<code> Chapter One

when I answered the phone in the living room of my three-rooms-and-bath, Eddy, the day man downstairs at the desk of the Spartan Apartment Hotel, said softly:

“Shell, there’s a kind of weird guy down here, says he wants to see you. I think it’s you. You’re the only private eye we got, so you must be the famous and wonderful detective with Jupiter rising and a Mars-Venus — “

“What? Jupiter what? Famous and wonderful?”

“That’s the way this egg talks. He says he’s a sheikh.”

“Huh? A what?” I shook my head. “Wait a minute. Start over — no, don’t start over.”

Normally, in the middle of a hot autumn afternoon, like this one, my responses would have been more brisk and lucid than a “What?” and a “Huh?” divided by mumbles. True, immediately upon arising I might respond to any reasonable query with even less, for I awaken like a man recovering reluctantly from rigor mortis — which, in my business, I see a lot of. But I had thus risen more than eight hours earlier, and was now, this October Thursday at three of the p.m., alert, vigorous, and full of marvelous beans.

Indeed, I had already been out in the poisonous vapors and rattling clangors of Los Angeles; had driven through the decaying corpse of once-glamorous Hollywood; had interviewed a number of people, at least a couple of whom had lied to me exuberantly; had visited my client, who — to my considerable embarrassment — was in the Morris Memorial Hospital, having been severely shot; and had been shot at myself within the hour; among other interesting things.

So I was awake enough, no doubt about that.

“Eddy,” I said, “slowly now. This guy’s a real sheikh? Like … Rudolph Valentine?”

“Who’s he?”

“Forget it. Like — the Arabian Nights? You know, Scheherazade, with the veils and the boobs. Ali Baba and the Forty — “

“Yeah, got it. From there in the middle of the east, that kind of sheikh, yeah. Only he looks more like one of them Forty Crooks.”

“Well, swell,” I said dubiously. “OK, Eddy, send the sheikh up.”

</code>

<code> I had come back here only half an hour ago, for a quick-fried steak sandwich and some quiet cogitation while I watched the tropical fishes frisk about in the two tanks inside my front door. Cogitation, because this case, which I’d been on for only a little more than twenty-four hours now, was surely — at least on the surface — not the kind of case in which I would expect guns to be going off or bullets to be flying, particularly into my client — one of my clients — or very close, too blisteringly close, to me.

Yet it had sure turned out to be that kind of case.

So when Eddy rang me I had been cogitating on what-the-hell, and why? Sure, there was an oil well pumping a trickle instead of flowing a flood, for one thing. There were those two born losers — my lackluster clients — who could plant oaks and grow acorns and might be the death of me yet. I dimly recalled one of them saying something about a sheikh and the Persian Gulf and a palace … something to which perhaps I should have listened more closely. Still another reason for my instant curiosity about a sheikh who spoke of “Jupiter” and a “Mars-Venus” something or other was the still-fresh memory of intriguing but baffling dialogues with Cynara, stargazer or astrologer or perhaps zingy witch, about such incomprehensible-to-me items as transiting Saturn squaring the Moon, and possible fraud and deception indicated by an afflicted Neptune in the seventh house, and Mars square his natal Mercury in Virgo, just for starters.

This one had already become, needless to say, a case unique in the files of Sheldon Scott, Investigations — which is the name lettered on my office door, up a flight in the Hamilton Building on Broadway in downtown L.A. — even before the entrance of a Sheikh Ali Baba, or whoever he turned out to be.

Alongside the door of my apartment there is a button that, when poked, activates softly cling-clonging chimes. But the chimes did not cling-clong. Instead, there was a loud, solid, but fortunately brief, ker-banging upon the wood of my door.

This guy, I thought, before seeing him, is about eight-feet, six-inches tall. Thus I missed him entirely when I opened the door, for I was gazing upward, where he was not.

The man was about five-six or -seven, at most five-eight, slim, standing almost elastically erect, as though poised like a ballet dancer preparing to out-Nijinsky the champ. His head was tilted back slightly, angled a little to one side, as he looked at me — up at me — along the ridge of a sharp, hooked nose with flaring nostrils, looked from eyes that seemed to glow like small black suns in the dark of burning space. His skin might have been smooth tough leather, bronzed and seared by thousands of desert-dry summers and endless hot sighing winds. He was an extraordinarily handsome man, handsome, but with a faint sheen or stamp of cruelty upon his face; or perhaps it was simply boldness, suppressed but simmering violence, hardness, strength. All in all, he was just as impressive as if he had been eight-feet, six-inches tall.

For no good reason, except my thinking about Ali Baba and Scheherazade’s boobs and such splendors, I had been prepared to see someone decked out in robes and a burnoose and/or whatever those things worn on emirs heads are called, bright with jewels and rings and possibly with a curved scimitar glittering at his side.

My caller, though, was dressed in a black, perfectly fitted, business suit, white shirt, narrow and tightly-knotted tie. The uneven points of a folded handkerchief, also black and with the look of fine silk, rose above the breast pocket of his coat. Light rippled on his small, patent leather shoes. Except for the shirt, he was all in black, from the brand-new-looking shoes to the thick, tightly-curling hair close-cropped on his head.

Actually, I was dressed more like an Arabian sunset, or massacre, than was he. I do like a bit of brightness, or at least dash, in a man’s clothes, and today I was wearing basically white trousers, sort of red-and-blue splotched, with globs like little melting orangish stars scattered about upon the underlying firmament; a long-sleeved pink shirt with “Byron”-length collar tabs dangling parallel to the kind of plunging neckline I dote upon, at least upon bosomy wenches; a wide white belt; and white spongy-rubber-soled shoes.

We regarded each other.

We were both, I think, somewhat taken aback. He might even have been taken a bit more aback than I was.

I’m six-feet, two-inches tall and weigh two hundred and five pounds when I’m hungry, and in contrast to his hair which was black and curled tight to his head, mine is whiter than the sands of the Sahara, only about an inch long, and sticks straight up into the air as far as it goes, as though startled, perhaps by the equally white boomerang-shaped brows angled over my eyes, which are gray to break the monotony.

His skin was not a hell of a lot darker than mine, but if this guy’s face appeared to have been exposed to plenty of hot sun and wind, mine must have been left out in the monsoon the night it hailed for an hour, though I would not say it appears to have been struck by lightning. The nose is probably my face’s most interesting irregularity, since the second time it was horribly broken, the good doctor — the one who set it the first time — had died, which was tough on him, but not so great for me, either. Then there’s the fine scar over my right eye, the slightly missing spot atop my left ear where a hood’s bullet clipped it, and — but that’s enough.

The man standing in my doorway said, “You are Mr. Sheldon Scott.” It was a flat statement rather than a question, but the flatness was in his delivery, not the almost metallic but softly resonant voice.

“That’s right, Shell Scott,” I said. “Come in. And you are…”

“I am Sheikh — ” This was followed by a good deal of musical incomprehensibility, marvelous fluting sounds formed from velvet consonants and gleaming vowels, out of which I managed to get “Sheikh” and what very likely, or at least perhaps, was “Faisuli.”

Whatever he’d really said, all of it brushed the ear as those graceful letters over entrances to Mohammedan mosques caress the eye, but I knew right then I would have to guess at much that the Shiekh might say, because some of the things he’d already said were obviously made from the letters they don’t use anymore.

I indicated the oversized chocolate-brown divan aslant on my shaggy gold living-room carpet, and as he strode to it with that dancer’s stride and turned to sink down easily upon it, as though lowering himself on steel springs, I said:

“Sheikh Faisuli?”

“That is close enough.”

“Well, if I missed it by an inch, or even a couple of feet, I’m willing to try — “

“Sheikh Faisuli is … adequate. Now, Mr. Scott, I desire to employ you to perform for me services of a uniquely unusual nature and requiring absolute secrecy, of vast importance to me and my — “

“Hold it a minute, Sheikh. Please. I’d better make it clear at the start that I’m already employed. And I concentrate on one thing, one client, at a time — “

“I shall pay you. Handsomely. I shall give you … a bag of gold.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Wow. A bag of gold. Man, that’s even better than money. Especially these days.”

“You,” said the Sheikh, obviously having picked up some of the vernacular along the way, “better believe it.”

I sighed, shook my head. “Sounds good to me. But I can’t do a thing for you, Sheikh. At least not until I’ve wrapped up the case I’m on. Which may be never.”

“But you do not even know what it is, my … ah, difficulty,” he said. “Surely you will listen, and then decide?”

“I’ll listen. You bet. I’m agog with curiosity. But I’m afraid I’ve already decided.”

There was silence for a while. Sheikh Faisuli scowled, sort of rubbing his lips together.

After a bit I said encouragingly, truly curious, “This difficulty?”

“Ah, yes. I have lost….”

Believe it or not, at that moment I knew what he was going to say before he said it. It was outlandish, an almost ridiculous concept, monumentally unlikely. Still, I knew.

“…my harem,” he said.

“Uh-huh. I knew it.”

“You — knew? Already?”

“Well — “

“Miss Lane assured me that you are a truly remarkable detective — “

“Cynara? So that’s where the Jupiter — “

” — an individual of vast strength and gargantuan appetites, the one investigator who might most assuredly and speedily restore to me my lost … ah, and beloved — “

“Sheikh, please. What I meant was, I just — guessed. I know from nothing about your harem.”

“You are clairvoyant.”

“I haven’t got enough clairvoyance to stick in your ear. I just — well, Sheikh, dancing girls, Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Croo — “

“Ah. So, then. For a moment I apprehended that you must already know where it is, what to it has happened, that you — “

“Nope. Haven’t the faintest idea where it’s at, or how in the world to apprehend it … them? We’re speaking about a real harem, aren’t we? I mean, a harem of girls?”

“To my knowledge, there is no other kind.”

“Yeah. And I guess you’d know. Well, that’s one for you, Sheikh. So it — they — is, or are, lost, huh?”

“Yes. Or … no.”

“Got to be one or the other, right? That’s one for me, huh?”

He did not appear to notice, or at least did not respond to my pleasantry. Instead, he said slowly, “I fear it may not merely be lost. I fear it may have been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” I said.

“Precisely so,” he said.

“But who,” I said wonderingly, “would heist a harem?”

</code>

<code> Chapter Two

“who … ,” I repeated, still wondering, and why?”

“I know not,” said Sheikh Faisuli. “This might perhaps have been deduced from my presence here, and my concern regarding its — their? — whereabouts?”

The last was, this time, a question. Gently, he added, “One more for me, eh?” So he’d noticed.

He went on, “I shall tell you more about this difficulty, yes?”

“You’d better not. I’m screwed up enough as it is — sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“This bag of gold, it is a small bag. About one thousand dollars. I could make it a larger bag.”

“Don’t say bag, huh? It reminds me of Audrey. And it’s not the money, Sheikh. I’d love to look for a harem, believe me. But seriously, I’ve always given each of my clients the best I’ve got, which means doing their job, not half of it plus two or three others at the same time. And I’m not going to change my game now. I don’t think.”

“I could make it a bag — a pouch — for each of the, ah, wives in my harem. That would be six bags.”

“Pouches. Six, huh? So, there are six gals in this harem? Or this segment of your harem? Is it the entire harem?”

“Oh, ha-ha,” he burbled, or chortled, apparently genuinely amused. “This is merely a small group, a modicum of companionship, a traveling portion, we might say, of my harem.”

“A little companionship … ,” I said dully. “Well, that’s half a dozen for you, Sheikh. Ummm…. Six of ‘em. Six….”

“Yes, six. Six magnificent wives. Each one young, graceful, a fragile flower brought sweetly to bloom and blossom in the most sensuous of Allah’s gardens, fully formed, yet slender and willowy as tender grasses blown by the wind o’er the — “

“Sheikh, quit it — “

” — whitest sands of the Lakashami, or even Shakalami, yet sands no more fiercely burning than the bountiful breasts of my Zezik, Visdrailia, Monesha — “

“Quit it, Sheikh — “

” — Shereshim, Yakima, and wild-eyed blossom-lipped Rasazhenlah … burning breasts as full and succulent and plump as those luscious fruits that hang heavy from the boughs of perfumed gardens — “

“Knock it off, Sheikh. Sheikh, I never socked a Sheikh before, see? And I probably should not commence now. So cool it, will you?”

“Cool … yes, cool as the night-brushed thighs … coo … ah. You, sir, have a look of violence about you.”

“It’s more than a look, Sheikh.” I smiled.

He fell silent. But in those black eyes of his I detected, or thought I detected — and, since I am supposed to be a detective, there was a fair chance I really did detect it — a dancing glow of delight, of amusement, merriment, or possibly sadism.

“For a guy who never met me before,” I said, “you’ve pounced pretty quickly upon one of my, oh, ah, weaknesses.”

“I will confess, Mr. Scott. Miss Lane not only informed me that you might most speedily and efficiently erase for me my present difficulty, but spoke briefly of those things that might most assuredly activate your feverish interest. In precisely this way, she did not phrase it.”

“I’ll bet not. Cynara again, huh? There’s something queer here … something fishy.”

“That it would be necessary for me to divulge certain things to you, I hoped not, Mr. Scott. But I perceive some further comment will be necessary. I assure you, sir, the return of, and safety of, my hareem — ” he pronounced it differently, more gutturally, this time — “is of vast importance to me. Perhaps even to my country, Kardizazan, which, as you surely know, is on the shores of the Persian Gulf.”

“I sure didn’t.”

“As my understanding is, you would, to embark upon such an endeavor as this that I have here for you outlined, rejoice, were it not that you feel morally obligated to expend your entire energies upon the endeavor presently and already engaging you. This is so?”

“This is so.”

“Then, if it is possible for me to assure you — to convince you — that my difficulty almost certainly is involved, perhaps entwined closely, with your present endeavor, it is probable that my difficulty you could investigate without sacrifice of dishonor, or … how?”

“Good enough. Yeah, I suppose. If I heard what I think you said.”

“Simply, Mr. Scott, if this is so, you could at the same time forward your current enterprise, with full justice to those who employ you, yet also diligently pursue my vanished hareem, each endeavor bearing closely upon the other. And thus hope not only to recapture my hot-skinned and so-forth hareem but for yourself win six bag-pouches of gold.”

“You do have a way of putting things, Sheikh. But you have left dangling, somewhere in there, a big ‘If.’”

“I shall attempt to untangle it. I know of your present endeavor, even of your clients. Of Mr. Willifer.”

“Gippy?”

“Yes, I believe it is Gippy.”

“Do you know he’s been shot and wounded, that he’s in the hospital now?”

“Shot?” The brows lifted, black eyes widened, burned more brightly. “Shot, with bullets?”

I smiled. “To my knowledge, there’s not much else people get shot and wounded with. Unless maybe it’s penicillin.”

There was that merry dance in his eyes again. But then he scowled. “It is, I perceive, worse than I had feared. Well, sir, of Mrs. Willifer also I know, of — “

“Audrey, too?”

” — the oil wells, and the one little well in particular of Mr. Trappman, of Mr. Morraigne, and other parts also.”

“Did you get all this from Cynara Lane?”

“Only some. Much — most — I knew before.”

“How come you even know Cynara? If you’re really some kind of sheikh, from whatyoucallit, with a portable six-pack hareem, then how the — “

“I assure you with grave confidence, Mr. Scott, I am Sheikh” — flutily flowing sounds — “Faisuli” — This followed by more incomprehensible mellifluousness exactly resembling what I’d heard him ripple off before. “I am indeed the Sultan, the absolute ruler, of Kardizazan. My country is represented at the United Nations.” He gave me the name of the delegate there, saying, “You may contact him, phone him — the number, I will give you — if you like. Call collect. Or ask of your State Department, your Department of Commerce. For that matter, your President. Even, should you require further corroboration in order to be certain I am who I am, consult the topmost people of virtually any large oil company handy. I will wait, if to check now you wish.”

“How can I ask it, when I can’t even hum it, much less pronounce it? Let it go, Sheikh. I’ll buy it all. For now, anyway.”

“It is well.”

Faisuli was a most persuasive man — as, I presume, are most men with bunches of willowy plump-breasted wives and pouches of gold — and finally he asked, “Indeed, sir, even should you ignore all I have said, do I not perceive that you may have reached an impasse? An obstruction to your instant endeavor? Consider: I have found you here at your home, have I not? I do not see you dashing about in a feverish investigative frenzy, gathering many clues and arresting things. I do not, do I?”

“Yeah, you do not. Got to give you that, Sheikh.”

“Were you preparing to embark upon some act of immense virtue, some investigative brilliancy of unresistible immediacy?”

“I was watching the fish.”

“Watching? Watching them what?”

“Just — you know, swim.”

“Incredible. Can you not then, for me, a few hours spare? Two? An hour? Miss Cynara Lane to me indicated you might find all my wives swiftly hey-presto almost of an immediateness. She said that, among her various suspicions of you, she suspected you would be particularly good at finding wives, that with huge energies you would work in such a pursuit, that thus inspired undoubtedly with great zeal there would be to the progress of your investigative endeavors almost a magic. You are the one, she said.”

“Yeah, I’m the one. How in hell would Cynara know from anything? I only met the dizzy babe yesterday.”

“It is of no moment. This she observed from your nativity.”

“What’s Christmas got to do with it?”

“Your nativity — your chart, your natal chart. I have not much to do with Christmases myself.”

“That, again. You mean my bloody horoscope, huh? Those dumb circles with the wiggles and doodles she put in it?”

“Yes, of course. She said many fine things. You are a wonderful investigator, possessed of wild eagerness, and much else, some of which was not all that wonderful.” He scowled, moving his lips. “Alas, I am disappointed in you.”

“Alas, you’re not the first, Sheikh. But you’ve made a pretty good point. I am kind of stuck, temporarily. In fact, I came back to the apartment to think a little — and watch the fish swim, of course — and maybe figure out where to go from here. I’d probably just sit on my sprained butt for an hour, otherwise, so maybe it would make more sense for me to get busy on something instead.”

“You will look, then?” He had brightened considerably. “You will find my hareem?”

“Look, yes — for a little while. Find? Only if I get lucky or come up with some … magic? Yeah, magic. Frankly, Sheikh, the truth is I’d never forgive myself if, in such a singularly fascinating situation, a situation probably never to pass this way again, I didn’t at least take one little poke — peek — you know, poke around a little — look around…. Well, one question, Your Highness. You’re dressed in a business suit, not unlike most other guys I’d see on the L.A. streets. I assume your wives are also dressed like the local natives — that is, unobtrusively?”

“Only I have adopted American garmets. They, the six, are in our country’s dress. Robes and ghazikhs, sandals brightly jeweled, colorful shoup-shoups. Only two have veils, to half-conceal their lovely faces. The veil is no longer required in my country, it is now a matter of choice, an adornment, to wear — or to remove, with sweet provocation, like a disrobing of the plump cheeks and warm lips….”

“There you go again,” I said, cutting him off but still listening to the echoes. “Well, if they’re gotten up that way, it shouldn’t be like looking for a noodle in a haystack. I’m surprised the whole caboodle isn’t on television already.”

“Caboodle? What is this of noodles — “

“It’s not very important. Anyway, I missed it. Maybe you’d better tell me what happened. Did you simply look around and realize something was amiss? I can’t help wondering how in hell anybody could lose a whole harem, clad in ghazikhs and shoup-shoups, even in southern California.”

Before replying, Sheikh Faisuli asked to use my phone, placed a call to his hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, spoke briefly, and hung up. Seated again on the divan he said, “My nubile, and sensuously aromatic, and plump — “

“Sheikh, we did that.”

” — -bosomed circus is still mislaid. Misplaced. Oh, kidnapped. Surely, it is not in evidence, even a clue there is not.”

“Somewhere, Sheikh, there’s got to be at least a little clue — “

“I will inform you how it commenced. This morning from the airport at Azdrak we departed, in two of my personal jets. In the first, I and one other man, my traveling companion. In the second, following behind us of course, as is proper, the — my six wives. We landed at your Los Angeles International Airport shortly before ten of the a.m. There, two limousines awaited us, in readiness as previously arranged.”

“Limousines from where? Whose limousines?”

“They were supplied by the Hotel Casacasbah — ” I knew the place, the Beverly-Hills concept of Arabian-Moroccan exotica — “of Wilshire Boulevard, for it is there I have reserved two floors of the top.”

“Two floors. Two limousines. Two jets. Sheikh, you do know how to live. I had to say it.”

“It is so. Which is much better than not so.”

“Two of everything, wow. No, not everything. Not with six….Sheikh, would you mind my asking how many wives you have? I mean, the grand total, when you add ‘em all up?”

“Forty-seven,” he said, then stopped suddenly, scowled. “Plus the six vanished. Or fifty-three.” He aimed a blank gaze toward the ceiling. “But still at home, yes … forty-seven … now. Forty-seven. Counting only those there. Plus six is fifty-three. Down from fifty-five.”

“It’s enough to confuse anybody,” I said sympathetically. “And now — six more gone. If this keeps up, you’ll be getting down to rock bottom, Sheikh. Of course, what’s rock-bottom to you might be little rock and a lot of — “

“Did you wish to hear of the disaster?”

“Disaster? Oh, yeah, I forgot. I mean, just for a minute there. Sure, go ahead. Last I remember, you’d got the top two floors, right?”

“Indeed. The topmost, and the one beneath. Alas, the one beneath — for my wives — remains empty of them! Ah! Even fair Rasazhenlah, with lips like dew-moist blossoms opening succulently, with eyes of flame — “

“Yeah, and great knees. Sheikh, maybe these babes panicked and flew back to the eunuchs — “

“From the airport, my companion and I proceeded in the limousine, at which time I observed my wives entering the other limousine, which was to follow. At the hotel, in my suites on the top floor, I awaited the arrival of my wives beneath me. I awaited for nothing. They did not arrive.”

“How about that second limo? Did it just vanish with the wives?”

“This — this only — has been investigated, the enquiries having been made by my companion, Harim Babullah.”

“Babullah. I’ll bet he’s a big guy. Big as a — “

“Huge, is Harim.”

” — bull.”

“An elephant, is Harim. Yes, he is a huge one. Thighs like great stone columns, arms bulging like … elephants. Like pregnant elephants.”

“He must bulge something awful.”

“His great chest bulges like the arnkukubuki of the goddess Shakimukkmak, that immense rump described for ten pages in the Holy Nuknik — “

“Say no more. I’ll remember Babullah.”

“Today, prostrate is Harim Babullah; inside he weeps. For, more than my companion he is. His duty it is to prevent upon my wives the encroachment of any molestations or vilenesses.”

“Bet he’s good at it, too. Or … was?”

“It is, you see, the most high function of my traveling companion, Babullah, to prevent what he has today entirely not prevented. Now his great frame shakes like cruzhik jelly, fear fills him, he is most apprehensive. And with plenty reason, believe me.”

“As surely all must agree. Somebody may hit him cruelly atop his bulging head, huh? Something like that?”

“Maybe something more. He is my traveling companion, because when I and my wives are traveling, away from home, it is incumbent upon Harim to prevent harm to my harem.”

“Beautiful. I’ll remember that — or, him. I’ll bet I better remember him. Well, ah…. Where were we? Harim — that’s where. He made enquiries?”

“Of the hotel, of the agency supplying the limousines, which are large black Lincoln Continentals. Several of which I have among my Cadillacs, in the garages of my palace. It was ascertained that only one of the two limousines awaiting in readiness at the airport was of this agency. The true one earlier had been disabled, from sharp instruments piercing its tires and flattening them, and not until half an hour too late for any function of usefulness did this one arrive. By then — this may without effort be deduced — someone with evil intentions, having provided himself with an identical Lincoln Continental limousine, had departed. Gone, it was! This usurper of a limousine had vanished, while containing all my wives!”

“All?”

“Well, all I had with me.”

I shook my head. “That’s really tough luck, Sheikh. Who do you suppose did this to you? Surely you have some ideas?”

“None. Not an idea. This is for you to discover, swiftly, hey-presto.”

“Yeah. Sure. But — something like this had to require planning. Getting the duplicate limo ready, for example. And if some enemy of yours pulled this caper, he had to have someplace picked out ahead of time where he could stash the heist — little detective talk there, Sheikh. Couldn’t just check into the hotel on the corner.” I paused. “I suppose you do have some enemies?”

“Ha-ha,” he chortled. “Do I have some enemies!” Then he scowled darkly. “But not my enemies, or even friends — except one — were aware of my intention to come here, to this country. I have indicated already to you that secrecy is essential in this matter.”

“What matter?”

“It matters plenty to me.”

“I mean, secrecy about what exactly?”

“Later, Mr. Scott. If at all. First, pursue and retrieve my harem. Restore it to me. Then, perhaps, I may tell you the rest of it. But not before.”

We talked a little longer, but the Sheikh had given me the essential info. Nothing of value, at least not so far, had been developed from the car-rental agency, or the staff at the Sheikh’s hotel. The police had not been, and would not be, consulted — because of the “essential secrecy” stressed by Faisuli.

He had earlier not only called the Hotel Casacasbah, but twice used my phone to dial another number, listen silently, and hang up. Now, once more, he dialed, waited, shook his head slowly, and hung up again. Then he called his hotel for the last time, spoke briefly, replaced the phone, and turned to me.

“Changed is nothing. As it was before, the situation remains. So, Mr. Scott, up to you it is. How to proceed do you intend?”

“Some ideas I’ve got. But, please remember, if I don’t turn up something in an hour or two — or if I conclude there’s something else of importance I should be doing for my clients — then that’s it. But I’ll keep you informed.”

“That is satisfactory. But you will try?”

“I’ll take a shot at it. There’s a chance…. Well, let me poke around first.”

We were both almost ready to leave by then, half an hour after 3:00 p.m. Sheikh Faisuli told me he had spoken to individuals at the Hotel Casacasbah, and to Harim Babullah as well — that one, I made sure of — and in connection with anything concerning the Sheikh I could be certain, as he put it, of “carte blanche to the most high degree.”

While he waited, I went into the bedroom, strapped on my gun harness, snub-nosed revolver — my long-owned, comfortably familiar Colt .38 Special — secure in its clamshell holster, got a white linen jacket from the closet, and walked back to the living room.

As I shrugged into the jacket, Sheikh Faisuli, noting the leather straps and protruding gun butt, said, “I see you carry with you a weapon. Is this a necessary thing, Mr. Scott?”

“Not often. But, once in a while it is. And once in a while is plenty.” I walked to the front door, Faisuli accompanying me. “You’ll be at your hotel, I suppose?”

“Most of the time, yes.”

“OK. I’ll get in touch with you there. Sheikh.”

“Oh, one thing. One little thing, sir.”

I had my hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”

He laughed softly. “I became, earlier, it may be, too overmuch lyrical when describing to you the enthusiastic charms, the varied and numerous excitements, of my wives.”

“Yeah, your varied and numerous wives. And, true, quite steamily lyrical. So?”

“Precisely so. Please, Mr. Scott, do not as a result of my too-enthusiasm comments let some, or even any, of those things I said when speaking of my beauteous wives, churn and dash in your head. Or elsewhere. Those things like how soft and bounteous the breasts of my wives, how sweet as succulent blossoms are the lips of my wives — “

“Got it…. Yeah….I begin to see it all clearly now — “

” — or how smooth and warm their pliant ivory thighs — “

“Got it, Sheikh. You don’t have to hit me on the head.”

“This was my — shall we say, joking? — manner of causing you to think of my difficulty with interest, to become involved, tempted toward commitment. But not to folly.” He paused. “This, only. It was not to compel you to fatal … ah, to unwise action. You are a wise man. Surely you comprehend folly fully.”

“Beautiful. And fatal, too, I dig. You bet I’m wise, Sheikh. And I’m getting wiser in a hurry. Pretty quick I may be so brilliant I’ll shine at noon — “

He was smiling again. “Cruel of me it was to … oh, to dangle so many of my wives before you, no?”

“Well, you did have them all hanging there like a bunch of bananas. For a while. But I wouldn’t call you cruel. Not out loud, anyhow. Maybe sly and devious, and horny, but — “

“You do understand my purpose, Mr. Scott? The justification for my manner, my approach to your feverish interest?”

I didn’t say anything. Could have been the wrong thing. Sometimes silence is golden. And I figured this might be a very golden time.

After a moment Sheikh Faisuli said, smiling a white and bloodless smile, “The wise man quickly understands the wisdom of quickly understanding. But, aside from this marvel of my philosophical think, you agree, do you not, that a Sheikh may have his little joke?”

It remained a golden time for me.

We went silently out of my apartment, down the stairs together, into the Spartan’s lobby.

I’d parked my Cadillac convertible at the curb across North Rossmore, the street running in front of the Spartan. Beyond the robin’s-egg blue of my Cad, I could see the greenness of the Wilshire Country Club’s carefully tended grounds.

Sheikh Faisuli paused at the Spartan’s entrance, and just before I started down the cement steps toward the street I said to him, “I’ll call you in an hour or two, one way or another.”

“Very fine,” he said. “And, sincerely, I will not forget your assistance. I thank you, Mr. Scott.”

“For nothing, so far, Sheikh. See you later.”

I trotted down the steps, started across the street.

And that’s when I got shot.

Not shot at, as before. Shot.

Not shot once, but twice.

I didn’t think I was killed — since I didn’t think so, it was therefore reasonably certain that I was not — but I knew I was going down, knew in part from the thud and rip of slugs and in part from my wrenching attempt to move sideways and out and down at the same moment. And I knew I was down when my head snapped back and hit the street’s black asphalt.

I’ve been shot before, damn near killed before. And I didn’t think I was badly hurt, felt I was merely nicked, a victim of steel-jacketed hit-and-run with more insult than potential homicide; but … you never know. In those first moments, you never know.

So the shock bloomed — just shock, and the chill of quick sharp fear and sudden confusion, but without pain — and I felt the dull bruisingness as my skull hit the solid street, and I wondered how it was, how bad it was. But at the same time another part of me thought almost wearily, those already-thought words, once again:

I knew it.

I knew when I got tangled up with those sad-eyed negative-thinking losers, with downcast Audrey and dismal Gippy, very likely from that moment forward something horrible was destined inevitably to happen to me. Maybe this wasn’t it; and a fat lot of good that did me. If it wasn’t, it merely meant the inevitably destined something-horrible still lay ahead.

See? I said to myself, lying there bleeding on North Rossmore. Already you’re thinking like those dingdongs.

Thinking like Gippy….

And Audrey….

Through whom, with whom, it had started.

Yes, Audrey … it had started with Audrey….

</code>

<code> Chapter Three

The first indication I had that there might be an Audrey Willifer anywhere in the whole wide world was not the sight of her, or her voice, but merely a little tap-tap-tapping sound.

