advance of the recent attempt on my life, the slugs flying from the rifle in that car. If he'd heard about it after the fact, he would also have heard that the attempt had failed.

He turned stiffly, nodded automatically to the crowd, grabbed Bunny's hand and they went off through a draped archway on stage left, the farthest spot from me. In a moment Bunny came back into view—alone. She looked puzzled, but smiled and bowed to the continuing applause.

I got up in a hurry, started weaving through the tables toward that draped archway. Elaine called something after me, but I kept going. As I went through the drapes and into a short passage beyond, I saw Bunny, glancing back over her shoulder. When she saw me she looked surprised, too, but not in the way Navarro had. She seemed surprised but pleased.

“Why, Shell,” she said. “How nice. Did you catch the act?”

“Yeah, it was great. But I'm in a hurry. Bunny. Where did Navarro go?”

“He was in a hurry too. It was the oddest—”

“Where is he, Bunny? I've got to see him right now.”

“Well, he ... acted so funny. Grabbed my hand and pulled me back here and left. He didn't even go out for the bow with me. I suppose he went to his dressing room.”

“Where is it? Which one?”

She pointed. “Around to the right there, number three.”

“One thing. How did he act when you got together again tonight? Or whenever you met for the first time after you left the Srinagar with me?”

“That was when I came to the club tonight. He was already here, and he seemed just like usual. He didn't even mention my leaving the boat without him—and naturally I didn't tell him about it, after what you said.”

“Don't.”

“He even seemed ... oh, in a better mood than usual. As if he were pleased about something.”

“Yeah, and I know what it was.”

I hurried around the corner and down the hall to room three, grabbed the knob and threw the door open. It crashed against the wall and I went inside fast. Joe wasn't in sight. The long, multi-colored tail feathers lay in a heap on the floor, the rooster's-comb cap alongside it.

I jumped back into the corridor. On my right, at its end, was a door, slightly ajar. I ran to it, threw it open as I heard a car engine start. Outside was the club's parking lot, bordering Westmount Drive, and as I stepped onto the asphalt a beige T-Bird skidded out into the street and swung left.

An attendant stood in the middle of the lot, watching the Thunderbird leave. I called to him, “Was that Joe Navarro?”

He swung his head around. “Yeah. Man, was he in a hurry. Came out half dressed, putting his shirt on and carrying his shoes. Lit out like a—”

I didn't hear the rest of it. A wire fence enclosed the lot, and the quickest way to my Cad was back through the club. I ran inside, cut across the dance floor and headed for the front door. From the corner of my eye I saw Elaine standing alongside our table and then hurrying toward me. I kept going, made it to the Red Rooster's entrance on La Cienega and outside. Elaine was right behind me.

I took off in a run toward the Cad, jumped in and stuck my keys in the ignition. As the engine caught and roared Elaine threw open the right-hand door and climbed in.

“Get out of here!” I yelled at her.

“No.”

I swore under my breath, but there wasn't time to argue. I cramped the wheel as I slipped the car into gear and tromped on the gas pedal. The Cad lurched forward and out of the parking space, bumper nicking the rear bumper of the car ahead, and then we were roaring down the street. I hit the brakes and swung right at Beverly Place, right again at Westbourne Drive and jammed down the gas pedal. I skidded into Rosewood Avenue and roared around the circle, fishtailing into West Knoll Drive with the tires shrieking. I couldn't know if Navarro might have turned off somewhere before here, but I did know that if he'd kept going down Westmount, in the direction he'd been headed when he'd left the lot, then only seconds ago he would have passed the spot where I was now.

This was a narrow street paralleling La Cienega, and only one car was in sight ahead of me. Far down where the street ended at Santa Monica Boulevard, the taillights of that car flared briefly as it slowed and swung into Santa Monica. They were the big round red taillights, two on each side, of a T-Bird. It almost had to be Navarro. Whoever it was had sure been traveling fast.

I jammed down the accelerator again. Elaine didn't speak, but I saw her feet pressing the floorboards in that involuntary braking movement. I hit the brakes at the Santa Monica stop sign, slowed, swung right into the Boulevard. At the next stop I caught sight of him again. He was across La Cienega, heading down Santa Monica alongside the railroad tracks. And it was a beige Thunderbird. It was Joe.

There was a break in the traffic and I gunned the Cad across La Cienega after Navarro, relaxing a little. He wouldn't shake me now.

“Elaine,” I said, “why in hell can't you stay home and knit socks or something, like a sensible—”

“Don't swear at me.”

I turned and glared at her. “Right now I damn well feel—”

“Shell, don't—”

I roared at her, “Listen to me! Every time I open my yap you start babbling at me. It's gotten so I can't finish a sentence. Now just sit there for a change.” I took a deep breath and squirted it out my nostrils. “And another thing. I can't have you hanging on my neck the rest of the night.”

She looked shocked, but she shut up. She sat quietly for a while, but then she moved over closer to me and put one hand gently on my thigh. Finally she said, “I just ... wanted to stay with you ... no matter what.”

More calmly, I said, “Honey, let me fill you in on this. The guy ahead took a powder because be saw me in the club. Saw me and was shocked that I wasn't dead. He knew those guys were going to try to ventilate me in front of the Spartan, he thought they'd done the job, and he was very happy about the whole idea. So knowing I'm still alive, he'll be even more delighted when and if somebody can kill me. I don't know where we're going or what's going to happen, and I simply can't be worrying about you during the action.”

The Thunderbird was the second car ahead of me now, and it turned right, traveling at a normal rate of speed. I dropped back a little more, followed him up the street where he'd turned. Then I said to Elaine, “I wish to blazes you'd stop following me around—while this is going on, at least.” I paused. “What's with you? What's in it for you, anyway?”

When she answered, she sounded angry. “I just wanted to be with you, you—you ape.” She was angry. What did she have to be angry about? I was the one supposed to be angry.

She went on, her usually soft voice edged, honed sharp on the corners, “It was just a stupid idea of mine.” She slapped her arms over her breasts, hugged them tight in a sudden, almost violent gesture. “I guess you think I go to bed with some man every night. Well, I don't. Not more than two or three times a week.”

She subsided into silence then. So did I. I watched Navarro's car ahead, and thought about what Elaine had said, and mentally threw my hands up into the air and clapped my head. I didn't have enough to worry about with guys swinging at me, trying to sap me, shoot me, drown me, and maybe even throw crocodiles on me before this was over. Now I had this piled on top of everything else. But, I guess, I had asked for it.

Finally I got out cigarettes, stuck one in my mouth and held the pack out to Elaine.

“Smoke?”

She took one silently. But, also silently, she pushed in the dash lighter, lit her cigarette, took mine from my lips and replaced it with the burning one, then held the lighter to her own.

On Fairfax Avenue, Navarro turned into the lot alongside a small nightclub called the showcase. I drove on past, turning my head to look back in time to see him pull into a parking space. I went on to the corner, swung around it and parked at the curb.

Then I turned to Elaine. “Honey, I'm sorry if I yelled at you, or barked. But I can't afford to—to divide my attention at a time like this.”

“I know. It's all right. I just...” She let it drop.

“And right now the guy I'm after went into the showcase. So I'm going to go in there, too.”

“Shell, let me go with you. Please?”

“Why? Wait here and—”

“That's just the point.” She winced. “I interrupted again, didn't I? But I know if I let you talk you'll think of a hundred reasons why I shouldn't. And I couldn't just wait here, alone. Not knowing what was happening. If I were with you, at least I'd know. I'm not afraid, if that worries you. And maybe I could even help some way. You can't tell. And I don't want you to go in there without me. I might just wait, and wait, and wait, and go crazy waiting. Please, let me go with you.”

“You pick the damnedest times to—”

“Please.”

We were back to the point where I couldn't finish a sentence. And right then I wondered if there might be any reason other than the apparent one for her wanting to be with me all the time. So maybe she thought I might get myself shot in the head and wanted to finish the waltz with me before it happened. It was flattering. Goofy, but flattering. But I have, in my time, been mixed up with a lovely or two who turned out, to my dismay and disappointment, to be lovely only on the outside. Inside, they were ugly—inside they were blackmailers or liars, even murderers.

So I said, “Elaine, honey, tell me this. Is there any other reason, anything you haven't told me, for your wanting to be with me? To go into the showcase with me? Anything connected with your brother's death, or what he was doing ... anything at all?”

She looked straight at me out of those dark Indian eyes, those warm, soft, lovely eyes, and for a moment I didn't think she was going to answer me. But even in the dim light, I could see the sudden moistness, the welling of a tear, the quick blink with which she fought it back. She turned her head a little, as if to hide her face, and said, “No.”

That was all. But her voice was small, different, hurt—almost like the voice of a girl. Suddenly I was sorry I'd asked.

She turned her head a little farther away, looked out the window for a moment, then turned back toward me. She was normal again, composed and quiet.

I don't know. I can get hit on the head, even shot, and recover. I pop people in the teeth, and sometimes leap into the lion's mouth and bite back. When I have to, and I'm charged up or jazzily stimulated, I can practically lift a house to get it out of my way. But some things I'm not strong enough to do.

“Well, come on,” I said. “They tell me this showcase is crazy.”

We got out, but before going to the club I opened the luggage compartment and started fumbling around in it. Elaine said, “What are you doing?”

I found what I wanted, a box in which I keep three or four hats, dark glasses, cigars, pipes, items like that. Sometimes when tailing a man on foot you can—by changing from cigar to pipe, from bareheaded to a man wearing a hat—by such minor changes lessen the chance of being picked out by the tailee.

As I straightened up and closed the trunk again I said to Elaine, “Mainly I want to cover this white hair of mine. But, also, this should make me look like a regular customer.”

As I spoke, I put on, at a rakish angle, the dark blue beret I'd dug out of the box and stuck an eight-inch-long cigarette holder into my mouth. Elaine said, "That should make you look like a regular customer? What kind of place is this?”

“You'll see. It would help if you'd part your hair in the middle and comb it straight to the sides, sort of scraggly.”

She didn't argue, but went to work on her hair. When she got through, her hair looked weird. It was perfect.

“Here we go,” I said, and we walked to the club. Just before we went inside I stopped her and said, “This is all against my better judgment—and sometimes even my better judgment is pretty lousy. So promise me one thing.”

“All right.”

“If this goes smoothly, I won't mention it. But, if I tell you to blow, get lost, leave. And in a hurry.”

“All right.”

“If we, uh, get separated. I'll come to your hotel later. The new one you checked into today.”

“All right.”

That settled that. I opened the door and we went into the club.

Chapter Eleven

Inside was a damp, gloomy-looking flight of stairs which led down below ground level somewhere; this was what is often called a cellar club.

I'd heard much about the showcase, and seen half a dozen dumps like it. It was one of those phonily “artistic” dives, where pale poets quote blank verse to blank people, where bands honk “modern” dissonances as background to sonorous verbiage. Here gathered painters and writers and poets and sculptors and all sorts of people who talked in lower case, like the showcase sign outside. It wasn't much of a place for laughs.

Elaine and I went down the cement steps and stopped at the bottom. The place was dimly lighted, but I could see a long bar stretching from a point directly ahead of us to our left for about forty feet. The wall facing the bar, the wall alongside which we stood now, was covered with paintings and drawings, and beyond the far end of the bar at our left were more paintings.

On our right was a small room in which couples and groups sat around tables covered with black-and-white checked cloths. Candles stuck in empty wine bottles provided wavering illumination. Straight ahead of us, at this end of the bar, was an open doorway. I could look through it into a big, dark room where wooden chairs were lined up in rows before a small raised stage, bright in the glare of a spotlight. Something was going on in there now. Over the door was a sign proclaiming the room to be the "showroom” — in lower case letters, naturally—and listing the names of several people who were to provide entertainments during the night.

I didn't see Navarro anywhere.

Elaine said softly, “It's kind of creepy, isn't it?”

“That it is.”

There was something unpleasant and clammy about the place, a feeling I couldn't put into words, as if everything were a little out of focus, the colors not quite right, as if something were decaying here in the room but the odor hadn't quite reached my nostrils. It was a scabious room in which people might breathe pure carbon dioxide and drink bat's blood from little wine glasses.

Two people were sitting at the table nearest us in that room on our right, but they were drinking ordinary highballs. They were near enough so I could hear their conversation. The guy was reading something from a paper in his hand, and no doubt they were regular customers.

The gal looked like a woman of the world, but not this world. She looked as if she'd had her face lowered, a grossly fat gal who hadn't let herself go, but had kept it all. She fluttered what almost appeared to be eyeless lashes at the man and said, “That was beautiful, Ilyich. Beautiful.”

"Yes! Yes!" he cried, eyes glazing. "Yes! I feel it now. I feel it.”

He was no prize, himself. He wore a mustache so long it drooped down at the ends. Unfortunately, it drooped about two inches extra at the left side, which made it appear that the highballs had gone to his mustache. It sort of destroyed the dashing look.

The girl said, “It was a beautiful poem. All the dying and all. Beautiful. It was sheer ... sheer poetry.”

“I feel it!” he cried.

I was beginning to wish he'd stop feeling it.

“I feel it!” he yelped, sort of all agog. “I shall achieve immortality—at least, for a little while.”

Elaine and I looked at each other, but didn't speak. I guess we just didn't feel it. This joint made me uncomfortable from my toes up—and I was tense and on edge to begin with. In a place like this I could almost feel my luck running out.

And then I saw Navarro.

He had been standing inside the door of the showroom, out of my sight. But he moved into the doorway, his back to me, and I could see that he was talking to a tall man with wide square shoulders and a black mustache and short beard. The mustache was heavy and ragged, and it curved down into the beard, becoming a part of the beard itself. He was looking intently at Navarro, thick brows knitted like black ropes.

I lit a cigarette in my long holder, made sure the beret covered my hair, then took Elaine's arm. We walked to our left, along the wall facing the bar, pretending to examine the pictures. The back of Navarro's coat was still visible to me when we stopped halfway down the long bar.

“What in the world is it?” Elaine said to me.

“Huh?” I turned to look at her. She was staring at a painting on the wall. This obviously had the place of honor here. It was by itself, with a lot of clear space around it, whereas elsewhere the paintings and other exhibits were almost side by side. It looked like a soft-boiled egg colliding with a green octopus. Of course, I could have been wrong. All I really know about art is that I like the calendars you see in garages.

Elaine said, “I think I know what it is.”

“That's the gimmick—it's whatever you say it is. Here, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Like a splinter, you know.”

“Seriously, I believe it's the sun rising over something green and gooey.”

I glanced at Navarro, still in the doorway, then said to Elaine, “My dear, you must take a course in the appreciation of appreciation. This is clearly the portrait of an omelette laying a hen. But it's in the fourth dimension. You can't appreciate it unless your eyes are in the fourth dimension.”

She smiled. “Of course. Now I feel it.”

There's no way of knowing where we might have gone from there, to what dizzy heights we might have soared, but in our moment of discovery Navarro wheeled around and started walking toward us. The bearded man was right behind him.

For a second I thought they'd spotted us. Joe looked right at me. I flipped ashes from my cigarette holder, and Joe looked at me—and away. As the other man came up alongside him, Navarro swung his head toward him, talking earnestly. I turned toward Elaine as the men came nearer. They walked past, only a foot or two behind us, and from the corner of my eye I saw them walk to the end of the bar and then go out of sight on my left.

I followed them, Elaine at my side. The two men had gone through a gaudily painted door, splashed with much purple and black and with a gaudy bloodshot eye melting in its center. The door was closing as we neared it.

I looked around. Opposite the melting-eye door, in the far wall, was another entrance into the showroom. From beyond it I could keep a lookout for Navarro or the other guy while Elaine and I remained out of sight. And I didn't want to barge into that room until I knew more about what was going on. We went into the showroom, stopping to give a woman at the entrance the three dollars required for admission.

We stood at the rear of the room, and I kept looking out into the room we had just left, glancing occasionally at the spotlighted stage where a tall, thin, angular girl was saying something about doing away with “all the machines, the warmongering machines.” Perhaps fifty people were sitting in wooden chairs, soaking it all up.

The melting-eye door in the other room opened, and a man came out. I'd never seen him before. He was about six feet tall, possibly thirty pounds overweight, neatly dressed, carrying a black bag. It was the kind of case doctors carry. A medical bag. Horn-rimmed glasses rested uneasily on his very small but bulbous nose. Apparently he was a doctor; and I wondered what a doctor had been doing in that room.

As the door opened and closed I'd gotten a brief glimpse at the room's interior, but it hadn't told me anything. The bearded guy was in sight, looking at something or someone out of my range of vision. Nothing happened for a while.

Onstage the tall girl finished her lecture, or whatever it was, and somebody announced that Mike Kent would recite his latest poem—composed this very evening during Miss Glidenwell's just completed and stirring declaration. The poem was entitled, “End of World in Atomic Holocaust with Blast and Fallout at the Ultimate Atomation.”

A big boar-faced man with hair hanging over his ears took the stage. A group of musicians at the rear of the stage made a lot of noise, building up finally to a great clatter. Listening to them was like facing the music. Here, at last, was poetry-to-jazz.

The music stopped. The boar-faced poet shook all over, threw his hands into the air over his head, fingers waggling like crazy. In the silence he threw back his head and yelled as loud as he could:

“POW!”

There was a great deal of applause.

I whispered to Elaine, “Good stuff. Starts out almost like Shelley, what?”

“I lean toward Edna St. Vincent Millay,” she said.

“Fine start, anyway. But how's he going to top it?”

He didn't top it. That was the poem. Being one of the uninitiated, I had thought he'd have to go on. And I didn't even applaud.

Elaine looked at me, her face blank. “Isn't this ... well, kind of silly?”

I grinned at her. “This, sweetheart, is the opiate of the masses. But you mustn't call it silly. That exposes your warped perception.”

She made a face.

Somebody else took the stage, but I paid no more attention. A few more minutes passed, then Navarro and the Beard came out of the melting-eye door. They spoke briefly, walked back toward the club's entrance. I stepped to the door, and watched them. Navarro said something to the other man, then went up the cement steps.

I hesitated, wondering whether I should follow Navarro, but decided against it. He'd probably done his bit for the night, by coming here—undoubtedly either to tell the Beard he'd seen me alive, or to ask why I was still alive. That “why” was the one that bothered me, too. I knew a lot of what was going on, but not why it was happening—not enough of the why, at least.

The Beard stepped back into the showroom, where he'd been earlier, on the opposite side of the room from us. I turned to Elaine, put my lips close to her ear and whispered, “I'm going to move around a little. This may go smoothly, in which case we can leave together. But if trouble starts popping, you beat it in a hurry.”

She said she would. I squeezed her arm and walked out of the showroom. Nobody was seated at this end of the bar, but the bartender was fixing setups and he glanced at me. I walked to a stool and sat down, ordered a bourbon and water and played with it until he walked to the far end of the bar. Then I picked up my drink and went over to the wall, glanced at more weird prints and collages and paintings, watching the bartender and crowd at the same time. When I thought nobody was looking in my direction, I slipped around the corner of the wall and walked to the garishly colored door.

It wasn't locked. I put my right hand under my coat, on the .38 but not taking the gun out, twisted the door knob and stepped inside the room.

At first I thought it was empty. A light still burned, and as I closed the door I could see that this was some kind of office, with a battered desk, papers scattered over its top, and a swivel chair before it. On my right was another closed door. It, I guessed, would open into the parking lot alongside the club. On my left, against the wall, was a wooden cot covered with blankets.

A man lay on the cot, one blanket half covering him.

He didn't move. The man appeared to be in almost as bad shape as the paintings outside. His arms and chest were bare, and red ugliness bloomed on the right side of his chest. He looked dead.

I walked to him, touched him. He was dead.

The flesh was still warm, but there was no pulse, no heartbeat. I pulled up one of his eyelids and looked at the dull dead eye. This guy had been among the living not long before, but he sure wasn't now.

I didn't know who he was. But I had a hunch. I had a hunch that I might have seen him before, though not clearly. This explained what the doctor had been doing here; but there was a chance it explained a great many more things.

Earlier I had fired three or four slugs at a man behind a rifle, a guy shooting at me. I knew I'd hit him, and at the time I'd hoped I had killed him. Maybe I had. The dead man's presence here, at the spot to which Navarro had rushed in such a hurry after seeing me alive, was almost enough by itself—this was probably the slob who'd tried to kill me.

His bloodstained coat and shirt hung over a straight-backed chair next to the cot. I went through the coat fast, found the dead man's wallet. There wasn't much in it, but a driver's license told me his name was Herbert M. Kupp, he was twenty-eight years old and lived in Los Angeles. He'd held a card in the Teamsters Union, and had a Standard Oil Credit Card in his wallet. I stepped to the other closed door and tried the knob. It was locked, and I started going rapidly through the Beard's desk.

I was bent over the middle drawer, starting to look through a small book listing phone numbers, when the faint sounds from the showroom swelled a little louder. I didn't get it soon enough. Engrossed in the list of numbers, I thought for half a second that the last act must have been sensational. Just half a second, but it was enough. By the time I realized the increase in sound could have been from that melting-eye door opening behind me, it was practically over.

Not quite over, but close enough. I had time to start swinging around, time to feel the first solid blow crash down on my head. But from then on I was just one of the also-rans, a man falling through pain with something exploding in my skull. My head split open and spread out toward the horizons, and then as the pain subsided the floor came up against me like a feather pillow.

Something dug hard into my side. I wasn't quite out, and I tried to reach for it and felt the cloth of a man's trousers jerked from my fingers. Then that foot slammed into my side again. There was a blow on my arm, something cracked against the side of my head.

And then everything went black and blue ....

Consciousness was pain returning slowly, nibbling at my flesh. A sensation like fire coursed along my side; my head throbbed achingly; something inside me felt twisted, as if it were pulling itself apart. I bit back the involuntary groan, lay still, trying not to change my breathing.

For a while I couldn't remember what had happened or where I was. All I knew was that I had to lie quietly, unmoving. I could hear movement, then a ticking sound. It didn't make sense. There were several clicks, a pause, several more clicking noises. Then a voice.

“Bob? Brandt here. You alone?” In a few seconds he went on apologetically, “I know ... yeah, but I thought you'd want me to call under the circumstances.”

Fog swirled before my closed eyes. I concentrated, tried to clear my mind of jumbled thoughts. Finally I realized what the clicking sound had been—a man near me had been dialing a number; he was using the phone now. I tried to crack my eyelids, move my hand easily, slowly. But nothing worked, my eyes stayed closed, I couldn't even figure out where my hand was. It was as though I'd lost all feeling through my body, all awareness of separate parts, except for the points of fire and pain.

The man went on softly, “I got Scott here. No—he's out cold. Yeah, caught him in the office.” A long pause.

Consciousness started slipping away from me again. It was difficult to know if I were really conscious or dreaming, imagining. Funny pictures floated through my brain. I saw Bunny in the water, nude, spinning around and around; a hawk-faced man leaping at me, great gleaming knives on his feet flashing, gouging and ripping at my flesh. I saw a sea of blood, and the face of a beautiful dark-eyed woman. Elaine.

Then I remembered Elaine. Remembered where I was. There was a voice near me. I couldn't make out the words. In a moment of comparative clarity I heard the man speaking on the phone. “Yeah, the bastard hit Kupp; he just died. Lime went back.”

I gathered all my strength, strained every aching muscle, exerted every atom of will. My eyelids cracked about a sixteenth of an inch. I could feel sweat on my forehead. I was lying on my back, arms beneath me. There wasn't much feeling in them yet. A light blazed ahead of me—that wouldn't be ahead, though; the light must be in the ceiling.

I pulled my gaze downward, getting the lids open a little farther. I could see a wall, wavering and melting, solidifying for a moment and then starting to melt again. A shimmering desk was a few feet away, a man sitting before it holding a phone in his hand, his right side toward me. His outlines, like the outlines of the desk, were insubstantial, indistinct, unreal. Everything looked like that drawing outside.

For a goofy moment I wondered, as if I had all the time in the world for such conjectures, if this explained how the artist achieved his effects; maybe he hit himself on the head and worked like a fiend, tapping his skull lightly once in a while. I wondered if maybe the walls and desk were really solid and I was melting. I wondered if maybe I was back to normal except that the blow on my own skull had damaged my brain.

“Yeah, the damn thing's getting out of hand.” It was the guy on the phone. The Beard. I could hear him distinctly, and my vision was becoming clear again.

He said, “I'll take care of it myself this time. But I can't do it here in the club. We'll haul him ... what?” A pause while he listened. “Okay. We'll dump him there.” He listened a moment, then hung up.

My thoughts were clear enough now so that I had no doubt as to what those words had meant or to whom the bearded guy had referred when he'd said, “I'll take care of it myself.” I was the It.

I could feel strength returning to my arms and legs. The pain swelled bigger and hotter, but my mind was reasonably clear. I took a couple of slow, deep breaths, getting ready. The man turned farther away from me and started to get out of his chair.

In another few seconds I wouldn't have a chance. It was now or never. As he started to get up, I gathered all my strength, gritted my teeth as hard as I could and lunged at him.

My head moved maybe an inch from the floor and banged down on it again. Both legs twitched feebly. But I kept lunging, banging and twitching. It took about three lunges before it became clear to me that not only was I still too weak and groggy to stand up by myself, but that my hands were bound behind my back.

The guy stood over me and looked down at me, chuckling throatily. “Your skull must be six inches thick,” he said. Then he pulled back his foot and slammed it into my left side. For a hellish moment I thought maybe his toe was going to come out on my right side, and then I heard him say, “Don't even wiggle, buster. Lay quiet and I won't have to stomp on you.”

I tried to tell him. I tried to sum it all up in a few choice, meaty words. But the words wouldn't come out.

He wadded a handkerchief, shoved it brutally into my mouth, then stepped to the door. I didn't hear him say anything, but in a moment somebody else came into the room. They got me onto my feet, one on each side, each hanging onto an arm. They steered me toward the locked door I'd earlier tried to open. The bearded guy stuck a key into the lock, turned it.

He said to the other man, “This is just a customer what had a couple too many, see? Took a swing at me and I had to stomp on him. Understand?”

“Sure, Hip.”

Hip, I guessed was the Beard's name or nickname, a fact completely without value to me at the moment. The last time he'd kicked me had hurt more than anything else so far, but it had swept some wisps of fog from my mind. And I could think clearly about the imminent murder. My murder. Yeah, that was crystal clear—Hip was going to kill me in a very few minutes. My mind was racing, thoughts accelerated by awareness of the spot I was in, and I consequently thought very fast about nothing at all. Nothing of any help, at least.

I could walk fairly well now, though the aches and ouches went right along with me. This was the first time I'd really been banged around, except for the street burns I'd picked up jumping away from those rifle slugs, but Hip had made up for the previous misses. I wouldn't be much good at running. Especially not with my hands tied and two mugs hanging onto me. The handkerchief gag was uncomfortable in my mouth, its taste ugly against my tongue.

And right then, oddly enough, my thoughts veered in a new direction. I thought about Elaine. I wondered if she were still in the showroom or had left. There was a chance she had seen Hip come into the office after me. There was even a chance that she'd been spotted, recognized—maybe she was in almost as bad a spot as I was. All that did was complicate my thinking with worry about her, make it more difficult to concentrate on the trouble at hand.

The two men pushed me through the open door into near-blackness outside. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness I could make out the shapes of automobiles. This was, as I'd guessed earlier, the parking lot; but the lights had been turned off—undoubtedly in preparation for this moment—so that I could be led in darkness to one of the cars.

They shoved me forward. I stumbled, caught my balance and walked ahead. We stopped next to a dark sedan and Hip reached for the back door. I knew that once I got in there it would all be over. So that door looked quite a bit like the lid of a coffin. As Hip's hand closed on the handle I made my move.

Hip was momentarily busy, opening the door, and the other man was holding me loosely, so I spun around fast, jerking my arm free of his grip, and jumped at him. Our bodies thudded together and he staggered backward. I leaped at him—and something closed on my neck like a noose.

Hip had grabbed the back of my coat and shirt before I'd completed one full step forward, and he yanked on it, my shirt and tie digging into my neck. With one hand he hit my shoulder, spinning me around, and he swung the other hand, closed into a hard fist, against my jaw.

I rolled my head with the punch as much as I could, but the blow still sent me slamming back against the car's fender. He stepped close to me, and I noticed the faint gleam of light on a gun in his hand. He jabbed it into my belly, growling; “One more smart play, Scott, and I'll let you have it right here.”

He pulled back the gun, a heavy automatic, ready to slap it down on my head again. I got my feet spread apart, started to duck. Finally, for the first time, I felt that I wasn't going to get out of this one. But if that was the way it was going to be, then Hip would have to finish it off right here and now. Because I sure as hell wasn't climbing into that car under my own power.

I ducked my head, tensed my right leg to drive me forward so I could butt this bastard in the gut—and somebody yelled.

It wasn't Hip or the other man. The cry came from behind me, from somewhere near that office door we'd just come through. “Hold it up! Hold it, Brandt!”

At almost the same moment light blazed out in the street. In the glare I saw Hip's shocked face as he jerked his head toward the light, then back toward the spot where the voice had come from. Automatically I had whipped my head around, and from the corner of my eye I saw a car swing into the lot with its tires skidding, a spotlight pointing toward us.

That first voice called, “Police officers. Drop it, Brandt.”

Hip's gun was still in his hand. He hesitated, but even as I wondered where the hell cops could have come from, and why, Hip made his decision. I saw his lips pull back from his teeth, beard wiggling, and he swung his gun around fast toward the officer.

Hip had his gun leveled and maybe he was even squeezing the trigger when I got him. I got him good, too. Maybe I couldn't have done much damage with my head, and I couldn't swing a hand at him, but my feet weren't tied—and I got him with my right foot.

There wasn't any thought about it. I'd started my leg swinging up at him when he jerked his gun toward the officer. Maybe I didn't choose the spot; maybe I did, unconsciously. But I got him in an area so vital that he was suddenly out of action for the evening, and maybe for the week.

As my shoe landed his eyes popped open and he let out a yell, a ghastly yell that sounded as if his throat had closed and the shriek tore through flesh. It was a high, gagging, agonized gasp to match his suddenly contorted features. The gun fell from his hand and he slumped after it, still making that horrible sound in his throat, bending forward.

Then a plain-clothes officer was alongside me. He picked up the fallen automatic and spoke briskly to the other man. When I turned, Brandt's partner was standing away from the car, leaning forward with his hands spread against the fender. In seconds there were half a dozen officers around us.

In a minute one of them pulled the gag from my mouth, helped me get my hands free.

When I could speak I said, “Man ... I'll take a thousand tickets to the Policeman's Ball. What the hell happened? Where'd you come from?”

“You all right, Shell?”

I turned toward the new voice. It was a sergeant named Sven Jurgensen, a tough, cheerful Dane. He sure looked good to me. In fact, all these officers around here looked beautiful, like pin-up boys. You just never know how much you really like cops—until you need them.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” I said. “I think. I wouldn't have been in another minute. How'd you get here?”

“Some gal phoned in, said you were getting murdered or something. All excited, didn't leave her name. You any idea who she was?”

I shook my head. “No.” At that moment, I didn't. I was still a little stunned by the suddenness of what had happened, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it must have been Elaine. This was the second time that lovely gal had helped me out of a hole. And this time I'd have been all the way in the deep one, covered with dirt, if it hadn't been for her.

Jurgensen didn't push it. He merely said, “Well, this time one of those hysterical babes was right, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, I'll fill you in on this boy,” I said. “And, believe me, I'll be happy to do it.” I pointed to Hip, still conscious and wishing he was unconscious, writhing on the ground and moaning through tight lips.

Chapter Twelve

I'd signed the crime report, and “Hip” Brandt was cooling off in a felony tank along with the other man who'd helped him steer me through the showcase parking lot, a guy named Quinn.

They hadn't spilled anything, sticking to the story I'd heard Brandt tell his helper—that I'd gotten drunk and tried to slug him. Under different circumstances, I might have been in a pickle myself—for breaking into his office—but he couldn't explain why I'd been bound and was being forced into a car. It didn't seem to worry Brandt any. The dead man in his office worried him, all right. But the only thing he would say during interrogation was, “I want to see a lawyer. I got a right to see a lawyer.”

I had also told the police about the doctor—or the man carrying a medical bag—I'd seen leaving Brandt's office, but I couldn't describe him well enough for identification. In fact, during the more than two hours I'd been in the Police Building, in and out of Homicide and the jail, I had discussed with the police everything I could think of about this case.

When I had been here the previous morning I'd told the officers about the yacht party which had started all the action. A team had checked my info, talked to Goss and to party guests, but nothing they'd learned was of any help to me. A check with other known guests had failed to turn up a single person who'd seen a man even remotely answering my description of that fourth guy, the shiny white-haired mystery man. Goss had denied his presence, and there wasn't any evidence he'd been aboard—except my own uncorroborated word.

Navarro, at least, was in the soup. Because of his reaction after seeing me in the Red Rooster, and his immediate departure for the showcase, a call was out on him now. There had as yet been no trace of the “woman in white” who'd fled the house after Belden's murder. As for Belden, the police had no new leads to his killers and had so far uncovered nothing in his background which appeared incriminating.

The checkup on Goss and the Srinagar had been made before my second visit there, so I filled the police in on what had happened during that ill-fated trip—hitting only the high points—including Goss’ bribe offer. And I had emphasized the fact that the shooting spree in front of my hotel had occurred right after that trip. Officers had investigated the Spartan shooting spree, but the anonymous call which had come in to the complaint board hadn't pinpointed the location, merely said it was “at the Country Club,” which covered a lot of territory. Consequently not only the gunmen but Elaine and I were out of there before the law had arrived.

But the most important thing I did in those two hours or so was to leave Homicide and put in a couple of calls to the Stuyvesant, into which Elaine had checked the previous afternoon. The first time there'd been no answer, but on my second call the voice I now knew so well spoke over the phone.

Elaine was all right. She'd seen the Beard go into his office after me, heard sounds which “disturbed” her—I told her they had also disturbed me—and, frightened, put in a speedy call to the law, then had caught a cab and gone back to the Stuyvesant. I couldn't tell her on the phone, especially in the short time I had, how important that call had proved to be for me, or how I felt. Elaine pleasantly suggested that I explain all when I could stop by the Stuyvesant. I told her I would come by as soon as I could. So I was much relieved when, after that second call, I went back up to Homicide and talked some more to Sven Jurgensen and some of the other officers there, and especially to Sam.

Sam is Phil Samson, Captain of Homicide. He'd been off duty and home when word had reached him about the action at the showcase, but he'd immediately come back to the Police Building, not only because he's a good, honest, hard-working cop who likes to stay on top of things in his division, but also because he's the best friend I've got in L.A.

Right now he was in the squadroom with us, behind a desk, with the almost ever-present black cigar unlighted in his mouth. He's a big, grizzled guy with iron-gray hair and sharp brown eyes, his pink face always looking as if he'd just finished shaving. He's gruff, hard, with a massive solid jaw like the rear end of a truck, but just a bit softer inside than that tough exterior would indicate—a fact which you could never tell Sam without getting your head bitten off.

I said to Samson, “I guess I haven't convinced you yet, but the guy who sicked those dogs on me at the Spartan was Robert Goss. I already told you he threatened me, warned me that this would be the day I died—if I refused to take his bribe and clam.”

Sam bit down hard on his black cigar and growled around it, “Yeah. You told us.” He rolled the cigar a little in his wide mouth. “But, Shell, I've known you so long I'm on to all your tricks.”

“Tricks? There's no—”

He went on like a steam roller, as if he hadn't heard me. “You get to talking, you can make a one-punch fight sound like an uprising of the vigilantes, or a riot seem almost like a friendly chat.” He stuck out his big chin and scratched it, adding, “Only sometimes you accidentally leave out the most important parts.” He looked across the room. “Sven, toss me that paper I brought in with me.”

When I looked around, Sven was grinning from ear to ear. I'd noticed Sven and a couple of the other boys looking at the newspaper, passing it back and forth, snorting and slapping their knees. They were starting to snort again.

Sven brought the paper over. Samson looked at it, shaking his head, then handed it to me. “I picked this up on the way downtown. Just hit the streets. I suppose you've got some perfectly sensible explanation.”

It was the morning edition of a local sheet, opened to the second page, and it didn't take me long to find the source of all the amusement. At the upper left-hand corner of page two was a story headed, “Monster Sighted in Newport Harbor.” Underneath was the byline of Hal Hannahan.

I knew what to expect then. Hal Hannahan is a reporter, a puckish friend who takes a kind of fiendish delight in pouncing upon any peccadillo of mine and enlarging upon it to the greatest possible extent. His motive goes back to an incident concerning a curvaceous tomato, and we won't go into that. Suffice to say, he pays me back at every opportunity.

The story was obviously written tongue-in-cheek, but that didn't make it better—it made it worse. The story began:

“Yesterday afternoon rumors reached this reporter, from usually reliable sources, that a strange creature had been observed wallowing in Newport Harbor. Descriptions varied from ‘a long snakelike thing with wavy tentacles’ to ‘gruesome, almost manlike monster, dripping with muck and goo from the ocean floor.’ Personal investigation by this reporter has proved the latter description to be most nearly correct. After, comparing the testimony of half a hundred witnesses, I have established beyond doubt that this gruesome, almost manlike creature was...”

I tore my eyes from the next few sentences, which included my name and the fact that I was “a local private detective,” and said, “Sam, this is not at all the way it was. It was entirely, uh ... well, not exactly like that.”

“Uh-huh. Read it all, Shell.”

The rest merely stated that Sheldon Scott had come up out of the waters roaring savagely at citizens and advanced upon them wearing shirt and tie, shorts and socks. And, “It has not yet been determined what happened to his trousers.”

Sam said, “You see what I mean about leaving out the most important parts.”

“Well, I was just giving you the facts. I didn't think it was—well, I had to jump off the boat. I had to sock Goss, and, hell, those guys would have killed me right there in the bilges or somewhere if I hadn't—”

“You socked him? You mean, you hit him?” Sam was leaning forward, teeth clamped so grimly on the cigar that I thought he was going to bite it in two.

“Yeah, he started to spit on me, so I lowered the boom—”

“Wait a minute!” Sam's expression was pained. “He started to spit on you? What kind of reason is that?”

“Okay, it sounds funny now. But he got all worked up when I wouldn't take his dough, and began getting nasty about it. He popped, and I had to let him have one.”

Sam put a hand to his forehead and slowly rubbed it back and forth. He was quiet for several seconds, then said, “Shell, I don't think I even want to talk about it any more. You're lucky the man was big enough about it not to bring charges. He could have you locked up, put away for—”

“Big enough? Get it through your head he doesn't want me locked up. He wants me out on the street where he can have his boys pick me off. As they damn near did.”

Sam sighed heavily. “Somebody tried to put a couple in you, that's sure. But there's no reason yet to say it was Goss. Half the time you make me mad enough to tell you I'm going to knock you off, but that's just the sweet way you have of making people love you.”

“Okay, then,” I said. “Let's forget it.”

Some snickering noises behind me, and a look at Sven's grinning red face, told me it would be quite a while before the monster-without-pants was forgotten. I drank hot coffee from a paper cup and changed the subject. “When you get the report from SID, Sam, that should wrap up part of this.”

“The way you tell it, we don't need the report.”

“Yeah. I'd still like to be sure.”

The dead man I'd found in Brandt's office was now in the morgue. Death had been caused by a .38 caliber bullet which had driven through the pectoral muscles on the right side of his chest, broken a rib and lodged in his right lung. Earlier, when discussing the shooting in front of the Spartan, I'd told Samson I thought the slug in Kupp, the dead man, was from my .38 Colt. A test shot had then been fired from my gun into the nine-foot water tank in the Crime Lab. The lethal bullet from Kupp's lung, and the test slug from my gun, were under the comparison microscope in Firearms now.

In a little while the phone rang and Sam answered it, spoke briefly, then hung up. He looked at me. “You tagged it. The bullet was from your .38, Shell.”

“It figured. Well, I'll bet Kupp lived long enough to wish he hadn't tried to blast me. I'd give a lot to know who the other guy was, the driver of the car. And for sure who hired those torpedoes.” Something wiggled in my brain. Sam started to say something, but I stopped him. “Wait a second. I just remembered something—I think.”

“What do you mean, you think?”

“After Brandt whacked me, I came to and he was using the phone.” Everything that had happened then, in those dizzy, sliding and melting moments when I'd been regaining consciousness, was still foggy, unclear. But I concentrated, trying to remember, and said to Sam, “Brandt was talking to somebody. Apparently filling him in on me, on what had happened.”

“Maybe the one who sent those two guys after you?”

“Maybe.”

“Any idea who it was?”

I shook my head. “Only what I've told you—it almost had to be Goss.” Before he could interrupt, I went on. “But ... Brandt said something about Kupp, that I'd killed him. Then he said, ‘Lime went back.’ I think that was it. I remember he said Lime. He might have meant Kupp's partner.”

“Went back where?”

“You've got me. If I knew, I'd be on my way. There's also a chance Brandt was referring to that doctor I saw, or whatever he was. The guy with the black bag. But the main thing is the name Lime. Mean anything to you?”

“Not right off. We'll check it out.”

Sam spoke to Jurgensen, asked him to check R and I, the Police Records and Identification Division, and see if there was a package on anybody named Lime. Jurgensen went out.

While waiting for Sven to come back, I thought a little more about Belden. As far as the law was concerned so far, if Belden had been involved in anything criminal, evidence to prove it seemed to have died with him. He'd been involved in one promotion after another, as Elaine had told me, but nothing illegal. For the last three years he'd been a highly successful real estate agent, a good citizen to all appearances. His office papers had been examined by the police, but seemed all in good order. Maybe too good—he owned or had made large down payments on well over a million dollars’ worth of land in L.A. County and outlying areas. It was land which, in a few years, might be subdivided, used for housing projects or other developments and thus rise greatly in value. But that was just good business, speculative planning—a gamble that might or might not pan out. There didn't seem to be anything illegal about it.

But I wondered where Belden had put his hands on a million clams in the last couple of years. It seemed probable that the money had come from somebody else. Maybe Captain Robert Goss? But—still—not illegal.

Jurgensen came back in, with a folder in his hand. He said to Sam, “Think we made him. Leonard Lime. Calls himself Stash and about twenty other aliases. Looks like the man—he's been picked up with Kupp a couple times. We got a want on him now for ADW.”

ADW is assault with a deadly weapon, and that was sure what the man had done to me. That, and his previous association with Kupp, made it almost a certainty that Leonard Lime was the second of the two men who'd tried to knock me over, the driver of the getaway car. Samson looked through Lime's package, showed part of it to me.

The suspect had a record that covered nearly one and a half closely typed pages. Everything from arrests for vagrancy to suspicion of homicide, plus two convictions. Things were looking up. In a few minutes a teletype message would go out to police divisions and sheriff's departments in the local area, and an All Points Bulletin would alert more distant agencies. The police had tagged my boy—and with a little luck, before long they'd have him.

When the happy developments regarding Lime were out of the way I said to Sam, “There's something else on my mind. Is Crandall around?”

“He's off duty. You want a picture?”

“Yeah.” Crandall was the police artist. Sometimes when witnesses couldn't clearly describe a suspect they'd seen, or find his picture in the mug books, they would do the best they could while Crandall made a sketch, changing it when told, “No, his nostrils were cuter,” and so on until often a good likeness of the suspect was developed.

“Winston's available now,” Sam said. “He's good, almost as good as Crandall. Who you got in mind?”

“The man I saw on the yacht with Navarro, Goss, and Belden.”

“Uh-huh. When we talked to Goss, he said you were drunk, you know. Neither Belden or this other guy you mentioned was with him at any time that night. Belden was aboard, but nobody that looked like the other one.” He paused. “We can't get tough with a man like Goss unless he's actually pulled something. Of course,” he added sarcastically, “you can.”

“Think you can get Winston up here?”

Sam nodded. In a few more minutes I was describing the white-haired, smooth-looking egg as Winston sketched rapidly and expertly on a drawing pad. When we finished, the likeness, while not perfect, was close enough.

I grinned. There he was. Finally. Things were on the way up, all right. Looking back at me from the pad was my mystery man from the Srinagar.

Chapter Thirteen

That's great, Winston,” I said. “Who is he?”

He cocked an eye at his drawing. “Looks quite a bit like—” He paused, and I leaned forward a little. “—like an uncle of mine in Minnesota. But he died last year.”

“Thanks.” A couple of the other men looked at the drawing and shook their heads. Samson had been eying the thing, and he picked it up, glanced at me.

“Funny. Looks a little like Silverman, of all people. Couldn't be him, though.”

“Why couldn't it?”

“Well, it just couldn't. He wouldn't be mixed up in anything that wasn't on the up and up.”

“Of course not. Now, who's Silverman?”

Sam looked at me. “Just one of the most important and respected men in the state. Clean as they come. It doesn't look much like him anyhow, I only—”

“Okay, Sam, we'll elect him governor, but just for fun tell me who the hell he is.”

“Bob Silverman. Mr. Robert C. Silverman to us folks. Way back he was a member of the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners—before you even thought about starting an agency. Right now he's not governor, but he's a very good friend of the governor. Member of the State Highway Commission, on the board of half a dozen corporations, philanthropist, first-nighter at the opera and suchlike cultural activities. Besides which, he's got half as much money as the mint.”

“I never heard of him. But, then, I mingle with the little people.”

“You never even heard of opera. But there's not much about him in the news any more. He got fed up with reporters and publicity a long time ago—when you were in knee pants, Shell.”

“I was never in knee pants.”

“Once in a while he's mentioned in connection with the drive for opera funds or a charity thing, but that's about all now.”

“Sketch looks like him, huh?”

“Oh, come off it, Shell.” Sam's voice was a growl. “I just tossed that in. Sure, it looks a little like him. And a little like a thousand other people.”