On that already warm morning in October, I was leaning back in my swivel chair, large cordovans atop my big and, like me, somewhat battered mahogany desk, thinking with sourness about the last babe, this one a stupe named Cronetta — which should have clued even one not a detective — who’d said to me: “Oh, I would, but I’ve got this terrible headache…” or terrible hangnail, or period, or piles, or broken back, or you-name-it and they’ve-got-it, or can get some in a hurry.

So, at first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard a thing.

Then, again, tap-tap-tap.

Someone was tapping, or breathing heavily, against the glass of my office door. Oddly I thought of Poe, and The Raven.

“Well,” I called — still sourly, I’m sorry to say, but I didn’t know anything about Audrey then — “if you’re a tiny bird, either fly in here or go sit on an egg.”

Nothing at all after that, for what seemed the longest time.

Finally the knob turned, the door moved inward two or three inches, with a little jerk … a pause … then it was suddenly wide open … and in she came.

Not far, a few feet, two steps, quick-quick, and then she stopped, stood stiffly, hands clasped tightly at the pit of her stomach as if she were holding something in — maybe a little sharp pendulum, I thought, still thinking of Poe — and looking at me, or almost but not quite at me. Tall, lean, elbows jutting out from her body, wearing dark shoes, dark skirt and blouse, and old gray button-up-the-front sweater, she seemed like a woman made of angles, and grayness.

Well, I am not Mr. Sweetsie-Pooh by the longest of longshots, and nobody had better even think it, but for a moment there I wanted to get up and walk over to her and put my arms around her and hug her, saying, “Now, now. It’s all right. Now, now.”

I don’t know why I experienced that sudden pull, or push, or gush of sadness or sympathy or whatever it was — and, fortunately, the peculiarly ghastly feeling passed quickly. But I suppose if a man, any man, saw another guy drowning, going down for the proverbial third time, as they say, he’d automatically grab the guy by his hair and yank him out if he could. And this gaunt and tragic homely babe looked, if anyone ever looked, like a woman forever drowning, going down and down and down in despair.

I had just one more flash of empathy, or telepathy, or imbecility, which was when I briefly wondered what had been going on in this one’s mind for that longest time after I had suggested she go sit on an egg.

“Well, hi,” I said cheerfully, or rather with forced and crippled cheerfulness, feeling a dumb, wholly irrational necessity to put this poor drowning creature at ease before she sank out of sight entirely and forever, leaving behind only bubbles. “Come on in, come in, miss — ma’am — or whatever … ah. Everybody brings their troubles here, and I’ll bet you’ve got plen … ty….”

Wrongo. But somehow I couldn’t stop — she was gazing right at me now, clenched fingers or thin-bony double fist still holding that something in or together, probably not a pendulum but an inoperable hernia or detached navel judging by the look of her, moving her mouth as if trying to speak or else make her jaws pop.

“Please sit down,” I said, standing up.

I indicated the leather chair in front of my desk, adding, “I’ll bet you wondered what I was cackling — chirping — yelling out about when I said that about…. I was thinking of a broad — of a raven … of Edgar Allan….” Then I just stood there and, for no sane reason whatever, said, “I’m sorry.”

“Mr. Scott?” It was a very small, soft voice. Particularly from such a tall, angular woman.

I nodded, smiling, encouraged.

Nothing.

I’d thought she was starting to say something, possibly something significant. But after another sticky moment I got it.

“That’s who I am, yes, ma’am,” I said with at least enough heartiness. “That’s me, Shell Scott, private investigator. A good one, too, if I say so myself. And … cheap.”

Wrongo. Did it again.

“That’s nice,” she said in the small voice. “I have … only have — I have thirty dollars. Here with me. Could you, is that enough for you to find my husband? How much do you charge?”

“Well, I charge … it varies.”

I scowled at her. She bugged me.

I charge a hundred dollars a day, minimum, plus expenses, and she had a nerve. I wouldn’t look for a painted turtle lost in the pet store for a lousy thirty bucks. She could at least ask me my fees before coming in here looking like flotsam from the wreck of the Hesperus. “As for finding your husband,” I said sharply, “thirty bucks is plenty, if he’s in the next room … ah. Forget it. Little joke. He’s lost, is he?”

“He went raging out to see Mr. Trappman last night, and didn’t come home at all, not all night. So he must be hurt, or in jail, or maybe dead.”

This did not necessarily follow, it seemed to me, no matter who this Mr. Trappman was, but I kept my silence while she went on. “I hope he didn’t … kill anyone. He was awfully upset when he left. It’s all on account of our oil well. I wish I’d never heard of it. That’s what ruined everything, you know.”

“No,” I said numbly. “I didn’t know. Oil well, eh? And you hope he didn’t kill anyone, eh?”

After a pause, I continued. “Perhaps it would be helpful if you outlined for me the essential factors, or facts, in chronological order. How the problem, whatever it is, commenced, this oil well that ruined everything and all, right up to your husband’s departure last night. And we might begin with your name.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled a little for the first time. “I forgot that, too.”

The “too” bothered me a little, but I listened attentively as she told me her name was Audrey Willifer, and her missing husband’s name was Gippy, and she was awfully worried about him because he’d never stayed out all night before, not ever, and something terrible might have happened or he’d have been back by now, something terrible must have happened, and maybe he was even dead, that was probably it, he was dead, and other things she never got out of Norman Vincent Peale or even Dale Carnegie, and finally she said, “If he wasn’t dead, like I know he must be, he’d have come home last night, because it was our anniversary, our wedding anniversary, our very first. We were married exactly a year ago yesterday.”

Then, silence.

Audrey looked absolutely wretched, which probably was not an unusual circumstance, but also forlorn, hurt, sort of crumpled together by a variety of anguishes. At least she wasn’t wailing and bawling and screeching, which was some comfort to me, since I am absolutely at a loss with wailing babes of any sort.

“That does sound … uh, worth investigating,” I said. “You were married just a year ago, then?”

“Yes. And what’s so awful is, the very same day he asked me to marry him is when he invested all his money in that awful oil well.”

“All his money? Lots?”

“Practically all he had — more than he ever had before in his whole life. I was going to be an Oil Queen, he told me.” She gave me a bleak look. “Oil Queen.”

“Umh-huh. And there wasn’t any oil, huh?”

“Oh, no, the well came in just a month or so later, but then there were all these delays, like Mr. Trappman couldn’t put that pipe in and all, but finally, we — my husband and I — got our first check. Just last week. That’s when my husband started getting so upset, and vowing vengeance and things like that.”

I looked at some dead cigarette butts in my ashtray.

Then I lit another cigarette, took a drag, and started asking questions, listening, asking another question from time to time. It took about half an hour longer, but by then I’d put the whole thing together. I thought.

They’d met, she and Gippy, on Sixth Street near Hope, or really it was almost on Hope, she said, or just the same, almost, they liked to say it was on Hope. They’d bumped into each other, then had a drink in a cocktail lounge just a half-block away on Sixth Street, and only three days later he’d asked her to marry him, and she said yes right away. She didn’t think he was serious, but she said yes even before he told her about his investment in an oil well that was, so Gippy solemnly promised her, “a sure thing,” and they’d have a lot of money, big checks every month. At least, they would after the well came in.

Gippy and two other investors had formed a small syndicate that invested “an awful lot of money” — and she hadn’t been more precise yet — in one of the wells being drilled by an Arnold Trappman, who was “a big oil and gas man.” There was, naturally, some suspense while the well was being drilled, and much rejoicing when it came in — though nobody was sure at first how much production could be expected.

Then, there were the interminable delays. Audrey wasn’t sure about it, but the main thing seemed to be Mr. Trappman’s inability to get legal permission — “a right-of-way” — so he could lay pipe from the well to a large oil company’s own pipeline, or point of purchase. So the well had to be closed off for a while, until the “right-of-way” problem could be worked out.

That, and the other problems, were finally overcome, but it all took nearly a year, and finally checks were mailed to the investors for their portion of income from production — “Percent of the Working Interest, I think they call it,” Audrey said. That first check was the one Audrey told me had arrived last week.

I was curious about that, among many other things, but she had at several points in her somewhat disconnected recital mentioned her husband’s belief that the well had to come in, that it would be a big one, his certainty that it “couldn’t miss.”

So at length I said, “Mrs. Willifer, I’m sure you’re aware that money invested in drilling programs is usually risky capital, often money that otherwise would be lost through taxation. In other words, it’s a very high-risk speculation. But a couple of times you’ve indicated that your husband looked upon this as a sure thing, something that almost couldn’t miss. I’m afraid I don’t understand why he’d have been so confident.”

“Well, you see, Mr. Scott, there’s this friend of my husband — they went to school together — and he’s sort of a genius, I guess. And he has this … oh, this instrument that tells you if there’s oil or gas, or not.”

“Oh? He does, huh?”

I kept my features composed, but mentally I was waggling them wildly, and flinging my arms about. I was pretty sure she was talking about a “doodlebug,” and if so I smelled “con-game,” since the two almost invariably went together like ham and eggs. Only make the eggs rotten, or at least the kind that never hatch.

Some years earlier I’d been involved in a case that brought me into contact with an old wildcatter named Ed Klein, who regaled me with many fascinating stories about the early days, and latter days, of the oil business. Not a few of those tales concerned various other geniuses and their instruments for finding oil — or “doodlebugs,” as they came to be called in the business. There had been, over the years, thousands of them, I guess, not one of which ever worked. Not, at least, for the people who hoped to find oil with them, or make lots of money. Many of those who operated the doodlebugs, however, made lots of money; and some of them were assuredly geniuses of a sort, but not at finding oil.

“This friend of your husband,” I went on, “I suppose his instrument has dials or lights or intricate things on it, and when there’s oil about some needles wiggle, or lights go on, or it buzzes? Right? Maybe it even tells you how far down the oil is in the ground. Right?”

She nodded, appearing excited. “That’s exactly right, Mr. Scott. You’ve seen it? You’ve seen Mr. Morraigne’s instrument yourself?”

“No,” I said sadly. “Afraid not. Morraigne, is that the friend’s name?”

“Yes, Devin Morraigne.” She paused. “If you haven’t seen it, how did you know all about it? I haven’t even seen it myself.”

This was getting painful for me. “Well, let’s skip that for the moment. Anyhow, it was because of Mr. Morraigne, and his instrument, that your husband was sure this well was … a good investment?”

“Well, it wasn’t just that. Not all by itself.”

“There’s more?”

“Gippy, Mr. Willifer, went to see Miss Cynara Lane before he invested a penny of all that money. And he told me she said it was a wonderful time for an investment.”

“Cynara Lane? That has to be a woman. Is she somebody in the oil business?”

“She’s an astrologer.”

“A wha — ?”

“A famous astrologer. She’s just wonderful, Mr. Scott.”

“I’ll bet she’s a darling,” I said.

And, try as I might, this time I could not keep my features composed, so I bent down beneath my desk and opened a drawer and squeezed my teeth together and pulled my lips way out, and shook my head rapidly before coming up into view again.

“Well, Mrs. Willifer,” I said, “I think we have a few clues to work with already.”

It bugged me that, every time I even half-hinted I might be able to help her in some way only private investigators could expect to know about, her homely face brightened, actually got less homely, and her eyes seemed to sparkle, almost.

“Then you think everything will be all ri — ?”

I interrupted. “I just had a funny thought here,” I said. “Maybe it’s nothing. But would this wonderful astrologer happen to know the chap with the doodle … this Mr. Morraigne?”

“Why, yes. Mr. Scott, I don’t understand how you — “

“They know each other, huh?”

“Why, they’re wonderful friends. Have been for years. Almost as good friends as my Gippy and Mr. Morraigne.”

It was right there, I guess, that I decided to take the case and give it my best shot, even if for only thirty bucks. Not that I’m inclined to go charging about, at least not on a white charger, righting the wrongs of the world, but this caper struck me as so obvious, and perhaps even brutal, that I was willing to give it an hour or two, perhaps even a whole afternoon.

Still, the thought of being paid thirty dollars by a client who’d just received a check for production from an oil well struck me as a bit of an incongruity. So I said, “Mrs. Willifer, you mentioned receiving your first royalty check from this well. Might I ask how much it was?”

“Eighty-two dollars,” she said.

“Eighty-two … huh. Doesn’t seem a hell of a lot, does it? How much did Mr. Willifer invest in this thing to begin with? A couple of — “

“Thirty thousand dollars.”

I blinked, several times, then said slowly, “Where in the world did he get thirty thou?”

It wasn’t quite the thing to say, I suppose, but during our conversation Audrey had more than once indicated that her husband hadn’t ever made much money, they were practically broke when the oil-royalty check came, and so on. Thus the amount she’d mentioned shook me somewhat.

“He won some, and he got some insurance money and — but that’s not important now, is it? It’s … gone. And I don’t care about that, anyway,” she said quietly. “All I care about is Gippy.”

“Sure. Well, if you’ll give me a little list, say, of places he could possibly be, people he knows, maybe even bars where he might go for a drink, I’ve a hunch I can run him down without a great deal of trouble.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, that’s wonderful — “

I managed to shut her up without physically abusing her, and for a minute or so she mentioned people and places, addresses I jotted down. Then she said suddenly, “Oh! I forgot the most important part. About when he went raging off to see Mr. Trappman.”

For no reason I could think of, I got a little chill right then, up and down my spine. And my spine got no warmer as she continued.

“You see, when there were all these delays, Gippy told me it shouldn’t be like this, because he knew there was a lot of oil down there, and it was very fishy in Denmark — that’s one of the things he says all the time — “

“I’ll bet he does.”

” — then when we got the check for only eighty-two dollars he yelled about how Mr. Trappman had to be a big crook and all. And — I forgot this, too — just yesterday, a couple of hours before Gippy left, we got this letter from Mr. Trappman offering to buy us out, out of the well, for only five thousand dollars. Gippy yelled, just kept yelling, that Mr. Trappman was trying to rob us.”

She stopped.

I did a little quick mental arithmetic, and managed to get myself screwed up. Five thousand bucks amounted to one-sixth of the Willifers’ original investment; that was easy. But if eighty-two singles represented a month’s income from the well, five G’s would approximately equal their income for a good five years — more, actually, since oil and gas wells decline in production as the years go by — which didn’t strike me as quite like robbery. Something had to be missing here. Besides Mr. Willifer.

However, I didn’t mention this to Audrey, just waited until she spoke again. “But what I wanted to mention is, Gippy was so upset, you know, and he’s always had this big awful gun around the house.”

“Gun?”

“And when he rushed out, so … upset, you know, he took the gun with him.”

After a moment, I said, “He took the gun. And he was all fired up at the time about seeing this Mr. Trappman?”

“Yes, and I’m afraid maybe he — he ki-ki — oh, maybe he killed — oh — “

“Stop it! Hold it, hey just watch it there, lady!”

She looked like she was going to start bawling, and maybe screeching, and that would make this a day of splendor for sure, so as she sort of silently mumbled or munched on her thin lips and twitched delicately, I yelled at her, “No problem, no problem, I’ll fix it!”

Just in time.

Her bony chest rose and fell a bit longer, and she said, “You will? But what if — ?”

I shoved my teeth together and stretched my lips out, right in front of her, then said, “This Gippy, Mr. Willifer, your departed hus — strike that, your temporarily dislocated husband — hasn’t shot anybody in the first place. I’ll give you eight to five he’s not the type, wouldn’t shoot a bug, much less a…. Anyway, it’s the simplest thing in the world to find out if this Trappman’s OK. I’ll just give him a call and ask if he’s been shot lately. See how easy?”

“Oh, would you? I wanted to — but I was afraid.”

“Our fears make cowards of — skip it. What say I call him now? You’ll be all right, won’t you? For the next minute or so?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Please call him.”

I did. Nothing to it.

Looked up the number for Trappman, Arnold, in the phone book, dialed, got a sweet-voiced secretary, and asked if I could speak to Mr. Trappman.

“He isn’t in the office yet, sir. But he phoned about half an hour ago, and I expect him at any time now.”

“Well, if he phoned you, I guess he must be all right.”

“I’m sure he is, sir. Who is this calling?”

“This is Shell Scott. I’m a private investigator. And….”

Audrey had been plucking at her chin, and squeezing her solar plexus, or whatever that thing was she did. She filled me with apprehension.

I said into the mouthpiece, “I imagine he would have mentioned it to you if he’d been, oh, shot at, or anything unusual like that.”

“Shot at? Did somebody shoot at him?” The sweet voice was a bit less sweet on that one.

“No, no. Not so far as I’m aware, at least.”

“He’d have told me about anything like that, I’m sure. Why did you ask such a peculiar question?”

“It’s just a way I have. Well, thank you, miss. I’ll call Mr. Trappman later — “

“Isn’t he there?” This from Audrey. “Isn’t he there? Oh. Oh, he’s dead — I knew it — “

“No, he isn’t, and no, you didn’t,” I said soothingly. “No, ma’am,” I said into the mouthpiece, “it’s just that I’ve got a complicated situation here — “

“Oh, Mr. Trappman’s just coming in now, sir. Would you like to speak to him?”

“Dammit, stop — no, ma’am, that was for, ah, something here. Yes, I’d love to speak to him.”

I heard her saying softly that a Mr. Shell Scott was on the phone, and he said he was a private investigator, and he sounded awfully rough, and kind of — odd and Mr. Trappman knew she was pret-ty good with voices, and — “

Faintly, a man’s deep voice, “Will you shut the hell up, Penelope? I got a lot on my mind. What the hell’s a private eye want with me?”

Then, loud, in my ear, “Arnold Trappman. You’re Mr. Scott? We’re not acquainted, are we?”

“No, sir.”

“My secretary tells me you’re a private detective.”

“That’s right, Mr. Trappman.”

“What do you want with me, Mr. Scott?”

I had been eyeing Audrey warily, and a couple of times I’d make a circle of my thumb and index finger, wagged it at her, smiling broadly. It hadn’t seemed to do her a lot of good.

So I made sure to mention the man’s name another time or two. “Actually, it’s not so much about you, Mr. Trappman,” I said. “I’m checking on Mr. Willifer, Gippy Willifer.”

“Oh, Gippy. He in some kind of trouble?”

“No, sir. But have you had any contact with him, this morning? Or, particularly, last night?”

“No, I haven’t, Mr. Scott. Not for several weeks…. Why particularly last night? Did he want to see me then?”

“Well, I thought he might have. It’s a misunderstanding, I’m sure, Mr. Trappman. Nothing very important, something to do with a well, I think. An oil well.”

“Ah, yes, probably an offer I made the Willifers to buy their interest … but I don’t suppose you’d be interested in that, would you, Mr. Scott?”

“No, sir. Not at the moment, anyhow. Well, I’m just calling around, trying to locate the man. Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Trappman.”

“It’s quite all right.”

We hung up.

“That was Mr. Trappman you were talking to?” Mrs. Willifer asked me, with some intensity.

“It was, indeed. So he’s perfectly all right, not shot or even winged, and he hasn’t seen or heard from Gippy in several weeks. So you can stop worry — “

“Are you sure it was Mr. Trappman?”

I sighed. “Well, no. It might have been the Governor of Michigan, but let’s take a chance.”

“I wonder … where Gippy is?” she said.

“Probably home — speaking of which, what’s your home phone number, Mrs. Willifer?”

She gave it to me. I dialed. Nothing.

“Give him time,” I said. “Or, give me time. I’ll find him.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” She sighed. “If Gippy is all right, I know he’ll want to find out about our oil well. So would I. If it’s really crooked and all, I mean, like Gippy says.” She hesitated. “But I suppose that would cost a lot more money to find out, wouldn’t it?”

“Very likely….”

This babe bugged me. Drowning, always drowning. I could hardly wait to meet Gippy. Audrey Willifer’s mate would have to be a marvelous experience. If, of course, he wasn’t dead, or dismembered, with his arms and legs scattered every which way….

Now I was doing it. Audrey was contagious.

I smiled stiffly. “Mrs. Willifer, first, I confidently expect that I shall find Gippy, and restore him to you, perhaps a little worse for wear, but usable. At the same time, I shall ask around a little — a little — about this bloody well, and it won’t cost you another bean. Would that make you happy?” I asked, knowing it wouldn’t.

“Oh, that would be wonderful, Mr. Scott. Thank you, thank — “

“Don’t thank me. Not yet. It might hex — just don’t. There is only one more thing of some importance. At least to me.”

“There is? What …?”

“My fee. I don’t work for nothing, you see. Not usually. And there was some discussion about thirty bucks?”

“Oh, merciful goodness!” she cried. “I almost forgot that — “

“Too,” I finished for her.

Smiling, God knows why, but smiling happily, she dug into a pocket of that gray sweater and pulled out a gob that might have been money or used green bubble gum, and leaned forward to place it on my desk. I pulled it to me, a wad of bills, mostly singles it appeared. As I pried it open — actually, I was going to count it, everything on the up-and-up — some little bitty white things fell onto my desk. Little white bitties, like grains of something.

“What’s this stuff?” I asked, curious.

“Oh, I — I must’ve got something on it,” she said, not gazing straight at me.

It looked like dandruff. Maybe she’d been carrying the dough in her hair — looked like she usually had a bunch of dough in her hair, with not enough yeast to make it rise good. Actually, the stuff was little white things, not so much like dandruff as…. Oh, merciful goodness, I said to myself. It looks like — can’t be, but it looks like — sugar. Can’t be, though. Nobody keeps money hidden in the sugar bowl. Not anymore. Probably nobody ever did. That’s all a myth, somebody made it up. Not in the goddamned sugar bowl.

Yeah, it was sugar.

I flipped the wad with my thumb, saying, “Well, no need to count it. Looks about right. Guess we have to trust each other, don’t we? Well — “

I paused. I gazed at Audrey Willifer. She looked as if she’d just been pulled from the briny. An instant before her final gurgling gasp. And hadn’t been given her artificial respiration yet. Ah, the poor girl. It had to be at least a bit scratchy, going through life like that.

So, impelled by forces totally beyond control, or reason, I said brightly, “OK. This will get us started in fine shape. And … I’ve got a very good feeling about this somehow, Mrs. Willifer. Your husband, your oil well, your — everything. A very good feeling … OK?”

“You do? You really do?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve been in this business quite a while, and you sort of develop a — a sense, a feeling, about different cases. This one’s going to work out fine, Mrs. Willifer, take my word for it. Really, I think you can stop worrying. Really. OK?”

“Oh, my God!” she cried.

“What?” I said. “What?”

“Oh, God, thank God!”

And the dumb broad was suddenly shrieking and gulping and crying and goddamn near croaking and I wanted to kick her bony butt out of the office, and I said, “Will you shut up, for Crissakes? What the hell came over — what’d I do? Will you please stop that horrible — Ah….”

I got up, moved over to her, banged a hand on her shoulder — very bony shoulder it was, as I had surmised. “Now … ,” I said. “Come on. Now … now.”

After a while she said, sniffling, “Oh, thank you, thank — “

“Don’t thank me, for God’s sake. Don’t you dare — “

“Thank you,” she said.

Then she was out of the door, and gone. Out of my office, but — I knew — not out of my life.

I sat down in my swivel chair. Didn’t sink down onto it. Just went plop. And sat there shaking my head for what seemed the longest time. Knew I couldn’t shake it much, though. Had to get out there, get cracking, find this Gippy dumbdumb. And fast, no pooping around on this job. If I didn’t find the guy, and in a stupendous hurry, the world would come to an end. Well, not the whole world; just Audrey’s piece of it.

The guy was probably, right about now, getting home, I told myself. Sniffing the bean pot on the stove, wondering where his wandering girl was. Had she found someone else? Was she being untrue? Was she stuck in a swamp?

</code>

<code> Physically, he was in the back corner booth of a near-zero “cocktail lounge” — so proclaimed thirteen curved-glass letters of the neon sign, long out of neon — on Sixth Street in downtown L.A. It wasn’t one of the places Audrey had mentioned, none of the addresses I’d jotted down. But I went there because of a couple things she’d said, and a hunch or “feeling” I’d had.

Anyway, it took me less than an hour, and that’s where I found him. On Sixth Street, not far from Hope.

</code>

<code> Chapter Four

It was a shabby little bar, and, if it must be said, Gippy Willifer was a shabby little man.

Of course, he wasn’t at his best when I first saw him. He hadn’t shaved for at least a day, maybe two, and the crumpled dark tie he wore was pulled down from the badly wrinkled, once-white collar, the collar unbuttoned and with one tab curling up toward his bewhiskered chin.

I’d come through the door of the lounge, paused a few seconds to let my eyes adjust to the dimness, felt my nostrils crinkle as the smell of booze and beer and departed bodies brushed them, then walked alongside the bar, looking around. When I spotted him in that back corner booth, it occurred to me for the first time that not once had I asked Audrey what her husband looked like, how tall he was, how much he weighed, hadn’t even — as I would have at almost any other time — asked for a photograph of him. I guess I’d felt somehow that, if I ever saw Gippy, I would know him.

And know him I did.

At first I thought he was asleep, maybe drunk and passed out. But he wasn’t drunk, wasn’t asleep. He was slumped in the booth’s corner, head against the wall, and his eyes were open. Open, but not seeing much. Not here in the bar, anyway.

He was wearing a dark brown suit that might once have been presentable enough before it was chewed by a dragon, or whatever had happened to it. I figured he weighed not more than a hundred and thirty pounds, and was maybe five-six, five-seven, thereabouts. Not as tall as Audrey.

“Mr. Willifer?” I said.

“Yeah.” It was more like, “Yhhh.” He didn’t look at me.

“My name’s Shell Scott. I’m a private investigator. Mind if I sit down and talk to you for a minute or two?”

“Don’t make no difference to me,” he said heavily. “Nothin’ don’t make no difference no more.”

I smiled. My guess was that he was feeling hugely sorry for himself, and probably enjoying it. Who had more troubles than Gippy Willifer, who in the whole heartless world? Nobody, that’s who.

So I said, “Well, maybe this will make some difference, pal. I am the meanest son of a bitch this side of the Rocky Mountains, and if you don’t very speedily call your wife you’ll think that’s what hit you.”

He came very speedily to life. But not as would one shrinking from an avalanche. He straightened, turned his head toward me, and smiled. The son of a bitch looked like a small cheerful imp, whiskers and all, when he smiled like that. Almost good-looking, in fact. No, not almost; when his chops weren’t hanging down just above his collarbone, but pulled the other way in a smile, he was unquestionably a pretty good-looking guy.

“Audie?” he said. “Little Audie? You ain’t tellin’ me she sent you out to find me?”

“She, Audrey — Mrs. Willifer — did.”

“I’ll be gawdamned to hell,” he said. Then his smile faded, brows pulled together. “What do you bet, this is gonna cost me?”

“Relax. Fee’s paid, and the job’s done. Practically.”

“Paid? By Audie? We’re damn-near flat, except for a lousy check a lousy crooked gawdamn…. Never mind. Anyway, I got that hid away in my sock — where’d Audie get any bread from?”

“Not from the bread box. But — I’m curious, really — did you ever see her messing around with the sugar bowl?”

That went past him. At least, he didn’t answer. And I wasn’t interested in an answer, because by then I’d spotted the gun.

Gippy had straightened up, turned more toward me, brown coat hanging open. And I could see the gun’s butt sticking up over the top of his pants.

“Excuse me,” I said, leaned closer and very gingerly pulled the Colt — a little .32 caliber revolver, the big-awful gun Audrey had mentioned — from behind his belt.

I sat down in the booth opposite Gippy, released the cylinder, rolled it out. The gun had been fully loaded, with a cartridge in each of the six chambers, but one of the brass cases was empty.

I dropped the revolver into my coat pocket and said to Gippy, “Your gun’s been fired. Who’d you kill?”

“Nobody.”

“I know you didn’t poop Arnold Trappman. I checked. So who did you shoot?”

“Well, it was a oak, or maybe a eucaryplus, they all look alike to me. If you see one, you’ve seen one — “

“An oak or…. You mean a tree? Are you trying to say you shot a tree?”

“I already said it. And I didn’t kill it, only wounded it.”

“But — a tree? Why would you shoot a tree?”

“I was, at the time, peroccupied with a large number of frustrations, many of them big ones. Which is a habit of mine.” He paused. “How much did Audie tell you?”

“Just about everything, I imagine. And, if you’ve no serious objections, it would help if you’d do the same.”

“Don’t see what good it’ll do. But, OK.”

“First,” I said, “though it’s not my business, really — except it’s part of the job I was hired for — would you mind phoning your wife before her seams split the rest of the way?”

He smiled. “You sure said it different last time. I must of growed on you in the interim. Does this mean you decided not to hit me into the mountains?”

I grinned. “Not immediately.”

He looked me over with some care. “I’m pleased to hear it.”

He scooted over the seat, stood up next to the booth, fumbling in his pockets. Then he said to me, “You got change for a eighty-two-dollar check? It may smell a little.”

“Smell?”

“From my foot. I got it in my — “

“I remember.” I gave him a dime.

The phone was out of sight, back near the rest rooms. Gippy returned in a couple of minutes, looking worried. Which, I assumed, was his normal expression.

He slid into the booth again. “She ain’t there. No answer. She ain’t there. Something terrible — “

“Gippy, I mean Mr. Willifer — “

“Gippy’s fine, call me Gippy.”

“Your wife probably hasn’t had time to get home from my office yet. Call her again, later.”

“Sure. That must be it. Only, what if — ?”

“Gippy, I have one more little job — a mere bagatelle of a job — to do, which in an unconscious moment I promised your wife I would at least peek into. I refer to your somewhat dubious investment. Your oil well.”

“Dubious? Dumb! Crooked! That gawdamn — “

“Tell me about it, if you can, without a coronary occlusion, OK? From the beginning. Could you maybe do that in less than four hours and a half?”

He scowled. “I could do it in four minutes and a half. Less. Was I of a mind to.”

“Well?”

“So….” He shrugged. “…OK.”

It didn’t take him much longer than four and a half minutes, and I had to admit that he told a much more orderly and understandable tale than his wife did. Except that it did not strike me as complete, Gippy having left an item or two out along the way.

So when he finished I led him back over a few spots. He swore when he’d charged out of his house last night, he’d taken the gun on purpose, having come to the firm conclusion that he was going to shoot Arnold Trappman with it. But he had enlarged upon that very little, saying only he “couldn’t even do that right.”

So I said, “Last night, about eight o’clock, you got to Trappman’s house. And soon left without banging away at the man. But is that all? Did you see him? He see you? Talk to him? What?”

“No, nobody saw me, but I looked in a window at his house, and he was just setting at a table in his front room there with some other guy, drinking wine or something. It was in those cute little glasses.”

“Who was this other guy?”

He shrugged. “Nobody I know, but maybe him being there is why I didn’t shoot Trappman. Complicated things some, you can understand.”

“Yeah.”

“I actual aimed the gun at the crook, looked at him over the sights — BANG!”

I jumped.