I didn't say anything. I'd remembered something else. When Brandt had been speaking on the phone in his office, I was pretty sure he'd addressed whoever was on the other end of the line as “Bob.” It might have been Rob, or Cobb, or even slob—I wasn't positive. But I had the feeling it had been Bob. I hadn't thought about it until now.

I said as much to Sam and his tone was openly sarcastic when he replied, “Well, that proves it! Sheldon Scott, I've got to hand it to you. Your powers of deduction fill me with awe—”

“Oh, shut up.” I grinned at him. It had also occurred to me that Goss’ name—Captain of the Srinagar Robert M. Goss—was Bob, too. And there were at least a couple other Bobs in Los Angeles.

But I said, “Sam, put up with my foolishness for just another minute. You said this Silverman was one of the State Highway Commissioners, among eighteen other things, didn't you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“A thought has occurred to me. We both know the biggest building program planned in the entire state is this multi-billion-dollar bunch of freeways the state's going to build soon now—or, rather, keep on building.”

“Now, hold it, Shell. Don't go off on one of your—”

“Okay, so I'm reaching a bit. But Belden, the guy just knocked off, is a real estate agent—and you say yourself his office papers show plenty of land—”

“That's enough, Shell. The next thing, you'll be telling me it was Silverman running from the Belden house last night, wearing a white dress and a black wig.”

I jumped a little. “Black wig? Where'd you get the rest of that description? All I heard was that some woman in a white dress ran from the place.”

“Witness that saw her remembered a little more. Said the woman had a lot of dark hair. Black, or maybe brown, he thought. He's not sure, but it might help.”

It might help too much. I didn't want to dwell on that woman's description, so I went ahead with what I'd been saying. “On this freeway angle, Sam. There's going to be a lot of money spent on the things. Billions. Not little millions, but juicy billions.” I lit another cigarette. “The last figures I saw were on proposals for over twelve thousand miles of freeways in the state—over fourteen billion dollars’ worth. That's a lot of juice.”

“So?”

“So when that much money's spent anywhere, building roads or buying jelly beans, a pile of it's going to be loot. Unless a very squinty eye is kept on the boys spending the dough.” I paused. “And, Sam, what commission in California is primarily responsible for planning and building our freeways?”

He bit deeply into his cigar, reached into his pants for one of the wooden matches he carries, and struck it. That was the next thing to a dismissal. He knew I almost invariably retreated from the choking fumes of his foul cigars, when he managed to light one, which wasn't often.

Holding the burning match he said, not without some sarcasm, “Well, we got a State Division of Highways, a State Department of Public Works, and a few highway engineers who—”

“Yeah, and we've also got a State Fish and Game Commission—maybe they ought to be interested, at that. Fourteen billion clams makes a fishy chowder.” I leaned forward. When I'd first brought this up, it had just been an idea to toss off, but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. “Look, Sam, the answer I was so subtly hinting for is the State Highway Commission. Granted, our commissioners are honorable, decent, very valuable members of society—not like those two turnpike commissioners in Pennsylvania. Even the jury found those boys guilty of conspiracy. How about the road-building frauds in Indiana? And that's not all, not by a long shot.”

He lit the cigar, dragged deeply on it.

“And Belden,” I went on, “was a guy who could buy real estate right and left without anybody wondering about it twice. Of course, maybe once is enough. Remember, I saw Belden with—well, a guy who maybe looks like this one.” I tapped the drawing.

“Shell, the highway commissioners aren't the only men with the kind of inside info you're talking about. There's plenty of others.”

“Uh-huh. But as far as I know, none of them looks like Winston's drawing.”

He didn't say anything. Instead, a thick almost green cloud of smoke boiled across Sam's desk at me. That did it. I got up.

“Sam, I was only thinking aloud.”

“Yeah, I know. That's the pitiful part of it.” He blew a little extra smoke and added more gently, “Shell, you know I don't mind your peculiar fits of the brain. Not too much. And once in a while you're almost right. But when you start talking to me or anybody in the department about a man of Silverman's character and reputation, have a better reason than your ear itches when you think about him. Would that be asking too much?”

“Not at all, Sam. I'll see if I can dig up something besides an itch. It's just that old ear wound—”

“Dig up—you stay the hell away from Silverman!” I grinned at him, waved at the men and started toward the door.

Sven was leaning against the wall where he could catch me as I went out. He said grinning, “Come on, Shell. Just between you and me. What really happened to your pants?”

I scowled at him, sneered at everybody in the Homicide Squadroom and left with their parting comments still burning my ears.

Before leaving the Police Building I checked a directory and found the address of Robert C. Silverman on Strada Vecchia Road in Bel Air. Bel Air, where the houses are just like houses anywhere, except that they look like hotels and the people build them out of money.

Silverman—in Bel Air. Maybe it would be a wild goose chase, but I would chase a lot of geese to find a man who even remotely resembled Winston's drawing. It was worth a look.

Bel Air, only a mile or so from the city of Beverly Hills, is the kind of place you go through big steel gates to get into. It's profusely planted, overgrown with trees and shrubs, all sorts of green things. All sorts of people live there, too—everybody from movie stars to millionaires. Quiet hangs over the hills, and the birds sing sweetly. The streets are narrow, winding, without sidewalks, and the maximum speed is twenty-five miles an hour. I kept the Cad down to twenty going up Bel Air Road, past the kind of houses we poor people call mansions. Curving drives swept up to many of the homes, and often the driveways led to homes out of sight from the road.

I swung onto Strada Vecchia Road and kept going up. Most of the houses were dark at this early-morning hour, but lights burned in a few. One of the few was Silverman's. A black Fleetwood was parked in the wide white-graveled drive leading from Strada Vecchia up alongside the house. In the middle of the close-cropped green lawn, a lighted fountain bubbled prettily.

I parked in the road before the two-story mass of stonework, got out and walked up the drive. Light from inside the house and from the fountain spilled onto the driveway and must have clearly illumined my features as I walked past the Fleetwood.

I'd thought the car was empty, but as I passed it somebody said, “Well, it's you—what's-your-name. Scotty!”

It was a woman's voice. Something about it, and her calling me Scotty, brought back memories I couldn't capture immediately. But somehow I knew they were happy memories, because I turned around grinning widely.

“That's who!” I cried.

I spun around and peered into the Fleetwood. “And who might you—ah.” I caught the flash of yellow hair, and big eyes blinking, and a sort of shadowy voluptuousness below. In a moment I remembered the name, possibly because I had thought when I'd first heard it that it was Elaine.

“It's Arline,” I said. “Hello, hello.”

“Hello, hello. You remember my name.”

“I remember much more than your name, Arline. Shall we dance?”

She laughed. “What an idea. We could hardly dance here. Besides, I don't really get warmed up until I've had a couple of Martinis.”

“That's a shame.”

“But we can talk. It's a lot easier to talk when people aren't dancing.”

“In your case, that is a monumental truth.” I stopped, frowning. Now that the surprise of suddenly hearing Arline's voice and seeing her was diminishing, I started wondering what the devil she was doing here. And right then, for no logical reason that I could pin down, small clammy-footed spiders tiptoed along my spine.

I said casually, “This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you out to Silverman's?”

“Is that who he is?”

“Don't you know?”

The yellow hair rippled as she shook her head. “No, I was out here with Ralph once before, but he made me sit in the car then, too. All I know is it's one of his clients. His biggest, most important client, says he.”

“Clients?”

“He's a lawyer. Corporation lawyer. But let's not talk about Ralph.”

“Okay,” I said, and went right on talking about Ralph, in whom my interest was increasing. “Ralph who?”

“Mitchell. But let's not—”

“He practices law at night, huh?”

“No, silly. Not usually. In fact, we were having a big evening when he got this phone call. We were at the Oyster House for dinner, and I'd just ordered my first drink when the old phone call came for Ralph. So we left and came to this dump. That was hours ago.” She paused. “I guess I shouldn't call it a dump.”

“Call it anything you like, Arline. As far as I'm concerned, you can do no wrong.”

She smiled, almost wickedly. “Oh, but I can. What are you doing here, Scotty?”

“I wish I could say I came to see you—but Ralph would probably object to that. Sir, you cur, and so forth.”

“Well ... not exactly. I mean, well.” She paused and collected her thoughts, which seemed usually fairly well scattered. “You see, he's got this great big place and he's hardly ever there, and somebody has to take care of it. So it won't get ... oh, mouldy and all.”

“Yeah. Clip the hedges and coupons and things.”

“Like that. Sort of like a caretaker.” She looked at me for a while, then shrugged. “Oh, the hell with it. But it's sort of like mine, you know. You could even come over and have a Martini with me some day maybe. If you phoned first. That's very essential.” She laughed. “If a man answers, you ask for Mabel or somebody.”

I was going to suggest that she be more specific, but right then the front door opened and brighter light fell on us. I glanced around to see a man stepping outside, and the figure of another man closing the door. I didn't get a good look at either of them.

Arline whispered suddenly, “I forgot to tell you, Ralph's insanely jealous.”

That was great. She had wonderful timing. She went on, “Make like you don't know me.”

Sure. At that moment I was leaning halfway into the car. I said to Arline, “Tell me, ma'am, where is the nearest all-night drugstore?”

She blinked and said, “What?” as Ralph stomped up to the Fleetwood.

I pulled my head out as he lowered thick brows and looked at me through their fringes. “What the hell do you want?”

“I was just asking the lady where the nearest all-night drugstore is.”

The eyebrows went up and then down again. I stepped around him and walked toward the house as Arline said behind me, “It's true, honey. He said, ‘Tell me, ma'am, where—‘”

I didn't hear the rest of it. But I heard Ralph say, “Sure I believe you. Sure, honey. It just seems a little—all right, Arline.” He got into the car.

Caretakers are hard to get these days. At least, caretakers built like Arline.

As the Fleetwood purred down the drive I rang the bell. In a few seconds I heard footsteps inside, then the door swung open and a man said, “What is it now, Ra—”

He broke it off, eyes widening in surprise, but his features quickly resumed their normal appearance. After a pause of perhaps three long seconds, he said calmly, “How did you find me?”

He was the one, all right.

Chapter Fourteen

This was the tall, slim, smooth-faced man from the Srinagar. He wore a hip-length maroon smoking jacket, white shirt showing beneath it, open at the collar. His wavy white hair was smoothly combed, close to his head. A cigarette was held casually between his long thin fingers, smoke curling up from it, and his eyes burned into my face, almost as if smoke might start curling up from them, too.

His voice was level, though, calm, as he repeated, “How did you find me?”

“It took some doing.”

He puffed on the cigarette. “Pardon me, Mr. Scott. Come in. I was ... taken aback when I saw you. And that is stating the fact mildly.”

He stepped aside and I walked in past him. A wide stairway on my right led up to the next floor, curving gracefully as it ascended. Near me on a stand stood a two-foot-high carved-ivory idol that looked Asian. It was of a graceful, almost feminine male figure, four-armed, one foot raised in the movement of a dance. The ivory had yellowed now with age; it could well have been a thousand years old, or more.

As I looked at it Silverman said, “Lovely, isn't it? One of the Hindu Trinity. Shiva Nataraja, dancing in the hall of Chidambaram.”

“Well,” I said, “...uh, yeah.”

Beneath our feet was a colorful carpet, thick, rich in appearance, with an intricate design in it that appeared to be Oriental, maybe Persian. On the walls were large framed oil paintings, softly lighted. Doors were closed on our left and right. A lacy potted palm inside the door almost brushed my arm.

Silverman placed one hand easily against my elbow and said, “Let's go into the library. We can talk there. I...” He hesitated. “It may surprise you to know that I'm rather glad you came.”

“It does surprise me.”

He guided me ahead, past the foot of the stairway and along its left side to another closed door near the back of the house. He opened it, and we went in.

It wasn't a very big room but three walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books, some in shiny wrappers, others bound in buckram, silk, smooth and rough leathers, even some stuff which looked like fur. Several complete shelves were devoted to volumes which must have been quite old, probably, I guessed, rare and first editions. In one corner were two heavy chairs. Before the chairs was a small mosaic-topped chest. On its surface was a silver tray with a bottle of liquor upon it. At the opposite side of the room squatted a wide, low divan, a beige phone on a stand at one end.

We walked to the chairs and Silverman said, “Please sit down. Brandy?”

“Thank you.”

He opened a door in the side of the chest facing the chairs, took out two big brandy glasses and poured each of us a slug from the bottle. “Armagnac, Manoir St. Vivant,” he said with satisfaction.

Well, that sure meant a lot to me. But I sipped the brandy and wiggled my lips. He didn't do anything so wild as to swallow the stuff, but his nostrils quivered in ecstasy. “My favorite cognac, Mr. Scott,” he said dreamily. “This Armagnac is thirty years old.”

The stuff had been born about when I was. Somehow, that made it taste better. This Silverman puzzled me, the whole setup puzzled me. He was being as charming as he could be, and if he was nervous, or at all afraid that I could give him a bad time, he didn't show a trace of it. He really did seem almost relieved to see me.

He settled back into the deep chair, snifter cradled in his hands, swirling the liquor slowly. Then he said, “Perhaps it would be best if you started by telling me why you came here.”

“I just found out tonight who you were. I've been anxious to see you ever since we met on the Srinagar.”

“That is an incorrect statement, Mr. Scott. I was not on board the Srinagar.”

“Mr. Silverman, don't start this out by giving me any fast—”

He held up one hand, palm out, smiling slightly. “Oh, of course I was aboard her. You know it. I know it. But I wish to make it clear at the outset of this friendly discussion—I choose to think it is a friendly discussion—that nobody else must know it. Naturally, if you repeat to anybody else your ridiculous accusation, I shall deny it most emphatically.”

There was steel in that voice, when he wanted to shove it in. Normally it was soft, carefully tended, almost as loaded with the breath of culture as the voice of a British duke chewing caramels, but it could change. When he had said, “I choose to think it is a friendly discussion,” the words had rolled along a girder, almost clanging.

I said, “That's what I'd expect from a man with plenty to hide.”

“In a way, you're correct.” He smelled his Armagnac as if tempted to drink it through his nose. “What I have to hide is the fact that I was in conversation with Craig Belden on the night he was murdered. I'd never seen the man before, nor, it goes without saying, since. But a man in my...” He paused. “I really don't mean to sound stuffy, Mr. Scott, but for the sake of clarity I'll risk it. A man in my position, well known to the—the leaders in the community, cannot afford even a breath of scandal. Not even the mildest censure should be associated with my name. My friends, my associates, the opera—oh, it's simply impossible. Consequently I can't afford to let it be known that I was aboard the Srinagar on the night in question.”

He was fluent, charming, almost hypnotic. His words washed over me. But maybe it was eye-wash.

I said, “That night is sure in question, all right, Mr. Silverman. I hope you'll forgive me if I push this a bit, but it seems that not only your departure from the yacht is a big secret, but even the fact that you boarded the tub. I can understand your reluctance to have it known that you were on the yacht, after you heard of Belden's sudden death, but why would you board the Srinagar in such an apparently surreptitious fashion?”

Silverman smiled sadly, as if I were going down in the quicksand at last, my nose barely bubbling, and he was powerless to do anything about it—since he was standing on my head.

“Please, Mr. Scott. I'm sure you have no desire completely to destroy our already tenuous rapport. I did not conceal my movements, nor act in a surreptitious manner at any time. I boarded the Srinagar early only because I had no desire to take part in the somewhat abandoned festivities planned. Mr. Goss has for long been an acquaintance—you might say a friend—of mine, and I wished to visit with him. I did. During the evening this chap Belden and a man named Navarro came in to see Bob—Mr. Goss—about some matter of which I knew nothing and still know nothing. It was at that point that you burst so precipitately in upon us. Soon afterwards we all went our separate ways. I spent a short time with Mr. Goss and left. By that time, I realized, the guests had all departed, but that was merely a coincidence.” He inhaled a few molecules of his brandy. “The next day I learned that the chap, Belden, had been killed. Naturally I communicated immediately with Mr. Goss and explained that I couldn't afford to become involved in any manner, and it would be best if my presence aboard the Srinagar were forgotten by all.”

He made his rather long explanation with an air of boredom, as if explaining something very simple to a lad who couldn't really be expected to grasp it. It was just about the way I would have expected him to act if everything he said was true. And it could all be true; there was conviction in his words, and especially in his tone and relaxed manner. Even so, I didn't believe him.

And suddenly this guy seemed perhaps more dangerous than Goss—than Goss and Navarro and the rest of the men who'd given me a bad time, all rolled together. If Silverman was lying, and yet could be so pleasant, controlled, almost convincing, then he was a man who could stand on the pieces of corpses he had dismembered, happily paraphrasing Hamlet to one of the heads. “Alas, poor Scott!...”

I said, “There are still a few things that bother me.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“Four of you were in that stateroom. Beside yourself, there were Belden, Navarro, and Goss. Belden was murdered that night. That night Navarro tried twice to beat my brains out—once immediately after you sent him with me to find a ladder. The next day, Goss tried to bribe me with five thousand dollars, to forget everything I saw on the Srinagar. More than once since then, mugs have tried to kill me.” I paused. “For an innocent meeting, there are an astounding number of guilty reactions arising from it.”

“That's no concern of mine. My part was—innocent. I have no control over, or concern with, the actions of others.”

His sentences had become shorter, more clipped. Now the words were sharper, as if he honed them on his teeth and sliced them at my throat. The steel was showing again, in his tone—and at last in his face. Just a little in his face, but more than enough to make him look like a different man. It was the face of a man who would wear down everyone else around a bargaining table, who would deliver the message to Garcia, who would climb the hangman's rope and get in one last kick at the executioner.

He went on, his voice slowly becoming even sharper as he continued. “These will be my final words on this subject. As for Navarro, I don't have all the facts. But I have been led to understand that he bore a grudge against you because of some female in whom he is interested. That is between you and him, I presume—but it is utterly devoid of interest to me. As for Belden, I have indicated already that I never saw him before or since. Certainly Mr. Goss offered you money—he knew I wished no inquiry concerning me, and assumed on his own initiative, erroneously, that money would satisfy you. If—if mugs, in your quaint word, have been attempting to kill you, that is perhaps unfortunate, but it has not the remotest relationship to me. In fact my lack of interest in their success or failure would probably depress you.” He paused, his eyes not quite smoking. “I might add that, from the little I already know of you, Mr. Scott, I am not at all astonished that great masses of people might desire to kill you.”

“Don't hemorrhage.”

His voice had been getting nastier and nastier, and toward the end had become a bit too weighted on the side of master addressing slave. As far as I'm concerned, each man I meet is just another disguised nudist shipwrecked on the same island with me, no worse and sure as hell no better. At least, until he proves me wrong, one way or the other.

Silverman moved back a little, the corners of his mouth turning down as his eyes widened in surprise. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘don't hemorrhage.’ You were getting all excited, and I merely—”

“How dare you...” He let it sputter out.

I grinned at him and went on, “I merely gave you some facts of life—my life. Which I mean to hang onto. Look, I rang your bell, and you invited me in. I didn't break the door down. We've talked—and that was also your suggestion. I neglected to mention that Goss, in addition to trying to bribe me, promised to kill me. And I've got a nasty streak in me that comes out when mugs—like Robert Goss, or anybody else—threaten me, or send punks to shoot me in the back.”

He began to say something, leaning forward with his eyes narrowing, but I finished what I'd started. “Consequently, I've made and will continue to make it my business to check up on anybody who might possibly be involved. You'll have to admit you sure seemed involved. If you're as pure as Little Orphan Annie, okay. I'll apologize and send you a bottle of thirty-year-old Armagnac. If not—well, I guess I just wouldn't apologize.”

He let me finish, put his glass down on the mosaic-topped chest. Then he said slowly, and there was no longer the slightest warmth in his tone, “You mentioned persons threatening you, Mr. Scott. I wouldn't presume to do anything so—so melodramatic. Let us, then, think of what I'm about to say as advice.”

I didn't say anything.

He went on, “Have you any conception of how much money I have? How much influence, how much power? Money is, of course, power. But I refer also to that power which comes from control over men; friendship with men; the indebtedness to me of extremely powerful men. I could mention a dozen names, and you would not even have heard of them, but a word from me to any one of them and you would be unable to continue in your profession, unable to live without unbearable harassment, unable perhaps even to live at all.” He smiled thinly. “My advice to you is simply that you leave this house and conduct your life in any manner you choose—so long as it in no ways impinges upon my activities or interests.”

“Or you'll squash me like a bug, huh?”

He hesitated only a moment, then smiled oddly, his lips pressed together. It was the smile a man might wear to cover teeth filed to points. “If we must speak in your language, yes. I'll squash you like a bug.”

I'd had a couple swallows from the brandy, but now I put the glass down on the chest. He said, as if we'd been discussing first editions, “Aren't you going to finish your drink, Mr. Scott?”

“Not now. Anyway, I don't really like it without Coca Cola.” He winced. That seemed to pain him more than anything else I'd said.

I stood up. Neither of us extended our hands. I said, “Good night.”

“Good night.”

There was a chill finality to the words, and I turned to go. But then Silverman spoke again, as if he had suddenly thought, after the conversation was over, of something else he wanted to tell me. “Oh—just a moment, Mr. Scott.”

I turned toward him.

He said, “You've barely glanced at my library. I'm extremely proud of it.”

I wondered what he was getting at.

He went on, “This collection couldn't be duplicated anywhere in the world. I would be embarrassed to tell you the value of the books here.” He walked to the wall, ran his hand over a shelf of large books, folio and quarto size, most of them bound in sun-faded leather, others in strange bindings.

He gestured, and I walked over alongside him, my curiosity growing. “Lovely, aren't they?” he said. “This shelf contains many of my most valuable volumes. Some which are irreplaceable.” His hand stopped on one book bound in a material I couldn't recall seeing before. Not on a book, anyway.

He pulled it out. “For example, this is one of the group found near Weimar by the Allies at the close of World War Two. I understand it was previously owned by Gerhard Sommer, master of the punishment cell block—”

I blurted out, “That's not the Buchenwald—”

“Yes. It's bound in human skin, Mr. Scott. Skin stripped carefully from the bodies of men—and women—murdered there at Buchenwald. The wife of the camp commandant, Ilse Koch herself, probably covered this book—or had the work done.” He stroked the cover idly with his fingers. “I'm surprised that you guessed what it was before I could tell you.”

“I'm surprised you'd want to own such a thing.”

He smiled. “When I want a thing I don't attempt to justify my desire, I satisfy it. At whatever cost. It took a great deal of money, influence, and effort to procure this.”

I was beginning to understand why he'd called me back a minute ago. I suppose he wanted to overwhelm me with the fact that he could get, or do, almost anything he wanted. Whether it was books or people, it was all the same to him.

He went on, “It seemed to me, Mr. Scott, that you were not sufficiently impressed by my words a few minutes ago. My—advice to you.”

“Enough seeped through so I got the idea. You don't have to beat me over the head with it.”

“On the contrary, I fear I do have to...” he winced slightly, “...beat you over the head with it. You don't yet fully understand the lengths to which I will go when my interests are involved. And your understanding might spare us both much unpleasantness.”

“Good night, Mr. Silverman. You've made your point. You'll forgive me if I find your company wearing.”

“Before you go, select something for me to read and enjoy along with my brandy, will you?”

I frowned at him.

“Please. I'm quite serious. Any volume will do, anything. Just choose something at random.”

It seemed a strange request, but I went along with it. Lying on a projecting ledge beneath the shelf into which he had again inserted the Buchenwald obscenity, were a number of volumes lying flat, loose pages, scrolls, even rolls of what was probably papyrus. One item caught my eye more than anything else on that ledge. It was rectangular, long and narrow, covered with a richly embroidered cloth.

I picked it up and handed it to him. “This one do?”

He took it from me, smiling oddly. “An excellent choice. One might almost say inspired.” As he spoke he removed the embroidered cloth, exposing the book itself, or whatever it was. “This came to me from the south of India,” he continued. “It is a very ancient illuminated, palm-leaf manuscript, Mr. Scott, and I believe it to contain medical, or other secrets, from the s'lokas of the sacred Indian religious books. It is very old, and very valuable. Priceless, in fact. The boards which protect the leaves are alone beyond price. Look it over, if you'd like.”

He'd hooked me, I am not a man who goes gaga upon touching a rare first edition of Lady Chumley's collected couplets, say, but I was interested. As I took the manuscript from him he was saying, “Oddly enough, perhaps my greatest interest is the art and literature of India. I have, myself, visited the overpowering caves at Ellora, Ajanta, and Elephanta.”

I examined the manuscript with growing interest. The “boards” he'd mentioned were thin strips of wood enclosing the leaves held between them. The top strip, the “cover,” was beautifully painted, vibrant with color and wonderfully executed. Even to me, not a man who roams atwitter through museums on his day off, it was beautiful, magnificent, and I could easily believe it to be almost beyond price.

It was obviously very old. The colors, among them still-vivid reds and yellows and blues, were chipped and streaked in places. The illuminated cover showed five seated human figures—robed men at either end in what looked like yoga positions, and in the center a youthful Indian woman in a posture of meditation, legs crossed and hands resting one on the other in her lap. At the sides of the central figure were two smaller figures. The background was mostly gold, with what looked like green leaves at the top of the strip.

“Each page is also illuminated, Mr. Scott,” Silverman said. “There are seven leaves in this particular manuscript. The writing on them, by the way, is Sanskrit.”

I gently lifted the cover, looked at the first sheet beneath it. It, too, was painted in the center, with smaller delicately drawn figures, and in the strip at either side of the painting, in even rows, were strange graceful black letters much like Chinese lettering I'd seen. They almost seemed to form pictures rather than words.

“This is really written on leaves?” I asked him.

“Yes, palm leaves. Other leaves are used for many similar manuscripts. The oldest of which I know is on birch bark and dates from the fifth century b.c. But these are leaves from the palm.” He paused. “Note the careful lettering. It was done with a stylus, and the indentations were then blackened with soot. Would you believe it, Mr. Scott, manuscripts of much less material and moral value than the one you hold are held sacred by many persons in India. They actually worship them and would die before letting them out of their possession.”

I handed it back to him. “Almost like Indian Dead Sea Scrolls, huh?”

“Somewhat, yes. The parallel is apt.”

For a moment there I had forgotten that I'd been stalking out of here when he'd called me back. So I said, “Well, that's all very interesting, but—”

He had grasped the manuscript by its ends and was holding it in both hands before him in the air. As he raised his knee I suddenly knew just what he was going to do.

I tried to stop him. "Don't—" I yelled, and reached for his arms. But I was too slow.

With a sudden, easy movement, Silverman thrust the manuscript against his knee, cracking the boards, tearing the palm-leaf pages. The sound of the wooden strips breaking was like a shot in my ears. Bits of color, red and blue and gold, fell to the carpet and clung to his dark trousers as he put his foot on the floor again.

I couldn't speak. I wanted to, but at that moment I was literally shocked into silence.

Silverman grasped the torn palm-leaf pages and pulled them free, letting the cracked and splintered wooden covers fall. He turned toward me smiling pleasantly. “I don't really know how old this manuscript is—was. I do know that it was for centuries in an Indian monastery before it came into my possession.”

As he spoke, he tore the fragile pages through again, placed them together and crumbled them, mingling the graceful soot-blackened Sanskrit letters, the vibrant colors of the paintings. He rubbed his hands together, opened them, letting the tiny fragments and powdered dust, all that was left, fall through his fingers to the floor.

I stared at him. Finally I spoke. “That was an insane thing to do,” I said slowly. “It was—inhuman.”

“Not at all. The word is human, Mr. Scott. I trust it won't be necessary for me to labor the point.”

I turned and started to leave, then stopped, swung around to face Silverman. After a moment I said, “You made your point, friend. And more. I think maybe you overdid it.” I paused as his face got puzzled, then went on, “You're a little too anxious to scare me off, Silverman. Maybe I've been looking in the wrong places for the guy who had Belden killed. Maybe I should have been looking for you all along.”

For a moment nothing seemed to happen to his expression, and yet it changed. The features didn't move or twitch, but it was as though tiny lines I hadn't noticed before appeared around his eyes and mouth.

Our eyes met and held, then his lips thinned and he said softly, “You idiot. Get ... out.”

I didn't say good night, just turned and left. Silverman didn't accompany me to the door. I let myself out.

Chapter Fifteen

It was nearly two-thirty in the afternoon when I got up, and I went into the front room and relaxed on the couch while Elaine puttered around in the kitchenette, humming. An hour later I'd forced down three or four spoonfuls of Cream of Wheat and had had coffee, and I was ready to go.

Before leaving the Stuyvesant, I used the phone to call Central Homicide. When I identified myself to the sergeant who answered, he said, “Where you been? The Captain's been trying to get hold of you.”

“I've been ... out of touch. What's with Sam?”

“I'll get him. Hold on.”

In another minute Samson said, “Shell?”

“Yeah. What's up?”

“Where in hell you been? I called your office and apartment and every place you usually hang out. Figured you'd finally got yourself killed.”

“I was in a new place. Why the panic?”

“No panic. But—there's a couple things I thought you'd want to know. All of a sudden there's a lot of pressure from up top, and it seems to revolve around you. Some of it's rumor, but part of it's official. There's more interest than there normally should be in the Belden killing, and a lot of people don't like you today.”

“A lot of people didn't like me yesterday.”

“This is different. I even got a call from one of the police commissioners—he phoned me—and asked questions about you like it was a quiz program.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Mostly about messes you've got yourself into, character and reputation, like maybe you've used that Colt Special of yours too much. I had to tell him about the mug you shot yesterday.”

“Did you also tell him the mug was engaged in shooting at me? And I merely broke the engagement?”

“Of course I did. But there's a fire started under you, Shell.”

That was like Sam. The fire was scorching him, but he didn't mention that part of it. He went on, “Some pretty important people are getting the idea your license ought to be lifted. Next thing, there'll probably be a call from the Bureau. I can see you walking around with no license or gun.”

“I can see it too. But not for long. You know who's behind this sudden interest?”

“No, but I can guess. When you socked Goss in the middle of his face, I'll bet he didn't start laughing right away. And he must have plenty of pull.”

“Could be, Sam. But eight to five, it's Silverman.”

“Don't start that—”

“I went out to see him last night—”

“You what?”

It was an ear-banging roar. There were a few muffled noises and Sam said with ominous calm, “I suppose you knocked him around a little and jumped up and down on him.”

“I merely talked to him.”

“You'd better get down here and fill me in.”

“Yeah. Uh, all this interest in me. I won't suddenly find myself inside looking out, will I?”

“There's no APB out on you yet. And that reminds me. We've got that woman identified. The one who ran from the scene of the Belden killing.”

My hand tightened on the phone. Elaine was sitting on the couch near me, and she must have noticed my expression change. “What's the matter, Shell?” she said.

I didn't answer her. Instead I said to Sam, “Yeah? What's the latest on the woman in white?”

“She's a gal named Elaine Emerson. Half sister of the dead man.”

“Where'd you get this, Sam?”

“It seemed likely from the beginning of the investigation. She was with Belden the night he was killed; she was wearing a white dress, left with him. Now she's disappeared. But since then Rawlins and Simpson have been on the Belden thing. The way you talked, last night's action might have tied in. So they've been trying to run down Navarro. No trace of him, but they did have quite a talk with a dance partner of his. Woman named Bernice Wade. You know her, Shell?”

He knew damned well I knew her. I said, “Yeah, uh, I know her.”

“Thanks for telling me. Is it barely possible you might have something else to tell me?”

That did it. He obviously knew by now all that Bunny could have told Rawlins and Simpson. Which was plenty. I said, “Yeah, Sam. Quite a lot. I'll be right down.”

“Don't hang up yet. Listen, Shell, if you know where the Emerson woman is, you'd better tell me.” He paused. I didn't say anything and he went on, “I'm giving it to you straight, you lame-brained monster. You're on a hot spot, this time. All they need is for you to get half a step out of line, and you'll wind up picking tomatoes in Imperial Valley. If you're lucky.”

“Relax, Sam, I—”

He went on, almost savagely, “If you know where she is and hold out, if you make yourself an accessory, if you plainly ask for it—”

“Yeah, Sam, simmer down. I'll be there in half an hour.”

He sighed heavily. “Right. Watch yourself. Don't get any tickets on the way.”

“I'll be the soul of caution.” I thought for a moment about what he'd told me and added, “But if worse comes to worst, Sam, I have always enjoyed picking tomatoes.”

He swore marvelously and slammed the phone down so hard it hurt both my ears. I hung up and looked at Elaine. “They've tagged you. They know you took a powder from your brother's house after the shooting. Police figured it was probably you from the beginning. So probably the hoods have been looking for you all along, too—including last night.”

Her face was sober. “I thought maybe it was something like that. What was all the rest of it?”

“It's too long a story. But it's getting pretty tight.” I thought a minute. “You should be all right here for a while. If the police knew you were in the Stuyvesant, they'd be knocking on the door by now. But, believe me, they'll find you. Just don't make it easy for them. Don't even stick your nose out the door.”

“I have to eat.”

“Eat Cream of Wheat all day if you have to. But don't go outside this room. Look, they're onto you now. And this L.A. Police Department is one of the best in the country. I think it's number one of them all. When those guys get on you, they'll find you. I won't tell them where you are, but they'll find you here, eventually. All they want is the info you have about your brother's death; but once your whereabouts is widely known, those hoods will find out where you are, too.”

“Do—you really think they'd kill me? I didn't even see them.”

“They don't know that. And, yes, I think they'd kill you. What did they do to your brother?”

Before leaving, I switched on the room TV and we caught the News of the Hour. Elaine Emerson was the big item in the local coverage. The telecast revealed everything Sam had mentioned about her, and more. The announcer stated that the missing Miss Emerson had been seen, on the previous night—the night following her brother's murder—in the company of Sheldon Scott, Los Angeles private detective.

Elaine looked at me, her deep dark eyes troubled, but didn't say anything more as I left.

Sam sat behind his desk in his office and chewed savagely on his unlighted cigar. We were alone, and I gave him the whole story of what I knew about Elaine Emerson, including everything she had told me and that she was my client—but I said nothing about whether or not I knew where she was now. Instead of saying I did or didn't know, I simply left that part out.

When I finished he said, “Okay, where is she?”

“What makes you think I'd know?”

“Here go the word games again. Okay. We'll let it lay there for now.”

It wasn't like Sam to drop it so easily. I had a hunch he didn't intend to drop it. But as long as there weren't any immediate fireworks, I changed the subject. “This pressure you mentioned, Sam, all the new heat on me. It should be clear by now that this isn't some ordinary hood trying to get me. This is organized, planned—desperate in a way. There're so many torpedoes trying to knock me off, guys after me in so many different ways, that somebody with a lot of pull and money has to be behind it.”

He found one of his wooden matches and fiddled with it, shaking his head. “I got to admit they been keeping you busy.”

“Yeah, and the guy calling the shots is either Robert Goss, or Robert Silverman. One—or both—of the two Bobs.”

He rubbed his nose with a thick index finger. “Goss, maybe. But I wish you'd forget the goofy ideas about Silverman. You sound like you're looking for stuff that will point to him, instead of the facts—no matter where they point.”

“Not exactly, Sam. Look, I told you I went to see him, but I didn't give you the whole story.”

He got a pained look on his pink face and said, “You might as well tell me what all went on. At least you didn't sock him, like the other one.”

“I managed not to. Well, I got out there about three a.m.—”

“Three...” Samson was agitated. He actually lit his cigar and sent a couple puffs of the fuming poison into the air around us. “Go on,” he said.

I told him the whole story, in detail. Somehow, in the telling, it got weaker and weaker. As I went back over it, the events seemed innocuous, and certainly not incriminating. In fact, Silverman's words seemed logical, almost the normal things that a man in his position would say under the circumstances. And it was obvious that Samson felt I was clear off base, even thrown out at first on this one.

He said, “That's why you think this guy is the head of the Mafia or something, huh?”

“Knock it off, Sam. I think he's just what he seems to be—except that maybe he's also as crooked as a rattlesnake's spine, and trying to murder me. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had Belden chilled.”

“Oh, Belden too now. When did he shoot McKinley?”

“Okay, skip it.” I started to get up.

“Sit down,” he growled. “What makes you think he's such a Jack the Ripper?”

“First of all, the fact that he was on the yacht with Belden and the others. And secondly, the way he acted when I saw him last night.”

Sam's tone was patient. “All right, he was on the yacht. But it sounds like he explained that to you—and it makes sense. If it was just an innocent visit, the headlines and news stories wouldn't do him any good. Right?”

“Right, if he's innocent. But the way he—”

“Now let me finish. How about that talk last night? You just take it on yourself to go calling on Robert C. Silverman, who is merely one of the richest, most important, least menacing men in the whole state of California. And at three a.m.—in Bel Air, yet. You say he asks you inside, into his home, gives you a drink of that expensive stuff, talks nice to you, even shows you his library—”

“Sam, for Pete's sake. He didn't show me his library so I'd dance joyously around the room. He was warning me.”

“Some warning. So he tore a book. It's his book, isn't it?”

“It wasn't a book, it was a palm-leaf manuscript, hand written by some old Hindu or—”

“Hindu! I don't care if it was by Hemingway!” Sam dragged on his cigar and said quietly, “Look, Shell. Maybe you've got something, maybe not. I think you're having another fit in that noodle of yours. But I'm just showing you how silly you're going to look if you tell that story to anybody. Anybody but me, that is.”

I had to admit he was right. And a kind of depression began sinking into my bones. If there was anything at all to my suspicions, then I sure had to go faster and farther in proving them than I had so far. Even the way he'd acted last night, Silverman came out looking like the Queen of the May, and I was the villain. Goss, too, had wound up a charming chap unjustly assaulted by a wild detective.

Samson rolled the black cigar between thumb and finger, looking at me. “Besides his being on the boat that night, what makes you think he'd have had a job done on Belden?”

I squirmed a little. “Well, I haven't actually got anything you can pin down. Not the kind of info you'd take to court, anyhow. It's—well, I guess it's mainly a feeling that he—”

“So you got a feeling.” Sam wasn't being sarcastic now. He just thought I was wrong. “That's not enough, Shell. And you know it. As far as him being on the yacht, Goss is rich, even if we don't know yet all about where he makes his pile. And so is Silverman. Well, rich guys like to chew the fat with rich guys. You know, birds of a feather.”

“A couple of vultures.”

Sam bit down on his cigar. “Maybe. But so far, this Silverman hasn't even spit on the sidewalk.” He paused. “Another angle. Just supposing he's everything you say. Until you damn well know it and can prove it, you'll just get in trouble messing around with a guy like him. Especially now. You know I can't even stand behind you in a situation like this. Nobody can. You're on your own.”

“Yeah. I know. I'll make out.”

He looked at his cigar ash. “Maybe. It's a little more than usual this time, Shell.” He looked at me, and his face was sober. “All right. I've told you all I could. And I wanted to hear anything you had to say. So now we get down to business. The Emerson woman. We want her. We'll find her. If you can help us, you'd better do it.”

“I've told you all she knows.”

“All she says she knows.”

“What does that mean?” I couldn't recall seeing him this serious before, at least not for a long time. It worried me.

He said, “A private operator like you—well, you can work on intuition or telepathy or whatever the hell it is. But we're stuck with facts. The facts are that two men beat it from the Belden house. And then Elaine Emerson beat it. But what happened in the house isn't real clear.”

“What are you getting at, Sam?”

“She isn't just a material witness. She's a suspect. How do we know she didn't kill him?”

I hadn't even thought of that angle, and as far as I was concerned it was impossible. I told Sam so, but his expression didn't change, didn't get any happier.

There was a blue-covered book on his desk, open. I'd noticed it when I'd come in. He picked the book up. “You know what this is?”

“Looks like the California Penal Code.”

“That's what it is. You've read the Appendix, haven't you?” His voice was hard.

“I've read it.” In the Appendix is the Private Investigator and Adjuster Act. I had a good hunch I knew what Sam was going to tell me.

He bit halfway through his cigar. “Article 5. Disciplinary Proceedings. Section 7551. ‘The director may suspend or revoke a license issued under this chapter if he determines that the licensee’ and so forth ‘has—‘” Samson fixed his sharp brown eyes on me. “Then there's thirteen subdivisions. Let's try the next to the last one on for size.” He looked back at the page. “'Been convicted of a violation of Section 148 of the Penal Code.'”

“I've never been convicted of any violation.”

“You know what 148 PC is, don't you?”

“Yeah. I know what it is.”

“I'm not so sure you do.” He flipped pages, read again, “'resisting public officers in the discharge of their duties. Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer, in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his office, when no other punishment is prescribed, is punishable by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding five years.'”

He slammed the book shut and glared at me.

I'd read that paragraph several times before; but when Samson read it to me, teeth clamped in his cigar and the words coming out of his mouth like rivets, it made a new impression on me. Neither of us spoke for several seconds, but it seemed that his last words echoed and reechoed in the office: “Five years ... five years ... five years...”

I have previously mentioned that Phil Samson is my best friend in L.A. That's true, and I think it works both ways. But Sam is an honest, hard-working cop who came up from the ranks. He lived his job. And loved it. I knew he'd bend over backward until his head hit the floor for me; but past a point he wouldn't go. And I knew, too, that I was standing square on that point now; another inch, and he'd slap me down. But I just sat there and looked back at him.

Finally he spoke. “Shell. Don't make me do it the hard way. You got anything to tell me?”

“I'm sorry, Sam.”

His jaw muscles bulged. He said slowly, “I don't have any proof you know where the Emerson woman is. You haven't told me one way or the other. But if there is any, I'll find it—fast. So...” He paused, and then pushed the words out slowly, as if they hurt his throat. “So don't let me see you around, Shell. Not till this mess is settled. I'd hate like hell to put the arm on you.”

That was the way we left it.

I used a passkey to let myself into Belden's Wilshire Boulevard office on the third floor of the Witter Building. Most of the papers I examined in the next hour meant little to me; I'm no accountant. But I found a few things of interest, though I didn't know if any of it helped.

There seemed several complicated land deals which it would take a C.P.A. to figure out. Belden bad acted for several companies or corporations, but nowhere did I find any mention of Goss or Silverman. There wasn't anything for me in that angle, so after about half an hour I went back to the idea I'd tossed out to Samson when first discussing Silverman with him.

Sam had mentioned then, among other things, that Silverman was one of the State Highway Commissioners. Most men in high office are honest, capable, doing a hard and usually thankless job in the best way they can. But once in a while a crook works his way up; and the simple history of crooks in any high office is that they use their office in an illegal manner, for personal profit, if they can. Of that much I had no doubt, the only question was whether I was right or wrong in my opinion of Silverman—specifically, the man himself.

Craig Belden's business, for the last few years, had been exclusively in the field of real estate, lately including very large land purchases. Belden, Goss, Silverman, and Navarro had all been together a few hours before Belden's murder. All of that combined, plus Silverman's position as one of the members of the Highway Commission, seemed more than suspect; it was like an arrow pointing to some kind of crooked land deal. At least it was to me.

I found evidence of two or three big purchases, acreage and lots near or on the borders of highways currently in use. As I had said to Samson, it was public knowledge that the state was planning to spend billions of dollars building freeways which would cover California like a concrete web. It had even been proposed that wide freeways should connect every county seat, and every “population center” of more than 5,000 people, even though some of the multi-million-dollar projects would serve only a comparative handful of citizens—almost like building stainless steel roads for horses and buggies. When a government, federal or state or local, spends millions and billions of dollars in tax loot, inevitably a hell of a lot of it is waste, or even crooked profits. Moreover, the largest chunk, well over three billion dollars of the freeway pile, was scheduled for spending in L. A. County.

And, let's face it, friends—this isn't Shangri-L.A.

If I knew Silverman, he'd be on top of the pile. That was the crux—if I knew Silverman.

In the late Belden's papers were grant deeds to tracts of land which, if crossed by freeways, could be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they had cost Belden—or rather cost Belden's unnamed client, for whom he had acted. The trouble was that I didn't have the faintest idea where the proposed freeways would eventually be built.

I almost said the hell with it, wondering what I could accomplish this way. Even if somehow I could show that Belden had illegally possessed such advance knowledge, there was still no connection between him and Silverman.

Except, of course, that on the night Belden had been murdered I had seen them together aboard the Srinagar.

It was well after six p.m. when I stood up and stretched, ready to be on my way. A big Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was on a stand against the wall, so I used it. I looked up "Srinagar." The word wasn't in the alphabetical listing, but I found it in the Gazetteer: “city of Kashmir ... on the Jhelum River.” In India.

Before leaving the office I used the still-connected phone to call the Police Building. The same sergeant I'd spoken to the last time I'd called answered, and when I asked him what was new, he told me.

“We've got that guy Lime you're so interested in, Scott. But not on the call that went out last night—he can't talk to us, either.”

“Can't—he's not dead, is he?”

“No, but you're warmer than he is. He's in Central Receiving with a couple slugs in him.” He swore softly. “This town's getting worse than Chicago in the twenties. Here's what happened.”

He told me the setup had been about like the attempt to kill me in front of the Spartan. Two men in a car had blasted Lime as he'd left a local bar, Luigi's on Virgil Avenue. They'd then raced away in a sedan, but of the two witnesses to the shooting, one said it was a green Buick and the other called it a brown Chevrolet. And that was all they were sure of.

I felt like swearing, myself. Lime was the one man still alive, of the two who'd thrown those pills at me—and now he'd gotten the same treatment he and Kupp had tried to give me. It sure seemed like a handy killing—for somebody. And I wondered if he'd been killed by that “somebody” because he'd been identified by the police and me last night, and the local and APB had then gone out on him.

I said to the sergeant, “Sounds like the guy I'm after is trying to make sure any leads to him are dead ones. How bad off is Lime?”

“He's alive. Two slugs in the back, but he's getting emergency treatment right now. He's got a fair chance.”

I thanked him, hung up and took off.

L.A.'s new Central Receiving Hospital is a two-story brick building at 500 Loma Drive. I trotted up the cement ramp and through wide glass doors into the quiet coolness of the building's interior. At the reception desk I asked the pleasant, white-uniformed nurse on duty at the switchboard what chance I had of talking to, or at least getting a look at, Leonard Lime.