“That was in my mind, what I was thinking. At least a minute, maybe — bang-bang-bang. But I was kiddin’ myself, had been all along, maybe I wasn’t never going to shoot him. I should of, but….” He appeared to be feeling sorry for himself again.

“So you just left then, walked around?”

“Yeah. That’s when I shot the tree. BANG! Give me some satisfaction. Not much. Then I went to….” He looked around. “Well, I come here, where we’re at. Spent all the cash I had on me, got a little sauced, you know. Knew I couldn’t go home, it was near ten o’clock by then, maybe eleven. Knew Audie’d kill me if I come in then, like that, so late. She’d kill me.” He was silent a moment, then added, “There was kind of a special reason. Why she’d of killed me.”

“Wedding anniversary, wasn’t it?”

He sort of peeled his lips back from his teeth. “Shee … how’d you know that? Don’t tell me. Audie, right? Audie. Shee — “

“Gippy, your wife’s very worried about you. I don’t think she’ll give you a bad time, all she wants — “

“I know, I know. I only said that about her killing me. She wouldn’t hurt nothing. I just … well, last night, after … it being the anniversary and all. I had my head on sideways; anyhow, I couldn’t face her. I’d screwed everything up, even our anniversary — had a reservation for dinner, going to dress lah-di-dah and I’d screwed that up, too. I just screw every gawdamn thing up. If there’s anyone dumber than I am I’d like to see him, just to look at him once. It’s not I want to hurt her none, only nothing works out.”

He slid from the booth, went back to the phone again. When he joined me once more he merely looked at me, shaking his head.

“There’s another thing you skipped over kind of fast, Gippy. I understand you were convinced this well of yours was going to be a big one, some kind of huge gusher maybe, but you never explained why you were so certain. Or, in other words, why you’re now so sure you’ve been screwed.”

“Well, you see, Mr. Scott,” he said seriously, “I conducted investigations of a abstruse scientific nature, which indicated to me clear as ever can be that this was a sure thing if there ever was one. Which is why, like A plus B equals C, it is obvious to anyone conversing with all the facts that there’s now something fishy in Denmark. Or, ‘screwed’ is a good way to put it.”

“By scientific investigations, Gippy, do you refer to your friend Morraigne’s doodlebug, and a half-baked astrologer’s advice to invest your thirty thou?”

He winced, as if a sudden pain had got him, down around the gallbladder, or in that general area. “Audie again, huh? She don’t understand these things. Very few people do understand the intricaticies of these abstruse…. Audie again, huh? Did she maybe tell you I had hammerroids in the summer of sixty-seven? She wasn’t aware of it herself till, like a dumb fool, I told her about it. Purple they was, purple piles. I took a mirror and looked — “

“Gippy, if you’ve got to change the subject, do you have to change it so much?”

He flapped a hand on the table top. “Mr. Scott,” he said wearily, “I don’t expect you to understand. My friend you mention, Dev Morraigne, he has been laughed at more than Copernicus or Galilee, but he’s the one should be laughing out both sides of his mouth. He’s got a electronic instrument — I don’t claim to understand how it does what it does — that indicates if there’s oil, or gas, or even minerals like gold and silver and so on in the earth, and even where it’s at, very close. Now, he checked out the location where our well was planned to be drilled, and I seldom saw him so excited. This was it, he told me, oil and gas both, and plenty of it, and so long as I had to drill me a well, this was the place for it.”

“Gippy, I’m not saying your friend doesn’t believe his dingus works. A long time ago I stopped putting any limits on what people can warp themselves into believing, including absolute certainty that the earth is really flat as a pancake and we live in the maple syrup, but just because Morraigne believes it works — if he does — doesn’t mean it works. I’ve seen a couple doodlebugs myself, and know there’ve been hundreds of others — “

“Mr. Scott, will you for please hell quit calling it a doodlebug? Or even a dingus? It’s a electronic instrument — Dev named it a Magnesonant Holaselector — that shows where there’s oil and the other things I mentioned. Like — well, hell, he just got back from finding a ship that got sunk no telling when in the Persian Gulf, hundreds of years ago. He even lived in a palace over there. So if it can find a sunk ship, it can find oil and gas, and I mean it really does. It did it for me, didn’t it?”

“Not, exactly, the way I — “

“And please don’t never,” he went on somewhat heatedly, “call it a doodlebug in front of Dev Morraigne. He’s a little sensitive, more than a little, about it. Man, he’d get purple piles right in front of you — “

“Gippy — “

“Because he knows, like I know, a doodlebug is a electronic instrument that don’t work.”

I decided to drop the subject. There were other items to cover. Besides, I once spent half an hour talking to a bearded man with bloodshot eyes, trying to convince him that he was not made of glass. He kept saying he was made of glass, because he could see inside himself — for that matter, inside me — and observe veins and arteries, surge and swirl of blood, beautiful vortices of whirling power…. Long later I realized he might have been one of those rare birds who can, clairvoyantly, see such things as he’d described to me. Still, that did not mean he was made of glass.

“What made you so high and mighty anyway?”

“Uh?” Gippy’s words surprised me.

“Nobody, not even Audie, hired you to protect me from my stupidness. Or even talk me out of it, did they? If there’s something crooked happening, swell, put the crooks in jail! Shoot ‘em! But who asked — ?”

“Well, nobody’s trying — ” I said uncomfortably.

“Come on. I’m not really stupid — unless I’m so dumb I am and don’t know it. I barely didn’t drop out from grammar school, but that’s because I got sick, nearly died — did die for a few minutes, they said — and I come back from mingling in them other dead people with a stammer, they must of scared the sh-sh — the crap outa me, but I hardly ever do it anymore. Anyways, I never went much to school after that, not steady. Stopped growing much, too. Sure, I screw everything up, yeah, I sure do. But….”

He paused, rapped his hand on the table again. “The way you talk about my good friend, Dev, and you even called Miss Lane half-baked — what do you know about it?”

“Uh?”

“I never forget a thing some very smart guy whose name I forget wrote — I copied it off a long time back.” He paused, looking at me. “Sure, I skipped some of the words, and I didn’t understand all he wrote about, but I understood enough of it.”

“Gippy, I didn’t mean to — “

“Forget it. I’m used to it. Anyways, he wrote about how dumb it is condemning without any investigating. Something like there’s an idea that holds off every kind of information there is, that there isn’t any argument can be used against it, and that it can’t help but keep a man dumb forever, and the thing that does all that is condemning before investigating.” Gippy scratched his whiskery chin. “Or the way I’d say it, maybe the biggest jerk is the guy who keeps putting down what he don’t know nothing about.”

I decided I could demolish astrology some other time. It was enough that I had proved to Gippy that doodlebugs don’t work. “Mr. Willifer,” I said, “or Gippy, I think we have been too formal up to now. Instead of calling me Mr. Jerk, why don’t you call me Shell?”

He grinned. “Shell? Where’d you get a dingie name like that?”

“Dingie, huh …? Well, it’s from Sheldon. I’m not crazy about dingie — “

“Sheldon? OK, that’s it. If it’s OK with you. Say Mr. — Sheldon, I want to call Audie once more, then would you drive me home? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“No trouble. You don’t have a car?”

“Sure, I got a car. It makes noises no other six-cylinder Whippet ever made since wheels got to be round, but it runs half the time. Only last night when I split from the house, it did not come to me I could get to Trappman’s home quicker, and shoot him that much sooner, if I rode there in my Whippet. So I ran maybe a quarter of a mile, and walked the other four and a half.” He nodded, absently. “I do things like that, no way to deny it. But, like it always does, it made a lot of sense at the time.”

Still nodding, he went to make his phone call. I got up and waited next to the booth until Gippy came back, shaking his head again.

He remained silent, his small features sagging, unhandsome, as we walked together out of the cocktail lounge, onto Sixth Street.

</code>

<code> Chapter Five

The Willifers lived on Maryon Street only about three miles from my apartment, it turned out, and once clear of downtown L.A. traffic and rolling up the Hollywood Freeway in my Cad, with the top down, Gippy talked easily, head resting on the seat cushion behind him, gazing up toward the smog-grayed blue of the sky.

After a while he said, “I guess you figured out it was back there Audie and I had our first drink together, and talk, after meeting. Must’ve, since you say she didn’t tell you to look there. Just three days later — someplace else, not in that dump — I popped the question. I mean, popped is right.”

He reached up and buttoned his shirt, pulled his tie into an approximation of its accustomed place. “I’d already signed the papers on the well, going into it, that same day. And I was ridin’ pretty high, floatin’, thinking about since I’d got all that money so quick maybe my luck was changed for good. I’m sittin’ there lookin’ at Audie, and she’s smilin’, she’s really so sweet, you know, and somebody around there said, ‘You got to marry me, Audie, or I’ll die.’ It couldn’t of been me, I’d have thought. It just popped out.”

He moved his head on the car seat. “One of them irrevocatable blunders. But once it was committed, Audie she naturally expected we’d get hitched together, and it didn’t appear there was much else could be done at that point.”

“You sure did get sandbagged into that one, all right,” I said, looking out my window so Gippy wouldn’t see me smiling.

Then I turned my eyes back to the Freeway ahead and said, “Nobody, not Audrey or you, has explained where you got all that loot, Gippy. Thirty thou, that’s a fat packet.”

“I never saw, almost never heard of, so much money, Sheldon, you want the truth. I guess, like, oh, it went to my head no doubt. The noovoe rich as they say of us. And when I had it, I recalled, like they say, It Takes Money to Make Money. And, Invest in a Piece of America, and all. They say a number of things what can ruin a guy. Well, how it was, I played the horses a little in those days of my single blessingness. This particular day — it was over a year ago, in July. I was sweatin’. And losin’. Both of which I had done before. I come up to the last couple races with six dollars and maybe eighty cents, and I put two bucks on the Big Double. You know what that is, Sheldon?”

“Sure, a real wrongo. You have to pick the first and second horses in not one but two races. Ve-ry long shot, but wild odds if you luck out.”

“Wild — crazy. I hit it, or I wouldn’t be telling you this story. Two bucks, and I get back at the window — I’m shakin’ like a man on one foot in a rolly-coaster — sixteen thousand, two hundred, and eighty-six dollars, and no cents. I was the only one had a ticket on it!”

He sat up straight. “My luck had changed sudden, right?” he said, looking across at me.

“It would seem so.”

“What it seems is not always what it seems. I’m excited, as you can well believe, right?”

“And how.”

“And how’s a good way to describe it? It seemed only natural I should go down and salute one of them last two beautiful animals that won it for me, the win and the place horse, maybe pet them on their noses — this was even before I got the money.”

“Oh? I have a feeling … You did get the money, didn’t you?”

“Sure — they carried me to it.”

“Carried?”

“Else I wouldn’t be walking around now on the oil millions I am temporarily keeping in my sock. To finish it quick, I run down onto the track, despite somebody who attempted preventing me from doing it, and I see my horse — the winner, name of Godolphus, why I don’t know — and I run toward him yelling, ‘Godolphus, you beautiful Godolphus!’ something like that, right up next to him.” He sighed heavily. “As you could maybe guess I never did pet his nose or anything else.”

“He ran away?”

“With my luck? You’ve heard the funny expression, ‘It was like getting kicked by a horse’?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, nobody can speak about it with authority if it never happened to him. Because it isn’t like nothing else that could happen to him. Least of all, is it funny. So the number who — like me — can tell it the way it is or was, is limited to only a handful of cripples or less.”

“This horse — this beautiful animal that won for you — kicked you?”

“You must be readin’ my mind. How else could I speak about it with authority? And even I haven’t got it all clear to this day. The horse, it is a large animal. With ugly big legs, and instead of feet they got huge clumps of horn, or bone, or maybe stumps ending in a boulder, besides which at the racetrack they put on pounds of iron for them to run on. Well, when I come to my senses — “

“He did kick you, then?”

“With everything I been telling you about. Ah, well, you see the picture, and maybe I was lucky at that since the owners of this deranged and inhuman animal didn’t put me in jail but instead settled out of court, by settling on me fifteen thousand dollars, which being rich was a pittance to them, and which I told them helped some but I’d rather they broke all their horse’s legs and had to shoot him.” He frowned. “Besides, they paid the hospital’s bills, for the eight days and a half I was in it.”

“At least you did win, Gippy. And you did get another fifteen thou out of it. Maybe there was some tough luck mixed in, but there was a chunk of good luck, too.”

“True, I’ve dwelled on it often and again, thinking positive. Remember, that’s how I was thinking then — like, even if I’d got my insides broke and shattered beyond repair, outside I was rich in worldy goods. It come to thirty-one thousand, two-hundred and ninety dollars, and eighty cents, counting what I had left after blowing two bucks on the Big Double.”

As he pointed to the off-ramp and I pulled right, leaving the Freeway, Gippy rested his head on the cushion again and said glumly, “I mentioned all them things they say that can ruin you. I should have remembered the one about a fool and his money being soon apart.”

We rode in silence for a minute or so. And I couldn’t help thinking, with a kind of weird and irrational apprehension, that somehow I had wandered today into the cracked-mirror land of doodlebugs, and transiting cuckoos, and guys made of glass.

Wandered only briefly, however, I reminded myself. Just far enough to feel a little trickle from the fringes of hallucination, then it was back into the real world again for me. Deliver Gippy to his year-old bride, maybe hit Arnold Trappman with a quick question or two, spend a few minutes with a couple of the other people involved in the Willifer fiasco. And then, about the first velvet of dusk, grab my apartment phone and invite someone over for fun and games, someone with almost rudely thrusting breasts, deliciously swaying hips, lovely lazy eyes, like Cronetta. No … not Cronetta.

Briefly mentioned by Audrey and Gippy had been someone named Benjamin Riddle and a man called “Easy” Banners, so as I turned into Maryon and drove toward Gippy’s home, I said to him, “Where does this guy Riddle fit in? He an associate of Trappman’s? Or did I get it wrong?”

“You got it wrong. He popped out of nowhere last December. See, like I told you, the well come in last year, tail end of November, so by December one I was mentally conditioning myself to a new standard of living it up, you’ll recall.”

“Yeah,” I smiled. “You bought a copy of Yachting Magazine, I believe.”

“Paying cash. Didn’t even ask the price of it. Like J. P. Morgan said, ‘If you got to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.’ Well, this is when that crook Trappman starts sending us investors letters saying there is going to be a little delay, very little, almost invisible under an electric microscope, due to negotiations for a right-of-way over a guy’s land. It turns out the guy is this Riddle, Ben Riddle, and he says go to hell, nobody is digging up his grass lawns and rosebushes to put pipes in it So this little delay comes to ten months, a little more if you want it counted.”

“Hold it a minute,” I said, “let me get this straight. Here’s your well, all set to start producing oil, and all you need to do is lay pipe from it to — what is it, the pipeline connection of the company that’s going to purchase your production?”

“Well, it ain’t that simple. I only wish it was. According to one of Trappman’s letters to me — to all us investors — his own pipeline company’s going to put in what he calls a flow line, from the wellhead to a tank battery, and then they got to muck around and get the water out and separate the gas from the oil — there’s a little bit of gas, too, about what you’d get from a pound of beans, I’d persume — and…. Jesus, you want the truth, I don’t know what the crud they do. It’s like mating a hippopomas with a giraffe, just ain’t no easy way to do it. But they got to get this pipe, or flow line, or garden hose, whatever the hell, in the ground, OK?”

“Gippy, I’m not arguing, it’s OK with me — “

“And the only place the pipe can go is across this crook’s land, OK?”

“Sure. Swell.”

“And this crook says, no way, that pipe going in their would hurt his rosebushes’ feelings, so forget it, and other things which adds up to N-O. The selling, that’s all agreed on, it’s to a big company and they’re going to pay us three bucks and a half a barrel, since it’s high-class crude according to Trappman. Low sulphur, and high API something, some kind of gravity. Anyway, it’s a good price. Just figure it out, Sheldon, say two thousand barrels a day at — “

“Let’s skip the J. P. Morgan stuff, huh?”

“Well, Dev said we ought to hit at least five hundred barrels a day and maybe even — “

“This guy, Riddle, he hadn’t agreed in advance to let Trappman lay pipe over his land? Wasn’t there a signed contract, a legally binding agreement of some kind?”

“Trappman told us he had a oral agreement with Riddle but he backed out of it when it screwed us most.”

“That’s odd — that there was nothing signed, I mean. What kind of man is Riddle?”

“I don’t know. Never met him — except in those wonderful letters from Trappman, who maybe even made him up just so he could screw me. Screw us. All us investors.”

“All” being a grand total of three, I knew, in this particular well, though Gippy made it sound like half the population of Los Angeles County. “Well, not having a binding agreement was stupid, maybe, but not necessarily crooked. I’ll check it,” I added quickly, as Gippy’s mouth snapped open. “Anyway, your well’s on the line now, so obviously Trappman managed to work things out with Riddle.”

“In more than ten months. So if you figure on only a measly thousand barrels a — “

“And Easy Banners is the guy who set up the deal right? Signed up the investors, or — how was it?”

“Not so good. But Easy — that’s from his initials, a ‘E’ and a ‘Z’ — he’s put together several other syndicates, drilling syndicates as he calls it, for Trappman and even other oil men. But mostly Trappman. Asks around and finds out who’s interested, tells you how much has to be put in for a share of the well, explains about the leaseholder’s piece off of the top, who gets what overrides, and like that. An override is some off the top, usually too much, in case you — “

“Yeah, I know, Gippy. Friend of mine’s an old wildcatter, still has interests in half a hundred wells or so, I guess.”

“Half a … he must be rich.”

“He is.”

“Swell, you know all about the oil business, then, huh?”

“Not all, not even much. But my friend’s told me enough so I understand how syndicates, like the one you got into, are set up, the way production’s divided, and so forth. He set up plenty of groups like yours himself when he wanted a shot at a new lease but didn’t have the cash to handle it alone. Actually, it’s a pretty good way to go, if a man’s got cash to spare. Mainly because of the tax break, though.”

“Sure. That’s what I was thinkin’ of when I cautiously invested my life’s winnings. Crooks! It’s the gawdamn croo — “

I braked to a stop at the curb. “You should live along here somewhere, if I remember your directions.”

Gippy glanced to his right, toward a small, neat, white house with a patch of green lawn in front of it, the lawn bisected by a narrow path of flat stones.

“Yeah, we’re here already,” he said. “That’s it, the one with a derrick hid in the rosebushes.”

And, suddenly, he was obviously nervous. He started squeezing his hands together, lacing and unlacing the fingers before his midsection, much as Audrey had done earlier in my office.

After a few seconds of that I said, “Something the matter?”

“Not exactly. It just come to me, I … I don’t want her to see me like this. You know. I’m all, well, not my usual magnetical…. Maybe you could ring the bell and tell her to wait in the closet or somewheres, while I shave and that…. This way, she might be underjoyed at my sudden — “

“Oh, sure. Relax, I’ll tell her you merely want to clean up a bit, or she’ll be dead certain you’re in the car gasping your last — be right back.”

I got out of the Cad, trotted over the flat stones, found the bell, and rang it. Rang it again. Again. Then back to the car, in next to Gippy.

“Ohmigawd — ” he said.

“She is still playing bridge with the girls, or feeding squirrels in the park, or — very likely — looking for you in drawers at the morgue.” I shook my head. I am not usually so sharp-tongued, not with nice people, but there was something about both of the nice Willifers that gave me the willies or brought out a little nastiness somewhere in me that was generally not so visible, or audible.

“I kn-knew it,” he moaned tragically. “Never should of left her last night. Of all nights. Well, she’s probably good and dead by now, all right. Or she’s run off with my worldy goods. If not, she’ll merely kill me. If I’m lucky, I never should of — “

“Gippy, get your butt out of the car. I refuse to listen to any more of this rambling imbecility. Maybe I’ll give you a call later, just to say I told you so.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate…. Hey, maybe you could come by here later? Just in case?”

“In case of what? No — don’t tell me.”

“Well, just … look, if Audie’s here, then both of us’ll be here, and — you could speak up for me, you know. Explain…. I … well, there must be something you could explain.” He shook his head. “She’ll kill me. I’ll bet she hits me with the ironing board. Or the ironing iron.”

“Gippy — “

“No, really, Mr. — Sheldon. I’d like it better if you could come around, later. I got a feeling, something….”

I sighed. “OK, see you later. Now get in the house, will you? You can be all shaved by the time Mrs. Willifer comes in with a bouquet for you. Bouquet of lilies — “

“Maybe she got sick of me screwing everything up, and run off with my fourteen dollars, in that old Whippet…. Hey!”

“Hey, what?”

“If she run off in the Whippet — which she must of, as it ain’t here, so she did or it’s been stole — she’s either got run over or she’s sitlin’ in it crying. She cries when it stops on her sudden. And that’s all the time. She don’t know how to pump on the gas pedal just so, or it won’t start up again. Maybe that’s what … no. No.”

“Yes. Yes. Goodbye. See you — both — later.”

“What time?”

I glanced at my watch, figured how long it would take me to drive where I was going, and then talk for a while, estimated the hour of velvet dusk’s arrival. “Around six p.m. OK?”

“Sure, swell. I’ll have a beer cold if you want it.”

“It will probably, by then, save my life.”

“Don’t say that, Sheldon. Don’t — “

“You’re telling me …?”

He smiled, for a moment looking almost handsome again, and got out of the car.

“You worry too much,” he said in parting.

</code>

<code> Chapter Six

Arnold Trappman rose from behind his big stained-walnut desk when I walked into his office, shook my hand. “Mr. Scott. My secretary did tell you I can’t spare more than ten minutes, didn’t she?”

“Yes, sir. Might not take that long.”

“Sit down.” He nodded toward a well-worn but comfortable looking upholstered chair, saying, as I sat down, “I suppose this has something to do with Mr. Willifer?”

“I just want to clear up a few questions about this oil well Mr. Willifer invested in last year. You drilled the thing, I understand?”

“Yes, that was the Number One well on the Roman lease. My company owns three rigs, and our fees for drilling constitute nearly fifty percent of our gross business.” He paused, almost smiling, scratching his chin with two fingers of his left hand.

He was seated once more, but Trappman was not one of these guys who are dwarfed by their desks, and his walnut job was a big one. But, then, so was he — almost too big, which means he was about an inch and a half taller than I am, or close to six-four, and call it a solid two-forty on the bathroom scales.

I’d been impressed by his appearance as soon as I came into the office. About fifty-five, with a lined, but firm-fleshed face, very bright blue eyes and a direct glance, broad in the shoulders, a little thick in the waist. He was wearing a splendidly tailored gray suit made from some kind of softly woven gray cloth — beautiful complement to his full head of almost straight gray hair, combed straight back and full over the ears — and a white dress shirt open at the neck, without a tie.

He was tanned, looked very fit, and his voice was strong, strong and deep, like rumbles coming up from the bottom of a well. “You ask the questions,” he said, “and I’ll answer as concisely as I can.”

“Right. First thing, Mr. Willifer seems quite upset about the delay in getting this well on the line. Something about a man named Riddle?”

“That son of a bitch.” Trappman’s face seemed visibly to darken, gray-flecked brown eyes lowering like small thunderheads over the sky-blue eyes. “Ben Riddle, one more smart-ass finagler who thought he could hold me up, and discovered I get a little rambunctious under the gun.”

“I don’t imagine there are many men who’ve thought that,” I said, looking at the bulk of him.

He stared at me. “Plenty of them, Mr. Scott. The oil business isn’t white French cuffs, and biscuits with your tea, never was. Besides, wherever there’s a lot of money involved, and oil is big money, there you’ll find the anglers and operators, the hot-ass lawyers, contract muggers, marauders, pirates — but we don’t have time for all that.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t have a contract, but only an oral agreement with Mr. Riddle — if it’s true.”

“The right-of-way mess? It’s true. I had a verbal agreement with Riddle, no reason to think he’d turn son of a bitch on me, thought he had more sense. When he refused to sign the papers, tried to hold me up, the bloody well was already completed, we’d reached oil — not much, but better than nothing. I had to shut the bastard down, and then … endeavor to help Riddle see the light.”

“Tried to hold you up?”

“I had already paid him what the right-of-way was worth, maybe five percent more than that.” The way he said it, I could almost see little wheels turning in his head as he weighed potential profit against possible loss, made a point here, shaved a half-percent there. “We’d agreed — verbally, true — and I gave him my check, went ahead. It was a mistake, but how the hell …?”

He stopped, put both his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Mr. Scott, I don’t mean this to sound as if I consider Mr. Willifer’s investment — or that of anyone else — a small problem, or a picayune amount of money, something I can’t be bothered with. But let’s be realistic. I’ve got dozens of oil and gas wells in various stages of production, and for seventy-five percent of those wells royalty checks go out each month to participants in those ventures, or to, for each well, from two to ten or more individuals owning parts of the Working Interest, not including overriding royalties to landowners and leaseholders, and others. This Roman Number One well is simply part of a somewhat larger whole.”

He leaned back in his chair again. “I’m not saying I didn’t make a mistake. I made a hell of a mistake. But I had assurances, that I accepted, believed, from Riddle before we moved in on the site, and for damn sure I checked with him again before we started drilling. In fact, the day we spudded the well I told him I’d been rushed, asked if he’d have the papers drawn up himself and sent over to my office, signed by him and ready for my signature. Sure, he said. Glad to. I’d already paid the son of a — he never got around to preparing those agreements. Mr. Scott, when a man nudges me once it’s no sweat, but the second time I get ready to gouge him.”

“What was he after?”

“Five thousand dollars. A miserable five. Hell, he knew the well was a producer, but he didn’t know what a puny bastard we’d come up with.”

“He must have agreed, finally, because obviously you got your pipeline laid. Did you pay the five G’s?”

He looked surprised. “I did not,” he said, as though affronted. And the way he said it, I wondered how I could even have thought of the question.

“It took some time,” Trappman went on, “but Ben Riddle was involved in other enterprises, owned mortgaged land, had borrowed quite heavily — was beholden, you might say. When he started feeling the pinch, one day he walked into my office, right here, and handed me the signed agreements. I signed one copy, gave it to him, and he went out. Neither of us even said hello, but both of us knew who’d lost his balls.”

After a moment, I said quietly, “A fine and noble victory for you, Mr. Trappman. But a bit of a pinch for the investors, too, wasn’t it? Waiting more than ten months for Riddle to see the light you’d led him to? So they could see their first little checks?”

He looked at me, silent, unmoving, like a big rock.

After a while, I said, not so quietly, “Did you all of a sudden go deaf?”

“You want me to bust your ass and throw you the hell out of here, Scott?”

I smiled. “Whatever turns you on, Mr. Trappman. Of course, it may not be all biscuits and tea. I’ve got at least twenty years on you, and more balls than I know what to do with.”

He glared at me, almost started up out of his chair, but then relaxed and slowly grinned. “Maybe you do,” he said.

He took a deep breath, let it out. “I don’t owe you, or anybody else, any goddamn explanations. But I’ll say this much, I drilled through rock and laid pipe in mud and busted my back working off the cathead for a solid month more than thirty years ago to get my first dry hole and go broke, not for the last time. Since then I’ve drilled hundreds more, some the kind your Gippy Willifer dreams about, most of them the kind Gippys always get. After the first dozen years, I did most of that drilling with other people’s money, let investors in for a piece of the action. I learned in a hurry that most of these big-time operators with their profit from selling a thousand shares of Amalgamated Grommets don’t know their ass from a bunion when it comes to oil — but every goddamn one of them knows more about my business than I do, and will not hesitate to tell me so. Now I do it my way — it’s written into every contract or agreement I have anything to do with — I’m the boss.”

“I kind of guessed — “

“I spud when I’m ready, stop drilling when I think it’s time to stop, and if I say we acidize with twenty-eight percent acid instead of fifteen, then, baby, it’s going to be twenty-eight.” He paused, thundercloud brows still lowered over the blue eyes. “That’s one answer to your question about that miserable five. Another is, nobody’s yet given me a good reason why I should use my own money when I don’t have to. OK?”

“I appreciate the explanation. If that’s what it was. Moving on, could you tell me where to find Mr. Riddle?”

He licked his lips, chewed on the bottom one. “I can give you his home address.”

“Fine. I’d like to say hello to Easy Banners, too. He set up this deal with Gippy and a couple of other investors, didn’t he?”

Trappman looked at the corner of his desk, scowling, shook his head. Pulled a drawer open, lifted out a stack of papers. “Yes. Easy made the arrangements, took care of the paperwork, saw that the investors’ cash was placed in escrow until proper expenditures were made of it, that sort of thing — Easy has worked with me, and others, in similar fashion for several years.”

Still holding the papers above his desk top in a large brown hand, he looked at me for a long moment. “I wasn’t going to ask this, but now I can’t resist it. Did Mr. Willifer actually hire you, a private detective, to find out if he’s really right, has been right all along, and down there at the six-thousand-foot level of his Roman Number One, there is more high API gravity crude than there are snows in Siberia if only the oil crooks hadn’t perforated pipe in the wrong section?”

Finished with his somewhat oratorical question, he placed the papers before him. I had to smile at this guy; he was raw, and rough, but there was a certain flavor to him that I almost admired. “I wouldn’t know about perforating pipe,” I said, “but I assume you’ve met Mr. Willifer, and I thus understand your question. The answer is no. Actually, his wife hired me, but to find her husband, not oil. Nothing to it, really, he’s not the first spouse who has stayed out all night, but Audrey, well, she’s the kind of gal who knows every silver lining has a tarnished cloud, so she probably feared hubby was perpetrating untellable depravities with” — I cast about for the right word, whatever Audrey might most have feared would ruin her — “a harem. Or something even worse, if there could be such a thing.”

Trappman nodded. “Yes, I’ve met her, met them both. It was dismaying. You mentioned something on the phone earlier….” He squinted. “Willifer wanted to see me, was that it? Last night?”

“He changed his mind.”

“I wondered. About eight p.m. someone rang the bell at my home, but when I went to the door nobody was there. Perhaps it was Mrs. Willifer’s depraved hubby.”

“No, the time’s about right, but he told me he didn’t ring or anything, just went back home — or, rather, to a bar. Where the wandering spouse got mildly soused. Not exactly the most important case of my career.”

He smiled, but not as if he thought that very amusing.

I went on, “The impression I get is that what finally shook Mr. Willifer up totally, the last straw so to speak — after nearly a year’s delay in getting the Roman well on the line, and then receipt of his first, and extremely meager, monthly royalty check — was your offer to buy him out for a mere sixteen cents on the dollar. I confess, I find this sequence somewhat odd, myself, including your eagerness to buy up the outstanding interest in the Roman well.”

“You wouldn’t, if you had the least goddamned idea of what you’re talking about. That first check wasn’t a monthly royalty, but Willifer’s slice for not quite ten days’ production.”

“Oh? Well, I…. He didn’t mention that.”

“He probably doesn’t know it. It merely says so very plainly on the check itself, but I assume he read only the numbers. Look, I personally advised against completing the Roman at all, because of its minuscule production, and did so only because that’s what the investors desired. At least, Gippy Willifer desired, with such cretinous fervor that the little son of a bitch threatened to sue me if I did not complete it.”

Trappman shook his head, light moving on his straight gray hair. “That shrunken bastard is out of his mind. I don’t think he even knew that half the cost of completion was his money. Threatened to sue me. Probably just crap. But he is out of his mind. Well, to continue exploring your abysmal ignorance — “

“Mr. Trappman, maybe you’d better start watching your mouth while you still have it on you,” I said sweetly.

He wasn’t listening. “The sixteen cents on the dollar you mentioned,” he continued, “is not ‘mere’ in this case, and your word ‘eagerness’ is also in error. The ‘eagerness’ was that of another investor in the Roman well, Mr. Donald Corey, who made the suggestion to me, almost pleaded in fact, that I purchase his seven thirty-seconds of the working interest for twenty-five hundred dollars, which is exactly one-sixth of the amount he invested. He’d suffered business reverses, needed money, and much preferred cash now to waiting nearly two years to receive the same amount in small monthly checks.” He paused. “Does this make sense to you?”

“Some. You made the same offer, then, to Mr. Willifer and the one remaining investor?”

“That’s right. After being approached by Mr. Corey. Obviously the Roman well is a very marginal producer, may stop producing entirely within a few years, perhaps even months — I’m not usually this generous.”

“Generous? Sixteen cents on the dollar?”

“How much he invested is not the consideration, but what that investment could produce for him. I’m not sure just how much the Willifers’ first royalty check amounted to — “

“Around eighty bucks.”

“All right, call it two-fifty a month, or three thousand a year. He owns a seven-sixteenths share of the working interest in the Roman well, for which I offered him five thousand dollars. He can keep his interest in the well and receive that amount in twenty months to two years — or more — or he can accept my offer and get that amount immediately. I don’t really give a damn what he does. I can afford to wait a few years for return on my investment, even though it would mean tying up capital I might get a better return from — after all, we know we’ve got production, even though it’s miserably small — but I’m not sure Mr. Willifer can wait.”

I nodded. “Makes pretty good sense. Incidentally, my impression was that Mr. Willifer owned half the well, or at least half the working interest, for his thirty thousand investment. But if he’s got seven-sixteenths….”

Trappman looked — irritated. He scowled. He shook his head, scowled some more, then said softly, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “If we get a dry hole, everybody dies. But we set up splits of production in the event there is production before we make our hole in the ground, right? Start with one hundred percent. The leaseholder gets an overriding royalty, a percent of gross income from production — in this case, Roman has fifteen percent. That is not an unusually large leaseholder’s override, if you wondered. Easy Banners gets a one-fortieth, or two and one-half percent, override. Total off the top, seventeen and a half. We’ll ignore costs of operating the well, which are substantial for a marginal producer like the Roman, to keep this simple. Remaining for investors and others is one hundred percent of the working interest. One-eighth of the working interest is mine, for managing the well, drilling, getting crews to the site, perforating casing, acidizing, arranging for sale — simply, everything I’ve learned during thirty years in the business. That leaves seven-eighths of the working interest, right?”

“Sure.”

“Half of which is Mr. Willifer’s, for his thirty thousand, with one quarter allotted to each of the other two investors for their fifteen thousand each. Total, one hundred percent. Are you now content?”

“Who’s ever content? So, ignoring those operating costs you mentioned, Gippy doesn’t actually have half of an oil well, that is, of its total production, but seven-sixteenths of the working interest, which is itself eighty-two and a half percent of gross income from production?”

“Brilliant.” Trappman paused, still scowling, then went on. “I’ll say one more thing about Gippy Willifer, since he’s your client and the reason you’re here. I did not meet him until after we’d brought in the Roman well. He’d written me some whining letters before then, but we hadn’t met. If we had, I assure you, Mr. Scott, I would not have allowed that ridiculous little man to invest even a dime in an operation of mine, much less thirty thousand dollars.”

His language irritated me a little. Not that it should have, it just did. So I said flatly, “He’s little, all right, but I’ll pass on ridiculous. Besides, seems to me this Roman flop wasn’t exactly your operation. Not with sixty thousand clams of other people’s money paying for it.”

“I think your ten minutes is up, Scott.”

I looked at my watch. “The hell it is. Of course, if eight and a half is ten to you, you’re right.”

He gave his head a small quick shake, annoyance evident in the movement. “I didn’t know we had to time this interview with a goddamn seventeen-jewel stopwatch. You’ve got a minute and a half.” As he spoke, he took his watch off and placed it on the desk. “But since you’re getting goddamn ridiculous yourself, Scott, when that’s up, you’re out.”

One way or another, I presumed. “Can I deduct ten seconds for all this blab?”

His expression indicated that I could not. “Actually, I was all through,” I said, smiling cheerfully at him. “But, since we’ve got some time to kill, do you know much about a guy named Devin Morraigne?”

“I’ve known at least a hundred and twelve deranged Da Vinci’s like Morraigne. Did Mr. Willifer mention the marvelous instrument this new Mr. Marvelous invented, or found at the city dump, and employs in mysterious ways?”

Half the time I wanted to sock this character, the other half I liked the son of a bitch. “I did hear something about the doodlebug,” I said.

He nodded, curling his lips downward in what I assumed was a grimace of approval. “Right on. You know its name, so you must know what the guy’s got.”

“Yeah. Another doodlebug.”

“And that says it all, does it not?” He spread his hands out, lifting and then dropping his wide shoulders. “This odd-sounding noun being one more name for the perpetual-motion machine, and the pot of crap at rainbow’s end, and the ghost of Christmas past, all rolled into one.”

“Morraigne did doodle around at the Roman site, then?

“Most industriously, dozens of times. And, on the Roman site, with great success. Did not his instrument almost go out of its tubes so vast were the quantities of hydrocarbons indicated only six thousand feet below, hardly farther than a large dog can pee? Well, because of that asshole I drilled — against my better judgment, merely to tune out some of the static, and of course because Willifer was helping pay for it — an extra one-fifty to six thousand, and there we struck a lot of dog pee and a little oil.”

“I do enjoy the way you put things, but I sure wish you’d keep the answers shorter.”

He glared at me, then smiled. Glared some more.

“You were going to give me a couple of addresses?” I said.

He glanced at the papers before him, scribbled on a notepad, ripped off the sheet, and handed it to me.

Then he picked up his watch, examined it, put it back on the desk, and stood up, smiling wolfishly.

“Thanks for the time, Mr. Trappman,” I said, leaving. “Almost used it all up, didn’t we?”

</code>

<code> Chapter Seven

starguide, it said, on a colorful plaque to the right of the door.

The plaque was about two feet wide and a foot high, done in bright mosaic, with the centered word, STARGUIDE, in bright chips of blue tile surrounded by odd figures or symbols, like doodles, or perhaps even planetary doodlebugs.

For this was where Cynara Lane, astrologer, reader of moonbeams and analyzer of sunspots, friend of dependable old Devin Morraigne and “advisor” to my client, Gippy Willifer, plied her trade, or part of it, dishing out cosmic wisecracks or gimcracks to the gullible, or whatever it was she did aside from publishing a magazine, also called Starguide.

But maybe, I thought, I shouldn’t put the old tomato down — for a moment there I’d remembered Gippy paraphrasing Spenser to me — until I’d heard her side of any argument we got into. All I really knew about astrology was that it had something to do with movements of planets in the solar system, and either the real or imagined effect of those movements and angles or rays or exudations or halitosis upon men puttering about down below.

Then, too, just because I thought of her as an “old tomato,” who probably slept under the full moon, with her eyes open, that didn’t mean she was necessarily any of those things. Nor did it necessarily mean she was not something worse. In fairness, however, I cautioned myself to withhold final judgment, and not put the dizzy old broad down till after we’d met.

She was my last stop on this wonderful thirty-buck misguided tour of mine, anyway. After leaving Trappman’s office, I had attempted, unsuccessfully, to contact Easy Banners and Ben Riddle From Gippy I’d learned that Devin Morraigne was out of town but might be home tomorrow; from what Trappman had written on his notepad for me, and checking the phone book, I had both an office and residence phone for Ennis Z. Banners, and a single number, a home phone — listed at the address supplied me by Trappman — for Riddle. All I got out of the three calls was a growing sense of frustration.

Frustration even though I could justifiably claim I had earned my fee, for Gippy was now reunited — or, certainly, almost reunited — with his fearful spouse, and I had at least tried to contact each of the major characters in this adventure with the exception of Miss Lane. Who was next and, presumably, last.

There were two numbers following her name in the phone book, one at what was apparently her home out in Burbank, the other being the offices of Starguide, which almost had to have something to do with guidance from the stars, or road maps to the homes of famous movie and TV people.

The door closed behind me with a soft shoosh as I walked into the air-conditioned cool of a small room that could have been the office of a lawyer or doctor or tax consultant. It was empty, so I proceeded along a short hallway to an intersecting corridor. From my left came sounds of some kind of machinery working, thumping and humming. To my right, the corridor extended for perhaps fifty feet, and I started walking up it, noting that it was lined by more rooms or offices on both sides, some of the doors open, some closed.

I’d taken only a few steps when a door on my left opened and I saw two things of exceeding interest to me — three, if you include the blue-edged gilt letters on the door spelling out the name “Cynara Lane.”

The other two things were both of my favorite sex, though the gal coming out — apparently a client, a satisfied client judging by the absolutely ravishing smile on her extraordinarily gorgeous face — was at least several hundred percent more female than the old tomato pausing briefly in the doorway and then turning to go back into the office. More accurately, into her office, no doubt, since she almost exactly resembled the picture I had clairvoyantly dreamed up of Cynara Lane, old-tomato astrologer.

A good, or not-so-good, sixty years old, she was about five-feet-tall, held firmly to earth by the pull of gravity upon at least a hundred and eighty pounds, not quite half of which I guessed was unnecessary, distributed over loosely waggling upper arms, massive breasts, bulging abdomen, broad hips, and several extra chins, loosely dangling.

Even without the contrast between her and the broad broad, the luscious lovely — now saying, “And thank you very much!” — would have been in a class by herself. Maybe five-and-a-half-feet-tall and a hundred and twenty delectable pounds, clad in a form-fitting pale blue knitted dress, she was everything the other female was not — everything, everywhere.

Less than half of the other’s sixty years, her face was bright and glowing as though freshly scrubbed in the Fountain of Youth, waist trim and taut, hips full and fully rounded, and the breasts, though not “massive,” were about as far as one girl’s can get from insignificant. In fact, thought I, as she pulled the door closed and turned, those have got to be significant breasts if ever I saw some, and I’ve seen some.

When she pulled the door shut and turned, taking a step, she bumped them right into me, possibly because I was not a long, long way away. “Oh!” she cried, startled, instantly apologetic, “I’m sorry, I didn’t….”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, smiling broadly. “Be glad it’s happened at last. Our meeting like this was destined by the Moon’s eclipse of Arcturus. Not to mention the sunspots. So, why fight it? They’re stronger than we are.”

Her eyes, perhaps a bit wider than they normally would have been, were a soft and luminous brown, or tan, or beige, or something new, soft like the velvet dusk I dote upon. The lips were full, slightly parted to reveal the edges of white, even teeth, pink tip of tongue pressed against them as she looked up at me before saying curiously, “Moon’s eclipse of…. Are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”

“Of course not. But why should I be different from anybody else around here? Leave us not quibble with destiny, however. Let me take you away from these unreal surroundings and back into the real world — Emilio’s Italian restaurant down the street, for example? — as soon as I’ve had a brief word or two with our hefty, and probably dizzy, astrologer friend in there.” I stabbed a finger at the door behind her. “OK?”

“Dizzy? Oh, you’re one of those, are you?”

“One of what?”

“And you want a word or two with the dizzy astrologer….” She aimed a lovely, curving, graceful — really, it was sexy, I swear — thumb at the door she’d just closed … “in there?”

I didn’t get it. Not then. Not for some time. And this was destined to cause me some pain.

I merely said, still smiling broadly, though it was no easy task after all this time, “‘Cynara Lane’ it says on the door, and that’s who — or what — I’m here to see. I figure Cynara Lane is either an ancient female astrologer or a side street in Glendale. You will wait, while I find out which, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling a peculiar little smile. “I’ll wait. Why do you wish to see Miss Lane? Do you want her to do your horoscope?”

“Me? Ha-ha,” I laughed. “Do I look like a man who’d ask an astrologer what kind of day it is?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. No, you really don’t.”

I noticed a glimmer of light in her hair, light glancing from the reddish-brown-speckled horn-rims of glasses she’d pushed up into thick auburn tresses.

“You’re really a disturbingly good-looking wench,” I said. “I know you’ve heard that sort of thing before, millions of times, but it never hurts to hear it once again, does it?”

“Do your teeth hurt?”

“My … hurt? I asked you if…. Oh.”

I stopped smiling broadly, waggled my chin a bit, rubbed my jaws. “Only a little, now you mention it. I was just … smiling. You know, it’s a thing with the lips and teeth — you ought to try it sometime.”

“I thought you might also have mistaken me for a dentist.”

Didn’t even get it then.

“If you aren’t having your chart ordered,” the lovely continued, “why do you want to see Miss Lane?”

“It’s not that I want to,” I said, “at least not more than anything else I can think of. But I’ve reason to believe she may have helped tout a client of mine — I’m a private investigator, by the way — into a lousy investment a year or so back. A not very oily oil well — but I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in that.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said. “If Miss Lane — ‘touted,’ was it? — someone like that, she must be a terrible, mean, cruel, sick woman. I’m beginning to hate her now, and I liked her so much before you came along.”

This gal talked funny. Which must be, I decided, what had been puzzling me. “Well, terrible, mean, cruel, sick … I wouldn’t go that far, I don’t think. Hell, I haven’t even met the old babe yet. Still, she didn’t look too well, the little peek I got at her.”

This lovely and exceedingly curvaceous creature, with her soft eyes still on my face, moved even closer to me then, which put us very little distance apart since she’d only been a couple of inches away to start with, and she said quietly, and seriously, “But you’re not very nice yourself, are you? I mean, to say such cruel, slanderous things about Miss Lane, even if they’re true — and what if they’re not true? — to me, a complete stranger.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “You really are. I goofed there. Yep. I apologize to you, and to that old broa — the fat stargazer in there. I don’t ordinarily go around slandering and libeling and ruining people with impunity, but I have a little flaw, which sometimes gets me into trouble, but I’d hate to do without it…. What I’m getting at is, when you bumped into me with those … when we met … well, who’s perfect? And the closer you get, the less sense I’m likely to make. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Swell. Now — I am sorry, dammit, I just goofed. You don’t have to glare at me like that, do you? Now, until and unless I have reason to believe otherwise, which will probably never happen in a million years, Miss Cynara Lane is a sweet old lady of sweet morals and impeccable probity and, well, sweet and nice. Also a wonderful astrologer, as I have elsewhere heard. So you’ll forgive me, won’t you? And join me for a pizza or some ravioli — “

“What’s your name?”

“Shell Scott. And who might you — ?”

“You’re a private detective?”

“That’s right. Carry a little gun and everything. You want to see it? Not everything, just the little — “

“I’ll bet you’ve never been to an astrologer before?”

“I’ll bet I haven’t either.”

“Well, I know quite a bit about astrologers, especially Miss Lane. Would you mind a little advice from me?”

“From you, I wouldn’t mind a whole bunch — “

“When you go into Miss Lane’s office, you should understand that she won’t even talk to you until she knows your birth data. You do know when and where you were born, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. What kind of dummy do you think — “

“Some dummies don’t. Miss Lane is quite temperamental, and very busy, so as soon as you see her — don’t wait for her to ask anything, or else the old eccentric will just ignore you — tell her your name, and the year, month, and day of your birth. Be dramatic about it, even poetic if you can — but, of course you can — because she gets bored seeing so many ordinary people. It might help if you’d smile that wonderful smile, too.”

“Ah…. You wouldn’t be pulling — ?”

“And try to be smooth, suave, cultured, even if it’s a little difficult for you just now.”

“Easy. I’ll knock her over. I’ll give her a whole mess — “

“It helps a lot if you know the time of day you were born, too.”

“I know that. I know everything — “

“Not quite everything,” she said.

“I didn’t mean — “

But by then she had brushed by me — actually moved against me, sort of brushily, gliding warmly past, and it was a moment worth writing a whole cultured poem about — and was walking away from me down the corridor. The walk itself was poetry, too, for that matter, each striding leg with rounded gleam of curving calf and ankle and individual sonnet, fluidly swinging and swaying hips at least an epic, a small but not-too-small volume of beautiful, flowery … but maybe I was getting overly lyrical about this gal’s rear end. Especially when she was walking away from me. Though I wouldn’t have known about it if she hadn’t been. Besides, I was still on duty.

So I opened the door bearing the blue-edged gilt name, “Cynara Lane,” and, still seeing in my musical mind those wonderfully rhyming hips, went inside. The overstuffed lady was sitting, slumping, sagging disrhythmically, in an overstuffed chair near a low white desk — not behind the desk, perhaps because the spindly-looking leather-padded swivel chair there would not have supported one of her legs, much less that other enormous object — looking at, well, at nothing apparently.

This was going to be tough; I would have to force myself.

As I came in, the old horror kept on, just — looking. But then she glanced sharply at me, and one would almost have thought that in her gaze was some small hint of alarm, as I stalked directly toward her, saying, “My name is Shell Scott, and I was born right here in Los Angeles early in the morn, on — “

I stopped, because she seemed to be trying, unsuccessfully, to get all her stuff out of her overstuffed chair. But then she kind of collapsed back into it, letting out a little sigh.

So I went on, giving her the month, day, and year of my birth, which it was impossible to make poetic, adding, “About sunrise it was, if I recall, and who should know better than I? Pa said our last old rooster, who was blind in one eye, run off after a peacock only the day afore, so at the moment when I was bore there was no cock-a-doodle…. Are you all right, Miss Lane?”

“Who?” she said.

I was close to getting it then, but not close enough.

“What do you mean, who?” I said. “It’s doo. Cock-a-doodle-doo — “

She screamed. She sure did.

Then she yelled, in a hoarse voice much like an old terrified man’s, “Miss Lane, Miss LANE.” And screamed some more.

I got it then, you can bet.

</code>

<code> Chapter Eight

Yes, I’d got it.

Of course, getting it isn’t much help when you don’t know what to do with it.

There was quite a bit of commotion, in the corridor outside, then here inside. First Cynara Lane, improbably gorgeous astrologer, then a couple of other gals, and a small boy with his hand in his pocket, asking where was the bathroom, and a tall thin egg with a bristly narrow mustache who kept saying, “I say — I say,” but not anything else of much interest.

I just stood there in the middle of the room. Well, I did snort, or growl, once, and once flapped my arms, lifted them up and smacked them down hard, in frustration, against my thighs. That, too, was a mistake, of course.

“He thinks he’s a rooster!” the fat old hag yelled. “And he said something about cock-a-doodle-doing me.”

“Not if you were the last old buzzard on earth — ” I began.

“I say — I say — ” the tall guy said.

“Please, where is the bathroom?”

It was Cynara who brought order quickly into the chaos of her office. Soon the other employees — or editors, astrologers, plumbers, whatever — of Starguide were gone, and only she, and the lady I had almost attacked with beak and wings, and I remained.

No, I hadn’t gone anywhere. Just stood there. Feeling — bugged. And, once more, greatly frustrated, lifted my arms and smacked them against my thighs.

Then, for a brief moment on the edge of being panicked myself, I pointed a rigid index finger at the bulging old hag and said grimly, “Don’t you say another bulging word, see? If you even once more suggest such a … ugh … that I would even think of cock-a — “

“See?” the dumb broad said, looking up at Cynara. “Did you hear him? He’s doing it again, Miss Lane. Now you believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course I believe you, Mrs. Gernbutts,” Cynara said sympathetically. “He does it all the time.” Then she ushered the old gal out saying, among other things, “And thank you very much, again, for your donation to Starguide, Mrs. Gernbutts. We all appreciate it greatly. And I’m so sorry that this — he — had to happen.”

Then she closed the door, walked past me to her desk, right past me without either word or glance, sat down and picked up a pad, gazed with apparent huge interest at the top sheet.

“OK,” I said. “So you’re mad. You’re entitled. I have not been experiencing the most wonderful moments of my life, either, would you believe it? However, Miss Lane, even though grievously injured myself, I apologize. I’m sorry, I apologize — that makes twice. OK?”

Nothing.

“I humbly apologize.” I lifted one foot off the floor, bent my leg. “See? Observe the bended knee. This is as humble as I can get.”

Nothing.

I walked over next to her desk, peered down at the sheet she continued to gaze upon, observing that it had three concentric circles printed on it, the largest filling most of the page, with another smaller circle within it and the smallest circle in the middle. Half a dozen black lines bisected all the rings, meeting in the page’s center and cutting each of the three rings into a dozen equal-sized pieces of what looked to me like paper pie. In no apparent order, a large number of odd little symbols had been handprinted, in three different colors of ink, all over the several paper-pie segments.

“Well, there goes the party,” I said. “Even I can see the hors d’ouevres have been ruined by microbes. Fortunately, we’ve got plenty to drink. Unfortunately, it’s all peanut wine.”

After a moment, I said, “Miss Lane, for the last time, what was I saying to you just before Armageddon?”

Finally she looked up at me and asked, “What in the world did you say to Mrs. Gernbutts?”

“Not what she thinks. I wish I hadn’t said anything.” I pulled my lips away from my teeth, shaking my head. “I wish I’d never heard of her.”

“She said you talked so strangely — “

“Let it go, will you? Look, it’s your damned fault, you assassin — or, Miss Lane — may I call you Cynara? Uh, well, you put that dumb culture idea into my fat head, and I got on a kind of half-rhyme kick mainly because when you walked away I was watching your gorgeous fann … y. Forget it, strike that. I was giving Mrs. Gernbutts the time of day…. That’s funny, isn’t it? If ever there was a babe I wouldn’t give the time of day — “

“I’m really very busy, Mr. Scott. If you’d like to make an appointment — “

“Are you out of your mind? Make an appointment to go through what I’ve — besides, I have only a few questions, Miss Lane. May I call you — ?”

She interrupted again, saying she did have much to do, and it was already after five p.m., and she’d have to take two charts home to work on as it was, and finally I interrupted her.

“Give me one last chance. You’d give even a dog one last chance, wouldn’t you? So just think of me as a dog. You sit there and be Mrs. Gernbutts.” I flipped my hands into the air. “At least try. Also, at least try to work up a little sympathy for me, while I reenact the crime. Ready? OK, we are now five minutes back in time. I have just been staring with openmouthed wonder at your retreating…. I have been watching you walk away, and a song is singing in my heart. Got it?”

“I don’t believe….”

She let it trail off, perhaps because I was halfway to the door. Then through it and in the corridor. Closed the door, tapped gently upon it, opened it and stepped inside, smiling, smiling, walking toward her, toward menacing Mrs. Gernbutts.

“Hi, there, you rare beauty, you,” I said. “My, isn’t it hot, my name is Shell Scott. Well, here I am, having been sent in here to ask you where the stars are at by a stripteaser with all her clothes on, who is now preparing, if I’m any judge — and I’m not bad — to go into her dance right there on the runway in the hallway. Ah, but what you want to know is when I was born, right? Well, I’ll tell you — “

And so on, through the month and day and so forth of my birth, pretty much as I’d laid it on Mrs. Gernbutts, but even lousier, though some it must have seemed gently humorous to Cynara Lane, for toward the end she was laughing, at least gently.

When she subsided, she glanced at a small pad on which she’d made a few notes as I talked, then looked at me, still smiling. “I knew Mrs. Gernbutts would react to you, even the sight of you, with something less than pure joy — “

“Why do you say that?”

” — but I had no idea she would….” And Cynara was off again, laughing and even snorting a little — delicately, though, very nice little snorts. Then, a big sigh, and, “All right, Mr. Scott. We both apologize — you more than me, though.”

“Sure. Call me — “

“Is this correct?” She indicated the small notepad. “Your birth data, I mean?”

“Yeah — would I lie?”

“I think you should explain, Mr. Scott, what you meant by saying this dizzy astrologer touted a client of yours into something — “

“Oh, that. It was — nothing. Think nothing of it. I thought you were an old hen then.”

“It’s what brought you here to see me, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, it is. Well, I might have phrased it a little differently, but it is my impression you advised my client that the time was splendid for a big risky investment, which turned out to be plenty risky but not so splendid.”

She was frowning. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d…. What is this client’s name, Mr. Scott?”

“Call me Shell, will you? Now that we’re friends? Client’s name is Mr. Willifer.”

She was shaking her head, but then her face brightened, the velvet-brown eyes opened wide. “Gippy,” she cried. “Gippy Willifer.”

“Right.”

“I remember him — haven’t seen him or even looked at his chart for, oh, it must be a year or more. But he was such a sweet little man, a good man. I think he’d been having a very difficult time, though, for several years….”

She paused, frowning again, then went on, “Yes, I do recall now. He’d had Saturn squaring his progressed Moon for years, and I remember how pleased I was to see that the aspect would be out of orb in another few months, maybe a year or so. That’s a rough aspect to live with. Are things getting better for him now, Mr. Scott?”

“Not exactly. What’s this Saturn squaring who? Not that I’d know, if you told me.”

She stood up suddenly, walked to a row of gray steel filing cabinets against the wall and opened a drawer, thumbed quickly through manila folders, selected one and brought it back to her desk. “Here’s Mr. Willifer’s chart,” she said briskly, “and the forecast I did for him. Let’s answer your question — and see what I did tell him.”

The whole operation, walking to and from the files and finding a year-old folder — that is, if she really hadn’t looked at it in a year — took no more than fifteen seconds. I had to admit this gal seemed efficient, even if she was hung up on beams from Full Moons and such wonders.

“Scoot your chair over here, Mr. Scott,” she said, patting the corner of her desk. “We can look at this together.”

“I will if you’ll call me Shell. Scott sounds too much like scoot. And Mr. Scott sounds like a husband.”

Her full lips twitched slightly, then she said, “All right. Scoot over here — Shell.”

I scooted.

Cynara flipped through a few pages of what looked like thirty or forty sheets of white bond paper, apparently each of them typed double-spaced. “Here,” she said, “this page covers nearly all I wrote for Gippy regarding his financial prospects, which he had not specifically asked me about. You’ll see I certainly didn’t advise him to invest in an oil well — or in any specific thing. Ordinarily I wouldn’t show you a client’s forecast, but in this case….”

The page didn’t look criminal. There was a comment that Gippy was beginning a two-year period when money should be made with much greater ease for him, at its maximum for good about a year and more from the forecast’s date, at which time another very good financial aspect would begin. But the rest of it was stuff like, “…progressed Sun in your eighth house trine you second-house ruler, which is really splendid…” and “…Jupiter transiting your Ascendant and then moving into your second or money house.”

The only negative comment seemed to be concerned with “…natal Neptune at the cusp of the seventh house,” indicating that Gippy should guard against possible fraud and deception, and be very careful of the character and intentions of anyone he went into partnership with.

“Great,” I said. “So you didn’t tell him to invest in an oil well. You didn’t tell him to get kicked by a horse, either, but he managed to do it. The rest of this stuff is … well, just stuff. Who could know what you told him?”

She looked at me for some moments, scowling, but making her lips very pretty, then sighed and removed a paper clip holding the pages together, so she could pull from the back of the stack one of those forms with three circles and many buggy little symbols.

She placed it near the corner of the desk, where we could both look at it, saying, “This is Gippy Willifer’s chart, or horoscope. Do you understand what a horoscope is, Shell?”

“Well, it’s something about the moon and planets … no, I guess I don’t.”

She opened a drawer, took out another printed form, this with only one large circle on it, six equidistant lines slicing the circle into a dozen equal-sized segments. “There,” she said. “A horoscope, or any circle, contains three hundred and sixty degrees, right?”

“You bet.”

“This is a blank horoscope wheel, divided into twelve segments that we call houses. Each of which represents a separate area, actually several areas or elements, of the individual’s life — personality, money, partnerships and marriage, and so on. The same twelve houses are in everybody’s horoscope, though different signs may be on the cusps of — or, influencing, coloring, molding the affairs of — those houses. But we’ll skip the signs for now, or it might confuse you.”

“That’s what I was going to say.”

“Clear on the twelve horoscope houses, now?”

“Sure, there they are.” I tapped several in succession with a finger. “There’s a house, a house, a house. Twelve horoscope houses, twelve rooms in my mansion, twelve little pieces of paper pie.”

Cynara gave me an odd, bleak look. “Twelve rooms in your mansion, that’s good, that’s very close to a perfect description of what the horoscope’s houses really are. But — paper pie?” She moved her head slowly from side to side. “Shell, you’re — I don’t know, I just don’t know about you.”

“So do a number on my horoscope, I’m all there. So they — you — tell me.”

She smiled. “Don’t think I won’t. You may even be sorry you suggested it.”

“Oh, come on, Cynara. Fun’s fun, but you don’t really expect me to believe you can figure a guy out by looking at those houses and whatsits and cockeyed doodles, do you? There I go, like a rooster again — “

“A scientific astrologer, and that’s what I am, Shell, can almost invariably learn much more about a man from studying his horoscope than from studying the man himself. Things he hides from friends, enemies, the world, perhaps even himself, are there in his horoscope, and a competent astrologer is able to see most, or at least much, of those things. It’s not easy, and it’s not absolute, but it can be done, is being done, all the time.”

“Well…. I’ll reserve judgment, and thus withhold any immediate comment that would make you peevish and fretful, Cynara. I know you don’t mind my calling you Cynara, right? Since I’m allowing you to call me — “

“All right. You don’t have to believe in me, or astrology, just now, Shell. But I should explain enough so you can understand some things I want to tell you about Mr. Willifer, about Gippy and his horoscope, and the forecast I did for him, I deeply resent your assuming I could be guilty of defrauding a client, misleading him or lying to him.”

She sounded quite serious, almost grim. I said lightly, “Dear, that was when you were Mrs. Gernbutts. Which explains everything, doesn’t it?”

“Not quite everything.”

“Yeah, only astrology tells you not merely how high is up but where down went. You know, if an astrologer could do all you say, or hint, can or even might be done, I ought to hire you to help me catch the criminals, or guys with little burglars in half their houses, and solve many unsolvable crimes. Why, I could make a fortune — “

“I’d be glad to help you, Shell. As a business arrangement, of course, for my usual fifty dollars an hour.”

“Look, dear, I was pulling your lovely…. Fifty bucks an hour? Keerist, you make more than I do.”

“So? What’s wrong with that?”