“Lime?” she said, and turned to a card file on the table next to her.

“He just came in,” I said. “With two bullets in him.” I quickly explained the importance of the info to me, that I thought the man had tried to kill me last night. She pulled a card from the file. “Oh, yes. He was a stat case. We gave him plavolex and serum albumin—he'd lost a lot of blood.” Looking at the card she continued, “After emergency treatment, he was taken to the County for surgery.”

“He's already gone?”

“Yes, a few minutes ago.”

That had been efficient—too efficient to suit me. Because Lime was a suspect, he would have been removed to the prison ward of the L.A. County Hospital near Mission Road. So that's where I was going.

Without red lights and siren, I couldn't make it as fast as the Central Receiving ambulance, but I didn't waste any time. I knew the girl on duty at the information center, a gal named Molly, and after some fast words with her went on up to the fifteenth floor. I couldn't go into the operating rooms there, but Molly had told me which one Lime was in and that a Dr. Fischer was operating on him now, so I waited in the corridor outside it.

Two men came out. One of them still had on his operating pajamas and skull cap. His back was to me, and he was saying to the other man, “I did all I could. But he was too far gone when we started.”

So that told me what I'd wanted to know—or, rather, what I hadn't wanted to know. There went my last chance to find out who'd hired the bum, who'd set me up for the kill. Which, I felt pretty sure, was why he'd been killed. I started to turn and go back down to the Cad.

The doctor swung slightly to his left, and I saw the front of his surgical gown. It was a little stained. “I did all I could,” he repeated.

And then I saw his face. Somehow, maybe the combination of looking from the blood on his gown to that face was a nerve-jarring blow that froze me motionless for a moment.

Dr. Fischer was the man I'd seen last night. The heavy, bulbous-nosed guy who'd walked out of Hip Brandt's office in the showcase.

Chapter Sixteen

So he'd done all he could, huh? I said, “I'll bet you did, doctor, I'll bet you did.”

Dr. Fischer looked at me through his horn-rimmed glasses, an expression of surprise on his face. “What did you say?”

“It—never mind. It wasn't important.” I tried to control my racing thoughts. My blood had suddenly started hammering in my temples. But I made an effort to keep my face composed, interested. “Lime didn't make it, huh?”

“The man who was shot ... no, there wasn't a chance. I did all I—”

He stopped, frowning. “What are you doing here? Who the devil are you?”

I told him, watching his face to see if I could detect any more-than-mild reaction there. “I'm Shell Scott.”

“Oh.” It wasn't a mild, soft comment, but more like a gasp. That was all, that and a sudden widening of his eyes and mouth, quickly controlled.

He turned away from me, his face puzzled. He couldn't have known that I'd seen him in the showcase last night; but it was possible—even probable, I thought—that he knew I'd been there. He said to the other man, who had been silently watching us, “I'll have to leave now,” and walked away.

The other man turned and went back into the operating room. I just stood there. I wasn't doing a thing except breathing and thinking, but I felt like a man running a hundred-yard dash, as if somebody had shot a hypo full of adrenalin into my veins. Keyed up, I went downstairs and walked out of the hospital. I'd parked on State Street, which runs through the hospital grounds, and as I walked toward the Cad I dragged on a cigarette, trying to put my thoughts in order. Maybe I was imagining things. I was getting dizzy, wondering what the hell was going on. I hadn't had time yet to put all this together. When I could, I felt certain I'd have something to sink my teeth into. And I sure needed it. As I looked in the direction of my car, a man walked away from it.

He seemed to appear out of nowhere alongside the Cad, and then he walked down State Street, got into a car and left in a hurry. I dropped my cigarette, stepped on it. As the car raced away I noted that it was a light-colored Mercury—and that rang a warning bell in my mind.

I had been racing so fast and furiously, first to Central Receiving and then to here, that I'd been less careful than usual. When I'd taken off from the receiving hospital, I'd noticed a car pull into the street after me. I thought I'd seen it behind me on Third, and once again later, but I hadn't thought much about it. I did now. It had been a light-colored Mercury.

Too many thoughts were cramming my head at the same time. That guy had sure looked as if he were not just near, but at my Cadillac. Only a few seconds had passed since the Mercury left the curb. If I snapped into it, I could still catch the car and tail it—and suddenly I badly wanted to follow that guy. I ran to the Cad, jumped in, fumbling in my pocket for the car keys. I found them, pulled them out and stuck the key into the ignition. My eye caught the ornament on the Cad's hood. It seemed higher than usual, as if the hood wasn't completely closed. I started to turn the key.

But then I stopped—my hand froze. I felt as if my blood had turned into ice water. Gooseflesh leaped out on my skin. My breath stopped in my throat and slowly, carefully, I took my hand from the key. For another few seconds I didn't move, just sat there feeling the cold sweat ooze out on my face, beading my lip, gathering on my forehead.

Then I let out my breath, carefully took the key from the ignition. Maybe I was wrong. I slid sideways out of the seat, walked to the front of the car and raised the hood.

I wasn't wrong.

There was nothing fancy about it. Just four sticks of dynamite, held together with black friction tape. With dynamite you don't have to be fancy. As I looked at it, my heart thudding heavily in my chest, I remembered a man in Las Vegas, a warm, close friend of mine, who'd started my old yellow Cad and been blown into flesh-ripped bloodiness, into ugly death, by just such a simple dynamite bomb as this. If I'd turned the key those few seconds ago, I would have ended the same way he had. And I'd been only a fraction of a second, a breath, from doing it.

I leaned closer, to the bomb, examined it carefully before touching anything. An electric detonating cap was attached to the end of one of the four dirty, brownish-yellow sticks, the cap's two wires leading up to the two ignition wires behind the switch. Turn the key, the battery's current runs down the wires, the cap explodes and sets off the dynamite, and that's all. You're dead. Shell Scott is dead.

With great care, almost certainly with more care than Dr. Fischer had used in his recent “operation,” I removed the wires from their connection to the ignition. I carried the bundle to the back of the car, opened the luggage compartment, and placed the lethal package on top of some coils of wire next to the squawk box and the infrared snooperscope. Then I closed the door.

I sat in the Cad again, behind the wheel, and lit another cigarette. My hands were shaking. My throat was dry and my suit was wet through. That near hopelessness I'd felt earlier was in my bones again, and in them cold and heavy now. Maybe part of it was because I'd come so close to turning that key; and part of it because in front of my eyes again was the face of the young guy in Las Vegas, torn flesh hanging from the skull beneath, the dead, ugly, unreal face of a man who had been my friend, a man who had laughed a lot.

Maybe that was much of it, but there was an icy hollowness in my chest and entrails, as if I were dying a little. As if I were as good as dead right now, just hanging on by luck and my teeth. It takes a lot to get me down, maybe; but I was down. I felt as if I needed a cordon of cops around me, a bullet-proof house or a tank. I needed help. And where in hell was I going to get it?

That was the low point. The lowest. And when there's no place to go but up, that's where you go. I started getting mad. It was as if the ice in my blood melted and then started to boil, and I sat there and swore at the lousy, stinking, murdering bastards. I swore at them all even if I didn't know their names and even threw in some names I knew. I swore out loud, quite loud in fact, and I imagine people heard me on the far side of the street and spun around in circles with their hands clapped over their ears. The really surprising thing was that no men in white coats came dancing out of the hospital to wind me up like a mummy in surgical tape.

It was quite an explosion. But when it was over, I was myself again. Not that all by itself that was so marvelous, but I wasn't feeling creepy any longer; I was mad. I was hot. I was two hundred and six pounds of steam, getting ready to pop the safety valve. I started the Cad and roared down the street, headed for the Hollywood Freeway and swung into it, not yet sure where I was going. All I knew was that I was in no condition to sit still, and for now it was enough to be on my way.

For a moment I wondered how the guy had managed to find me—and have that bomb so handy. Guys just don't drive around with dynamite in their laps. At least, not usually. And if what I suspected of Dr. Fischer were true, how had it been set up so fast? It was sure too fast for me to figure, too much for me; there had to be an explanation, but at the moment I couldn't figure out what it was.

I relived the episode when I'd smacked Goss in his beefy kisser and wished I were doing it again. There seemed not the slightest doubt that he was behind much of the hell thrown at me. But I couldn't get Silverman out of my mind. I could still see him tearing that manuscript. To make an “impression.” He'd made an impression, all right, and maybe I'd beat him to death with a book.

It was clear, however, that I couldn't just go around smacking people, unless it was with a warrant. For that, you need evidence, proof. And that made me think of Ralph. Arline's Ralph—Ralph Mitchell, she'd said—who'd been leaving Silverman's last night as I'd arrived. Silverman's lawyer—or at least one of them, and maybe the one. For crooked operations on a big scale, involving phony fronts and corporations and complicated legal maneuvers, you've got to have a man who knows about such things. And Ralph, Arline had told me, was a corporation lawyer; his most important client was Silverman. Could be. Could also be that I was clear out in left field and the game hadn't even started yet. Could be Silverman was an angel in disguise. I didn't think so. And now I knew where I was going.

Arline had also told me to call her, but she'd not had time last night to tell me where to call. At the Sunset Boulevard turnoff I left the Freeway, used a gas station's phone book to look up the name Mitchell, a sense of urgency growing in me. I had the feeling that there wasn't time to spare, that I had to wrap this mess up now, fast, or I wouldn't be alive tomorrow.

A Ralph Mitchell was listed on Maplewood Way, and I called the number at that address. The phone rang several times and I was almost ready to hang up when it was answered.

The voice was a woman's, but it sounded slurred, thick. “Arline?” I said.

“Yess. Who's it?”

“Shell Scott.”

“Ooh, Scotty. Whee.” She sounded loaded to her eyelids.

“Ralph there?”

“Ralph? No, the skunk. The stinking bum.”

“What? What's the matter? You have a falling out?”

“Yeah, a falling. And I'm out. The hell with it. I'm getting drunk. C'mon over and get drunk with me.”

“I'll be right out, Arline. But try not to get plastered, huh? I want to talk to you.”

“'I'm already plastered.”

“Then sober up.”

“Ho, boy. Are you serious, Scott—Scotty?”

“Yes. Really. I'm very serious.”

“Well...” There was a long pause, while she was thinking. Or drinking. “I could steam a little, I s'pose. Don't think it'll do any good, though.”

“You can what?”

“Steam. Ralph's got a big fat steam room. Sauna or some crazy thing he calls it. You go in it and turn on the steam. Isn't that wonderful?”

“Yeah, that's great. You steam, Arline. Get nice and sober. I'll be out in a few minutes.”

“Oke-kay.”

“You're sure Ralph isn't there?”

“If he was here, would I be telling you to come on over and get drunk with me?”

“That makes sense. Uh, have some black coffee.”

“Sure.” She told me how to reach the house, then said, “'By, ‘by, ‘by, Scotty. ‘By.”

“'By,” I said.

I could have made it sooner, but I didn't hurry, because I hoped the few extra minutes would give Arline time to get a clear head. She did pretty well, though at first I was afraid she'd gone downhill from where she'd been.

The address was a long way out in an area I wasn't familiar with, Arline had told me it was on Maplewood Way a couple of blocks this side of Martin's Memorial Hospital, a private hospital I couldn't miss, but that the house itself was half hidden by trees and plantings. Even so, I missed Mitchell's place and passed Martin's, a squat stone building, then turned around and went back two blocks, U-turned in front of a lush green estate.

There was no street number out front, which was probably why I'd missed it, but this looked like the place. It was two stories, of brick and stone, and looked bigger than the hospital. Much of it was hidden by trees and shrubs, but I guessed it must have forty rooms or more inside it, and was surrounded by a good acre of landscaped grounds.

Mitchell's was the only house on the north side of the block, three big jobs facing it across the street on the south. An iron gate was closed before the cement driveway, so I parked and walked to it, found a buzzer and pushed it. In about a minute there was a click and the gate sprang an inch ajar. I went in, pushed the gate shut behind me and walked on up to the house.

Arline was waiting in the doorway for me, wearing either a bulky white robe or wrapped in a voluminous Turkish towel, I wasn't sure.

“Hi,” she said cheerily. “There you are.”

“Here I am.”

“Didn't expect you so soon. I mean, not since you called but so soon after last night. You know what I mean.”

“I think so.” She stood aside and I walked into a huge living room, furnished with heavy, colorful divans and chairs and massive wooden tables. Then I got a good look at Arline. It was a big towel she was wearing, holding it clasped in front of her and looped over her arm, somewhat like a toga. Her skin was shiny with perspiration.

“I did what you said,” she remarked, blinking those big green eyes at me. Her yellow hair was matted on her head. “And I'm sure a mess.”

“You look delightful.” She did. Her skin was pink and glowing, and she was smiling very prettily. She looked about like a gal who'd stepped out of a shower, and you know how dandy gals look stepping out of showers.

She appeared to be more sober now, but even so her eyes seemed to have difficulty focusing. They sort of wandered around in the air in the vicinity of my face. “I'm not there, yet,” she said.

“Not there?”

“Not sober. But I'm working on it. Was in the steam room, steaming. There must be Martinis all through the air in there. S'pose I should change the air, or something. Go back in there, and I'll get looped just breathing.” She paused, waggled her head a bit, and focused on my face. “What brings you here, Scotty?”

“Hell, you invited me, didn't you?”

“I mean, why else?”

I gave it to her straight. “I came here hoping you could tell me a lot about Ralph. And in what way he's connected with Silverman. Frankly, some people are making a great effort to kill me. And maybe you can tell me enough to help me figure out who it is.”

“Kill ... you?” That seemed to sober her up a little more.

“Yeah. In all sorts of ways.”

“But Ralph—he can't be mixed up in it, can he?”

“I don't know. Probably not directly. Indirectly maybe. If he's mixed up with Silverman.”

“Who's Silverman?”

That was right. She'd told me last night that she didn't know who lived in the house on Strada Vecchia Road, just that it was “a client.” I said, “The guy Ralph was visiting when we talked last night.”

“Oh. I don't know. Ralph keeps a million papers and things in his safe here. If he's up to anything, it'd prob'ly be inside that monster. It's like a vault.” She frowned. “But—I dunno.”

“You say he's got stuff in a safe? In this house?”

She blinked and nodded. Then she said, “What're we standing here for like dummies? C'mon.” She took my hand and started to lead me into the living room. In order to take my hand she had to let go of the towel, and momentarily it swooped away from her body. There was just a flash before she caught the towel again, but it was a flash of the real Arline. Actually, it was more than a flash; it was a kind of a blinding glare of glowing pink skin and marvelous projections and delicious undulations.

She grabbed the towel and wrapped it around her and yelled, “Whee! Boy, almost lost the old towel that time.”

“Yes, you—almost lost the—old towel that time.”

I had gone through too many emotional situations lately, as if I had been stretched on a nervous rack, and those beat-up synapses of mine started sparking almost audibly. I had seen Arline dance, I had danced with her, I had traded conversation with her, all of it enjoyable; but it had not, even when totalled, been as overwhelmingly enjoyable as that blinding flash. Fortunately it hadn't really blinded me. I could see with all twenty-twenty, and at that moment I was using all forty. But she had the towel securely around her again.

We got seated on the divan. At its end was a table on which were an ice bucket, pitcher and several bottles. As Arline sat down the towel slipped, not as much as before, but enough to bare one leg and thigh clear up to enough.

And there went that old flaw of mine. I knew I was smiling sort of foolishly, almost fondly at that long gleaming thigh. But, hell, I am fond of thighs. Arline didn't cover up this time. Maybe she thought it wasn't worth the trouble for just a leg. It wasn't really just a leg, though. It was a hell of a leg.

“Ah ... Arline,” I said. “I came here to ... I came here to ... Say, what did I come here—yeah, Ralph.” I looked off into space, sort of scrunching my thoughts together. This is important, Scott, I told myself. Watch it—or, rather, don't watch it. You don't want to get killed, do you?

Arline nudged me and held out a glass. While I'd been off somewhere she'd mixed me a drink from fixings on the table near her.

“It's bourbon,” she said. “I remembered you drink bourbon. You look like you might enjoy a drink.”

“Yeah. Yeah. That's it.” The drink was quite brown. “I drink it with water,” I said primly. “I'm not a slob who—”

“It's with water.”

So I had some. It seemed to go down like cold lava and soothe my nerves. I had another glug and turned to Arline, recharged. “Honey, if Ralph—”

She smiled. “You never called me honey before.”

“Well, we ... weren't such chummy friends then. Look. Honey. Listen. If Ralph has a safe here, I'd give my eye-teeth to take a look at it. In it. Can we blow it open or something? Maybe I could pour this drink on the dial and melt—”

“I know the combination. But I wouldn't dare open it.”

“You know—"

“I peeked a couple times when I wasn't supposed to be looking. I know it, all right. But I wouldn't dare—”

“Honey. Honey, you look plenty daring to me.” I unscrambled my thinking processes again. “What's the matter between you and Ralph? You didn't sound lovey-dovey when you mentioned his name on the phone.”

“We had a fight. A real brawl. Started about you.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“He asked me who you were last night. I told him. He wanted to know where I met you and so on and I told him about dancing on the yacht, and all. He went through his roof. Pow! We went on from there, and I called him a fat old lard—well, I gave it to him. So there's going to be a ... a new caretaker of Mitchell Manor.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't have any—”

“Don't get soggy. We were already kaput. How d'you say it? Pfft? Pfft, we were. This was just a handy time for it.”

“I'd sure like to get into that safe.”

She smiled, a bit fiercely. “That would get even with him for me, hey?” She seemed somehow to be going downhill again. “Hey?” she repeated. “If you found—whatever it is you're after, would that fix Ralph's old wagon?”

“That would make his wagon a shambles from which it would never recover.”

She thought a moment, shook her head. “I'm scared to. This I have to consider.” She reached to the little table at the divan's end, on which were the ingredients for drinks, and picked up a half-full Martini glass. “Cheers,” she said, and gulped it down before I could stop her.

“Arline!” I cried, suddenly realizing why she was going downhill. That much booze will ruin you—especially Martinis, which are like falling off cliffs.

She sort of coughed silently and said, “I think I swallowed the olive that time. Hey-ha-ho, boy.”

“Arline.” I was starting to feel desperate. If this tomato reached the point of no return, or even passed out on me, that “monster” safe and I would never get together.

In my agitation I finished my own drink, then took Arline's hands in mine. “Honey, lovely Arline, I am serious as hell. I've got to get into that safe. And if you don't open the damn thing, there's very little chance that I'll do it.”

To me, that seemed logically to sum up the situation, and Arline agreed, bobbing her head like a pendulum. “Yeah, boy. You said a mouthful that time.”

She pulled her hands free and reached for the drinks. I started to grab her, but she merely picked up the bourbon, poured me a glassful and handed it to me.

I said, “You didn't put any water in it that time, honey.”

She looked at me with an intent expression, if a wavering and dizzyingly wobbly gaze can be called intent, and said, “The water is ... in the bottle. Already. Didn't you know that?”

“Frankly, no. I had no idea—”

“Well, it is.”

I thought that was a clever way to manage things, pouring water right in there on the bourbon in the bottle. I had some of the stuff, and it sure tasted like straight bourbon. But I guessed Arline knew what she was talking about. She was a pretty smart kid, this Arline, a regular dear. “Hey-ho,” I said. “Pretty tricky.”

She was still thinking. “That would sure shambles his wagon,” she said. “But I couldn't do it. Couldn't...”

We sat there and thought about it a while. Then I said, “Maybe there isn't anything even in there. We could look and see.”

“There's plenny in there. Papers and papers and all sorts of slop. Gun, pictures, books. It's a monster.”

“Let me in there.”

She peeked sideways at me. “You're a monster.”

“No, I just look that way. Underneath I'm Shell Scotty. Hey, Arline?”

“I'll bet. An’ underneath, I'm Arline.”

Without another word of warning, she threw her arms wide and pulled the towel from her body. For a few seconds she lay there, leaning back on the cushions behind her, the lovely, sweeping voluptuous curves of her really astounding body bare. Her breasts quivered with the sudden movement, and then became still.

I was reeling around inside. Mentally staggering about the room and letting out little yips.

But then, “What am I doing?” she said in a high voice. In a flurry of movement she pulled the towel around her again, sort of loosely, and blinked at me. “I've got to sober up. Again.”

“I'm not so sure.”

“Yes, I do. I don't like to get this looped. I like to do things on purpose. And that was accidental. I'll bet you were surprised.”

“Yeah, and there are a couple of words even more—”

“C'mon.”

“Come on? Where?”

“I've got to steam me some more. You look pretty looped yourself. Hey, Scotty.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “That bourbon I gave you had water in it all right—in the bourbon. I mean, like all bourbon. See? It was the truth. Obviously bourbon has to have water in it, or it'd jus’ be all like sand. Wouldn't it?”

“I'll be hanged if I know. What you mean is, you didn't add any more water to the bourbon.”

She nodded. “That's what I didn't.”

“I suspected it.” This Arline was really drunk. She was almost going out of focus.

She said, “So now we've both got to sober up. You ‘n me both. In to the steam with us.”

“What?”

“Going to sober you. Going to steam you up.”

“I'm pretty well steamed up already.”

“C'mon.” She led me across the living room and into the room adjacent to it. In one wall there was a closed door and on a bench next to it were draped some feminine garments which must have been the clothes Arline had been wearing when she'd decided to have her first steam bath. She stopped at the door and swung around to look at me, towel flying about like crazy. “Don't just stand there,” she said.

“I'm not just standing here.”

“Well, come on. Let's get with it.”

With it? I thought. What's with it? I knew very well I should be shooting hoods, or dodging bullets or some such thing. Veering between doubt and uncertainty, I made one last try. “Couldn't we open the safe now, Arline?”

“No!” This time she really seemed angry. “I tole you I got to sober us up. I'm not going to go opening safes when I don't know if I'm going to do it or not, am I? Besides, I really truly want to think soberly about it. Maybe I'll do it.” She paused. “But if you think I'm going to sit there in all that crazy steam again all alone, you have lost your fat mind. If I do, when I come out, if you're still here when I come out, I'll chase you out. And never open any safes.”

She meant it, too, that seemed certain. “Well, Okay,” I said, and started to take off my coat.

“What're you doing?” she asked me.

“Taking off my coat.”

“Ho. You keep it on, boy. You take your coat off, and I know what'll happen. Next thing, you'll take off your pants. Ha! I know what'll happen, all right.”

“Me too, all right. But, after all—”

“No!” It had the same sound as the last no. “You keep your clothes on and I'll keep my towel on. We can sober up just as well that way. The other way, we might as well take in the bottle.”

“Now, Arline, this is preposterous. Who ever heard of anybody taking a steam bath in a gabardine suit?”

“What's that got to do with it? Besides, suppose Ralph should come home?”

That was suddenly the most depressing thought I'd had for a year. “I guess I know what he'd do,” I said. “Especially with me unarmed and pretty defenseless. Maybe you're right.”

“I know I'm right. And you want into that safe, don't you?”