“But, well, it’s — keerist, you’re a girl.”

“You’ll forgive me for that, won’t you, Shell?”

“Hmm, yes, I suppose, one of these days.”

“Shall I go on with this?”

“Sure, just keep it simple. And irresistibly fascinating, of course.”

“Of course,” she said. She pointed to Gippy’s “chart” between us, then ran a coral-tipped finger around the inner circle of the three on the sheet. “Ignore the rest for a moment, just look at the inner circle. That’s Gippy’s natal chart, the horoscope of his birth. Now, in addition to the Sun and Moon, the planets in our solar system, including the one we’re on and starting with the little fellow closest to the Sun, are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, then Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.”

“Now I remember. I learned that in high-school geology — geometry. In the twelfth grade, it was.”

“A horoscope is a map of the heavens — the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets relative to the earth — at the moment of an individual’s birth. It’s essentially a two-dimensional representation of the actual three-dimensional planetary pattern in space at that moment. And it’s a constantly changing pattern, which is why you’re unique.”

“It’s sweet of you to notice — “

“Why everybody is unique. The little — microbes I’ve drawn on this chart are symbols for the planets, astrological shorthand for Venus, Jupiter, and so forth.”

Cynara indicated with her long coral-pink fingernail some of the little figures, explaining that this one was Saturn, this one like a pitchfork or trident was Neptune, and that there were ten of those symbols and, in addition to them, twelve other symbols for the dozen “signs of the zodiac.”

She went on for a while, until I said, “I think this is getting beyond me. It’s so bloody complicated….”

“Not really, Shell. A little confusing at first, maybe, but what’s complicated about a mere ten planets and twelve zodiacal signs? You already know what the planets are — from your high-school algebra — and you also know the twelve signs of the zodiac.”

“I do?”

“Uh-huh. You say, he’s an Aries, she’s a Taurus, his wife’s a Gemini…. Right?”

“Yeah. And you’re a what?”

“I’m a girl.”

“Hey-boy — “

“You merely refer to the fact that his Sun was transiting — moving — in, say, the zodiacal sign of Cancer when he was born, only the Sun, without consideration of any other bodies. Or, she’s a lordly Leo, meaning her natal Sun is in the sign Leo. The rest of the signs in order are Virgo, Libra, Scorpio — I’ll bet you’ve got a lot of Scorpio in you. Shell — “

“What does that mean?”

“Maybe we’ll get to it later. And then Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces, around to the start of the wheel at Aries again. The symbols save a lot of writing, a lot of space on the chart, and once you learn them it’s automatic to look at the symbol for” — she quickly scribbled a couple of wavy lines, one above the other, on her notepad — “Aquarius, say, and know it is Aquarius, the sign ruled by the wildly eccentric planet Uranus” — she drew something like a capital-letter “H” with half of a dumbbell hanging down from the bar — “and so on.”

“And on,” I said. “And on, and on and on — “

She pulled her arched brown brows down, pushed them closer together, then they went up high over her eyes again as she brightened, leaned across her desk to riffle through a stack of booklets, took one out. “He asked for it,” she mumbled. Before she flipped through the pages I was able to read on the paper cover Raphael’s Astronomical Ephemeris and something about the Planets’ Places, and a four-digit number, either a number or the year when I was born.

I wondered if it was just a number. Sometimes a body could get a mite apprehensive around astrologers, I decided, if only because they speak a foreign language.

Cynara had flipped several pages, found what she was after. I peered, noted that the little book was open to a page filled with column after column of figures and symbols, and was oddly pleased that I could now recognize some of the microbes and even call them by name if I wanted to show off. It was with only mild unease that I noted, at the page’s top, that same digit again, and the name of a month — the month and year of my birth, it was. And Cynara’s coral-tipped index finger ran down the left-hand column to one for the day on which I was born. Irrationally, I had the queer, very queer, sensation of being at a stuffy party wearing only the Emperor’s new shorts.

“Let’s see, for that hour he’d have” — mumble, mumble — “rising, Sun on Ascendant, and there’s Moon conjunction Jupiter in the twelfth, ah” — mumble, mumble — “probably Neptune in the tenth, and wow, oh my” — mumble, … She grabbed another blank horoscope chart, started making marks on it.

I was fascinated. Maybe because the mumbling was about me. Undobtedly because it was about me.

Cynara took a break from her concentrated perusal and looked at me, smiling that sweet-hot smile. “Shell,” she said with some enthusiasm, “this is a chart. I’ve got to set you up. Tonight.”

“Set me up? Tonight?” I smiled.

“Erect your timed horoscope, accurate to the minute of arc, current progressions and all. I’ve only glanced at the Ephemeris, but it’s obvious you’ve got a lovely Mercury, Shell. And splendid third and ninth houses — “

“Yeah, plus a vacation hideaway in Bimini.”

“I’m sorry, I realize you don’t understand all this yet. But you could, in no time. Certainly, you’re no dummy, the way you sometimes put yourself down — “

“A fat lot you know.”

“Oh, you’re rough enough, even capable of annoying crudity, but you’ve got a good mind, Shell, even if you don’t look…. Well, you know what you’re doing all the time. Most of the time.”

“Some of the time?”

“Oh, most — be quiet. I want to give a quick check to the rest of your planets, and…. Oh! Oh, my!”

Her voice was softer, but with a rush in her throat like a small whirling wind, and she put one hand over her left breast, or over her heart — let’s say her breast, since she might have had merely an average ticker, and actually her hand was not over it, but upon it, or part of it — and I watched her hand rise and fall….

“Oh, golly, good grief,” she murmured quietly. “Oh, my.”

</code>

<code> Chapter Nine

“…Oh, my,” Cynara murmured.

I leaned closer to her, my arm touching her shoulder, and examined the Ephemeris page she was studying.

“I don’t see it the way you do,” I said seriously. “Looks worse than that. Lord, pork bellies are down a buck and a half a belly — I’m ruined.”

“You’re not ruined, you’ll never be ruined, you’re the ruiner,” she squealed.

“That doesn’t sound nice.”

“You’re not nice. You’re a lusty, libidinous, lecherous…. Oh, if you were a bull you’d be snorting all the time, and pawing — “

“I do have more bulls than I know what to do — “

” — Why, you’re practically a secret sex fiend.”

“I didn’t know it was a secret. Cynara, all these things — lusty, lecherous, libidinous — I’m hurt, I thought you were paying me a bunch of compliments. But, then, I think of myself as a nice sex fiend. Hey — don’t stab me with that pencil. You were aiming at my eye, weren’t you? Look, I joke a little, mainly because you’ve got to be making this up. You don’t know what kind of guy I am — I haven’t even made a pass at you, have I?”

“No. But you will, won’t you? Just as soon as you get a chance, you will, right?”

“Well, if that’s what you really want — “

“Damn you — “

She cut it off, scowled prettily, pushed her lips out — prettily — pulled them in, nodded sharply as if silently talking to herself. Then she jabbed that coral nail at the last little symbols she’d penciled close together on the chart and said, “Look at that Mars-Venus-Uranus conjunction in the fifth trine, that twelfth house Moon-Jupiter of yours — in the sex sign!”

“OK, I’ll look at it, but I’ll feel like a voyeur — ” I shut up because Cynara was muttering something, but I wasn’t able to interpret it.

While Cynara was talking, she’d entered ten symbols — all ten of my planets, I supposed — around the printed wheel. She gazed at her handiwork, then rolled her eyes slowly and gazed at me for a few moments with such a peculiarly intent expression that it was a bit disconcerting.

“Last time I saw that look,” I said, “it was on the face of an infected bacteriologist — “

“I’ll finish this later, I believe.” She pushed my chart to one side. “Or else we’ll never get around to Gippy’s horoscope. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”

“Once upon a time, that’s how it started — ah, don’t be so twitchy, Cynara.”

“That’s because your Mars-Venus-Uranus is right on my….”

“On your what?”

“Now, you’ll see in Gippy’s chart here,” she said quickly, as if she hadn’t even heard my question — but there was a pinker flush to her cheeks, almost as though she were a schoolgirl blushing, and for quite some time she managed not to look at, or even close, to me.

“In Gippy’s chart, the inner circle shows the planetary positions at his birth. The adjacent larger circle shows the movement of his progressed planets from the day last September when he consulted me through the following year. And the outer ring shows the year-long movements of the heavier, or slower-moving transiting planets.”

She paused, as if for some comment, still not looking at my face. So I smiled benignly at the chart, which had dark blue symbols on the inner wheel, light blue for the middle, and in the outer ring the same symbols as appeared in both the others, only these were in bright red ink.

“It’s pretty,” I said. “Especially the progressed and transmitting.”

“Transiting — referring to the actual, not symbolic, movements of the planets in the heavens. This is late October, so right now the Sun is actually transiting, or moving through space, at the very end of Libra and about to enter — rather, has just entered — Scorpio. Progressing, or directing, a horoscope is done by using the day for a year, mentioned in the Bible, in Ezekiel. In Numbers, too.”

“Bible? You mean astrology’s mentioned in the Holy Hardback?”

“Do you have to be so irreverent? — of course you do,” she finished, rolling her eyes down to my own horoscope again. “It is mentioned, over and over again,” she continued. “The three wise men, or Magi — Magi-ans, Magicians — for example, were obviously astrologers. They observed the bright star in the East, probably a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Pisces, or the Fishes — never mind, it would take too long. The basis for directing a horoscope — to determine the major internal influences bearing upon an individual’s life at any specific time — is that the movements of the planets during the first day of a person’s birth exert definite influence upon him during the first year of his life, their movements through the second day affecting the second year of his life, the fiftieth day all of his fiftieth year, and so on.”

“Astrologers do this directing, or progressing, because it’s mentioned in the Bible?”

“No. Because it works. That’s why it’s mentioned in the Bible. Now, I referred to Gippy’s suffering for a long time from Saturn squaring his Moon. This, you’ll remember, is the symbol for Saturn.” She drew a straight left-to-right line with what looked like a little sickle descending from it.

“There he is,” I said, tapping that same symbol three times, once in each of the three wheels. “A dark blue one, a light blue one, and a red one. I like the — “

“Or natal, progressed, and transiting Saturn. Now find his progressed Moon for me. And transiting Saturn.”

“Easy.” The Moon symbol was shaped like a little new moon, and light blue was “progressed,” so I gave it and the red Saturn each a tap and said, “I never realized astrology was so easy.”

“How far apart, how many degrees distant, are they?”

That took me a while, but finally I said, “About ninety-some, less than a hundred.”

“Good enough. When two planets are approximately ninety degrees apart or at right angles to each other we say they’re in square aspect. One hundred and eighty degrees apart, or opposite each other, they’re in opposition. Those are difficult aspects usually, indicating delay or friction, or a slowing-down, or some kind of frustration, and very powerful. Sixty degrees apart, the sextile aspect, and one hundred and twenty degrees or the lovely trine, those are the smooth and easy, usually helpful, lucky aspects. But, as you’ve pointed out yourself, Shell, transiting Saturn there was still — then, over a year ago — in square aspect to Gippy’s progressed Moon. Now, because it takes Saturn about twenty-nine and a half years to move through all twelve signs, and it requires almost the same length of time for the progressed Moon to move through the zodiac’s three hundred and sixty degrees, they can hold the same aspect for years. If the aspect is a trine or sextile, that’s good, but in Gippy’s case he’s had that heavy square in his chart — in his life, in other words, whether you believe it or not — for nearly ten years.”

“And it’s a bad one?”

“It doesn’t have to be, but it can be pretty awful, and obviously it hasn’t been much fun for Gippy.”

“So what happens to the little guy? Saturn keeps on mugging him for another ten years?”

She finally looked at me, and smiled. “That’s the nice part. Shell. The aspect was separating, getting weaker, when he came to see me, and it should be almost out of effective orb by now.” She grabbed another Ephemeris from the stack on her desk. “Let’s enter his current transits. It’ll only take a minute.”

The gal was efficient, all right. Flip the pages to October, finger down the date-line, plastic ruler under the twenty-fourth day — today — zip, zip, scribble, and … in just about a minute she was done, looking at the chart. Looking quite soberly at it.

“Oh, dear,” she said softly. “Oh, my.”

“He’s a sex fiend, too, huh?”

She snapped her head around, eyes very bright. “Dammit, be serious — “

“Well, it’s just that you made the same noises when — “

” — because I’m serious. He could get hurt. Badly hurt.”

And suddenly I was not longer jovial, felt a queer and growing concern. Not that I believed Cynara could actually see some kind of squashing calamity in those little drawings she’d made, but because a queer thought had popped unbidden into my head.

And suddenly I was no longer jovial, felt a queer and a middle-aged con-artist named Zoreena, which sounds like the name of a lady snake charmer, though this babe was neither charmer nor lady but a female fortune-teller who smelled of garlic. She read cards. Undoubtedly there are some people who can “read” cards, or tea leaves, or mowed lawns, and see things in them that I can’t. Not, however, Zoreena, who came to my professional attention because she’d informed a rich female client said client was destined to lose something of much value to her, within a week. And Zoreena knew — because Zoreena knew that her husband, who was a professional burglar, intended to burglarize said client’s home within a week, which he certainly did, removing from the premises a hundred and twenty thou worth of diamond and ruby brooches, pendants, bracelets, and rings, plus one zircon of little value.

This clairvoyance impressed the rich client so much that she returned to Zoreena on numerous subsequent occasions, and did not become my client until after being burglarized for the second time. Some people are slow. All of which was not now important except that, as Cynara was speaking, I suddenly remembered Zoreena, whom I had not thought of for at least a year.

I didn’t know why she’d popped into my mind. Maybe only because the name sounded a little like Cynara.

But I tried to shake that unfair comparison quickly out of my head, and said, “What do you think might happen to him? And when?”

Cynara had looked into a different Ephemeris, entered another little light-blue Moon figure, drawn a couple of arrows, and entered a few numbers on Gippy’s chart. “Well, Saturn square his progressed Moon is out of orb now,” she said, “and that helps. But I don’t like transiting Uranus in Libra exactly quincunx his radical Mars-Uranus conjunction in the Ascendant.”

She paused, tapping the tip of her pencil on the desk top, looking at the chart, nodding a couple of times. “Interesting … same planets involved again. Transiting Mars is exactly square Gippy’s natal Mercury now, and it was square his Mercury and Sun, and his Ascendant — from Sagittarius then — when Gippy had his accident last year and was hospitalized.” She glanced at me. “That was before he consulted me. Do you know about his accident, Shell?”

“Yeah. Same planets involved, huh? Does that mean he might get kicked by another horse? Or even Godolphus — ?”

“Of course not. Mars is in a different sign and house now, for one thing. But he’s still wide open to accident or injury, especially for the next week or so. There are a lot of other factors, and I don’t like his twelfth house — I’ll go over his chart more carefully tonight — but with all that Mars influence, and since Mars rules Aries, it could be a head injury, or…. No, it’s the affliction in Virgo that bothers me, so it’s something in the abdominal area….”

“What’s an affliction in Virgo?”

“In this case, I was looking at Gippy’s natal Mercury in Virgo. That’s a splendid place for Mercury, since it rules Virgo, and is exalted in that sign. But his Mercury is afflicted naturally, and squared now by transiting Mars — and Virgo rules the abdominal area.”

She looked at me. “Each of the signs rules, or governs — has dominion over — a different part of the body. To oversimplify, just as Aries rules the head, Taurus the throat, and so on around the wheel, Virgo rules the abdominal area. And that’s where Gippy’s birth chart Mercury is. The rough aspect is that square from Mars, almost exact to the minute of where we are right now.”

Cynara shook her head, looked at me again, and asked, “You’ll be seeing Gippy, won’t you?” And when I nodded, she said, “Ask him to call me. I don’t usually push myself on former clients, but this time I’ll make an exception.”

“OK,” I said, perhaps a bit casually, “will do.”

“Please do, Shell. I’m really worried about that affliction in Virgo.”

She went back to her charts, frowning, pushing her lips out prettily again. I noticed she was examining the little horoscope she’d set up for me, shaking her head. Then she said, “That’s interesting. You’re under very similar afflictions yourself, Shell.”

“That is interesting. Where am I going to get it? This is lots of fun, isn’t it?”

She glanced at me, not smiling. “I don’t mean you might get killed or anything like that, you probably won’t, but … take care, will you, Shell? You’re in a period for a few days when you’re not only liable to accident but might be more irritable, more on edge than usual. And, too, you’ll be inclined to be more brash or impulsive than normally, and — oh, I don’t know, you could leave important items lying around, forget things, overlook something important, do something dumb.”

“Me, do something dumb?”

“Have you already forgotten Mrs. Gernbutts? Seriously, Shell, take care. Even if you think I’m crazy?”

“Sure. And you’re not crazy, dear, just a little flaky, and perhaps erotically undernourished — watch that pencil, will you? I get it now, you’ll tell me the stars say I’m in danger of getting stabbed in the eye, and then you poke my eye out with a pencil. You ought to meet Zoreena — “

“I know you won’t pay any attention to what I say, but you might at least tell your client he’s in a dangerous period now and for several days more. He might listen.”

“I’ll tell him. Going to see him and his wife tonight.” I looked at my watch. “In twenty minutes or so.”

“Then it’s about time you left, isn’t it? And let me finish up and get out of here myself?”

“Just a couple more quick questions first, OK?”

“All right.”

“Gippy seems to have gone into this drilling venture of his largely because of astrological factors he felt were good, and also upon the advice of a man named Morraigne. Am I right in thinking you and this Mr. Morraigne have been friends for some time?”

She gave me a slow sidelong glance, as though wondering why I’d asked that particular question, but then answered easily, “Yes, Dev Morraigne and I are very good friends. He was one of my very first clients, shortly after I founded and incorporated Starguide — that was seven years ago — and we’ve been dear friends ever since. What did you want to know about him?”

“Well, what kind of guy is he? And I understand his advice to Gippy was based on mysterious operations of some sort of doodlebug he’s put together….”

I stopped, because Cynara was smiling, shaking her head gently. “Did I say something funny?” I asked her.

“Not really. But, ‘doodlebug’ — well, that tells me what you think Dev Morraigne is. Actually, he’s a lot like you, damn you both. But you think he’s some kind of weirdo, or kook, and maybe even a sly criminal … true?”

“Well, we haven’t even met — how would I know what he is? All I know, Cynara, is that every doodlebug I ever heard of — “

“It’s not a doodlebug, and I’m familiar with the term. I should be, since on at least a dozen occasions in my presence Dev’s raged about his Holaselector being called by that name.”

“You don’t think the thing actually works, do you?”

“Sure, it works,” she said casually.

“So why hasn’t some big oil company paid him a jillion dollars for it?”

She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “Ask him,” she said.

“I intend to, when I locate the man. I understand he’s out of town — would you happen to know where?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“And what did you mean, he’s a lot like me? You mean he’s got two arms and two legs and two heads — “

“For one thing, he also has a Mars-Venus conjunction, like you, but in a different sign. Actually, he’s probably worse than you … oh, leave me alone and let me work.”

“Tell me some more about this Mars and Venus stuff and all. I might be fascinated, eventually.”

“No.” She glared at me, then at her charts, but chewed her lower lip for a while, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Then she said, “Shell, I told you I haven’t had any contact with Gippy since he came to see me over a year ago. I knew he was interested in the possibility of making some kind of investment, but I didn’t know what it was even then, and I haven’t heard from him since.” She paused. “I’d like to know more about what happened, if you can tell me. All you can tell me, Shell, even things that might not seem important to you could be significant to an astrologer.”

I saw no reason not to, so I filled her in on what I’d got from Audrey and Gippy, and Arnold Trappman as well. I even mentioned Gippy’s leaving his home last night, with a gun, and the wild idea of taking a shot at that “crook, Trappman,” but winding up shooting a tree and then staying out all night.

“Which is a fair example of the usual Willifer follow-through, I suppose,” I finished. “Fortunately, in this case.”

Cynara listened silently, looking at Gippy’s chart most of the time, making a little check or two on it as I spoke. When I finished she merely nodded, then said quietly, “I don’t suppose you’d know this Mr. Trappman’s birth data?”

“That’s one of the things I never thought to ask him.”

“He might be listed in one of the biographical reference volumes here in our library. But….” She looked at me again, smiling slightly. “If you could find out what time of day he was born, it would help a lot.”

“Help how?”

“Without knowing the time of his birth, I can’t determine his Ascendant or rising sign, the signs and degrees on his other house cusps, or even the exact placement of his faster-moving planets, particularly the Moon. To put it simply, with all his birth data, including the correct time, I can tell if Mr. Trappman has had a tendency to get involved in anything underhanded, crooked, illegal — or if he’s had that kind of opportunity — during the last year or so. When Gippy invested in this Roman well, for example. Or even right now.”

I shook my head, blinking slightly. “You really claim you can see that sort of thing in a man’s horoscope?”

“Yes. Primarily from his natal chart, of course, which shows what he’s born with — his weaknesses, strengths, inborn tendencies. To me, an individual’s basic character stands out more clearly than anything else. But also from a consideration of how current progressions and transits stimulate or trigger his natal positions and aspects. It’s quite simple, really.”

“Well,” I said, “I honestly can’t imagine at the moment a situation in which I’d feel comfortable asking Trappman at what hour and minute of what day he was born, but if I should accidentally come up with that info I’ll give you a ring.”

“I’d appreciate it. Shell. Now, I do have to get busy. Lord, I’ll be working on charts at home until midnight as it is.”

She reached for a large book with “Tables of Houses” printed on its paper dust jacket, along with a number of other things I didn’t have time to read before she opened it and flipped several pages. She made some speedy calculations on a notepad, glanced at an open Ephemeris on her desk, scribbled some more.

I smiled. “I know I’ve delayed you a little, but hasn’t it been worth it, Cynara? Haven’t we had fun?”

She took three felt-tipped pens and one of those blank three-circle charts from a drawer, started entering dark-blue symbols on its inner ring, making quick additions from a table of proportional logarithms before entering each symbol.

“Hmm?” I asked. Then, “Well, even if we haven’t had lots of fun, I wouldn’t say it’s been unbearably painful, would you? Hmm?” I stood up, to leave. “Hmm?”

She had already turned a page in the little Ephemeris and was busy entering light-blue symbols in the chart’s second circle.

So I smiled down at her, and waved my fingers in a friendly wiggle — neither of which gestures did she appear aware of — and left. Left her office smiling, walked down the hallway somewhat more sober, and went outside scowling fiercely.

Because even before I wiggled my fingers at Cynara, I had noticed that the Ephemeris she was using was the one already open to the month and day of my birth. So it was my chart she was still working on. And at first I felt hugely flattered, pleased, that the lovely Cynara was so interested in me … and then only slightly flattered, pleased … and very quickly not so flattered, only minimally pleased, if that much.

When was it she’d stopped speaking to me? I wondered.

And why?

What had she seen in those dumb squiggles she’d been so busy squiggling? Nothing really bad, certainly, but…

And, of course, she couldn’t really see anything much, but what might she be thinking she saw?

And what if, in some ridiculously witchy way, she really could peer into the perhaps-best-not-closely-peered-at insides of me, into the secret places …?

Such curious questions flocked in my head as I tooled the Cad back through Hollywood, over to Beverly, down to Maryon Street, and rolled along toward the Willifers’ home. When three blocks away I noted it was three minutes till six p.m. so I’d make it on time, even a minute or two early. While I slowed down during the next couple of blocks I was already figuring that, after about ten minutes of jawing with Audrey and Gippy while “saving my life” with a cold beer, I could be home and on the phone in perhaps ten minutes more. On the phone, calling….

Calling whom? Oddly, I kept thinking of Cynara, that’s whom.

But then I stopped thinking of Cynara, of other lovelies, of phones, and cold beers, and anything except the chilling sound I suddenly heard.

Muscles tightened all through my body and I could feel knots like bunched gristle in my calves and a quick taut ridging of my spine when that sound raked my ears, for I knew not only what it was, but who it was.

Maybe it was because I was then only half a block from the Willifers’ home, maybe it was some other awareness tickling a deeper edge of thought, brushing a dark sharp edge not often touched in my mind. But I knew.

What I heard was a woman screaming.

</code>

<code> Chapter Ten

That high shrieking cry was unquestionably a woman screaming, and I knew the woman was Audrey, had to be Audrey.

I’d almost involuntarily tapped the brake when that anguished shriek scraped my ears, but in another second I slapped my foot onto the gas pedal, felt the Cad jump forward as I swung the steering wheel right to edge near the curb, then hit the brakes again, hard, skidded to a stop behind an old blue sedan parked before the small white house with fiat white stones set in the lawn and leading to the front door.

Leading to the door and, now, Audrey, tall, angular — and screaming — Audrey, at the lawn’s edge, looking down, both hands pressed against the top of her head.

It was still bright, sun not yet touching the horizon, And I could see Gippy, too — or whoever it was — on the ground, on the grass, body bent and turned, half on his side. The Cad was stopped but still swaying a little as I scrambled through the right-hand door, sprinted over the lawn.

Audrey heard me running, turned, saw me — and stopped screaming. Suddenly, just like that, stopped, but with her mouth still open wide and her eyes like dark empty hollows.

I stopped near her, started to kneel next to the body — it was Gippy — and she said in a high flat voice with almost no inflection, “He’s dead. Somebody shot him, only a minute ago, only a minute. Shot him and killed him, he’s dead, he’s — “

“No, he’s not dead,” I said. “He’s unconscious, but he’s not dead.” That was all I said aloud, but mentally I added, “Not yet, he isn’t.”

I’d spoken softly, and I was looking away from her, at Gippy a foot from me. Audrey heard me, though, and stopped speaking. I could feel a pulse in Gippy’s throat, weak and thready, much too fast.

I didn’t move him, but I looked him over as well as I could. He’d changed clothes since I dropped him here earlier, and was wearing brown slacks and a beige sports shirt that hung outside his trousers. He was clean-shaven now, too.

Low on the left side of the beige shirt, a large wet stain had spread, where Gippy’s blood had spilled, or maybe gushed, in the first moments after the slug hit him. I ripped off the two lowest buttons, spreading the shirt open, making sure my own body hid what I was doing from Audrey.

He’d been hit low on the left side of his midsection, just beneath the rib cage, and there was blood all over his stomach and side, red wetness soaking into the top of his trousers. But he wasn’t bleeding much now, a little, not much, just a slow ooze from the small dark hole in him.

I draped the stained beige cloth over his wound again, stood up. “Get a blanket from the house, Audrey,” I said. “Just to put over him, to keep him warm.”

“All right,” she said. “To keep him warm.” But she didn’t turn, didn’t move.

I ran to my car and used the Cad’s mobile phone to call for an ambulance, and the police. I gave the officer on the complaint board my name, the address here, and said that a man had been gut-shot, was seriously injured, maybe dying, probably dying.

Then I got an old woolen blanket from the Cad’s trunk, and walked — without haste now, slowly, as casually as I could — back over the lawn toward the house. I put the blanket over Gippy’s body, pressed it down onto the grass around him, then straightened up and stood next to Audrey.

She was silent, the tall bony body rigid, both hands still pressed atop her head. I reached for her wrists, pulled her arms out, turned her toward me. She moved without resistance, but her eyes stayed on Gippy, there on the grass below us.

“Look at me,” I said. “Audrey, look at me.”

Finally she let her head turn, the hollow eyes rested on my face, but it didn’t seem likely she was really seeing me. I wasn’t even sure she knew who I was.

“Audrey,” I said quietly, “Gippy’s going to be OK, he’ll make it. He’s unconscious, and in shock, but he’s alive and breathing and there’s an ambulance already on its way here. Believe me, Audrey, he’s going to be all right.”

She sucked in her breath, let it out in a long quivering sigh, saying, “All right.” Breathing out as she spoke, it sounded like, “Ahh-hh-ahhll right.”

“What happened. Did you see who shot him? Man on foot, in a car, what?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head in one little jerk left, another right. “I was late getting home. The car died on me, stopped, and I couldn’t … couldn’t make it go.”

She started crying. But she cried quietly, without any sound, with just the flow and shining track and chin-drip of tears, as she continued in the flat and almost expressionless voice.

“I ran in the house when I got home, left the car out there, and Gippy saw me coming, ran out, too, and he hugged me so good…. We went inside, and after, oh, half an hour or so, I don’t know, he went out to put the car in our garage, it’s behind the house, and that’s when it happened, just now, just a minute ago. I heard the noise — it’s when he was shot, but then I didn’t know … and I ran out here, and he was down on his side, down on the lawn there, and I knew my darling was dead, my darling, my darling, was dead — “

I shook her. “He’s not dead, so knock it off, just shut up, OK? He’ll be all right, I guarantee it. OK? Believe me, I know about these things, who’d know better? He’ll make it, I swear it.” To myself I swore otherwise, put a great many foul and even nauseous words together, swore with marvelous fluency, but to Audrey I went on, “So stop worrying, everything’s going to be OK. Will you for Christ’s sake listen to me?”

She nodded, a little light, or life, coming into her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I hope so.”

“Look, you ran out of the house, and — did you see anyone? Anything? Man, car — ?”

“Nothing. I didn’t see anything except him, except Gippy, Mr. Scott.”

At least she knew who I was. And, already, I could hear a siren, probably the ambulance getting closer.

</code>

<code> That siren I heard had, fortunately, been an ambulance nearing the Willifers’ address. Attendants checked Gippy quickly, wheeled him on a stretcher to and gently through the ambulance’s open rear doors, plasma already being dripped into his arm. Audrey went with him. Since then I hadn’t heard how he was, or if he was still alive.

I’d spent the time since then partly in the company of police detectives who were asking questions of the neighbors, partly doing a little checking of my own — none of which turned up much. Three people remembered seeing a car parked near the Willifers’ home, on the same side of Maryon and only fifty feet or so ahead of where their old Whippet was parked. It had left in a hurry, immediately after the shot, they all said, but none of them could describe the car except to say it was a dark sedan — one man thought it was new, a large dark sedan — or who might have been driving it. Almost everyone in nearby houses had heard the shot, and every single one of those individuals claimed he’d thought the noise was a firecracker. Half a dozen people, for some reason, had been impelled to check the exact time when they heard the firecracker. So we knew Gippy had been shot at 5:55 p.m. For a moment I wondered what might have happened if I’d arrived at 5:54 instead of three minutes or so later; but only for a moment.

</code>

<code> I sat out front in the waiting room for twenty minutes, with Audrey. It was odd, but neither of us said a word, not in all that time. Maybe it was one of those stretched-out moments when silence says more, or at least enough, and twice Audrey looked at me and smiled, not very big, but very sweetly. She’d stopped crying, and didn’t drip any more.

When the surgeon, a lean man with a wide face and thin lips, came out and walked toward us, still wearing the rumpled green gown and cloth cap over his hair, I knew from his expression — relaxed, reassuring, you know what I mean if you’ve ever waited like that, and the news was good — Gippy was OK. Well, maybe not OK, but alive. He hadn’t checked out on the table.

Audrey spoke for the first time. She turned her head toward me, looking down, with one hand palm out toward the doctor. “Please,” she said to me, almost in a whisper.

I knew what she was afraid of. What she was always, I suppose, afraid of. So I said, “Look, relax, it’s good news, Gippy’s OK.”

But I got up and walked forward a few steps, met the doctor. “I guess Mr. Willifer made it?”

He nodded. “Yes, he came through the operation very well indeed. He’s in Recovery now and, barring complications, I think he’ll be fine soon. He paused. “You are …?”

I just said, “Friend of the family.” Then, indicating Audrey — after smiling widely, and giving her the big “OK” sign with thumb and index finger — I said, “That’s his wife. She’s pretty well jangled, and it would be a blessing if you assured her Gippy’s alive and well, and living in Los Angeles.”

The doctor gave me an odd look. “Of course.”

He started to step past me and I added, “It might help if you’d tell her at least twice, to make sure it gets through. And then I’d like a word with you myself, if I may.”

He gave me another odd look, but nodded, walked to Audrey and spoke to her briefly. Half a minute later I heard him say in a querulous tone, “Of course I’m serious.” And a bit later, “I did it, I’m the surgeon, I operated on Mr. Willifer. I must insist that he is recovering nicely, very nicely.”

A minute later he walked back alongside me, plucking at his lower lip with thumb and two fingers. “Twice wasn’t enough,” he said.

“I know Mr. Willifer’s OK,” I said, “but was there any really rough damage inside him? Vital organs chewed up, anything like that?”

“Surprisingly no. He’s a very lucky man. Bullet entered the left lower quadrant of his abdomen, pierced the colon, missed the kidney, and lodged in fatty tissue near the fourth lumbar vertebra. No spinal or nerve damage, though.”

“The bullet was still in him, then? Must not have been a large-caliber slug, at least not from anything like a forty-five.”

“Ye-es, it….” He hesitated.

I showed him my wallet card, saying, “I’m also a private detective — employed by the Willifers. Almost any cop around should know me, or at least who I am. Or you could call Phil Samson, Homicide Captain downtown, if you want to check.”

He hesitated a moment longer, then said, “The bullet was thirty-two caliber, made a clean entrance wound, did not strike bone, and came to rest unfragmented. The intact bullet has already been turned over to police officers.”

“Thank you, doctor. I don’t suppose Gippy, Mr. Willifer, was conscious enough at any time to speak, or — “

“No.” He shook his head, pulling the thin lips together. “He’ll be conscious soon. Mrs. Willifer may see him in another hour or so, if she desires to wait.”

“She will desire,” I said. “Thanks again — and thanks, too, for doing another good job. On Gippy.”

“Another?”

“Can’t be the first time for you, doctor. Not even the first today.”

“Oh. I see what you mean. No….” For a moment his eyes were vacant, and the skin of his face seemed to sag, become visibly more lined. “No….”

That was all he said, however; then he turned and walked away.

And I walked over to, sat down next to, Audrey. “Isn’t that great?” I said.

She surprised me. She didn’t say, “Well, yes, if only he doesn’t die, or get constipated.” She did say, “Oh, God, yes, yes. I prayed all the time, prayed and prayed, and He answered my prayers.”

“Well….”

“I’ve been giving thanks just now, and I’ll keep on giving thanks to Him. And to you, too, Mr. Scott.”

“I wish you wouldn’t — not in that company — hell, I haven’t done anything.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Sure, I phoned for an ambulance. Big deal — “

“Mr. Scott.”

It was like a question, or the start of a whole paragraph, so I waited. I waited for a while.

Finally she said, “Gippy told me how nice you were. And you were so sweet to me, too, this morning.”

“Sweet?” I roared so loud a passing nurse almost dropped a bedpan. “I’ve never been sweet in my goddamn life — “

“And I really want you to keep helping us, if you can, helping Gippy mainly. Who it was shot him, and those things….”

“Sure.”

“I don’t have any more money right now, only a couple of dollars he, Gippy, doesn’t know about. But if things work out, I’ll pay you anything, if you’ll keep on with … everything.”

“Sure.”

“You’ll really try to find out who it was? And I can pay you later when — “

“Lady,” I said, “just drop it, will you? I have been hired, I have been on this case, whatever it is, I am on it, and I will stay — do you hear me? — stay on it to the bitter end, even if Fu Manchu catches me and has naked girls pull all my fingernails out while I’m bound hand and foot. And you have paid me all I intended, ever, to ask you to pay me on this case. Another job sometime? OK, it’ll cost you a million. But this one’s paid up. I will investigate everything, brave everything, and Fu Manchu willing solve everything. For the fee you have already paid me, which, as I recall, was…. Agh-h.”

“You will? Without any more money?”

“Yeah. I told you it wouldn’t cost you another bean, right? And I’d fix everything up? Well, now I’m stuck with it. I may be dumb, and planning to be poverty-stricken, but I won’t tell you yes/terday and no tomorrow … what was that I just said?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re even. I shouldn’t talk to you at all, I get — bugged. What I’m saying is, I’m not one of those, if there are any, so you’re home free. I’ll stay on this case if it takes fourteen years, my remaining youth, and most of my middle age. This is because I’m so sweet and dumb — “

“That’s wonderful, just wonderful, Mr. Scott! You’ll really find who it was shot my husband, you really will?”

“I’ll find him and kill him — “

“I’ll pray for you — “

“You do, and I’ll sock you — “

” — and I thank God you’re here to help Gippy and me.”

Then this absolutely unbelievable broad leaned at me and clunked her bony wrists behind my neck and kissed me on the cheek. I mean, Audrey really stuck both those unappetizing lips on my chops and went smack, or more like mmppphhhphh.

I couldn’t think of much to say after she leaned back, fluttering her eyelids as though in maidenly embarrassment.

Finally I said, “You — you shouldn’t have.”

And before another minute had ticked its little life away, after saying I would check later to make sure Gippy wasn’t chasing any terrified nurses through the hallways and straining himself, I headed for the exit.

Audrey called after me, “When I see Gippy, Mr. Scott, and talk to him, is there anything you want me to tell him? For you, I mean?”

“Well….”

I paused, glanced back over my shoulder at Audrey — at now-beaming, actually, joyously-smiling, almost prettily plain Audrey — and said, “Just tell him to keep my can of beer cold. And not to take any tired blood. And — yeah, you might tell him what the surgeon who just operated on him said about your spouse to me. Gippy won’t believe it, but you might as well pass it on anyhow.”

“What was that, Mr. Scott?”

“He said Gippy was a very lucky man,” I told her, and sped through the hospital’s exit, and was out of sight in a trice, before she could think of any other wiggy things to ask me.

</code>

<code> Chapter Eleven

Insistent hunger pangs reminded me that I hadn’t put anything nutritious or even tasty into my stomach since breakfast, which by then seemed a couple of foodless days ago. So I drove to one of my favorite spots on La Cienega, where I had a beer at the bar to drown the pangs and then an order of blood-rare prime rib, an inch thick, at a corner table.

While enjoying black coffee and a smoke, and waiting for my check, I thought a bit about the day now nearing its end, mentally skipped back over the recent events, took another look at people I’d talked to, wondered about that Roman Number One well and the men and women I’d seen — and those I hadn’t seen yet. Then I signed my check, got three dimes, and used the restaurant’s pay phone not far from the front door.

I called the numbers I’d written in my little book for Devin Morraigne, Easy Banners, and Ben Riddle, and still had my three dimes. Where was everybody?

Then I remembered the name Donald Corey, looked up his number and dialed — and at last found somebody who answered his phone.

I told him who I was, and at least part of what I wanted to talk about, asked if I could come to his home and use up ten minutes of his time. He was gracious in saying I could, if I drove out immediately, since it was just a bit after eight-thirty then, and he was an early-to-bedder.

So I got there in ten minutes — it was a large, fairly new house in Bel Air, where even the poor people have money — spent another fifteen with him, and was on my way again before nine. All I wanted from Corey was corroboration — or denial — of what Arnold Trappman had told me this afternoon: that the idea of buying out investors in the Roman well originated not with him, but with Mr. Corey.

We sat in a light-pine-paneled den in big nubby brown chairs facing each other, and I listened while he smoked a long thin cigar and sipped Remy Martin cognac from a large ball glass. Corey was maybe a dozen years older than I, a heavy-set six-footer in his early forties with a plump pink face and a most winning smile.

“Yes, that is essentially a fair statement of the facts, Mr. Scott,” he said, after I’d explained a bit more about the case I was on and repeated what Trappman had told me. “Except that I did not tell Arnold why I desired to sell him my interest in the Roman Number One, and I assume he concluded, erroneously, that I was in financial difficulty of some kind. He did indicate to you that I had suffered business reverses?”

“Yeah, something like that. It’s the impression I got, anyway.”

“It is possible that is what he believed, but, if so, he was in error. I invested fifteen thousand in the venture in the hope of substantially greater return, but also because, due to my tax structure, the real cost to me was only a little more than forty-five hundred dollars. You undoubtedly know that one hundred percent of all intangible drilling expenses are deductible from the investor’s current income, so for me it was a small-risk venture with the potential for large gain.”

“If this minimal investment was of such little concern to you, then how come you recently dickered with Trappman for a piddling twenty-five hundred bucks?”

He smiled that very handsome smile. “I never think of twenty-five hundred, or twenty-five, as a ‘piddling’ quantity when those numbers refer to dollars. However, a monthly royalty of roughly one-hundred and twenty-five dollars, with twenty-eight of those dollars exempt from federal taxation, is not my concept of an exciting enterprise.”

“Ill go along with that.”

“Moreover, I invested in the Roman last year. This is another year, bringing with it new tax-and-investment problems and possibilities. Last year I was able to deduct the major portion of my investment — tangible well expenses must be depreciated over several years — in the Roman. The twenty-five hundred paid me this year by Arnold is a long-term capital gain rather than ordinary income, since I sold to him all my present and future interest in the well. Also, that — ” he smiled again — “piddling twenty-five hundred dollars became immediately available to me for whatever application I might desire of it, rather than in much smaller amounts monthly.”

I nodded.

“I would enjoy continuing this discussion, Mr. Scott,” he said. “But — ” he glanced at a heavy, interesting-looking watch on his left wrist — “the hour grows late.” At that, he tapped a little button on the side of his watchcase and I could see reddish figures flicker, forming little glowing numbers on the watch face. “Eight-fifty already,” he said.

Dandy timepiece, I thought. Like a little computer. Liquid crystals and stuff. Must have set Corey back a bundle. Probably paid his oil-well capital gain for it. “OK,” I said, “I’m almost out the door. But I would like to ask what you know about a man named Devin Morraigne, and his Something-or-other Holaselector.”

“The lusty gentleman with the doodlebug?” he said, smiling that most engaging smile.

Corey had turned the tables on me this time. Uusually I was the guy saying “doodlebug” and everybody else was correcting me.

“That’s the guy,” I said. “Judging by the way you refer to his gizmo, I assume you don’t think it’s of much value.”

“I don’t consider it to be of any value. That’s quite a bit less than much.”

“Right on. Have you seen Morraigne operating his invention?”

“I have several times observed him walking over the terrain, aiming his black box in various directions, pursuing something or other with great intentness. I was never close to him at such times — he is rather secretive about how his instrument works. Allegedly works. On at least one of those occasions he was accompanied by your client, Mr. Willifer.”

“Yeah, Gippy seems to have a lot of faith in the man, and his hydrocarbon finder. You figure the thing’s a bunch of junk, huh? Or maybe part of a fraud, some kind of con game?”

“My opinion — an educated and considered opinion, I believe — is that Mr. Morraigne’s instrument is valueless. I have no reason to believe, however, that his actions are in any way criminal, or even designed to deceive, even though they do deceive. I could, of course, be wrong entirely about any part or all of this, since it is merely my opinion. But it was not formed … lightly.”

“Was he around when — ?” I stopped, rephrased my question. “Who was present when the well was spudded? Wait a minute, spudding is when you start drilling the hole, right?”

Corey nodded.

“What I’m after is, who was present when the well came in — Morraigne, you, the other investor? That is, when the oil actually gushed out, or oozed up, or whatever it did.”

“It was pumped to the surface, Mr. Scott. Often there is insufficient subsurface gas pressure to force crude up the pipe, thus the oil must be pumped. But, in response to your question, no, I was not present when the well came in. It is my understanding that only Mr. Trappman and Mr. Banners — and, of course, the rest of the drilling crew on the rig — were there at that time. Drilling proceeded with virtually no delays, and the selected depth was reached — and the disappointing production of oil was reached — a day or two sooner than had been anticipated. At any rate, I’m quite sure Mr. Morraigne was not present at that time.”

I’d got what I wanted from Corey, but something he’d mentioned earlier had stuck in my head, so I asked him about it. “You referred to Morraigne as ‘the lusty gentleman,’ I think it was. Why ‘lusty’?”

“Perhaps that was a careless choice of word. Merely an opinion again. But he is quite a handsome man, tall — about your height, Mr. Scott, though a good deal slimmer, almost thin — a rather devilish-appearing fellow. Yes, devilish. And a bachelor, though nearing forty. But my impression, or opinion, undoubtedly was inspired by the circumstance that, on two occasions when I observed him, he was in the company of an exceedingly attractive and almost shockingly curvaceous young lady.”

“She was outstanding in numerous ways, hmm?”

“They.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not she — they. There were two young ladies. He was with a different one on each occasion. My comment, or description, was meant to apply to both.”

“Hmm. I wonder how many of those he’s got. I wonder how many of those there are.”

“Not an infinite number, you may be quite confident, Mr. Scott. Moreover, Mr. Morraigne, when the opportunity arose between those periods of his intensive investigations in the field, was not averse to paying considerable attention to the young ladies — one at a time, of course.”

“I’m not so sure, the way you describe him. Considerable attention — they didn’t make babies while hanging from derricks in the sunlight, did they?”

“Oh, no, no.” He smiled. “At least, I did not observe any exercises of that nature. Mr. Morraigne travels about in a motor home, one of those miniature motel rooms on wheels, in which he carries his prized instrument and various items of electronic and other equipment. And, it would indubitably seem, from time to time, a girl.”

“Exceedingly attractive and shockingly stacked.”

“Approximately. Again, about this also I may be in error. My use of the word ‘lust’ was merely a reflection of an assumption and may be inaccurate.”

“If your assumption accurately reflects, I wonder how he finds time for any doodling, with all that diddling. However, back to Arnold Trappman for a moment, and his purchase of your Roman interest. May I take it as a fact that you did not virtually throw yourself on his mercy, and request — plead — that he buy you out, possibly so you wouldn’t have to stop payments on your watch?”

He smiled, but did not speak, as though actually to answer such an outrageous question was out of the question.

I saw him obtrusively poking that little button on the side of his timepiece again, so I stood up and said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Corey. I appreciate your seeing me at this ghastly hour.”

“It was a pleasure, Mr. Scott.”

I left then, even though I’d have enjoyed talking to him a little longer. I’d wanted to ask him where he got that watch.

</code>

<code> Weird, I was thinking, weird coincidence, wild, far-out witchery and a one-in-a-million bull’s-eye.

I was recalling Cynara Lane’s comment to me, when talking about Gippy’s current transits and other astrological gobbledygook, to the effect that he was in some sort of dangerous period now. More, there’d been a remark about the possibility of his getting injured either in the head, or the “abdominal area” — unless I’d got what she said twisted around or sideways. But I clearly remember her mentioning an “affliction in Virgo.”

I hadn’t really believed then that she could see anything that specific in Gippy’s chart, and the hell of it was I couldn’t believe it now, either. In all of my experience, which included plenty of guys who’d been shot in numerous places, the only people who could possibly have known about those crimes in advance of their commission were either those who planned personally to participate in the crimes, or others who were privy to info from those who did plan to commit them. Which is to say, accessories at least before, if not also during, the fact.

Which description could not possibly apply to the lovely Cynara, who had too many charming virtues, not the least of which were those outstanding physical…. Right then, interrupting my thoughts, another slightly jarring phrase fluttered in my mind, this one Dan Corey’s description of the “exceedingly attractive and almost shockingly curvaceous” lovelies who’d accompanied Devin Morraigne to the Roman Number One drilling site.

That description certainly fit Cynara well enough.

I finished my smoke, thinking about lusty Devin Morraigne, about Cynara, about Gippy lying in a hospital bed with a bullet hole in him — in his stomach — then took my little book from a coat pocket, turned to the letter “L.”

Earlier, when I’d jotted down the address of Starguide, I had also entered Cynara Lane’s home address. It wasn’t too far from where I was parked, just out the Freeway to Burbank. Not too far away, and not too late in the p.m. Of course, even if it had been much more distant, and the hour much later, I suppose I would have gone there, anyway.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twelve

It was a small house in a quiet residential district, not much different from other houses on that tree-lined street except that it appeared more heavily landscaped than most of them, planted with low-spreading junipers and large-leafed tropical-looking plants, and with a lot of ivy and morning glories growing up the front of the house.

I rang the bell, then knocked briskly a few times, and rang the bell again. I was feeling pretty good, for no particular reason.

Soft thumping sounds — soft feet on carpet inside — then the door opened partway and Cynara looked around its edge. Looked and blinked, but not flirtily, not as though winking mischievously with both eyes. More as one would blink at a multiple collision on the Freeway, or the San Andreas Fault opening up.

However, she looked great — at least the little of her not concealed by the door did. That little was enough to hint that she was not bundled up to keep at bay the chill of winter snows, even though, other than the beautiful face, all I could see was a hunk of beautiful reddish hair hanging loose, part of a beautiful neck, and one beautiful shoulder covered only by something like thin cotton candy through which beautiful pink shoulder skin showed.

Then she said softly, “Is … is something wrong?” and opened the door wide.

For that moment, rather a brief moment as it turned out, Cynara was framed in the doorway with her form limned by light from behind her, and it was instantly clear I’d guessed rightly that the loveliness thus limned was not in any way overconcealed, for she appeared to have on only a kind of frilly gauziness, a negligee or robe or peignoir, or something even better, and the contours and roundnesses of the form thus revealed made the description “shockingly curvaceous” inadequate, but close enough, considering the limitations of language.

“Wow,” I said, “if it’s true kissing spreads colds, I wouldn’t mind catching pneumonia — “

Clunk-click. Clunk was the door closing in my face, click the lock automatically snapping into the jamb.

Right after that I heard Cynara say in what, if it had been anyone but me out here, I would have thought a tone of high exasperation. “I knew you’d come snorting around here before the night was over — “

“Snorting?”

” — but I am not going to let you in, Shell. I told you I’ve got work — “

“What do you — “

” — to do, and I know what will happen if I let you in. So I won’t let you in. So, go.”

” — mean, snorting? And what do you mean, you know what’ll happen? … Cynara?”

There were more of those soft thumping sounds, and it did not require a detective to deduce that they were moving away from me, not only because if they hadn’t been moving away she would have banged into the door, but because the thumps got softer, and ceased, and I heard the clickety-clack of a typewriter’s keys. Then even that stopped.

I knocked softly. Said, “I really do have something to say to you, Cynara.” Knocked again. “Something else, I mean. It’s important.”

The door opened a crack and Cynara said, “Don’t come in for a few seconds. I’m — not quite dressed.” After which I heard her moving away.

I waited a few seconds, then stepped inside, closed the door behind me, and gazed around at a small but very comfortable-looking living room — low silvery-blue divan against one wall, a couple of darker blue overstuffed chairs, long low mosaic-topped table covered with magazines, books, papers. A few paintings were on the walls, and in one corner was a six-foot-high bookcase containing several dark brown leather-bound volumes, a few newer hardbacks in shiny paper jackets, some paperbacks, and several open spaces in which were little idols and figurines, an hourglass, one small and fragile blue-pink-white cloisonne vase. A few feet from the corner where the bookcase stood was a small desk, a typewriter upon it with paper in the carriage, a straight-backed chair behind it. But no Cynara.

Then, however, she came in through a door on my left, wearing a long white evening coat with at least a dozen large buttons all the way up its front. All the way up to her neck. And with all of the buttons buttoned.

“I see,” I said. “You think I came here to unbutton you, and you’ve made it impossible.”

“I suddenly realized I was standing in the doorway in only my nightclothes, and very little even of them, which is not a wise thing to do with one such as you about.”

“No, ma’am. Of course, I didn’t really come here to do what you seduce — suspect — deduce … what you think. Gippy Willifer got shot tonight.”

“Oh, dear God,” she said.

</code>

<code> She sighed, saying, “Thank heavens he’s going to be all right. I was afraid something might happen to Gippy, but I never even thought of his getting shot.”

“I know you assumed something might happen to him. You told me so. You even said he could get it in the stomach, if memory serves me. To me, that’s either one hell of a coincidence, or….” I let it trail off. There wasn’t really any way to say it with the kind of lightsome precision I had in mind.

“Yes, that affliction in Virgo,” she began, but left her sentence unfinished, too. She looked at me, smiled tentatively, glanced away, and was silent for several seconds.

Then she pulled her gaze back to my face once more and said, “Well, really! Detective Scott, I think I understand that ‘coincidence-or’ now — and two or three other innuendos I ignored earlier. Let’s see, I told you Gippy might be injured, even mentioned the possible area of his injury, stressed that he was going through a critical period right now and during the next few days, and therefore — since I couldn’t possibly have known this through astrological analysis of his horoscope — I must have been planning to hire a professional gunman or shoot him myself!”

She sure made it sound dumb. But before I could tell her so, Cynara continued:

“I am myself, of course, a trained marksman, incapable of missing what I aim at, and I planned to aim at his duodenum, and therefore pretended to see a severe affliction in the sign Virgo of Gippy’s chart. If I’d really wanted to kill him, I would have said there was an affliction in Leo, so I could shoot his heart out, and if I’d felt like merely wounding his feet, I would have said Pisces — “

“You’re getting all shook up, dear. Over noth — “

“Nothing! When you — “

“Your Adam’s apple is bobbing obscenely, Cynara. Look, we got off to a bad start in your office today, let’s both admit that, and make up, and then fight some more. Half the fun of fighting is making — “

I’m not quite sure what her interruption to that was except it was loud, after which we yakked at each other for another minute or two, but finally she simmered down. Seemed a bit sulky, but calm. So I said, “What I would really like for you to do — “

“I won’t.”

” — is show me on Gippy’s chart where it says he’ll get shot. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.”

I could tell she was crunching her teeth even though her lips were pushed together and hid her teeth completely. But after maybe ten more seconds she took a deep breath and whooshed it through her nostrils, and said, “Nowhere is it written in capital letters, or even small print, that Gippy would get SHOT. I didn’t say SHOT — “

“Now, Cynara — “

“But the possibility, even the probability, of injury is unmistakably there. And I will show you the planets and aspects indicating that. I’ll do better than that. But then I have to get back to work, and you have to go.”

“Naturally,” I said.

She got up, walked to her little desk near the bookcase, opened a drawer and removed a sheet of paper from it, took another paper from the desk top, and left me alone for a minute. I heard a faint hum from something in the next room, then Cynara was back.

She handed me one of several pieces of paper she was holding. “I duplicated Gippy’s chart, with his current progressions and transits, for you. Since you may not believe what I tell you, about anything, ask any other astrologer — any competent astrologer — to interpret it for you. Particularly the significance of Gippy’s afflicted natal Mars in his first house, and transiting Uranus forming a quincunx to that Mars-Uranus conjunction while his Mercury in Virgo is squared by transiting Mars.”

“Naturally,” I said.

But then I looked at the now more familiar three-ring chart with symbols scattered around it, exactly like the ones I’d seen at Starguide since even this duplicate showed the figures in three colors. And, oddly, the thing didn’t look nearly so goofy to me now — probably because, thanks to Cynara’s earlier explanations, I could recognize at least some of the symbols.

We actually spent a couple of minutes discussing it, which gave me a chance to show off, after which Cynara looked at me with an arched brow raised over one of those velvet-dusk eyes and said, “You really are learning a little, aren’t you?”

“I made that up about the asteroids.”

“I know, you idiot. But that is transiting Mars — ” she tapped the little beggar with a long coral-tipped fingernail — “and that is Gippy’s natal Mercury. And … well, I think there’s hope for you. Don’t let it go to your head. As for Gippy, except for these difficult transits, which won’t last much longer, he should really be moving now into a lovely time — particularly lovely for him, after these past several years. His progressed Sun, after thirty years in Libra, has moved into Scorpio, applying to a trine with his fifth-house Jupiter, both of those points to be trined by transiting Jupiter in Pisces. I consider that a very fortunate configuration, but it doesn’t negate those other dangerous aspects we’ve discussed. Really, though, the worst stresses of Gippy’s entire life should be just about over now.”

“I’m delighted to hear it. What lies ahead for me? I mean, soon, like in the next few min — “

“I wanted to show you this, too, Shell,” she continued. “I found Arnold Trappman’s birth date in one of our biographical reference volumes before I left the office, and set this up tonight. It’s Mr. Trappman’s solar chart, and you really should find out his birth time for me so I can do a more accurate horoscope. But even this is significant.”

“Significant how?”

“Well, just from his solar chart, I’d say he’s probably a crook.”

“Come on — “

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be so dogmatic about something like this,” she said. “I should say, if he hasn’t overcome the clear indications in his birth chart, if he has overcome difficulties without giving in to a natural tendency toward taking the easy way, the deceitful way, the crooked way, then he’s a crook. And … maybe I threw in a little woman’s intuition there.”

“Good, that clears everything up — “

“He’s intelligent, sharp — look at that Mercury — but there’s a criminal mentality if I ever saw one. I won’t try to explain why I say that, but you’d better accept it if you have anything to do with him.”

“Well….”

“Now, I don’t know what time of day he was born, so these progressions could be off as much as five months or even more either way, up to nearly a year — another reason you’ve got to get me his birth time if you can. But there’s a very strong possibility he’s in something crooked now, and that he was into something very similar — and just as crooked — about seventeen years ago. Sixteen, eighteen, about seventeen years. Would that help you?”

I didn’t quite know how to answer that. “Well, it’s sure — interesting,” I said.

We chatted a little more, mostly about things she saw in Trappman’s chart, and Gippy’s, that sort of thing, and I got up and looked around the front room. I liked it, and told her so, then found myself next to her little desk in the corner.

On the sheet of white bond paper in the typewriter was half a page of double-spaced typing, some sort of “Forecast” presumably, since the top two lines read, “splendidly benefic influences six months from now, when your progressed Sun-Mercury conjunction is trine natal Uranus — “

But of more interest to me, and more intelligible to me, were the comments in the last three — or two and a half — lines, since as soon as my eyes fell upon them I recalled that brief flurry of clickety-clack typing Cynara had done immediately after shutting her front door in my face.

“…even more important, the conjunction of progressed SHELLSCOTTSCOTTSCOTT IS A BASTARD BASTARDBASTARD AND DAMN HIM AND HIS DAMNED MARS-VENUS ON MY — “

Cynara had leaped off the divan and all-of-a-sudden charged at me, reaching for the paper in her typewriter. I let her grab it and rip it out, merely saying innocently, “I wonder whose forecast this could be-be-be?”

“You — “

“Well, I only dropped by for a minute … ho-ho, what’s this?”

On the desk, face up, was a somewhat different kind of horoscope — I guessed. There were only two rings or circles, pinkish-red figures entered in the outer ring and light-blue ones in the central circle. But, while at Starguide earlier today, having studied with some interest the little figures denoting Sun and Mars and Mercury and Jupiter and such in my horoscope, I noted that all those symbols, here in light blue, were to the best of my recollection precisely where, on that other wheel and in dark blue ink, my own planets had been.

So, casually, I pointed to the pinkish-red figures and said, “What’s that?”

“Not what — who. It’s a girl.”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s me.” She started to grab the paper, but this time I was quicker than she.

“Wait a minute,” I said, offended. “I thought you were pleased I was learning astrology so fast.”

I could pick out the symbols for Mars and Venus quick as a flash by now, since in my own chart they were scrunched together on the same degree, right next to my “H” with half a dumbbell hanging down. So it was with interest that I noted the pinkish-red Moon and Venus — the latter like a little circle with a small cross descending from it — were right above my own Mars and Venus and funny “H.”

“Just to show you how far I, like my planets, have progressed,” I said to Cynara, tapping first the inner circle then the outer, “if this is me and that’s you, then my Mars and Venus in cahoots — “

“Conjunction.”

“Yeah, same thing. Well, they are, it appears, right there at, or in cahoots with, your Moon thing and your naval — natal — Venus thing. Is it not so? Or have I flunked — ?”

“Yes, it’s so. In fact, Shell, your Mars-Venus-Uranus conjunction is on the same degree as my conjoined Moon-Venus in Pisces. Your Scorpio Moon opposes my Mars in Taurus. In fact, your Moon-Jupiter conjunction is in wide square to my Aquarian Sun.” She pointed. “There, and there, and there. Now, do you know any more than you did before?”

“Sure. I know what that means.”

Her eyes widened. She turned her head slightly, looking slanty at me. “You — do?”

“Sure. It means we’re going to — going to — going to take a trip? Yeah. A vacation. Together, or in conjunction, of course. How’s that?”

“Lousy.”

“Sounds like lots of fun to me. What’s so lousy — ?”

“I mean your astrology is lousy.”

“Ah, then the idea’s not so bad, hey? I knew you’d see the light, Cynara. Well, since we’re going to go off together, I’ve a splendid idea. Or two or three. How do these sound?”

I leaned close to her and whispered in her ear.

Whereupon she stepped back, stood a full yard away, and glared at me, actually stamped one foot, thump, on the carpet. “Shell Scott,” she said sharply, “you, you — criminal. I wouldn’t spend an unforgettable weekend at the Mauna Kea, or a mad-magic night in Acapulco, or an afternoon in Burbank with you if you were the last man on the Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars — “

“You don’t have to exaggerate — “

” — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto — “

“You’re going to hurt my feelings.”

” — not to mention the Sun and Moon.”

“I’d just as soon you hadn’t mentioned that first bunch — “

“In other words, No.”

“Why are you so unreasonable about vacations?”

“Shell, you — “

“‘Criminal,’ yeah. And I need a partner in crime. I’m not doing so good by myself. Hold it — you wouldn’t hit a man, would you? OK, I know when my aspects are lousy. You win. Goodbye. Or, rather, good night — so kiss me good night and — “

“Go. Go. I have work to do.”

“Sure. I understand. Your work is more important than my well-being. So, just kiss me good night, and — maybe you’ll never see me again.”

“Oh, dear.” She flipped her pretty hands. “All right.”