“I ... guess so.” At that point, I didn't really know whether I wanted into that safe or not. But while I was thinking about it, Arline opened the door and went inside calling, “Hurry. Don't let all the steam out.”

So acting on impulse, as I sometimes do, I followed her into the steam room. Closing the door quickly behind me, I didn't let all the steam out. But that crazy Arline had meant exactly what she'd said about my keeping my clothes on and her keeping the towel on—and she sure let all the steam out of me.

Chapter Seventeen

I shall not even dwell upon the miserable hour or so during which Arline and I sat in that steam room, chatting. You have no idea how easy it is to run out of light conversation under such circumstances. When, finally, I was reduced to such comments as, “Hell, my pants are shrinking,” and, a little bit later, “If my gun is rusted, I'll bat you with it,” we decided that, completely sober or not, it was time to get out of there.

So it was almost an anticlimax as two bedraggled and wilted and thoroughly steamed-out people staggered into Ralph Mitchell's bedroom and opened the big safe there. Anticlimactic, even though in the mass of papers and other material I found what I'd been looking for. At that point, just about anything would have been anticlimactic, even finding Ralph in there with a double-barreled shotgun.

I didn't find Ralph, of course; what I did find was a lot of stuff that didn't make sense at first, and some other items that did. I found copies of two of the grant deeds I had earlier seen in Belden's office. Both were for large areas of land in a nearby county. Held with them, by a rubber band, was a California map. On it was penciled a heavy red line—passing into and through the land represented by the deeds. The red line connected two distant freeways, already in use, and in several places followed the fainter map lines which indicated that only graded or improved roads were now in use there. It didn't take any stretch of imagination to assume that before long a new multi-million-dollar freeway would probably be constructed on the route indicated by that penciled red line. A continuation of the red line went on to another county seat, but I couldn't find any papers showing ownership of, or payment on, land in that area. Maybe there was something to that effect in Belden's papers, but I doubted it

Actually there was nothing yet to prove Silverman or Goss owned the land; most of the deeds showed the name of “Atlas Development Company” as owner which could be anything or anybody. It would take a staff of C.P.A.'s to trace all the fronts and companies involved, probably, but I had no doubt that at the end of the trail would be one, or probably both, of the two Bobs.

In a neat package were copies of the prison record of one Thomas Cain Morrison, who had been arrested twice in Georgia for assault with a deadly weapon, without conviction, and subsequently done a year at Atlanta for manslaughter. A faded newspaper clipping told the story of Morrison's illegal flight to avoid prosecution on a murder charge. There were a few other odds and ends in the package, but the most interesting item was the photograph which accompanied the clipping.

He'd changed in the years since the photo had been run in the paper, but not enough so I couldn't recognize him. It was the man I knew as Robert Goss.

Even more interesting, though not so obviously damaging, was a mass of material I found all together in a blue manila folder, neatly packaged. There were canceled checks and crude photographs of checks, photostats of records, copies of deeds, escrow deposit receipts, ledger sheets, other papers I didn't understand. But several of the photographic prints were of checks signed by R. C. Silverman, and eight of them—each for more than a hundred thousand dollars—had been made payable to Robert Goss. Other checks had been endorsed by Robert Goss, acting for the Atlas Development Company. Still others were endorsed by a man I'd never heard of, also for Atlas Development. There were checks and other papers concerned with several companies unknown to me.

I felt more than pleased about all of it.

But I wondered how it happened that such incriminating material was so conveniently arranged here in the blue manila folder in Mitchell's safe. There was at least one logical answer. A lawyer involved with crooks and party to crooked deals would naturally have to know all about those deals in order to take steps necessary to cover them up. That knowledge could make him dangerous to the men on whose behalf he acted, and it seemed certain to me that, involved with such men, Mitchell would have wanted some kind of guarantee that he wouldn't be dumped overboard, tossed to the wolves or even killed, in case of trouble. The blue manila package looked like very good insurance, a kind of paper club with which he could protect himself.

But, for me, it was a different kind of club.

Into the manila folder I jammed all the other papers which looked like help to me and trouble for the two Bobs. I left a lot of other info, including a pile of money and securities, in the safe; there was a lot more than I could carry, and I was sure I had enough anyway. Then I locked the safe, stood up and turned to Arline.

She had been watching me, saying a word or two once in a while, but keeping silent most of the time. Now she said, “You act like you found the tomb of King Tut in there.”

“Something much more valuable to me right now, Arline. When I hand this over to the police, Ralph's going to be in a lot of trouble. Along with some other people. I felt I should tell you.”

“Thanks. It doesn't surprise me. Or bother me much, if you were wondering.” She frowned slightly. “Good thing I was leaving anyway, I guess.”

“Yeah. And you'd better get out fast now. Things are going to pop very soon, and you'd better be nowhere around. The best thing would be for you to leave with me.”

“Uh-huh.” She bit her lip gently, then said, “I'm ready. I've some bags already packed. You want to bring your car up to the front door? I'll open the gate from inside.”

“Okay.” I had parked in front of the house, and it occurred to me that maybe it hadn't been wise to leave it there in plain view. But it was done, so I put the thought out of my mind.

Then I picked up my blue manila folder, feeling very pleased with myself, and walked out of the house. And into the street. And got shot.

I was clear into the street before I saw them in the dim illumination from widely spaced street lamps, but they saw me at the same time, or probably a few seconds sooner.

What had brought the men here was, apparently, Ralph Mitchell himself. There were three of them, and I spotted them after they'd climbed out of a black Fleetwood parked ahead of my buggy. Mitchell was just getting out of the car, stepping onto the sidewalk, but the other two were already standing in the street on the opposite side of the car from him.

Mitchell yelled, “It's Scott, Shell Scott!” but he didn't have to tell the tough boys; they already knew it. One of them, nearest the car, had a gun in his hand, swinging it toward me, and the other was bending forward, hand at his hip.

The folder was in my right hand. I dropped it and grabbed for the Colt, but I was a little too slow. The man next to the car, with his gun already out, snapped a shot at me and I felt it fly hotly past my face. Then my .38 was in my fist and I pulled the trigger. All I hit was a tree, but the man ducked and jumped backward.

I heard the other guy's gun crack. And that one got me.

The slug slammed into my chest, its impact like a spike being driven into my flesh. There wasn't any pain then, just the hammer-like blow of the slug and a sudden sensation of dull numbness all through me.

The impact spun me a little, but at almost the same moment when it hit I'd flipped my gun toward the man firing at me from the street and squeezed the trigger twice. I saw him jerk, but then I staggered, ankle banging into the curb. My leg buckled at the knee and I fell hard on my side. I could already feel warm blood on my chest. The gun was still in my hand, and I rolled, or tried to, and at first didn't even know if I was moving.

But then I was on my back, gun arm at my side. From the corner of my eye I saw Mitchell bending over in the street, grabbing for the blue folder—even with the bullets flying he knew what it was. That folder had his life in it, and he knew it.

A bullet hit the grass near me and plowed into dirt. I saw a man on his knees in the street and got my gun arm up, the Colt pointed at him. But then another shot cracked from somewhere nearer the car. That one came from the gunman who'd sent that first slug at me, and now he'd fired from a spot where he was half hidden by the Fleetwood's side and fender.

I pulled my gun around, fired at what I could see of him, heard the bullet smack into the back of the car. It was hard to see clearly. I didn't know how bad I was hit, but the impact and shock were dulling my senses. My eyes wouldn't focus. There was a roaring in my ears, as if it came from inside my head. I triggered the gun again, trying to aim at the man, saw him move. He wasn't hit. He was a blur, like something seen through a film of oil, but it looked as if he jumped into the car on the driver's side. Another man was just getting into the front seat, on the opposite side from the driver.

I'd gotten to a sitting position, but my left arm didn't work right. I leaned forward, elbow on my knee, and tried to steady my wavering gun. The car began moving, and I aimed toward the driver. But that was as far as I got. The gun swung from the car, and then my elbow slipped from my knee, the gun dipping sharply.

The Fleetwood raced down the street, and I saw hazy movement on my left. There was a lot of fuzziness before my eyes. Out there in the street the guy I'd hit toppled forward and lay still. It took most of my strength, but I rolled over, got on my knees to move toward him.

My left arm buckled and grass slapped my face. I made it up again, using my right hand, started crawling toward the man in the street. It seemed as if blood were all over the front of me, clear down to my stomach. I got to the man, but he wasn't moving. His gun, the gun with which he'd shot me, lay a foot from his hand. It was a Colt Agent, a .38 caliber revolver with a two-inch barrel.

Too much excitement, I thought groggily. Too many bangs on the head. That's it. And that damned steam room, and whatnot. Steamed all the juice out of me. I'm not shot, I'm just pooped. But by that time the landscape was swinging around crazily, and I couldn't quite believe it. I could see my car swinging around over there somewhere, and I tried to get to it. I made it, too; I got the door open and had the car keys in my hand, but that was all of it.

My thought was that if I could get the buggy started, I might make it to that little hospital I'd seen. And for about five seconds I felt maybe I'd make the grade. But then the keys dropped from my hand onto the floorboards and when I reached for them my knees gave way. I fell back into the street, and when I tried to get up again I couldn't do it. I couldn't move. And in a little while I didn't much care whether I moved or not.

Somewhere a woman was screaming. I could feel everything slipping away from me. That would be Arline, I thought, and I wondered why she was screaming. The scream became a faint sound, a high, thin, thready wail that got softer and softer, became a faint sound in blackness, and then faded away completely.

Chapter Eighteen

I guess the first thing was the smell. Before sight, before movement, there was a thick, almost sweet odor in my nostrils. Then I could hear sounds, but at first I couldn't tell if they were near or far away; it was a soft pattern of muffled noises. Pain came then, dull and throbbing, somewhere high in my chest.

I tried to move, and the pain became a burning knife near the joint of my shoulder. I opened my eyes. My head was clear enough, and I seemed almost normal except for the pain and the weakness. I lay quietly a moment, then moved my head, looked around me.

A uniformed nurse was doing something at a small table across the room. She turned toward me as I moved, a plain but pleasant looking gal somewhere under thirty. I was in a bed, apparently in a hospital. That odor was hospital smell.

The nurse said, “Awake now, are we?”

I swallowed. “I don't know about you, but I'm—”

I'd started to sit up and she interrupted. “Lie still, Mr. Scott. I'll get you anything you want.”

“How'd I get to the hospital? This is a hospital, isn't it?”

“Yes, Martin's Memorial. Fortunately we're only two blocks from where it happened. A call came in, and our ambulance went right out. You were unconscious in the street. I guess you know you've been shot.”

“I know it. So was the other guy. How is he?”

“He's been taken to ... the morgue.”

I moved my shoulders a little, wiggled my fingers. Everything worked. “How bad is it?”

She smiled. “Not bad. You'll be all right, but the bullet is still in your chest. Nothing is seriously damaged, no bones broken. In a few days you'll be good as new.”

She was almost annoyingly cheerful about it. My bullet wound didn't hurt her a bit. But my case, I guessed, was in the festering hangnail class compared to many of the others here. I didn't mind her cheerfulness; but something else puzzled me. How had she known my name?

Before leaving the Spartan with Elaine, and heading for the Red Rooster, I'd cashed a check at the desk—but there hadn't been any kind of identification in my pockets. My private investigator's card, driver's license, the works, were at the bottom of Newport Harbor.

I asked the nurse, “How did you know who I was?”

“We reported the gunshot wound, naturally, and two officers came here to see you. One of them recognized you. They wanted to talk to you, but you were unconscious.”

That figured. The police investigate all gunshot cases; well, this was one I sure wanted them to investigate—and fast. “Good,” I said. “I want to talk to them, too. Right away.”

“They left a few minutes ago.” She looked at her watch. “They'll be back in an hour. By then you'll be out of surgery.”

Something nagged at me; there was something odd about what she'd just said. But the nurse was going on. “Perhaps I shouldn't even mention it, but there's another visitor waiting to see you, a young lady. The doctor will be ready for you in a few minutes, but she insisted on waiting.”

“Who is she?”

“She wouldn't give her name. But she said it was dreadfully important. She's beautiful.”

“Then it's important. Show her in, please.” I grinned at her. “Don't you want me to get well?”

It took some argument, but the nurse finally agreed. She went outside, and half a minute later my visitor came in.

It was Elaine.

She closed the door behind her and came to the bed. Her face was drawn, worried.

I said, “What in the name of sanity are you doing here? I told you to stay—”

“Don't, Shell. I heard a news broadcast that you were shot, and I didn't know how bad it was. For all I knew, you were dying. I had to come.”

“Anybody see you?”

“I ... don't know. I saw two policemen leaving when I arrived, but they didn't notice me.” She bit her lip. “Are you all right? The nurse told me what she could, but how do you really feel?”

“Like getting out of here. But first they have to separate me from this slug.”

I stopped. For the first time since the shooting I'd remembered that blue manila folder, remembered all I had learned there at Mitchell's place. Well, I didn't have that info any longer, but at least I remembered most of what I'd seen. Even if that file was by now destroyed, I knew where to look for the proof I was after.

It was going to be difficult to accomplish in the hospital, though. But maybe the police could do the job for me. Maybe, I thought, I could get in touch with Samson, try to convince him that now I really knew what I was talking about. Without the proof I'd had for a little while in my hands, I might have a tough job doing it; but I knew Sam would listen.

It did not, however, seem a good idea to have any law piling into the room here—not while Elaine was in it with me. Not only would she be in a pile of trouble, but I wouldn't be the fair-haired boy myself, under the circumstances. I could still clearly hear Samson saying, like rivets, “Five thousand dollars ... or five years!”

On the other hand, there was no telling what Mitchell—and Goss and Silverman—would be up to by this time. Time. That was the most important thing now.

I asked Elaine, “How long have I been here? What time is it?”

She looked at her watch. “A little after ten.”

Ten p.m. That would make it only an hour or so since the shooting. Time enough for those papers to be destroyed, of course; but if Mitchell still had them, he'd want to hang onto his paper club. There was still a chance that everything would work out.

And right then I realized what had been nagging me a minute ago. It had been when the nurse was talking about the bullet still being in me. If I'd been here for close to an hour, I wondered why that slug hadn't been taken out of my chest by now. The thought bothered me.

“Shell.” Elaine still looked worried. Scared, even.

“What's the matter?”

“I—when I arrived, I parked in front of the hospital. While I was waiting to see you, I saw another car arrive with some men in it. One of them looked over my car, then went to it and opened the door. I think he read the registration thing.” She paused, hands clasped tightly together. Then she went on, “It was the man who did that bird act at the Red Rooster. The one you followed last night.”

Joe Navarro.

Hell yes, Navarro—and more. Every hood who'd ever been after me would know I was here in Martin's. If Elaine had heard a broadcast about Shell Scott getting shot up, then the hoods would have heard it too or heard about it—Goss and Silverman included. I lifted my arms up a little way and let them flop back onto the bed.

It wasn't a gesture of hopelessness, though the outlook appeared dim at this point, but a trapped feeling combined with a sort of futile fury. I'd have liked getting my fingers around Navarro's throat now more than ever before, and I couldn't even squeeze my left hand into a fist without pain.

I said, “Navarro and how many other men? And how long ago was this?”

“Two others were with him. Ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“Yeah. He must have recognized your car. They know you were on the Srinagar with Belden, left with him. If they didn't know what your car looked like before, you can bet they found out in a hurry, certainly, since today's broadcast.”

I grunted to a sitting position, holding the sheet in front of me with my right hand. Beneath the sheet was just me. They'd taken my clothes—and I had to have something to wear, even if it was only this big diaper here.

Elaine said, “What are you doing?”

Dizziness swept over me and for a moment the room turned gray. But not black. In a few seconds my vision cleared, and I said, “When I told you I felt like getting out of here, it was a gag. It isn't any longer. Somehow, we're leaving.”

“But Shell, you've got a bullet in you! You've got to—”

“And one is enough. They'll have to probe for the next one in my head.”

She was still wringing her hands together. “I—after what happened last night, and now, I suppose you're right.”

“I know I'm right.”

She swallowed. “I'll help. If I can. But—”

“I'm not as bad off as I look. I always look this way. I keeled over mainly from shock—I was really shocked to see those guys shooting at me—and because I was physically and emotionally depleted. I could have keeled over without getting shot. I've had about six hours sleep in the last sixty, I've had knives and saps swung at me, been half drowned and steamed practically to death—”

“Steamed? When did ... Steamed?” She looked puzzled.

I shuddered and went on rapidly, “Besides, I've just had an hour's rest. I can navigate all right. If you could get out of here and—”

I groaned. The fat was really in the fire. I couldn't even let Elaine leave this room without me, not with Navarro maybe right outside, and no telling who else.

She said, “Maybe I could drive my car around to the side entrance—”

“No, baby. They've spotted it now. Not only do they know we're both here, they'll have an eye on your buggy. We've got to stay away from it.”

“What—will we do, Shell?”

I didn't answer her. I was thinking. Or at least what passes for thinking in my set. Any man who got himself—and a lovely woman—into the mess we were in had to have mental processes about on the level of the armor-plated rhinoceros. The armor-plated rhinoceros, incidentally, is not noted for its brilliance. I was starting to sweat again.

Elaine was saying, “Surely nobody can come in here and shoot you or anything, can they? If that's what you're thinking. Not here.”

“Maybe you're right. But the odds are you're wrong. And the hell of it is, honey, there're two of us to shoot if there's any shooting. All sorts of accidents can happen, even in a hospital—I know.”

“Well, but—shouldn't you wait until they get the bullet out of you at least? It might poison you or do something awful. By now Doctor Fischer must be almost ready for you.”

“We can't wait. And, honey, I'm not on my death bed. I've seen Marines shot clear through their bodies with rifle slugs and go on fighting for an hour before they...”

Then what she'd said got through to me. I looked dully at Elaine. “Who did you say?”

“Doctor Fischer, whoever he is. The nurse told me he'd be ready any minute, so I couldn't stay long. What's the matter?”

I was staring blankly at the wall. Her words brought me back. “Doctor Fischer, huh?” I said. “That's great. That's all I need. That guy should operate in the morgue.”

“What?”

“Honey, he will go in for that bullet by way of my gizzard. He may even start at my left toe, and just rip his way up.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Never mind. There's no time to tell you now. But it's settled. We're leaving.”

A thought struck me then. I had little doubt about what Dr. Fischer would do to me when and if he got me anesthetized on an operating table. But if I were right, and Fischer was supposed to take care of me, that also meant Navarro wouldn't be pulling anything unless the operation was a failure—and I lived. So maybe this was a break.

I felt pretty good, weak, but I'd be able to move around okay, I thought. The pain didn't bother me, and I had been given emergency treatment by the ambulance boys. A bandage was taped to my chest, gauze wound around my body. I got to my feet, wrapped in the sheet, walked across the room and back. The legs were wobbly, but usable.

Then I sat down and racked my brain for a way out.

A minute passed, then I said to Elaine, “Where's this room located?”

“Near the end of the east wing. The door at the end of the hallway comes out on the east side of the building.”

That meant from the door it would be only a few steps up the side street to Maplewood, and then two blocks to Mitchell's place. “Okay. Another thing—”

I didn't have time to finish. The door opened, and the nurse came in. “I'm sorry,” she said to Elaine, “but you'll have to leave now.” Then to me, “Oh, you shouldn't be sitting up.”

“I'm all right. Bring a phone in here, will you?”

She blinked. “I can't do that. There's no place to connect one, anyway.”

“Well ... show me where a phone is.”

“That's out of the question! You can't be walking around. And I'd be discharged if I—”

“Okay, never mind. It probably wouldn't work anyway.” I thought a moment and said, “This Dr. Fischer who's going to help me. He a resident surgeon here or something?”

“No, somebody phoned the Director and requested special attention for you and said not to worry about the expense. He wanted Dr. Fischer—he's very expensive—to handle your case.” She smiled. “You must have some extremely influential friends.”

“Yeah. They'd do anything to me. That's why the slug's still in me, huh? You had to wait for the special doctor?” She nodded and I said, “That's nice. I've got to see Dr. Fischer. Immediately.”

“Oh, but he won't be in to see you. He's already in surgery. You're to be taken—”

“I think he'll come. If you'll do me the favor of telling him something for me. Okay?”

She nodded.

“Tell Dr. Fischer it's important to him that I see him. It's about a dead man in the showcase, and a man named Lime. That's all.”

She frowned but said she'd do it. I asked her if she knew where my car was, and she said she supposed it was wherever I'd left it. It hadn't been brought into the lot.

“Would you tell Dr. Fischer right now, please?”

She went out, closing the door. I said to Elaine, “Honey, we're in this together, whether we like it or not. If I leave, we leave together.”

“You couldn't get rid of me anyway, Shell. That's why I came here, you know. Maybe I can help.”

“You're the damnedest woman.”

“At least I'm not shot in the chest.”

“Not yet, at least.” I grinned at her, and it was to be the last grin for quite a while. “Besides, if anybody shot that chest, I'd live long enough, even with bullets rattling in my ears, to strangle him.”

She smiled and said something very nice.

Then the interlude was over. I stood up and looked around the room. I needed a heavy object that I could manage with one hand, and a satisfactory item was on the little table across the room. It was a water pitcher, big enough and heavy, the bottom about an inch thick. I picked it up, hefted it, and decided to leave the water in it to make it even heavier.

Then I turned to Elaine. “I guess you know what I'm going to do.”

“Well, nearly every time I see you, you hit somebody, so I suppose—”

“Exactly. Stay out of sight, and if anything goes wrong run down the corridor screaming and just keep screaming till there's about a hundred people around you. Then stay with the hundred people. Yell for cops. If you can, get to a phone and call Captain Samson at Homicide, have him send some men here. With luck, maybe I can do that myself, but just in case—you do it.”

She didn't say anything. In another minute the nurse came in and said Dr. Fischer would be here in a few moments. She went back into the corridor again. I moved to the door, and waited.

I heard his voice outside. “Nurse, you won't need to remain here. I'll arrange for the patient's removal.”

That sure sums it up, I thought. Fischer didn't want any other ears listening to what I might have to tell him, it seemed. He didn't know that not even his ears would be listening.

The door opened, and he came into the room. It was Dr. Fischer, all right, the heavy-set, bulbous-nosed guy I'd seen at the showcase and talked to at the County Hospital after Lime's death. A worried look was on his face as he stepped inside, glancing toward the bed. His brows pulled down when he noticed the empty bed, and then he spotted me from the corner of his eye.

“Wha—” The word didn't quite get out of his mouth.

He was turning toward me as he gasped the word, but by then I was swinging. The heavy glass pitcher was moving at the end of my arm, coming down from over my head, and the heavy base caught him about an inch above his ear. The pitcher broke, water splashing over him and the floor, and he went down silently.

His clothes were a bit loose and short for me, but they fit well enough, and in two minutes I was dressed. The hole in my chest had opened, and I could feel blood seeping into the bandage, but otherwise all was okay so far. I said to Elaine, “We'll go out together. Come on.”

She looked pale. Pale, but game. And ready to go. I opened the door and went out first. The corridor was empty. Elaine stayed beside me as we walked down the corridor. I could feel the muscles in my legs and back tightening more with every step. “Oh, golly,” Elaine said, then was quiet.

We made it to the door. Outside, street lights threw dim illumination onto the trees lining the side street and onto the hospital steps. I glanced back as we went through the wide doorway. Behind us, the corridor was still empty. I breathed easier, feeling we had a good chance now.

We walked to the corner, then turned left on Maplewood Way. Two blocks away was my Cad. At least I hoped it was there. “Step it up,” I said to Elaine.

“But can you—”

“Baby, if I have to, I can run. Let's move.”

We didn't run, but we did use up plenty of energy walking from the hospital. Those two blocks ahead of us seemed like two miles. We made one block with no trouble. Then I heard voices behind us, shouts back at Martin's. I couldn't make out what they were yelling, but I could guess.

We covered another half block before I heard the car. When I looked back, I saw it rip from the hospital lot into the street. And right then I didn't think about anything but Elaine, couldn't think about anything but her. For a moment my mind was a blank while I tried to figure where she could go, how she could get away. Maybe into one of the houses—but they would know she couldn't be far away. And my Colt was back at the hospital, with my clothes. That wasn't all though. If the Cad's keys weren't on the floorboards where I'd dropped them before passing out.... I refused to think about it.

The car raced into the street and turned—away from us. They hadn't seen us, just knew we were gone. It was a break. But they'd be back.

“Run, baby,” I said. If we got to the car, if we could have even half a minute, maybe we could make it.

Elaine trotted ahead of me, staggered and almost fell. I didn't stop, kept going past her, building up speed, heart hammering and the ache in my chest spreading clear down into my stomach. Behind me her heels clicked on the sidewalk, getting fainter.

I reached the Cad, yanked the door open and ran my hand over the floorboards, searching for the keys. For agonizing moments I couldn't find them. But then my fingers touched them, and I grabbed the things and stuck the ignition key into the switch as I slid under the wheel.

For a miserable moment I remembered the bomb that had earlier been under the hood, but I jammed my teeth together and turned the key. The engine caught, roared. Elaine reached the car as I slipped it into gear. We were parked facing Martin's Hospital, and as Elaine opened the door on her side a car skidded around the corner three or four blocks away and raced toward us, lights looming in the dim street. It had come around the corner so fast that it swerved sharply before straightening out; I heard its tires scream over the asphalt.

We couldn't make it. There wasn't time for a U-turn; they'd be on us in seconds. There was no question about who it was in that car now, either. I made up my mind as Elaine flopped on the seat beside me. At the moment when she landed, before she even had the door closed, I jammed my foot down on the gas. The Cad leaped forward, pressing us both back against the seat, and the sudden lurch slammed the door violently shut. The other car was less than half a block away when I shot out into the street toward it, angling straight at them from the curb. I reached for the lights with my left hand, and gasped aloud at the momentarily forgotten pain that lanced through my chest. But I forced my hand forward, grabbed the knob and pulled it out when we were only yards from the car. As my lights blazed on and splashed over the car I jerked the wheel right. If that driver didn't veer away, we'd still crash—but he did.

He must have hit his brakes and jerked on the wheel with the suddenness of panic because the car's tires shrieked and it swung hard to the right, skidding, heading for the curb. We missed them by inches.

And I saw the man at the wheel as we went by.

It was the moulting-hawk face of Joe Navarro. His mouth was wide, as if he were yelling. Another man was next to him on the front seat, one or more others in the back. I couldn't count them, but I saw movement behind Navarro.

Then we were past, the sudden yank I'd given the steering wheel sending us plunging toward the curbing. I wrestled the wheel back, and we straightened out, swaying. “Watch them,” I snapped at Elaine. “Keep your eye on that car.”

She moved on the seat beside me, twisted to look behind us. “They—they...” She stopped, gasping. But then after some shuddering breaths she said, “They're sideways, stopped. But—now they're backing up.”

I'd counted the blocks from where we'd been. We'd covered three so far; before they were on our tail and moving we'd have another block or more on them. It wasn't enough. Not by five or ten miles it wasn't enough.

I kept my foot down to the floor. We were still gaining speed, and on a straight stretch I knew the Cad would outdistance them. But this was far from downtown L.A., an area I wasn't familiar with. All I knew was that the road curved off toward the Santa Monica Mountains, but I didn't know where any of the side roads went. I couldn't afford to take one that led to a dead end, either; not without a gun. Already we were out of the residential area, starting slightly uphill.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked Elaine.

“I've been on this road. But I don't know. I'm so—I don't remember.”

“You'd better remember.” I stopped, dizziness climbing up into my head again. It seemed as if the headlights dimmed. I should have been flat on my back in a bed, and the exertion of running, the strain of tugging at the steering wheel, had drained away most of the strength I had left.

“Elaine, if I head off the road or—or something, grab the wheel.” I could still see the speedometer dial and the needle was at sixty, falling back. Without being conscious of it I had slowed down. I pushed my right foot forward again.

“Shell—oh, Shell, don't ... pass out on me.” Her voice was high and tight.

“Slap me. Slap the living daylights out of me.”

I didn't have to tell her twice. She leaned over and walloped me with the back of her hand, cracked it into my cheek again. It felt as if a truck had run over my head, but when my skull stopped wobbling everything was bright and sharp once more.

She had her hand hauled back for another one, but I yelled, “Hey! That's enough. Don't knock me clear out through the door.”

She clasped her hands together, squeezing them tight.

“Honey, I'm sorry,” I said. “About this ... you know what I mean. There isn't time to tell you.”

“Maybe—maybe they won't hurt us. Even if they catch us.”

“No, baby. Take my word for it. I know who's back there, and exactly what they'll do if they catch us. They'll kill us.”

And right then, as if to prove me absolutely correct for once, a bullet crashed through the windshield high at its left. Immediately afterwards the sound of a shot reached me, then a second and third crack carried to us through the air. Only the first slug hit the car; but there'd be more.

I glanced at the rearview mirror. The other car was much closer than it had been. When I'd slowed, fighting dizziness, they must have closed the gap between us. They were still too far away for accurate shooting, but even without enormous accuracy, it was shooting. And good enough, too. My eyes flicked to the bullet hole and back to the road.

Three more shots were fired in quick succession, and I heard one slam into the back of the Cad. I shoved my foot hard against the accelerator, watching the rearview mirror. We were pulling away from them. What seemed like a long, stretched-out minute went by, then the engine coughed. The car slowed, and there was another coughing sound that jerked the Cad. We slowed still more—then the engine caught and the speedometer needle began creeping up.

Elaine said, her voice twisted in her throat, “What was that?”

I licked my dry lips. “I think that last slug hit the gas tank. I'm not sure. If it did—” The engine coughed again. I looked at the gas gauge. It registered empty.

I didn't try to explain any more to Elaine. We had a few seconds, that was all, so I said, “When the car stops, I'll swing it broadside—”

“But it can't stop. They'll—”

“Listen to me! When it does, you run—away from the Cad. Down the road. Maybe you can get ... somewhere. If only there was a grove of redwoods, or—the hell with it. One thing, they can't be sure I don't have a gun, which I don't, so when we stop they'll be a little cautious, at least. Maybe you can make it.”

For a few moments she was quiet. Then she spoke again. And, surprisingly, her voice sounded almost calm, controlled. Again it was the low, throbbingly lovely voice I'd first heard on the phone—it seemed a year ago. She said, “There aren't any redwoods, but about a mile ahead there's a park or grove of trees of some kind. Maybe a lot more or less than a mile. I just remember seeing it once. Could we—I don't know. Hide there or something?”

“What kind of park? If it's a little dinky pile of—”

“No, a few acres, but with dirt roads and all.”

“If we make it, that's big enough.”

“Can we make it, Shell? Can we get that far?”

“That slug must've hit pretty low. There's still a little gas slopping around—and still slopping out—but some of it's getting to the engine. I don't—”

The engine coughed again.

Elaine said, “I think we're near...” She didn't finish, leaning forward to stare through the windshield.

And that was when the engine coughed for the last time—and died.

Chapter Nineteen

I threw the gear shift into neutral, let the Cad coast while I pressed the ignition key over, grinding the starter. It was no good. We'd had it.

The road bent to the right. We coasted around the curve doing about fifty miles an hour. And slowing.

“There it is!” Elaine pointed. “That little road there.”

I saw it. It was about a block away, just before the street curved left again, a narrow road leaving this one at right angles. Even at our reduced speed, it was going to be a narrow squeak to swing into it without skidding left, up against tree trunks visible in the car's lights—especially with one hand on the wheel. But I wasn't going to slow down, and there was a good reason.

When we'd hit that bend in the road, the lights of the car behind us had disappeared from the rearview mirror. For a few more seconds that car would be out of our sight—and we also would be out of theirs. I held my right hand far over on the wheel's left, eased it around and then jerked it the rest of the way. We skidded into the road, almost into those tree trunks, but straightened out in time. The dirt road went straight ahead for well over a hundred yards, then turned.

I shoved in the light switch and we coasted forward in darkness. I didn't have to tell Elaine this time; she was looking behind us. I'd made the sliding turn at close to fifty miles an hour, but that sharp turn had slowed us almost to a stop; we were making less than twenty now, the needle dropping.

“They went by,” Elaine said. For some reason she was whispering.

“They'll be back. When they see the road empty ahead of them, they'll find this turnoff. But it gives us a little time.”

The Cad was barely moving. I eased to the right of the narrow road and swung the wheel left, putting on the brakes. The road wasn't completely blocked, but at least another car couldn't pass in a hurry.

I should have felt exhilarated that we'd made it to here, but I wasn't. I had been able to see in the headlight's glare that this “park” wasn't at all what I'd hoped it would be. It was little more than an area of widely separated trees, mostly open space. I hadn't seen any place where two people could duck—except behind a tree, which was virtual suicide under the circumstances. So it looked as if all we could do would be to run like hell. But I knew those guys behind us could run faster. Certainly faster than Elaine, and I wasn't about to leave her now.

Oddly, I felt quite calm. As the Cad stopped moving and I started to open the door and leap out, through my mind were running the things that had happened so far, all the close squeaks. I'd had everything come at me from knives to dynamite, from guns to...

All of a sudden a burst of energy and adrenalin and probably eighteen things I never heard of slammed into my bloodstream and lit up my brain like a torch.

Dynamite.

The dynamite bundle I'd taken from under the Cad's hood was still in the luggage compartment. Still there exactly as I'd found it, electric detonating cap and wires still attached. And in the trunk, too, was plenty more wire—not the most perfect for what I had in mind, maybe, but it would carry an electric current. I threw the door open and slid out, grabbing the car keys in my right hand. I shouted words at Elaine as I jumped to the rear of the car and got the trunk open, grabbed the four dynamite sticks and the other coil of wire near it, raced to raise the Cad's hood. I couldn't explain it well, or fully, but I gave her the general idea.

When I'd spliced the extra wire lengths quickly, even sloppily, to the wires already in place on the detonating cap, then bent over the fender to attach the ends of my additional wire lengths to the ignition leads, I said to her, “They'll have to come up this road. With just a little more luck I can blow some of them to hell. Stop their car and shake them up, at least. So go on, honey. Run. Run, damn it!”

She was shaking her head. I looked back toward the road and saw a glow hitting the trees; a car was coming from the direction in which Navarro and his chums had disappeared. Maybe it was a different car. I didn't believe it.

Elaine, still shaking her head, said, “You just turn the key and it will go off?”

“You bet it will go off. Get out of here.”

“How can you turn the key and throw the dynamite and all without killing yourself?”

“I'm not going to kill myself. That's up to those bast—buzzards. I just said I'd throw it. But I'll plant it in the road and come back or—I don't know. Don't worry about it.”

Everything was set, the last connection made. I stepped back from the car, the four sticks and added coil of wire in my hand.

“I'll do it,” Elaine said.

“What?”

“I'll turn the key.”

“You'll beat it, and—”

“No.” Her face was white and frightened, eyes scared. But she finished, her lips quivering. “I'll turn it. Maybe after ... you can run to them and—get a gun or something.” She gasped. “There they are! Oh, Shell, there they are.”

That car was slowing, starting to turn in toward us.

I leaned in through the Cad's window and shoved the key into the ignition. As I did, the approaching car's headlights fell full on us. The twin beams hit us like a blow.

Well, they'd seen us now. Seen us both.

Elaine was already in the Cad, sliding under the wheel.

“Okay,” I said, and my voice was tired. I felt as if my blood were running out of me, melting into the ground at my feet. “It doesn't make much difference now, I guess. All you have to do is turn the key. Don't turn it until you mean for this stuff to go off.”

The car had stopped. I guess when they'd spotted us, Navarro had braked, wondering what the score was, why we were still in sight. He might not realize that one slug had hit the Cad's gas tank; and he couldn't possibly know I was unarmed. For all those boys could know, I had half a dozen guns in the car.

They were less than a hundred yards away, and as I looked at them, they started slowly forward again. So I walked down the road to meet them, like an imbecilic Western marshal, asking for it.

I guess the apparent insanity of what I was doing puzzled them. The car came several yards closer, then stopped. The lights went out. I didn't wonder why right then; I ran forward, paying out wire from the coil in my hand. It stretched a total of twenty yards at most from the Cad. I dropped the dynamite on my right, at the edge of the road, turned and ran back toward the Cad. Maybe, I thought, maybe I could make it back there in time to do the job myself.

Then the other car's lights came on again. Much closer this time.

I suppose the shock of seeing the two of us in the glare of their headlights had worn off—and they surely knew, finally, that if I'd had a gun I would have sent half a dozen slugs at them by now.

I stopped when the lights hit me, turned my back to the Cad—and to Elaine, still a few yards behind me. As I turned, I stepped sideways toward the left of the road. Not only closer to a couple of spindly trees, but a little farther from the dynamite. I raised my right hand in the air, started lifting my left one.

“Scott!” Navarro leaned out the window on the driver's side and yelled my name.

“Yeah, Navarro. Hold it up. I—I've got something to tell you.”

He laughed. “Stay right there, Scott.” He could easily see that I didn't have a gun in my hand, and every fraction of a second I thought a bullet was going to slam into me. I couldn't quite keep my feet from moving, even though I tried to stay still. But I kept inching a little more toward the left of the road, almost as if my legs were acting on their own, without any instruction from me.

“I said stay there. Freeze.” Navarro's voice was very tough now. Masterful. He wasn't afraid of any one-armed shot-up man without a gun.

He got out of the car, said something to the men inside, then stepped toward me. As he came closer, the other men also got out. There were two of them, but the only one I could recognize so far was Navarro. Behind me, maybe fifteen feet, was my Cad and Elaine. I'd made it about forty feet or more from the dynamite before turning around. And Navarro's car was on past the dynamite at least another ten or fifteen yards. Too far away.

Navarro walked toward me. A gun gleamed in his hand. It was a big one, a .45 automatic. A slug from Navarro's .45 would do the job, even if it hit a whisker, the shape I was in. I was wobbling on my feet, fighting back dizziness again.

I ground my teeth together, not even breathing. Navarro hadn't stopped grinning. I made myself stand still while I got my left arm over my head, but I never did anything harder. The other two men walked toward me, following Navarro. They were both together, Navarro quite a bit ahead of them. Only one of the two others held a gun, and it looked as if Joe wanted to handle this job himself. I wondered why he hadn't done it already.

In a way, he told me.

“Thought you could push me around, huh? Slug me, kick hell out of me. Well, Scott, how does it look now?”

My voice wasn't a powerful bark when I answered, not at all threatening. “Not—so good.”

He was still grinning, moving gracefully forward. He walked past the dynamite. I closed my eyes, sweat coming out my pores like water from faucets. I wondered if I were going to crumple up and fall down in the road.

Navarro kept coming, stopped ten or twelve feet from me. He couldn't miss from there. And there wasn't a chance in hell that I could get to him. But the other mugs were still coming, too, though they hadn't come as fast as Joe. Half a dozen more steps and they'd be right where I wanted them. If I lasted that long. If only Elaine ... I didn't think about it.

Navarro, standing with his feet apart, said, “Yeah, you're a tough one, you bastard. But you made a mistake when you messed with me. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know it was coming—from me. But right now, tough man, you get it.”

He pushed the gun in his hand a couple inches toward me, and his whole face tightened.

I said the words in a rush. “Look at your feet, Navarro. At those wires. They're wired to dynamite, Joe. Dynamite.”

The others were practically alongside the four sticks when I spoke. Navarro probably didn't believe me, but he must have thought he had plenty of time. He glanced at the road, and his eyes fell on the wires. From the moment when he'd pushed the gun forward until now, only three or four seconds had passed—that was all.

Navarro's eyes stayed on the wire long enough—just long enough for me to move. While his eyes were off me, his gun wavered a little. I called on every ounce of strength in me and stepped fast to my left, bending my leg and then shoving hard. At the same moment I yelled, “Now, Elaine!” and leaped through the air. I could see the ground blurred before my eyes. It took only a fraction of a second, but a hundred things seemed to flicker before my mind—I wondered if Navarro was pulling the trigger, if Elaine would turn that key, and whether anything would happen even if she did.

But even before my right shoulder hit the ground, it happened.

The roar seemed to fill the world, there was a crack like hell exploding and an ugly glare swelled suddenly and died. Something grabbed my body, hurled me forward and flipped me over. Maybe I heard a scream, maybe I didn't. I hit the ground, but then felt nothing at all.

I was digging at dirt under my fingers and saying something. My ears rang, and my whole body tingled. I must have gone clear out, but it could have been for only a few seconds because dust was still swirling in the road behind me when I managed to twist my head around and look.

One of the car's headlights still glowed eerily through the boiling dust, like the eye of a locomotive, but the other had been blasted out. In that swirl of dust two men, or what was left of two men, twitched. But even as I watched, the movement stopped. Near me, Joe Navarro lay flat on his face in the dirt road, both arms stretched out in front of him. His gun lay two or three yards from him. His arms were moving, and as I looked at him, he tried to raise his head.

I got to my knees and waddled toward him, that ringing sound rising and falling in my ears like surf. I fell once, but kept going on my knees until I reached him. He moved his head, got it off the dirt and turned to stare at me when I was a yard away.

He was stunned, his face white with shock and his eyes wide, unbelieving. Fear swam in his eyes, too. On my knees, I reached him, straightened up as much as I could, raising my right arm high. He shrank back a little as I hit at the side of his neck, cutting at him with the thick edge of my palm. The blow landed, and landed where I wanted it to, but all it did to Navarro was knock him down again. He kept moving, tried to roll over.

The blow must have had all the force of a teen-age girl slapping her boy friend, but it was the best I could do. So I did it again. I still didn't know if he was out, but he stopped moving. I looked back down the road at the two other men. At bloody horror.

Four sticks of dynamite, that close to men, doesn't just poke neat holes in them. They both were dead, but there wasn't anything neat about it. Dynamite rips and rends, tears off limbs and shatters skulls, blasts out eyes, hurls flesh from bone.

As I turned toward Navarro again I saw Elaine get out of the car and start toward me.

“Go back!” I yelled. “Don't come down here.”

“Is it—are you all right?”

“Yes. Get back in the car.”

She turned, took two steps toward the Cad and stopped. Slowly, not as if she fell, but as if she couldn't go farther, she sank to the road. She sat there, her back to me, and bent her head forward into her hands.

I looked Navarro over. Something had been driven into his hip, gashing through cloth and flesh, but otherwise he seemed unhurt—except for shock and the buffeting from the explosion and compressed wall of air that had slammed into him. But he didn't look like a man who was going to die. Not, at least, from dynamite.

I rolled him onto his back. Blood had run from his nose. He groaned. In a minute he'd be coming to. And it occurred to me that even Navarro, if he thought he was dying, might talk as long as he could, getting the crimes off his conscience, trying to wash the darkness from his soul.

I smeared that red-stained ugliness from his nose all over his face, the front of his shirt, onto his hands. Then I got his automatic, and waited.

His eyelids fluttered. He moaned, licked his lips, and then stopped the movement of his tongue, horror and sickness mingling on his face as his eyes opened wide. I gave him plenty of time.

Then I said, “Too bad, Joe.”

“Get—me a doctor.”

“A doctor, huh? Aren't you the guy who just started to shoot me with this?” I waved the cocked .45. “The guy who was so happy about the chance to kill me?” I tried to make it sound tough, but my voice was thick.

“I wouldn't have done it. I just—” He stopped speaking, rolled his eyes down to the front of his shirt, looked wild-eyed at the blood covering him. He raised both his hands and stared in horror at their wet redness.

Then his head flopped back onto the dirt, his hands fell limply. I thought he'd fainted, but he was still conscious. “Doctor,” he whispered. “Please. Doctor.”

“It's too late for that, Joe.”

“You mean ... I'm gonna die?”

I didn't tell him what I meant.

He said, “Don't let me die. Don't, don't...”

“Get the whole thing off your chest, Joe. From the beginning.”

He kept asking for a doctor, his voice growing weaker. I was afraid he'd really kick off on me. Men have died when there was nothing wrong with them—when their fraternity brothers, for example, “cut” their arms with ice and dripped water into a pan, telling them their blood was pouring from them. They've died with all the symptoms of actually bleeding to death—and Joe was getting weaker and weaker.

So I said, “I'll see that you get a doctor, Joe. Just as soon as you spill everything you know.”

His head slowly rolled from side to side. “Too late—for a doc. I'm goin'—”

I slapped my hand across his face. “You'll last long enough to spill, unless I kill you right now, friend. Talk faster than you ever talked before.”

Maybe the slap got him started; that or the hope that he might live until a doctor could give him a miracle drug of some kind—if he talked fast enough.

Whatever the reason, there wasn't another bit of trouble from Joe Navarro. When I asked him why he'd been on the Srinagar that first night, and what the other three men had been doing aboard, he said, “Silverman and Goss were the two top ones in the business. I handled muscle, any rough stuff for them, mostly through Brandt and the boys of his that hung out at the showcase—Brandt runs the Red Rooster, too, so I could take off any time I wanted. I think Belden was scared, ready to rat. So I was aboard in case he had to be taken care of. When I had that beef with you, I went down to the stateroom to tell them you were aboard and that it probably meant trouble. Then you busted in. After I come around from you slugging me, Goss told me they'd had Belden take a fast powder, and you were already gone. So he sent me ashore to set it up for Brandt's boys to take care of Belden and you both.”

“Why me?”

“Goss told me if you noised it around Silverman was aboard, and with Belden there too, there'd be hell to pay. They'd just made up their minds to poop Belden. So you had to be taken care of that night, before you could mess things up.”

“Why did Belden have to be knocked off at all?”

“He was in on some land deal with Silverman and Goss. But nobody ever told me what it was.”

“I know what it was.”

Navarro still lay on his back in the road, his eyes shut. But he was breathing normally again, and his face—under the smeared blood—had better color. He was in pretty good shape—except that he thought he was dying.

I said, “What's this ‘business’ you mentioned, that Silverman and Goss are in?”

“I don't know much about it. Goss just told me what to arrange, or do, and when to do it. I wasn't in on all their plans, just the heavy stuff.” He licked his lips. “How about that doctor? I don't feel like I can—”

“After you spit it all out, Joe. So keep spitting. Who did the job on Belden?”