“No kidding? Well — “

“I’ll kiss you good night, just to get rid of you. Keep your mouth shut — “

“What kind of kiss is that — ?”

“Keep your big mouth shut and listen!”

I listened.

“If I kiss you once, just once — I mean, really kiss you nicely and neatly, not a little peck — will you get out of here and let me work?”

“Sure.”

“Do you mean it, Shell?”

“Sure.”

“Do you have to pucker up like that?”

“Just messing … horsing around. All this work you do forever and ever, I figured you might enjoy a little horseplay — little humor — amusement?”

“All right, then, now pucker up.”

I didn’t really have that much time. Her mouth moved at me like a soft wild bird flying almost faster than the eye can see, and then….

And then….

Well, if this was what Cynara called kissing “nicely and neatly,” I wanted to be around when she felt a little tacky.

Too soon, though even twenty-five minues as a bare minimum would have been too soon, the kissing and varied vibrations and exceedingly marvelous labial extrapolations ended. Ended suddenly.

And just as suddenly Cynara was saying, “All right, Shell, you’ve been kissed — “

“Boy — “

“So get lost, beat it.”

“Beat it? You mean, get lost?”

“I mean go, leave, depart.”

“You want me to split, huh? After all we’ve just been to each other?”

“Damn you, Shell, get out.”

I smiled. “OK. But I want you to know, before I depart, that you’ve been swell, really. Really and really swell. I’m a sentimentalist fool at heart, you know, and nothing makes my fool heart rejoice like — oh, you know, dear, like — romance. Like we just did. Sweet, tender, almost teary romance. Like the romantic song, A fine ro — . Of course I did ask for my lips rare, and you did ‘em well-done. Now they’re ruined, you went and cooked all the blood out — “

She socked me. I mean, she really bonked me. Raised one white-coated arm, slender fingers clenched in a pretty little fist, raised it high over her head and then swung it down, bonk, on my skull.

“Just for that,” I said, reeling, “I’ll leave.”

I turned and legged it across the room, shoulders slumped, threw the door open, and trudged out into the darkness.

But from the darkness I looked back, at Cynara, and she was rubbing her still-clenched hand. Rubbing it, and smiling, smiling sweetly at her pretty little fist.

</code>

<code> Chapter Thirteen

In the morning, my home-cooked mush came out as well as it ever had, which meant I could eat it without severe misgivings for the first time in a month. I put away a whole bowlful of the gruel, then fed my fish.

The tropical fish are in two aquariums against the wall, just left of the door when you come into my living room. The community aquarium, a twenty-gallon job, contains black mollies and red swords, a pair of industrious little catfish, a few shark-like Panohax chaperi, a pair each of Rasbora heteromorpha, delicate white clouds, and dainty black tetras, one magnificent cornflower-blue Betts splendens and a dazzle of frisky little bright-blue-neon-striped, and appropriately named, neon tetras. The adjacent ten-gallon tank contains only guppies, but some of them, with their delicately shaded and waving dorsals and comparatively enormous fanlike caudal fins, are more wildly colorful than anything in the big tank.

I tied half a raw shrimp to a thread and suspended it in the community aquarium, watched the fish tear fiercely at it for awhile, then sprinkled dried daphnia on the water in both tanks, added a few thin red tubifex worms for the guppies, dawdled around until eight a.m., and got on the phone.

After three uncompleted calls — to Easy Banners, Ben Riddle, and Devin Morraigne — I phoned the Morris Memorial Hospital and asked how Mr. Willifer was doing. He was doing fine, still under mild sedation, though I would be able to visit him later today.

The next call was to a man named “Red” Vetterman, also a licensed private investigator, whom I’d known when he worked out of a one-man office like mine. But he was now head for a large, competent, and prosperous business, “The Vetterman Detective Agency,” and I’d called on him a dozen times in the past couple of years for leg-work and digging that could be more efficiently accomplished by half a dozen of his employees — or a dozen if need be — than by me alone, legging it from door to door and thumbing through various public, and some not so public, files; more efficiently, and more expensively, which fact I already knew, but was reminded of painfully when Red told me approximately what his bill would be.

“It may really be true,” I said, “that it takes a crook to catch crooks. Would it be cheaper if I wanted the info next week?”

“You don’t want it next week. Besides, I always charge you more than anybody else.”

“You’re a real friend. Well, that’s all I can think of, Red. Arnold Trappman, Ben Riddle, Easy Banners — that’s from E. Z., for Ennis Z-something.”

“Got it.”

“I intend to call on those last two myself, if I have better luck contacting them than I did yesterday. But I’ll want the background on all three, especially the fishy stuff, if there is any. From the little I’ve got so far, I’d say concentrate most of your fire on Trappman. Whatever he might be into…. oil, gas, numbers, prostitution — “

“Trappman? I thought he was an oil guy, mainly. He in rackets?

“Not that I know of. I just want you to keep an open mind.”

“I’ll put three men on the quick stuff right away, check out the cops and robbers bits myself — should have the top of it for you this afternoon. Where’ll you be?”

“I’m not sure, Red. For the price I’m paying, you can have a pretty girl type it up and bring it over, can’t you?”

“Type it up, yeah, bring it over, no. You want to ask me why I’ll send a guy with it?”

“I think not. There’s also a man named Devin — no, skip it. I’ll check him, and his girl friends, myself. But there is one other thing.” I hesitated, wondering what the hell I was doing, then went on, “When you’re digging into Trappman’s background, see if you can find anything that smells — crooked deal, criminal or on the borderline thereof, anything screwy — about seventeen years ago.”

“He pull something seventeen years back?”

“Beats me. I’d just like to know what he was into around that time, give or take six months or so. It’s just a … hunch. Call it a long shot.”

“Hell, it’s your money.”

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? OK, Red, I’ll be in touch.”

We hung up, and I tried Arnold Trappman’s office, didn’t reach him, but did get his secretary, who — somewhat to my surprise — gave me her boss’s home number. And, lo and behold, somebody was finally home.

It was a brief conversation. I told Trappman I’d had no luck in reaching his present and former associates, Banners and Riddle, and would appreciate it if he could help me get in touch with them.

The voice was the same this morning as it had been yesterday afternoon, rather large, heavy against the ear. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get off my ass,” he said.

“There’s nothing I’d rather do, Mr. Trappman, nothing in the whole world, but I intend to catch up with those guys — “

“I haven’t talked to that son of a bitch Riddle,” he interrupted, “since he crawled out of my office. But I’ll see if I can find out where the bastard is, and let you know. He’s not at his home?”

“If he is, he doesn’t answer his phone.”

Trappman grunted. “Banners has an office on Hill Street in L.A.”

“I know. But he hasn’t been in it lately.”

“He’s been checking on some leases for me, near Long Beach, should be back in town later today. I expect a call from him this morning, so I’ll tell him you want to see him and set up a meeting at his office. Will that satisfy you, Scott? Enough for you to quit pestering me?”

“It’ll satisfy me some,” I said. “But who’s to say how much?”

“You know, Scott,” he said in the deep rumbling voice, “you gripe my ass. You really gripe it severely.”

“I’ll bet you say that to everybody,” I responded cheerfully. “If you manage to set up a meeting with either Banners or Riddle, you can call me here, or on my car phone.” I gave him my mobile-phone number. “OK?”

He grunted. “I’ll say this for you, Scott, you put out a lot of work for a paranoid jerk like Willifer.”

“I’d do the same for any paranoid jerk,” I said. “If you ever need me, I’m in the book. Incidentally, the way you talk about my friend, Gippy, I guess you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“He got shot last night. Should be in the papers this — “

“Shot? That little — who shot him?”

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

“Shot, huh? I’ll be goddamned. Kill him?”

It was a question not asked as though Trappman were overcome by curiosity, so I simply said, “Nope,” and continued, “but I know he’ll appreciate your concern as much as I do. Thanks for your help — “

“You really do gripe my ass,” he boomed. “You keep it up, Scott, it may cost you a few bills to get put back together in an emergency ward, and you wouldn’t be the first smart-mouth — “

“Don’t worry about it,” I interrupted, just before hanging up, “I’ve got more bills than I know what to do with.”

</code>

<code> She stood there, looking hesitant, fiddling with both hands held tightly against her abdomen. I wondered if Audrey’s secret vice was cracking her knuckles, but I smiled at her and waved, and she jerked back slightly as if startled that I’d noticed her.

I stopped by the bed, looked down at Gippy.

“Hi,” I said. “They tell me you got a couple pints of blood last night, and it must have been just what the doctor ordered — you look better than before you got shot.”

“I been worried about that,” he said seriously. “The blood, I mean. I asked this morning where it come from, and would you believe they don’t know from where? Don’t know from who? Why, they just take it out of anybody who’s handy and spill it all together — “

“Gippy, I wouldn’t be too concerned — “

” — and then they transfuse it in you. While you’re unconscious and cut open, and not in any mood to argue. What if they took it from somebody sick?”

“Ah … well,” I said, then smiled stiffly. “Hi, Audrey.”

“Good morning, Mr. Scott. I — we both — want to thank you so much, we couldn’t have afforded this private room ourselves, and it was so sweet of you — “

“Forget it, will you? And don’t start that — please don’t call me — look, the fellow outside the door in a police uniform is, as one might well suppose, a policeman, right? Not that Gippy’s in any further danger, but until we know who shot him, and why, it makes sense to take reasonable precautions, right? All I did was make certain small suggestions to an individual or two, including a friend of mine named the Captain of Central Homicide, and now we can all breathe a little easier, which is a tough thing to do in the smog around here.”

“Then the police are paying the extra for this room?”

“Not exactly. But they are paying for the cop. OK? Well, Gippy, I can’t stay here more than five minutes or a nurse may attack me, so is there anything you can tell me about the shooting? You see anybody?”

He shook his head on the pillow. “Like I told the police officers already, I went out to put the car in our garage, and Good night Emily, that’s all I remember till I come to in the Recovery Room — that’s what they call it, but a lot of people die in the Recovery — “

I asked him a few more questions, about anything he might have heard, unusual movement, where the sound of the shot had come from, but he was blank on all of it. I was talking to him about the other involved individuals I’d been unable to contact yet, and he wasn’t able to add anything to what I already knew, but suddenly he said, “Hey, I’m glad you asked about Dev Morraigne — he phoned me maybe an hour ago, right here in my room here. I told him about you, working on the well for us and all, and that you were going to fix everything up.”

I smiled again, and again quite stiffly. “You told him that, huh? That’s nice. So, Devin Morraigne called? Well, at least he’s alive.”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Just an expression — I haven’t had much luck getting in touch with him and some other guys. Morraigne’s in town?”

“No, he’s on his way back from Dallas. Heard a mention of me on the radio news, so he stopped and put a call in to me right away.”

“Did an operator place the call, or did he dial direct?”

‘I just picked up the phone and said hello, and Dev’s there saying who he is and all. What difference does it make?”

“Just curious,” I said. “He’s on his way here?”

“Yeah, he was in Texas spotting locations for some oil men there the last few days, but he says he’ll be home by noon maybe. I mentioned you’d like to see him. I guess you still do?”

“I still do.”

“He’s coming by here first, to see me, but I expect he’ll get to where he lives around half past noon — it’s a house out on Granite Ledge Road. You know where it’s at?”

I nodded. “Since you’ll see him before I do, tell him I’ll drop by his place about twelve-thirty then, all right?”

“Sure. You’ll like Dev — you guys’ll like each other.”

“You think so, huh?”

I was about to leave when Gippy turned his face away from me, as he reached for something on a table next to his bed, and I noticed a small white square of cloth in the hair at the back of his head.

When I asked him about it he said, “It’s just a bandage on a little cut I got when I fell, nothing seriously injurious. Hit my head on one of the rocks set in the lawn there in front of the house, I guess. I was not aware of it happening at the time, or of anything else.”

“Funny,” I said. “Isn’t that Aries? Doesn’t Aries have something to do with the head?”

“Hah?”

Gippy was not exactly sure what it was that I’d asked him, which made us even.

</code>

<code> Chapter Fourteen

At eleven-twenty a.m. I left my Cad with the attendant in a parking lot on Hill Street, near the building in which Ennis Z. Banners had his office.

Ten minutes earlier I’d been on the Freeway nearing downtown L.A., when Arnold Trappman reached me on my mobile phone. It was a one-sided conversation, all his side:

“I got in touch with Easy, and he’ll see you in his office any time now — but no later than noon. I told him if he talked to you on his lunch hour you’d give him ptomaine poisoning.”

“What’s he planning to do, bite me — ?” I began, but jolly Arnold had hung up.

Hill Street near Twelfth isn’t a particularly charming or refreshing area of downtown Los Angeles. But, then neither is any of the rest of downtown Los Angeles. The building was six stories high, looked forty years old, and although there was an elevator it didn’t elevate.

I climbed six stories, to the top floor, walked down a quiet corridor to 616. The door was open, but I could read the black-paint letters on its frosted glass: BANNERS PRODUCTIONS AND PROCESSES.” Whatever that was.

He was behind his desk in the office — one of two rooms in the small suite, I gathered, for a door between this room and the next was open and from the adjoining room came the sound of typing. Not a smooth speedy rippety-pop-clickety but more of a rip-pp-peytpo-p-clockorty. About the way I type.

Easy Banners was not a tall man, but anything he lacked in that direction he compensated for in breadth and girth; a lot of his extra pounds were in the impressive bulge of stomach that appeared when he stood up behind his desk.

He was fleshy, but he didn’t look soft, certainly did not have the squishy loose look of many fat men. His face was wide and full, but the features were firm, and when he smiled the flesh at the corners of his mouth bunched more like muscle than flab.

And he did smile, very pleasantly, shaking my hand with a strong grip, when I stopped before his desk.

“I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Scott,” he assured me in a warm, pleasant voice. “Arnold told me you’ve been trying to get in touch with me since yesterday.”

“That’s right, Mr. Banners.”

“Sit down. How can I help you?”

I told him; but I didn’t get very much from him — much that I hadn’t already heard from Trappman, that is. Banners put together the “deals,” found or made contact with potential investors in various drilling programs, explained their financial obligation, risk, potential for profit — which potential he could make sound overwhelmingly attractive, I had a hunch. He saw to it that contracts were properly signed, handled the investors’ checks, kept them informed of progress after drilling commenced.

“A lot of our investors have never been involved in a drilling operation before,” he said. “So they expect us to at least hit kerosene at a hundred feet, and get very antsy when we don’t, which we don’t. So I do everything but change their pants for them. I explain what the electric logs indicate, even see they get copies of the logs, which means a whole lot to them, make sure they’re informed almost daily as to the depth reached, tell them if a drill-stem test shows possible production — if you can think of it, I’ve done it.” He paused. “It’s a lot of hassle and sweat, but that doesn’t matter when I can inform investors we’ve reached our target depth and there’s production, our test shows we’ll make at least three hundred barrels a day — which is the story of a well we brought in two weeks ago, up north in Kern County.”

He went on, being very helpful, answering all my questions easily, with a good deal of charm. I’d actually met a pleasant character for a change. But it made sense that Banners was pleasant, I was thinking — as abrasive and hot-tempered as Trappman was, the “wheeler-dealer” or advance man, the guy who put together the deals, met the people, would have to be a much different type from jolly Arnold.

This guy was smooth as silk, ingratiating, no rough-cob edges on him — he was like his name, easy, subdued, and almost gentle. Still … there was something about Easy Banners that I didn’t like.

Nope. Didn’t like him, either. I wondered if I was turning into some kind of suspicious, edgy, sharp-tongued, crotchety, thirty-year-old misanthrope. Gippy made me throw my hands up in the air, Audrey bugged me. Trappman more often than not produced in me the desire to hit him in the eye with a monkey wrench, and even the lovely and sweetly sexy Cynara Lane and I seemed to have difficulty in avoiding the build-up of static electricity, or just static, between us.

It was as if I’d been walking around in an invisible and not yet fully formed hurricane’s eye, pale lighting shooting out of my ears, and silent thunder rolling around outside — and even inside — my head. Maybe so, maybe not so; but if Cynara was right, it was a temporary thing, a transient mood, a twitchy aura that would quickly pass and….

I was doing it again, falling into the imbecile error of assuming Cynara’s gobbledygook might have some actual relationship to the real world … and out yonder, as has been said inside many an asylum, lies madness.

But then, as Banners turned his head slightly, looking down, something about his pose, the angle, plucked delicately at an old thread of memory. Plucked too delicately for me to grab whatever-it-was and pull it out of the past, but enough so I knew there was something about Easy Banners that I ought to remember, in time would remember.

It was when he’d moved, glanced down, and he’d looked — thinner. That was it. Picture the man younger — he was in his fifties now, I guessed, about Trappman’s age — and a lot thinner. Say ten years younger, or twenty….

I almost had it, when I heard Banners saying, “Arnold passed on to me what you told him about Mr. Willifer. It’s a shocking thing.” Banners moved his head slowly from side to side, his expression grave. “I like Mr. Willifer. Frankly, I agree with Arnold that he’s something of a pest, but I always found the man very likable nonetheless, warm and good-hearted if a bit … ineffectual.”

“By ‘pest,’ do you mean his insistence upon putting his money in a well to be drilled at a location — and maybe even to the depth — selected by this guy Morraigne?”

Banners smiled. “That’s part of it. Frankly, Mr. Scott, a man could walk around California with a willow twig in his hands and we’d drill a well for him wherever it pointed down — if he was paying for it. Why not? But we would do our best to discourage him, try to suggest a more logical location. Sometimes, however, individuals acting on messages from a higher plane are not easily discouraged.”

I smiled, thinking not only of Zoreena but of other dandies who’d told me numerous swell things that were destined for me, one of which dandies professed to have received her information direct from “the eighteenth plane,” and who, after my excited query about where in the world that might be, responded only with a highly spiritual look and the intelligence that the eighteenth was “very high.”

Thinking of that, I said, “I suppose Devin Morraigne’s black box is the willow twig?”

“In the case of Mr. Willifer, yes, and I have seen the tree — the blighted forest — that twig came from. The thing I can’t understand about Mr. Willifer is, I personally told him of occasions when Mr. Morraigne had advised others, to their later sorrow. But Mr. Willifer was not responsive to my warnings.”

“You mean you told Gippy about people who’d previously invested in wells drilled by Trappman? People who were also advised by Morraigne?”

He nodded. “I’m sure others, probably a good many, made similar investments after similar advice from Morraigne, but I knew of two men who had by then dropped bundles in wells, that is in dry holes, drilled by the Trappman Oil and Gas Company, since I set up those deals myself. One of those incidents occurred many years ago, and that disillusioned investor has since died, but Mr. Willifer could easily have checked with the other gentleman, since he was one of only three investors in the Roman Number One.”

“One of the … the other two guys? Besides Gippy?”

“Yes. It was only three years ago that Mr. Corey, then being advised by Mr. Morraigne, assumed total financing of a well which, when tested at a depth of sixty-eight hundred feet, showed production of twelve hundred barrels a day — “

I was a little slow, but finally I said, “Corey?”

” — of salt water. What?”

“Dan Corey? The high-finance guy with the investments and swell watch and — “

“Yes, Dan Corey.”

“Dan Corey. How about that? I got the impression he was almost boringly rich, and maybe infallible — “

“Rich he is. Must be worth ten or twelve million. Infallible, he is not. You’ve met him?”

“Talked to him last night. We spoke about Morraigne, too, but Corey sure didn’t hint he’d ever had anything to do with the man himself.”

“He wouldn’t. He made a mistake, and a pretty good-sized one. Dropped seventy thousand in the Corey Number One, so called because that particular lease was in his name, and Mr. Corey does not talk about, tries not to think about, his mistakes. Maybe it’s a good way to go, since I doubt he ever makes the same mistake twice. However, if you get the chance, you might ask Morraigne himself about it. If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested. But — hold it a minute. If Dan Corey doesn’t make the same mistake twice, how come he put fifteen thousand into this puny Roman well, which Morraigne — who apparently helped him blow seventy G’s three years ago — advised Gippy was a sure thing, or close to it? Was Morraigne maybe selling a little advice to Corey on the side?”

It took Banners a while to answer. But finally he shook his head. “Not a chance. Corey undoubtedly had his own reasons for assuming it worthwhile to drill on the Roman site. I’m sure the fact that Morraigne thought the same thing — or perhaps merely went along with Corey’s advisors — had nothing to do with Mr. Corey’s decision.”

“Corey had his own reasons? Like what?”

“Geological advice, personal survey of the site accompanied by his own geologist and petroleum engineer, possibly because his ear swiggled when he was out there — is it important?”

“Probably not. I just….” I let it ride, trying to fit bits of several separate ideas together.

Banners went on, “Corey knows — we all know, if we’ve been in the business more than a day and a half — that all you can really do, despite geologists and seismographs and doodlebugs and you name it, is drill a hole and string pipe and see what you’ve got when you get down there. Most of the time you’ve got a long hole, which you then abandon, seal up, plug with cement. If you’re lucky — and that’s the word, lucky — one of those times you get production, maybe a little, maybe a lot. But there aren’t any guarantees. However….” He paused. “Try telling that to a Gippy Willifer.”

Then from behind me, loud enough to chip paint from the walls, booming like an amplified echo, “Why try? Assholes can’t hear, they got no ears.”

If I hadn’t known who it was without looking, I would have handed in my license before nightfall. I got up, turned around. “In a better mood this morning, I see. That’s a relief.”

“Scott, you absolutely gripe my — “

“Please, Trappman, it’s not that I mind terribly, but couldn’t I gripe you someplace else for a change?”

Tall, thick in the middle, showing his big teeth but not in what I would consider a winning smile, Arnold Trappman strode past me, broad shoulders swinging, sat on the edge of the desk and dropped a sheaf of papers in front of Banners. Banners’ face hadn’t changed expression. He continued to look relaxed, pleasant, mildly interested.

“You irritating son of a bitch,” Trappman said, looking at me.

His mouth was still open to continue his description, but he did not continue, because I could feel that old familiar flush start up my neck toward my face and I took one long step toward the desk, reaching for him with my left hand, saying, “Goddamn you, mister, if you won’t muzzle that big mouth of yours I’ll pull it off and cram — “

But then I stopped, let my left hand relax, and the arm fall to my side. After a deep breath — during which I could almost hear again Cynara Lane saying that this guy and I would always be at each other’s throats because his asteroids were on my squared conjunction or some marvelous thing like that — I shook my head and said, “Man, you must have been born at midnight during a Full Moon. How else could you be such a miserable — ?”

“Born — what?”

He blinked, blankly, as well he might, I thought.

I had phrased my comment in that peculiar way only because I’d been thinking, though not on purpose, of Cynara. Cynara, who, among other fun things, had wanted me to find out what time Trappman was born — and the hell with that noise, I told myself.

But right then, because Cynara was still in my head, it occurred to me with a slow surge of almost sadistic pleasure that I had a marvelous opportunity, here and now, to stick Trappman pretty good. Where he would feel it, where it would hurt. Maybe even draw a little sour blood.

So I took another step closer to him, and standing about a foot away smiled and said. “Yeah, when were you born, friend? What time of day?”

“About … six-thirty p.m.” he began automatically. But then he stopped, stared at me from the very bright blue eyes. “What the hell is this?”

“Well, I’m pretty deep in the occult these days,” I said, still smiling. “Been getting wisdom at the feet of a four-hundred-year-old yogi in Burbank, who has remarkable feet. For his age. So, since I now know you were born at six-thirty p.m. during the bubonic plague, I merely tune in on the whatchamacallit records in the half-astral plane and see all, know all, about Arnold Trappman. Will you buy that?”

The expression on his lined but firm-fleshed face had slowly become less puzzled, more interested. I had not the least doubt that Trappman believed in far-out occultism and the super-wisdom of levitating yogins just as devoutly as he believed he was wearing brass rings in his nose, more, that I knew equally as much about such esoteric jazz as he did. Trappman was quite aware, however, that I was up to something, and was clearly interested in discovering what it was.

“Of course,” he said slowly. “Makes a great deal of sense.”

“Splendid. Possessed of this knowledge about you, my wisdom tells me many things. Like, you’re abrasive, loudmouthed, and very uptight these days. Possibly you have not had a good bowel movement for a week. Also, you’re a crook.”

I hadn’t meant to say that. It just slipped out. The bit about bowel movements, OK, that was a normal insult. But “crook” was a bit much. Trappman didn’t mind any of my comments, however — at least he didn’t appear to.

He was smiling now, also, and he said, “Aren’t we all? What kind of crook am I? I’d like to know.”

“So would I — I mean, ah, that’s in fine print, there, on the whatchamacallit. Several kinds probably. I’d need my other glasses. I can tell you this, though. You are presently engaged in something of most prickly and dubious nature, and this — which is making you so miserably uptight, and cross as a polar bear hibernating in Death Valley — is tied by invisible strings to, and either closely or distantly allied to, a similarly prickly and dubious undertaking in which you, Arnold Trappman, were engaged ssss….”

All of a sudden, I couldn’t say it, and I became aware that there was a distinct possibility I was beginning to lose my mind, assuming it had not already strayed beyond recall, because here I was, enjoying an almost sadistic and certainly fiendish delight at the thought of jarring and seriously upsetting Trappman by revealing to him information I could not possibly — so he would assume — know about him.

Beautiful. That would really jar and seriously upset him.

And how had I discovered this undiscoverable intelligence, where, from whom?

From the dingdong comments of a dingaling astrologer, that’s how, and where, and from whom.

True, Cynara Lane was a charming girl, and lovely, and built, and lots of good things. This was undeniable. But it was also true she was dingaling, and her comments — upon the unshakable validity of which I had gaily embarked and was now shakily standing — were dingdong. This, too, was undeniable.

But Trappman — Banners, as well, for that matter — was staring with great intentness and concentration, at my face, almost breathlessly awaiting my revelation, so I continued, finishing lamely:

“…ssseventeen years ago.”

And something happened.

I don’t know what it was. Trappman didn’t gasp, or get pale, didn’t growl or swear at me. But something changed, maybe in his bright eyes, or behind them, or in tiny movements of skin or muscle or nerve of his face.

There was a slow soft release of breath, a very gentle sigh, but not from Trappman — from Banners. I glanced at him, but he looked about the same as before, except perhaps for a certain fixity of expression.

Neither of them said a word.

Five seconds, that seemed much longer — and very quiet, very still — passed, and then I turned and silently walked out through the door.

Out, and down the six nights of stairs, wondering, What the hell was that? What happened back there?

</code>

<code> Chapter Fifteen

Granite Ledge was one of the narrow winding roads in the hills overlooking Hollywood. Morraigne’s house, abundantly landscaped and with several bushy trees growing around it, was set back from a curve in the road and reached by a steeply up-slanting driveway, so that it not only took full advantage of the impressive view but would afford the occupant, or occupants, a lot of privacy.

I got there at twelve-fifteen p.m., thinking I’d have a few minutes’ wait before Morraigne arrived. But a sleek GMC motor home was already parked at the top of the driveway, so I swung right and gunned my Cad up the steep strip of asphalt, and parked behind it.

A door at the rear of the deluxe GMC job was open and two curvaceous, bare legs were sticking out of it. They were not, I was sure, Devin Morraigne’s legs, no matter how devilishly pretty he might be.

I got out of the Cad, and approached the legs.

“Hi,” somebody said. “When Gippy described you I assumed he was lying, but if you’re Shell Scott he wasn’t even exaggerating conservatively.”

It took me only a split second to realize it was not the possessor of those bare legs speaking. “That’s who I am, ma’am,” I said, “or miss — who said that?”

From the comparative darkness inside the motor home, a tall lean guy clambered out, grinning, balancing himself on the way by clamping one long-fingered brown hand around a white thigh.

He stood erect before me, letting go of the thigh, and stuck out his other hand. “Devin Morraigne,” he said.

“I figured it out,” I said, shaking his hand.

He was a hellishly good-looking guy, with long wavy black hair, very long-lashed dark blue eyes, the skin of his face and neck perhaps even more tanned than mine, and with flashing white teeth, a little crooked, like his smile.

He was wearing a white pullover T-shirt that was tight on his broad shoulders and well-muscled chest, white trousers, open leather sandals, the trousers held snug around his waist by what looked like a piece of rope instead of a belt. It was a piece of rope.

“I just saw Gippy at the hospital,” he said in the deep rich voice I’d first heard issuing strangely from those legs. “He told me you’re helping him and Audrey, and any friend of theirs is a friend of mine. What can I do for you?”

It might be tough to get bugged at this guy, I realized. But maybe I could manage it. “Fifteen minutes of your time will do it, Mr. Morraigne,” I said. “Just a few questions.”

“Sure,” he said. “Call me Dev, everybody does. You’re Shell, right?”

“Right.”

I could see into the camper a bit better by now, and it was clear that the legs were attached to a girl wearing brief, tight-fitting pink shorts and a pink sweater. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted pale blue, which seemed an odd thing to have done with them.

“Ah, you’ve noticed Petrushka, have you?” He crooked a finger at her, then pointed it down toward his left foot. “Heel, Petrushka!”

He grinned at me. “You’ve got to train them when they’re young, or they tend to go astray.”

The girl slid, or sort of undulated, out of the camper, obediently slithered forward and grasped his left arm in both hands, squashing part of her voluptuous pink sweater all over the general area of his bicep, pretending to growl at him. I guess she was pretending. Petrushka was perhaps eighteen years old, with about twenty-five years of curves distributed as well as one might reasonably expect.

“Well, you’ve got plenty of time,” I said amiably. “Minds good already, though. Nice Petrushka?”

She growled at me, then said, “Ooh, it’s hot on my tootsies,” lifting one bare foot to press it against her calf, then switched feet and reversed the process. “Let’s go in and pour Martinis on them,” she said brightly.

“We’ll soak the darlings in a bucket,” Dev said. “No — skedaddle inside and commence filling the bathtub with gin, Josephine. If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”

“Righto!” she cried. “Easy on the vermouth!”

Morraigne fished a key-ring from his pocket, handed it to the child, smacked her lightly on her rounded adult fanny as she turned and skipped toward the house.

“Martini sound all right to you, Shell?” he said, turning back toward me.

“Little early in the day for me to get tanked,” I said. “I could use a bath, though.”

He laughed, took another key from his pocket and locked the camper’s doors, then said, “Come on in. She’s a cute thing, isn’t she? And not as dumb as she looks.”

“Looks intelligent as hell to me. Did I hear you call Petrushka Josephine?”

We walked past the carport toward the rear of his house, stepping on bumpy korean grass and moving into partial shade under the branches of jacaranda trees.

“Her name is Mary-Lu — Lu without an ‘o’ — Watermooth,” Morraigne said. “So I have been experimenting with names less criminally depressing. She responds well to Madeleine, but I think Petrushka brings out the best in her.”

“Well, then, Petrushka by all means,” I said, as we walked inside, through a rear door apparently left open by Morraigne’s companion.

But Petrushka, standing only a few feet inside the house, turned toward us, wiggling the key in her hand. “I didn’t have to use this,” she said to Dev. “The door was already open.”

He glanced at me, lips pulling down at the corners, then said, “Wait here,” and walked on into the house. I waited, with Petrushka, until he came back and said, “I do believe somebody’s tossed the joint. Not much disturbance, just a few things out of place, and it doesn’t look like anything’s missing.”

“Well, we’d better call the police — “

He didn’t even let me finish. “No way,” he said. “Forget it.”

I argued with him, but not much — it was his house — and that’s where we left it. In another minute, we were seated in the low-ceilinged living room, furnished and decorated in a style I had not seen or even suspected before. Nothing in sight matched anything else — wicker chair, bamboo settee, chair and table of dark heavy wood … paintings and masks and a couple of tapestries on the walls … idols and figurines, a wooden spear straight as a long arrow next to a shield that could have been made from elephant hide … an old flintlock and a modern high-powered scope-equipped rifle leaning aslant in one corner … a hammered brass water pipe…. Jumble of shapes, kaleidoscope of colors, but it all seemed to take on a kind of harmonious clutter after I looked at it for a while.

“Hideous, isn’t it?” Morraigne said cheerfully. “There’s junk in here I’ve picked up all over the world. Some of it’s not junk, really. That life-size Balinese doll over there, for one — life-size from the tits up, anyway. She’s jade. God knows what it’s worth just by the pound, but it’s beautiful work. I knew the artist in Bali, that’s his wife, at least it’s lovely Meluma as she was five years ago.” He paused, looking across the room at a green sculpture on what might have been a chunk of polished monkey-pod wood from Hawaii. “Meluma may get fat, and wrinkled, and old, but not my green beauty. Young and fair she will be, when all of us are dead and dusty.”

Then he leaned back in the chair and crossed his long legs. “But you didn’t come here to admire my trinkets and trophies. Besides, I hear the bath water running.”

“Either that, or an awful lot of gin,” I said, listening. “Well, the reason I’m here — I suppose Gippy mentioned that I’m a private detective?”

He nodded.

I decided the quickest way to handle this interview — since I had a hunch I wouldn’t have Morraigne’s undivided attention for much longer — would be to simply tell the man what pertinent-to-him info I’d picked up along the way to here, hit him with a few questions, and see what he came back with.

So that’s what I did, starting with my being hired by Audrey and ending with the conversation I’d just had with Banners — leaving out, needless to say, any comments I’d then made about birth times or anything in that general area.

When I finished, Morraigne was silent for several seconds before declaring mildly, “I don’t give a damn what Trappman says, there’s oil down there. Not any fifteen or twenty barrels a day, either. More like five hundred a day, if not better.”

“This, uh, instrument of yours, Dev, do I understand that it’s supposed to indicate not only the presence of oil or gas, if any, but how much is present?”

“Within limits, yes.” He ran a hand through his thick black hair. “I can determine absolutely if hydrocarbons are present in sufficient quantity to justify drilling, and I can estimate the quantity of the reserves, and probable daily production, with a margin for error of approximately twenty percent. Now, obviously, a well’s production doesn’t decline nicely and neatly, in accordance with a mathematical formula, and costs of production, other factors, may also vary widely. But with that understood…. Do you understand me to here, Shell?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I just don’t get the point yet.”

“OK, here’s the point. Let’s say — just to pick some figures out of the air for an example — that I survey a site and conclude a well drilled to the optimum depth should produce a hundred and twenty barrels a day, with production declining say five percent a year during the first ten years of its operation. That would mean total production for the ten-year period of … three-five-one-three-eighth-five-point-plus … three hundred and fifty-one thousand, three hundred and eighty-five barrels of crude. Assume a possible twenty percent error, and production could be as little as two-eight-one thousand one-oh-nine barrels and it might be as much as four-two-one thousand six-six-three, but almost surely it would be between those extreme limits.”

I made no comment at all for a little while.

Then I said, “That’s a little difficult to believe, Dev — quite a bit more than a little. Not merely those last production figures, if that’s what I heard, but that you can absolutely determine, as you put it, if hydrocarbons are present.”

“I’ve been doing it,” he said easily. “I’ve been associated with investors in at least twenty successful wells this past year — five in a row drilled by Trappman Oil and Gas Company rigs, since the Roman well. But, I know. Nobody does believe it — yet. Except for me and a very few other people, that is. They will, though, you better believe it. I’m going to make believers of a lot of people.” He flashed that white smile at me again. “Including you, Shell, if necessary.”

I smiled back at him. “It may be necessary eventually, assuming it’s possible. Twenty wells in the last year, huh? No misses?”

“I … missed a couple. Two. I’m still not sure exactly why. Sometimes there are faults, cracks in the earth…. I’m working on it.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m just working on my job, too, poking here and poking — well, at those speedy figures you just rattled off, for example. It was an impressive performance, but I’d expect you to be pretty well prepared with facts and figures about production and X barrels times Y dollars, and alla-kazam — “

“You mean the example I just gave you? No, that was off the top of my head, merely as clarification of my point. I didn’t figure it all out last night, or last month, in case I got a chance to say it.” He smiled. “I suppose that’s what you meant.”

“It is.”

“I sometimes forget that what’s second nature to me, mathematically speaking, surprises most people.” He uncrossed his long legs, crossed them again the other way. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me, I suppose, but when I was a kid I was supposed to be a prodigal lad, the numbers genius, mathematical super-whiz. I could add columns of six-digit figures in my head, multiply, divide, extract square roots — not without limit, but with ‘unbelievable speed and accuracy,’ as some then said. Hell, as I say myself, for that matter, I can still do it.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you figured out in your head, just a minute or so ago, that starting with a hundred and twenty barrels a day, decreasing that initial production five percent a year, over zilch number of years, it adds up to … whatever it was?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah, easy to say, but if the first year is one-twenty barrels, the second year is five percent less or … six less, I hope … or a hundred and fourteen barrels, right? And the third year the amount would be decreased by five percent of a hundred and fourteen, not of a hundred and twenty — “

“Sure. Of course, production doesn’t go along at an even keel for three hundred and sixty-five days and then, whop, suddenly drop five percent the next day. But I had to figure it that way, or I couldn’t do it. And that is the way I figured it.”

“The hell you say.”

“The hell I don’t. First year one-twenty a day, second year one-fourteen, third one-oh-eight-point-three, tenth year seven-five-point-six-three, or down to a little over seventy-five barrels a day by then.”

“Dev, I could screw that up nine times out of ten doing it with an adding — or subtracting? — machine, so don’t try to tell me — “

“You could. You could, Shell. With me, it’s automatic. I don’t visualize numbers on a mental blackboard, I just think the problem or related numbers and know the answer. It isn’t anything I learned how to do, by the way, I’m just able to do it. Always have been, as far back as I can remember. Which is, now, a help to me in interpreting the figures and indications produced by my Holaselector, needless to say.”

“Dev, you seem like a nice enough fellow, but I’m goddamned if you’re going to snow me with — “

“Instead of that first example I threw at you, assume initial daily production of five hundred and fifty barrels, declining progressively from four percent the second year to let’s say fifty percent in the eleventh and the following two years — “

On he went, with an even more complex series of mathematical gibberish than the first time, winding up with what he referred to as daily production at the end of the thirteenth year, assuming no remedial work had been done on the well in the meantime, translated that from barrels into tons and into dollars, assuming varying prices per barrel of crude, plus finally a jaw-breaking figure that he alleged would be total production and total income received during all thirteen years.

“Dev,” I said numbly, “how would I know? I do hand it to you, however, for being able to say all that without chipping a tooth. But that still doesn’t….”

I paused, thought a moment, then said happily, “OK, brain. What’s three hundred and twelve times four hundred and sixteen?”

Without the slightest hesitation, he said, “One-hundred twenty-nine thousand seven-hundred ninety-two.” He spoke rapidly but in an odd, jerky rhythm, and the tone of his voice was flatter, more mechanical, than it normally was.

“Try some more, if you must,” he said. “Nothing larger than six digits, though.”

“Just hold it a shake, OK?”

I’d dug out my pen and notebook, was busy writing the numbers down — first the figure he’d given me, 129,792, before I forgot it, then my 312 with 416. After a while I said, “Let’s see … nine and eight is seventeen, seven and carry one … and there’s a nine … got it! One-two-nine-seven-nine-two. How … did … you … do … that?”

“I don’t know. I told you — “

“How did you do that? What kind of trick — what’s four thousand eight-hundred and ninety-nine times eighty-two thousand seven-hundred and eighty-six? Quick now, quick — “

He looked over my head, or past it, for about a second, not more than that because he interrupted my last “quick” by telling me the answer. I wrote it down, along with the figures I’d given him, and started multiplying furiously but after screwing it up the first time decided I would check this out later, at my leisure.

“Well, that’s close enough,” I said. “For now. And that’s very … interesting. But let’s get back to where we were, OK? Now … where were we? Got it — I was wondering, if you’ve got something as good as what you’ve been describing to me, why aren’t all the big oil-company wheels hammering on your door, simultaneously beating each other over the heads with clubs — ?”

“If I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich, huh? Well, if you build a better mousetrap, people who want to kill a lot of mice have to be convinced, first, that your mousetrap is better. Then they’ve got to be willing to pay me what it’s worth — or, to put it differently, what I’m worth. For the last year I’ve been working on that little problem, and I’ve some reason to believe I will be rich before many more months roll by. Richer than Gulbenkian, for a start.”

“Who’s Gulbenkian?”

“He’s dead now. They used to call him Mr. Five Percent, because he got a five-percent royalty on production from a great many wells in his time, amounting to many, many millions of dollars and pounds and guilders and pesos for Gulbenkian. He comes to mind because that’s part of my price for locating fields, pointing out drilling sites — five percent off the top.”

“So you get nothing from dry holes.”

“There aren’t going to be any dry holes.”

“I doubt that Dan Corey — and a few other people before him that I’ve heard of lately — would agree with that statement.”

That comment didn’t appear to bother him. Or, rather it seemed perhaps to bother, but not to anger, him. “Yeah, Corey, that was too bad,” he said. “Unfortunate. Before that job, the Corey Number One, I was still working on the Holaselector, improving it — and I made that clear to the people who, at that time, lost money drilling where I thought they should, you understand.”

He paused, leaning forward in his chair, dark blue eyes fixed on me. “I didn’t take any money from them, went on spec, for a small percent of their working interest — “

“How about Gippy? You have that kind of deal with him?”

“That’s right.” He nodded. “Now, about Dan Corey, the only trouble then was I thought my instrument was perfected, but I discovered there were still adjustments required before I could be sure of the difference between fresh and salt water.”

“I don’t get it. Even if your instrument could tell one from the other — which I gather you’re saying it couldn’t — what difference would it make?”

He smiled slightly. “Sometimes, quite a lot. In Corey’s case, the difference between a producing well and a dry hole. We were drilling in Kern County, up past Bakersfield, and ran into a little oil and a lot of salt water — you can hit water damn near anyplace, not just along the coast there, but we found so much in the structure there was simply no chance of completing a commercial well, so it was abandoned. You see….”

He paused for a second or two, then went on, “I, that is, my instrument, confused the higher specific gravity of salt water — higher than fresh water, that is — with the even lower specific gravity of oil. The specific gravity of fresh water, the standard, is one, salt water one point oh four, and the oil, say, point six or point seven, and I identified the oil but missed a bit on the salt water. Hell, I don’t want to get too technical, but to sum it up my instrument gave me a false indication at that time, and I spent a year overcoming the difficulty — which I did overcome, of course, so it’s no longer a problem. That was, I’ll admit, a highly instructive episode for me.”

“Pretty instructive for Corey, too, wouldn’t you say? About seventy thousand dollars worth of instruction?”

The first small flicker of annoyance marked Morraigne’s handsome face, and he gazed at me silently, black brows knitted together. Finally he said, “Yes, it was painful for both of us. Even more painful for me, whether you realize that or not.”

“OK,” I said. “You had a problem, and worked it out. How do you know there aren’t other problems you’ve not discovered yet?”

“No.” Morraigne shook his head. “No. I’ve worked all the bugs out. It took a while, I’ll admit, but the Holaselector is perfected now. I’ve demonstrated that to my complete satisfaction — and soon perhaps to the satisfaction of many others.”

He got up, started pacing a few steps in one direction and then the other, hands clasped behind his back. “Look Shell, what I’ve done isn’t a miraculous breakthrough creation of a whole new science. I’ve simply taken what’s known about the laser, holograms, sympathetic vibrations resonance — including some of Nikola Tesla’s researches into resonance and vibration that aren’t widely known but should be — added, I’ll admit it, some brilliant concepts of my own, and developed what I have named the Magnesonant Holaselector.”

“Couldn’t you have named it a Jolly-Dandy Oil Finder or something less jaw-breaking? With a little easier name, you might sell a million of ‘em — “

“My present intention is to sell only one, along with my personal services, so it matters little what I call it.”

I opened my mouth to comment upon that — and left it open. But did not comment. Strolling in from the back of the house somewhere, naked as the day she’d been born not a terribly long time before, came Mary-Lu Josephine Petrushka Hot-Diggety, carrying a brimming-full martini glass in her hand. The glass was so full that she had to move slowly, with considerable care, kind of bent over a little with one hand outthrust and holding the cocktail, her other hand cupped beneath the glass to catch any intoxicating drips, and I can state it as a fact that she was an arresting sight.

She walked right past me, almost close enough to molest, and up to Morraigne, who was still standing, but not now with his hands clasped behind him.

He gazed fondly upon her, as one beumused, and said, smiling, “Ah, you’re a free soul, aren’t you, little Melinda?”

“I made you a martini,” she said. “Before I got in the tub.”

“So I — see,” he said. “Well, I’d love a little, little martini, but….” He glanced at a watch on his left wrist. “I’ve an important appointment, dear, and I’ll need a very clear head for it.”

I thought possibly he was referring to this conversation with me, but he went on, “I’m expecting a call this afternoon, my dear, and if it were not an extraordinarily important meeting I shall be attending, I would decline not even your most extravagant whim. So, I shall take a gin check. But let me suggest that you offer this chill delicacy, produced with your own hot little hands, to my enthusiastic friend, Shell Scott there, creeping up behind you.”

I wasn’t creeping at all. I may have been leaning forward a little, but no fair observer would have claimed I was doing anything else suspicious.

Melinda — or whoever the hell she was — turned around and advanced toward me, moving in that cute way she had, and said, “Would you like it?”

“Well….”

“It’s a real good one. I didn’t put any vermouth in it.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I think. Well….”

“At least take a sip, then it won’t be so full anymore.”

“That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. At least, I’ve heard a lot of things that made less sense. Well….”

“I’ll hold it for you, while you sip it. All rightie?”

“All rightie,” I agreed.

She moved just a bit closer, holding the brimful glass close to my lips, and I leaned forward to slurp a little, unfortunately noticing about mid-slurp that, behind this crazy tomato’s back, Dev Morraigne was halfway through silently cracking up.

“Oh, you took too much,” the gal said. “Oh, it’s coming out your nose.”

“Why don’t you go soak your head — soak all your nice things — in the tub?” I asked her. Asked her, after I got what felt like the olive and pimiento out of my nostrils.

“You aren’t used to drinking much, are you?” she asked sweetly.

I dabbed at my eyes with my handkerchief. “Not like this, no.”

“You want the rest?” she asked, holding the martini glass, and what was left in it, toward me.

“Sure. I’ll pour it in one of my ears this time.”

I took the glass, and she held one arm up stiffly, elbow pressed against her side, and wiggled her fingers gaily at me. Then she turned and gave the same friendly little wave to Morraigne, and walked out the way she’d come in.

When he was about through laughing, I said to Morraigne, “Well, that was fun, but let’s get back to this doodlebug of yours — “

I stopped, not because he said anything, for he didn’t, but because right then I lamped the sudden angry expression on his face. He flushed even darker under his tan, the lips thinned, and he started to speak but didn’t. He whirled around, clasped both hands behind his back again, then spun and stalked to his chair, sat down slapping both hands against his knees.

“Doodlebug,” he said finally.

I had prior to this moment carefully refrained from using that term, having been informed by both Gippy and Cynara that to do so would not produce a wonderful reaction in Devin Morraigne. They had spoken truly. And I imagine I would have continued to refrain from using the forbidden term if it hadn’t been for the just concluded distraction.

After a few more moments of silence I said, “Sorry about that, Dev. I don’t really know whether your dingus works or not, but I didn’t intend to refer to it as a — “

“Dingus is OK,” he said sourly. “Maybe not swell, but better than — ” He scowled. “Listen, I guess over the years I’ve become sensitized to that goddamned word. Every time I hear it, I salivate like a Pavlovian wolf. I can still see the kindergarten dropouts looking at me and snickering and making finger circles around their heads. That bloody word — well, it implies — chicanery, fraud, or at best, self-deception….”

He let it trail off, nodded a couple of times, as though carrying on a silent dialogue with himself, glanced at his watch, then nodded again and looked at me. “Shell, my suspicious detective friend — or mayhap foe — would you like to see how a real zippety-doodah” … he closed his eyes, winced, went on … “doodlebug works?”

“Be interesting, I suppose. But I probably wouldn’t know if it was working or not, unless it showed me a picture on television.”

“Between commercials,” he said. “I understand. We know where truth is today, don’t we? But I’d like to show you what my Holaselector does, in the field. You’ll have to take my word for it that I know what it means when it does what it does. That makes a lot of sense to you, I suppose.”

“Enough.”

“It might help you understand what you’re dealing with — if you’re really interested in getting to the bottom of this Roman mess. For Gippy and Audrey, I mean. Are you?”

“Yeah. And I expect I will get to the bottom of it, wherever it is, if it has one, and assuming I can recognize it — one way or another.”

“Spoken just like Dick Daring or Tom the Telephone Boy, whichever was more retarded. Shall we go?”

“Where?”

“Out into the nearest boondocks, where I shall demonstrate my genius. Thus some day you will be able to say you knew him, knew fabulous Devin Morraigne, before he had even his first billion.”

“Wonderful. Don’t forget, you can tell those same people you knew me before you had your first billion.”

“I may get to like you yet, Shell. Let’s go.”

We went.

</code>

<code> Chapter Sixteen

We went, though not precipitously — not until we got out of the house, at least, but then precipitously — for Morraigne was thoughtful, or libidinous, enough to spend a minute in his bathroom for the alleged purpose of telling his multinamed and probably multitalented young companion that we would be gone for a little while, and she wasn’t to leave more than one ring in the tub.

When he returned, his hands and forearms were wet. After drying them on a towel, he said — dryly, of course — “Woman work is never done,” then we went outside together and climbed into his motor home.

</code>

<code> “I didn’t know that was what we were doing, you maniac,” I said. “I thought you were trying to catch up with some light waves.”

“Used to drive racing cars, a long time ago,” he said, as if that explained anything.

We got out and Morraigne unlocked the rear door, climbed inside. There were clicking sounds as he opened a couple more locks, then he stepped out, carrying — carefully, watching his step — a black box about two feet wide and high and a foot across its top. Set into the top of the box were three large circular meters, or calibrated instruments of some kind, and below them three opaque inserts, without any figures or lines or needles, just circles of dull off-white plastic. Projecting upward from each outer front corner of the case was a telescoping metal antenna, similar to the kind used on portable television sets but much thinner, almost like fine silvery wire.

“That’s it, huh?” I said.

“That’s it. The only Magnesonant Holaselector in the world. Doesn’t look like much, does it?”

“No.”

“Wait till I put it on the Magnetropic Stabilizer — on its base, to you.”

Morraigne reached inside the camper and lifted out a flimsy-looking lightweight stand, much like an ordinary three-foot-high table except that a metal band was secured around all four sides of the table top, projecting upward a couple of inches above its surface and thus providing a space into which the black-painted instrument case could be securely fitted. Instead of a table’s usual four legs, this had only three, in the shape of a triangle, one leg at its front and center, the other two at the rear corners. Additionally, in the exact center of the metal-banded stand’s base, projecting up through the base for two inches and extending downward perhaps six inches farther than the three legs of the triangle, was another “leg” of shiny metal, round, polished, and pointed at its bottom end.

Morraigne set the instrument’s base on the earth, forcing that pointed middle leg into the ground, then picked up his black box from where he’d carefully placed it, eased it into position atop the little table.

“There. Look more impressive now?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Follow me.”

I followed him overland, and zigzagging about, for the next half hour, and — so far as I could tell — Morraigne didn’t deliberately conceal anything from me. Not verbally, at least. Needless to say, he did not open up his magical box and let me poke around at whatever was inside it, but he did tell me what should happen to the various dials and meters and needles and circles, when it should happen, and what it meant.

I’ll say this, as far as I could tell, he didn’t personally make the needles of those three larger meters wiggle or the small circles of opaque plastic glow while little dots moved across them, much like the visible records doctors make of heartbeats — unless it was by some sort of telepathy, which would have been more unbelievable than that his mysterious dingus might actually react in some way to minerals and hydrocarbons hidden in the earth. That is, he didn’t poke any buttons, or fiddle surreptitiously with valves or wires when I was presumably not looking, merely moved the instrument itself into various positions and locations, and each time adjusted one of the large dials and also adjusted either one or both of those thin silver antennae.

He even let me perform those operations a couple of times, and although there was no way I could interpret with any accuracy what was happening, what it really meant, something sure as hell was happening, and it was a weird, almost unnerving, sensation to watch those long thin needles slowly move, stop, remain steady at one point on a calibrated dial, while one or more of those plastic circles began eerily glowing and a dot like dark light moved erratically across its face.

There was, for example, the moment near the end of our half hour in the field when, for the first time, though at a spot selected by Morraigne — I set up the instrument on its base and turned the large left-hand dial until the needle under a circle of glass began moving by itself, then waited, watched, saw all three of those small plastic circles start to glow, faintly, then brighter, the third one brightest of all and at last almost brilliant like the center of a luminously incandescent pearl, all three with dark dots moving, and I yelled, actually yelled loud enough to be heard a half-mile away, “My God, that’s oil — there’s oil down there!”

I felt silly as hell immediately afterward.

But I would not forget the sudden jarring shock of emotion, the literal quickening of my pulse and quick sharp hammer of my heart, when I saw that needle and those dials telling me — or at least when I believed they were telling me — there was rich black oil beneath me, I was standing squarely above it, it was there somewhere beneath my feet. There, and for a wild moment, mine.

Of course, I reminded myself, I interpreted that play of movement and light as the instrument’s reaction to the presence, in some quantity, of hydrocarbons, because that was what Devin Morraigne had told me such a reaction, when and if it occurred, would mean. He could as easily have assured me that the same or other indications would prove there was a rich vein of subterranean alfalfa growing down there, or deposits of minerals from ancient Atlantean oyster beds. In which event I might just as easily, and loudly, have shouted, “My God, there’s oysters in the alfalfa down there!”

Still, I would not forget that sensation, the excitement, the thrill of making a discovery, of “finding oil.” And, naturally, I thought of how enthusiastically a naive and hopeful potential investor, or even well-healed and hardboiled gambler — or “mark,” as con-men refer to their half-hypnotized victims — might react to what had just turned me so noisily on. Tapping a mark at that moment for everything he owned plus fifty percent would be, I had no doubt, a piece of cake.

Morraigne was looking at me, half smiling.

“Sorry about that,” I said to him. “Didn’t mean to whinny like a horse — “

“Don’t apologize, Shell,” he said. “Happens to me every time, still happens. Inside, anyhow. I’ve learned not to show it on the outside. Not to show it that much, at least. Kind of grabs you, doesn’t it?”

“It felt a little bit like a heart transplant I wasn’t expecting. Of course, it doesn’t mean a damn — ” I cut it off, started over, “Let me put it as a question, Dev. Do you assume from your instrument’s — not my — reaction that there may be a little oil somewhere below us here?”

“Not may be, is. Not a little, plenty.” He waved one long arm around in a half-circle. “Hell, you can see we’re in an oil field here, most of the wells abandoned but half a dozen still producing.”

Dev himself had earlier operated his instrument at three separate places within the square mile we’d tramped over, before urging me to have my solo try at it. He’d taken me first to a spot near one of the producing wells, where the walking beam of an ungainly pumping unit, moving up and down, activated a subsurface pump, forcing crude oil to the earth’s surface and into a pipeline that led off to the north.

There his instrument had reacted — to something — dial moving to twenty on its 180-point scale, and the first two of those three plastic circles becoming a little brighter than the rest. Oil, Dev had said, part of what was left of reserves from which the producing well near us, and many others now shut down, had been pumping for the last twenty-five years. He fiddled with dials and those antennae, estimated what amount of crude oil he believed was left here, in tons, translated it into barrels for me — something less than five thousand barrels.

After that, we’d visited the sites of two other wells, both of which had stopped producing and been abandoned. Results from the ever-alert Magnesonant Holaselector: nothing. It was a boring fifteen minutes, even though Dev allowed me to play with his machine at one of the dead and cement-plugged holes. It’s no fun playing with something that doesn’t do anything, which at the abandoned holes it didn’t. I found myself wondering what little Petrushka — actually, not-so-little Petrushka — was doing. Was she in the tub, soaping? Making bubbles? Playing with a celluloid duck?

And then — I’d struck oil.

Everything changed in that instant. I didn’t care if Petrushka was stuffing green olives into her nose, or elsewhere. For that one, long, heart-thumping moment only, of course.

By then Dev had educated me somewhat in the technique of using his instrument, at least enough so he could simply tell me to set it up and see what happened. And he’d guided me to this spot, where a small steel-pipe marker rose about four feet above the ground, on it a sign recording the well’s name and the fact that it was abandoned. There were a lot of those two-or three-inch pipes visible in the area, marking spots where other now-abandoned wells had been drilled, a long time ago.

Now I looked from Dev to that pipe sticking up from the earth a dozen feet away and said, “What the hell? Why abandon a well when — if — there’s an ocean of oil down there? Or at least a little pool. If that’s what your dingus … your instrument is trying to tell us.”

“That’s what it’s told us, Shell, even with you futzing around with it. I’ve been here before, as you must have guessed if you’re really a detective. That’s why I brought you to this location.”

“I assumed something more than a freak of fate brought us here. You’ve checked this spot out before, and with some care, I assume?”

“You better believe it. Watch.”

For five minutes he adjusted those three dials, both antennae, making notes on a pad — the first time I’d seen him write anything down — talking quietly all the time. Most of what he said made sense to me, even if I didn’t believe all of it, but some was simply beyond my understanding.

When he was through, Dev summed it up, occasionally indicating a figure he’d noted on his pad. “So, there you have it. The old casing — metal, of course — was simply left in this hole when production petered out. Now, that casing ends at sixty-two-hundred feet, and it’s one of the deepest wells in this particular field. I’ve checked.”

“Dev, bear with me. I saw you do it, watched that right-hand needle drop off suddenly, flop down to zero, at a point you say represented sixty-two-hundred feet below us. Assuming I buy that, do you mean some kind of ray or feeler from this” — I pointed at the black box — “actually differentiates between the pipe and dirt around or underneath it?”

“Sure. Down there the casing string isn’t in dirt, by the way, but solid rock for the last eighty feet. Must have been a sweet hole to drill. It’s not a ray, though, more like a pulse sent out from the Holaselector and returned to it. There’s no trick to noting the difference between solid steel pipe and soft earth, or even granite. And the time lapse between emission and return of the pulse can easily be translated into feet.”

“Especially if you can do it in your head.”

“Right. Or, equally well, better in fact, by computer. It’s a very simple equation, time in microseconds divided by two and multiplied by speed of the pulse in feet per microsecond equals distance in feet to the point being probed.”

“Yeah, but…. What have you got inside there, super-socko little batteries?”

“Not what you’d call batteries, exactly. Certainly no motor, nothing turning, no moving parts as they say.”

“But the damn thing isn’t — isn’t plugged into anything. Where’s your power source, Dev?”

“Sure it’s plugged in.” He pointed to the polished round bar or fourth “leg” extending down from the center of his instrument’s three-legged platform.

I knew there was, in the instrument’s base, a small circular opening into which the top two inches of that silvery rod projected, and fitted snugly. And the other end of the rod, the pointed end, went down six inches into the ground. Still….

“It’s plugged into the earth,” Dev said.

“Of course. Next time the lights go out in my apartment, I’ll just stick a lamp plug into the lawn socket.”

“Crack wise all you want, Shell. Tesla believed it was possible to tap the earth for power at any point on its surface, no armatures, no dynamos — except old Mother-Earth dynamo. Hell, the earth’s essentially a magnet. Large one, true, so it helps if we mentally reduce it in size, say to a foot or a few inches. And there she is, round magnet, north and south poles, magnetic flux stretching around the entire body, and through it, from pole to pole. Spinning in a space filled with other magnetic fluxes and enormous quantities of power. But the hell with all that.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to be getting back to the house pretty quick.”

“Maybe we’d better leave now, so we won’t have to hurry.”

“There’s time. To wrap up what I was telling you, Shell — and listen closely, my dubious friend, because the next minute might make you filthy rich. This well here, now abandoned, was drilled to sixty-two-hundred feet. The deepest well in this field reached only sixty-seven hundred. Now, you can see” — he touched one of the figures scribbled on his pad — “the indication we got, actually the indication you got, Shell, indicates very substantial quantities of hydrocarbons three-quarters of a mile below the greatest depth explored in this area.”

“You’re saying the original developers of the field didn’t go deep enough, right?”

“Not exactly. They got what they were after a quarter of a century ago, reached a very profitable zone, achieved excellent production. Which, in the last twenty-five years, has been almost entirely exhausted. What they didn’t know, what nobody alive knows except me — except me, and now you, Shell Scott — is that three-quarters of a mile farther down into the earth there is another extensive zone, another entire reservoir of oil and natural gas. Enough gas pressure to force that oil up without pumping, let it flow, actual goddamn gushers when that zone’s hit. And I’m not certain — haven’t checked the entire area yet — but I’ll lay odds there’s not less than a hundred million barrels below us right now, waiting for someone to come along and take it.” He paused. “Someone, of course, who realizes it’s there.”

I blinked. I had been blinking for a while. “Hundred million barrels? Hundred million barrels? Only three-quarters of a mile farther down?”

“Not quite three-fourths of a mile, which would be three-nine-six-oh feet, but about one-sixty less than that. Have to drill to about ten-thousand-five, or point-seven-one-nine-six-nine-plus, call it point-seven-two miles — thirty-eight hundred feet — beyond the sixty-seven hundred-foot depth I mentioned.”

I whistled. “I remember that the first well you checked, the one still pumping, sent that needle” — I pointed to it — “only up to about twenty points, or degrees, twenty whatever. But this one, that same needle flipped way the hell over, past