“The two guys with me tonight.” He grimaced, remembering.

“They're not with you any more, Joe. They were almost on top of that dynamite when it blew.”

“Where in hell did you get anything like that so all of a sudden?”

“I thought maybe you wired it under the Cad's hood earlier tonight, at the General Hospital. Somebody did.”

“So that's it. Wasn't me—Arty done it. He's the noise shark. He'd been tryin’ to catch up with you since the party started.” Navarro lay silently a moment, then groaned a little. “You got no idea the hell you stirred up. Must've been ten men tryin’ to poop you. Includin’ Arty.”

“That I can believe. How did this Arty get on my tail? I wasn't in the hospital more than fifteen minutes.”

“When Moe and Geats blasted Lime outside Luigi's, we knew there was a chance Lime wouldn't slam off right then and there. They always take them bleeders to the Receiving, so one of the boys was already hangin’ around there to ride the Erie a little and make out if he croaked. He seen you leave, tailed you and give me a call. I got on the phone to Arty and he dusted over to the County barely in time.” He paused. “When nothin’ happened, I thought Arty loused it up.” He opened his eyes and looked at me sorrowfully, then closed them again. “Scott ... doctor. I'm gettin’ weaker—”

“This Moe and Geats. I guess we haven't met yet.”

“Yeah, you met outside Mitchell's. That's where you got the pill in you. Moe put it in you, and you put Moe in the morgue. Geats is the one took off with Mitchell.”

I knew Navarro was the man who put out all or most of the orders to his and Brandt's hoodlums, but I wondered how come he seemed to know every little thing that had happened. I asked him, and he said, “Man, all the boys knows. I told you, you got no idea the hell you stirred up. The phones have been ringin’ like there wasn't going to be no end. You been on everything but television.”

He opened his eyes again and looked heavy-lidded at me. “Scott,” he said slowly, “I'm tellin’ you everything. I ain't leavin’ nothing out. So how about that—doctor? I got—to have a doctor.”

“Okay, Joe. I'll get you a doctor. I'll get you Doctor Fischer.”

He opened his eyes wide and blinked at me. Those eyes were fairly alert now. “Doctor—Fischer?”

“Yeah. He's popped up three times I know about. With Kupp, Lime, and me. The first two are dead, and I was supposed to join them, right?”

Navarro looked puzzled. After a second or two he gingerly moved his right hand up onto his chest, began moving it around and poking himself gently, apparently feeling for the gaping wounds which ought to be there.

“Answer the questions, Joe.”

He swallowed. “Fischer's an old friend of Silverman's. He's picked pills out of the boys a time or two when they couldn't check into a hospital. That's what he tried to do for Kupp, but that boy was coolin’ off too fast. Lime was just the opposite. Fischer made sure he cooled off.”

“Why? You just told me all the boys know what I've been up to.”

“Yeah, but they don't know why. Except for me, only Goss and Silverman know—now. But Lime was aboard the Srinagar with me when Belden met with Silverman; he knew about that. Didn't make no difference at first, but when Belden got chilled and you didn't, and then all that heat got on Lime, he plainly had to go.”

“That figures. But I'm still puzzled about how the ‘operation’ on Lime was set up so soon after he got hit.”

“It wasn't. I told you, if Lime didn't slam off on the street we knew he'd go to the Receiving. They just do emergencies there. With a want on Lime, they was sure to run him over to the County bone-factory where the jail ward is at. So Fischer was ready for him, in case he got that far. It was all set up way ahead.”

“And Fischer was supposed to let his knife slip tonight in me, or something like that?”

“Yeah. Goss got the word to me about your run-in at Mitchell's, that you was in Martin's. They'd got in touch with Fischer already. If he couldn't find a natural way for it to happen, like under the anesthetic or something, we was supposed to handle it. You just got no right to be alive.”

“You were supposed to kill Elaine Emerson too, weren't you?”

“That word's been out ever since Belden got it and the story on a woman running from the place hit the sheets. Only we didn't know where she was till we spotted her with you tonight.”

I kept after him for another couple of minutes, during which time he poked himself in about every place he could poke, his face becoming more and more puzzled. He'd already told me most of what he knew, but there was one more item, an important one.

“Where are Goss and Silverman now? What's the next move?”

“All I know is Goss told me, when he called about me and the boys going to Martin's, that as soon as it was over to get in touch with him at Silverman's. If they weren't there, they'd be on the boat. He didn't spell it out, but it sounded like they were going to take a cruise outside the States for a while.”

With that, he gave himself a regular whack on the stomach, then banged his chest. His face had a tortured look on it, and he pushed himself up from the ground. “Where am I bleedin'?”

He looked so painfully perplexed that I had to chuckle. “You had a nosebleed,” I said.

He looked from my face to his red and gory front, at the stained coat and shirt, and then slowly back to my face. “I didn't know a nose could bleed so much.”

About that time he must have figured it out. At least he realized he wasn't cut in half and hanging by a mere thread of skin. His face darkened, and suddenly he leaned toward me, reaching for the gun in my hand.

Just as suddenly, I popped him on the head with it.

He flopped over, letting out garbled sounds, tried to get up again. I let him sit up, then got to my feet. I'd been recovering a little, while sitting quietly on the ground, but standing sent everything whirling for a few seconds.

Joe held his head and swore at me. I let him swear. The words didn't bother me a bit. Not now.

Half an hour later we were in Navarro's car, and Elaine was turning off Bel Air Road and starting up Strada Vecchia. While she'd driven in, I'd sat quietly beside her, eyes closed, breathing deeply and trying to build my meager vitality up a little higher than zero. Navarro was in the car's trunk with a second lump on his head, sleeping. His .45 automatic was in my—or rather Dr. Fischer's—coat pocket.

As we passed the entrance to Robert Silverman's two-story stone pile I saw a new black Continental alongside the house—that would be Silverman's—a maroon Lincoln, and a black Fleetwood. The Fleetwood looked like Mitchell's, so it appeared that the whole gang was here, mapping strategy while awaiting news of my death. Or maybe even getting ready to run.

Elaine turned at the road's end, stopped, and I got out. She said, “Shell, come with me to the police—”

“We went through that. Just tell them what I told you and send them here in a hurry. I might get a few things from these guys they wouldn't say in official company. They won't know the law's coming and might think they've only me to worry about.” I paused. “Besides, honey, you know of only about half the hell these bums have tossed at me. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing them again.”

She bit hard on her lip. “Shell, I'll die if—”

I interrupted her. “One other thing. Have the police send an ambulance out here.”

“You aren't going to shoot anybody else—”

“Baby, the ambulance is for me.”

She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together, put the car into gear and drove furiously down the hill.

I waited until she was out of sight, then walked back to Silverman's driveway, hand on the cocked automatic in my pocket. I hesitated a moment, my throat as dry as a bone left days in the sun, then walked toward the house.

Chapter Twenty

My legs were weak. In fact, I felt weak all over, but my mind was clear. That is, as clear as it gets. I pulled Navarro's gun from my pocket, held it ready as I tried the door. It wasn't locked, and I eased it open, stepped inside.

The curving stairway ahead of me and on my right was empty. Nobody was in sight, but I could hear voices. They came from the library in which I'd previously talked to Silverman. The potted palm inside the front door brushed my arm as I walked forward. At the open library door I paused and listened.

“...how many times do I have to tell you, Bob? I swear I wasn't going to use that stuff against you. It's just—stuff I had around to keep the records straight. You know how complicated it's become.”

I'd heard Mitchell's voice only once, when I'd been leaning into his car here to talk to Arline, but it sounded like him.

The next words were in Silverman's calm, clipped, icy tones. “That is not quite good enough, Ralph. It's fortunate that Geats forced you to come here with this stuff. We'll say no more about it.”

There was a finality to the words that made Ralph's future look very dim, as if it might extend barely beyond the present. Then I heard Goss’ rumbling tones as he said, “I wish to hell we'd hear from Joe.”

It seemed like a good moment for me to put in an appearance. The library door was open and I stepped in front of it, automatic ready. I could see Silverman and Goss seated by that mosaic-topped chest. The blue folder was on the chest's top, some papers scattered near it. Mitchell and another man, apparently Geats, were farther to my left, their backs to a wall of books. Only the four men were here. I stepped forward and was clear inside the room before anybody noticed me.

I said, “You're not going to hear from Joe.”

Goss jumped to his feet, his mouth falling open. He started to reach beneath his coat but stopped and let his hand fall to his side, eyes on my gun. His mouth was puffed and ugly from that solid right I'd landed on him aboard the Srinagar.

I moved to my left, kicking the door shut with a bang. Silverman hadn't reacted with sudden movement as Goss had. His hands gave one quick jerk, and then he was still all over. Except for his face. If a man ever saw a ghost of somebody he'd killed—a ghost with a real gun in his hand—he might look about the way Silverman did. It was as if the flesh of his face was suddenly drained of blood, as if chalk had been thrown on his face, as if the flesh in one second had decayed a little.

On my left, both Mitchell and Geats whirled toward me. “Don't do it,” I said. “Turn around and grab a handful of books. Both of you.”

They didn't waste any time doing it.

Words dropped from Silverman's slack mouth. “How can you possibly...”

I finished it for him. “Be alive? I guess my time hadn't come, Silverman. But yours sure as hell has.”

He was recovering swiftly. Even now, stunned with shock at seeing me, maybe knowing he might really be washed up this time, he came back nearly to normal between one sentence and the next. “You can't pull that trigger. You surely have more sense than to commit murder.”

“I've had most of the sense knocked out of me.”

Goss slid his feet on the carpet, moved farther to my right. I flipped the gun toward him and said, “That's the last time you'd better move, Goss. I don't feel a bit friendlier toward you than I did the last time we met.”

He stopped moving. Both he and Silverman were staring at me, looking from my gun to my face and clothes. I guess I must have looked like something dredged up from the La Brea Tar Pits. Fischer's clothes, which hadn't been a stunning fit in the first place, were ripped and dirt smeared. Blood stained the shirt's white front. And there was probably little to choose from between my face and an old vanilla cookie.

There wasn't much time left before the law would arrive in force—at least, if nothing had gone wrong—and I had a couple of questions for the two Bobs. I said, “There's a chance one of you can get a head start. The one who spills. Maybe you can cop a plea right here.”

Silverman looked at Goss. “Don't listen to this idiot. There's blood on his shirt. You can see he's almost unconscious on his feet.”

“You don't have to tell me much,” I said. “I know ninety percent of it now. There's Ralph to thank for some of it. And plenty more from Navarro a little while ago.” I went over the high points of what he'd told me, fast, and ended it, speaking to Silverman. “I looked through that blue folder. It's obvious you've given Goss piles of dough, and he spent at least half of it in the name of Atlas Development Company. The trail of those checks, and the fact that you're one of the state's highway commissioners, plus a red-penciled map on that table in front of you, should be enough all by itself to send you away, friend. Even I could figure it out, but an expert with that stuff won't have any trouble proving the connection between Robert Goss and Atlas Development, and also between you and Goss. You're both cooked on the freeway grab, not to mention murder and some other interesting things.”

Neither of them spoke.

I tried talking to Goss the next time. “I know the commissioner here must have supplied the dope on where the freeways would go; you supplied the front—and the muscle, through Navarro. Belden, until he got scared of the mess he was in and wanted out, handled the actual mechanics of purchasing the land. There must be a lot I don't know about.” I paused. “Just for the record, which one of you two slobs was really the top man all along?”

Neither of them spoke this time either. But Goss licked his lips, turned a little toward me as if he wanted to speak. Silverman's lips looked as if they'd grown together.

I said to Goss, “Don't worry about the commissioner here. I've got enough to buy you both a pound of cyanide pellets in Q's little apple-green room. You know what I mean by Q, don't you, Morrison?”

He jerked when I called him by his real name.

“The way it looks to me,” I told him, “Silverman was the brains from the start, the guy behind the scenes. Knowing you were a fugitive from the police, I'd guess he didn't have much trouble convincing you that you ought to go along with him. Be his front man. Especially when it was so profitable.”

“Not so damned profitable,” Goss said.

“Shut up!” Silverman said, looking at Goss instead of me, “He can't prove a thing—it's just his word so far. And he's half dead now. Look at him. He won't last five minutes. Bob, listen to me. You know some of my connections. I can beat this for both of us.”

There wasn't any question about who the boss was. I said, “No, it's not just my word, Silverman. Right now, Navarro is telling the law all he told me. The police should be joining us in a minute, maybe less.”

Silverman said to Goss, “He's lying. He came here alone. There aren't any police coming, Bob.”

I heard a siren then. It didn't mean anything; the sound could be from police on their way here, or going in the other direction, but I said, “Bend an ear to that.”

Silverman believed me. But I don't think he'd doubted it. Goss jerked his head around and I said to him, “You're both cooked. Silverman's sure to have a fall guy around somewhere, though. Somebody he can blame everything on. A man with records in his name instead of Silverman's. A goat. A patsy, Goss. And who do you suppose that fall guy might be?”

Goss hesitated, but he was obviously thinking about what I'd said. He knew who the patsy was. Silverman didn't hesitate at all then. He looked at me and said calmly, “Strange as it may seem to a man of your mentality, Scott, Morrison has been behind all this, responsible for all your difficulties, from the beginning. As you have discovered, he is a man with a prison record. He personally broached the idea of utilizing my knowledge of probable freeway routes in order—”

“You lousy bastard!”

That, of course, was Goss-Morrison. He looked at me.

“Okay, Scott. That ties it. This bastard set everything up. Sure he had the dope about me being in the can and then on the lam. I couldn't have stayed out of stir this long without him pulling wires. He planned it all. The reason Belden was on the yacht was so he could look him over, talk to him, make up his mind whether to have him killed or not. On the yacht—hell, it's his yacht, just in my name like half his other deals—there wouldn't be any bugs, nobody listening. It would just look like a party, a big gay time, the farthest thing from anybody planning a murder. That's why everyone brought a babe along—and the party was already planned anyway, so he used it. After you busted in he said to me, ‘We've got to kill them both ...'” He stopped.

Goss had done rather well there for a while, but that “he said to me” phrase must have slipped out. He couldn't blame everything on Silverman that way. He went on, “Everything that happened was what he decided on.”

Not quite, I thought. But close enough. The siren hadn't gotten any louder. In fact, I couldn't hear it any longer. I began to worry about Elaine. And also about me. I noticed the gun's barrel was pointing at an angle toward the floor and brought it up again. It seemed to weigh forty pounds. I was pretty dopey; I hadn't even checked these guys for guns—but the way I felt, it was probably better if I didn't get too close to any of them.

“His ya—” I started over, got it out the second time. “His yacht, huh? I'd guessed it. You'd never have named it the Srinagar. The Sea Slob, maybe. It sounds like Silverman, though, he told me all about...” I let it trail off. I could see two of Goss, and that was twice as bad as just one of Goss.

He went on, “It's in my name, but his money bought it. He named it, all right.” Goss hesitated then. Some of his fervor for telling all he knew was leaving him. He looked at Silverman, who hadn't moved. Silverman's face was like cold stone as he stared fixedly at Goss, his eyes like ice. He didn't say anything, just stared, but frost should have formed on his eyebrows.

Goss seemed to jerk his gaze away with an effort, and went on, “Somewhere he's got a will he made me and Mitchell draw up, leaving practically everything to him if I died. Or got killed. He wasn't letting go of a thing.”

“All your money came from him? I saw about eight hundred thousand in checks that Ralph kept.”

“Most of the dough. He handed over a million or more a year. I declared a lot of it. I've got a wife and three kids, and he's a bachelor. So right there was a fat tax break, and with Mitchell's tricks there was plenty more saved. Besides, that way he stayed under cover on the deals. I still don't know where in hell he got all his dough, but you can bet it's crooked. I know most of it is.”

I looked around. I wanted a chair to sit in, so I wouldn't have to keep using most of my strength just to stand up. But there wasn't a chair near me. A couch was against the right wall of books, but it was a long way off.

The phone rang. It was on a small table at the end of the couch. Silverman started to speak, but I told him to keep quiet, I'd get the phone. I started toward the couch and the phone wobbled around in the air quite a bit. I shook my head hard, bit into my lip and the phone settled down again.

When I flopped onto the couch I could hardly feel it beneath my legs. Both Silverman and Goss were looking intently at me. I felt lousy. I felt dizzy and sick. Nausea climbed into my throat. It took a long time for me to get my hand on the phone, but the dull pain tearing at my shot-up chest cleared some of the fog from my numbed brain.

I picked the phone off the hook and managed to get it to my ear. A quiet respectful voice said, “Hello. Mr. Silverman?”

“Who's this?” I asked him.

“Lieutenant Strong, sir.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is Silverman. I want you to come out and water my lilies.”

“What? What the—”

“This is Shell Scott, lieutenant. And where in hell are you?” Anger sent more feeling into my body, gave me more strength. I didn't feel exactly like a tiger, but for the moment I was a pretty strong kitten. Then fright charged me up even more. “Didn't Elaine Emerson get to the station?”

“Why, yes. I—there's a hysterical woman here, claiming impossible things.”

“They're not impossible, they're true.” I kept my eyes on the men across the room. “Especially about Robert C. Silverman.”

His voice was all shattered, like broken glass. “It ... Shell Scott? I thought you were dead.”

“I'm half dead. If you guys don't get here in a hurry I'll make it the rest of the way.”

That was about all the conversation. I didn't hang up the phone, just dropped it next to me.

Silverman spoke to Goss. “Well, the gentlemen of the police really are on their way now. You shouldn't have lied so fluently about me.” He smiled, and again I was reminded of a smile over filed-down teeth. “You know I won't spend a day in prison. You know, don't you, that I won't be convicted of anything?”

He sounded supremely confident. Then he frowned, as if at some small annoyance, and said to me. “I will admit that I probably won't be back in this house for a while. Shall we have one last glass of brandy?”

As if he were reaching for a crumpet to nibble with tea, he reached toward that mosaic-topped chest, pulled open one of the doors facing him in its side. Goss turned a bit—but away from me. I didn't get the significance of the movement, but I wasn't much worried about him now; his back was to me. Silverman was the boy I had my eye on.

I said, “Silverman.”

He looked up, hands inside the chest.

My gun was held steady on his middle. “You know if you try anything fancy, that's the end of it for you. You haven't a chance. Slow and easy, sit up straight.”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled, looking quite handsome.

“You wouldn't refuse the condemned man one last dram of this fine Armagnac, would you, Mr. Scott?”

He grasped something inside the chest and straightened up.

The shot was sudden and ear-splitting, a nerve-ripping sound in the quiet. Silverman's face seemed to leap from his skull. Bits of bone and flesh splatted against the wall of books. For a moment I thought my gun must have gone off, that I'd unconsciously pulled the trigger.

But Goss took one step backward and then I saw the gun in his hand, another .45 automatic. Silverman's body was still moving, thrown from the chair he'd been in and turning in the air. He fell, arms flailing crazily, rolled onto his back, most of his face gone.

Goss looked toward me.

“Drop it,” I said. “If you even wiggle your ears, I'll kill you.”

He dropped the gun. “I was just trying to save you from getting shot, Scott.” His voice was almost a whine. “He was going for a gun. I had to do it.”

“Sure. You had to.”

“I did. I had to do it. He'd have killed us both.”

“Sure. You saved my life.”

“That's it. You'll tell the cops that. I already spilled plenty. Ill give you all the rest of it, Scott. I can help you plenty.”

“I don't know, Goss. I don't know if I can stand any more of your help. Get over there with Mitchell and that other helpful gentleman.”

He got over there. From where Goss had been standing, he would have clearly seen every movement Silverman made. But from here, on the couch, the mosaic-topped chest blocked my view.

I thought about getting to my feet, thought some more, started up and finally made it. I walked over to the chair where Silverman had been sitting, sank down into it. On my right he lay quietly. Blood drained from his flesh, but slowly. His heart had stopped pumping. And at my feet was a wet stain, slowly spreading. The fumes of brandy rose in the air and filled my nostrils.

The bottle rested almost against one of my shoes. The bottle he had reached for, pulled from the chest. Silverman's brandy. Armagnac, Manoir St. Vivant. Thirty years old.

Then, the sirens. Coming, I thought hazily, to water the lilies. They made it inside the house in less than a year. I don't remember much about it. But then two uniformed men were near me, carrying a wheeled stretcher.

“Easy, Scott,” one of them said. “We'll give you a hand onto this and—”

“Never mind, friend. I made it this far. I guess I can make it to the ambulance.”

A fat lot I knew. I guess I did make it about halfway there. I know I took a couple of steps on grass, but then—that's all I remember.

There were some blurred days, and some not-so-good days with probings and transfusions and strange doings—none of which was by Dr. Fischer, who was in the can with a whole host of other people, including Hip Brandt and Joe Navarro and Geats. And then there were a number of good days. Visits from friends, and police including smiling boulder-chinned Samson, and, praise be, from several juicy tomatoes.

Even after I got out of the hospital it took a while to wrap everything up, make sure Goss was tied up tight, get the names of all the hoodlums still living who'd been in on any part of the numerous financial, and bloody, capers. But it all got done quickly enough; and with Goss talking a little, and Ralph Mitchell talking a lot and explaining all the papers in his blue-manila file, and with a number of other hoodlums singing almost in harmony, it made beautiful music to many ears, especially to mine.

Between the windup of the case and the time when everything was settled for good, there were several days not filled with reports and depositions, arguments and explanation. Several fascinating days, in fact.

Among them were the days when I saw Bunny, and we had lively chats and whatnot. She was doing a single, having had enough of dancing partners for a while—I caught the act a time or two, and it was great. As soon as I could, I made sure that no trouble had come to Arline—as it would have, if Mitchell and the rest hadn't been in the can. But Arline was a gal who could take care of herself, and the last I heard she'd even found a caretaker's job at what she called “the most wondrous new place.” It had a pool, and a gymnasium, and even—you guessed it—a steam room.

And then there was the day ... this day, in fact. The day when everything was wrapped up, over, finished, and life was wonderful. Nobody was shooting at me, it looked as if I'd live for a while longer, and for a while longer anyhow, I was sure living.

We didn't have a yacht. We had a thirty-six-foot cabin cruiser, rented, but still just as much fun as a yacht, anchored in a secluded Southern California spot I know about. It wasn't night, as it had been when all this had started, but a beautiful warm day with caressing sunshine and puffs of clouds in the blue sky. There were other points of similarity, though.

Again it was not only beautiful and balmy, great to be alive, but there was a gorgeous bare fanny in the water there ahead of me. Not Bunny's this time, but even lovelier—Elaine's. In fact, this was twice as good as when it had started—which is the way I like my cases to wind up when possible—because this time there were two bare fannies in the water. And, if it need be explained to any subnormal mentalities, that other bare fanny was mine.

Because I was in the water with Elaine. And only a damned fool jumps into the water with his clothes on. More than once, anyway.

And, I like to think—no matter what you may have heard—that I'm not a damned fool.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1959 by Richard Scott Prather

Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media

ISBN 978-1-4804-9863-1

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty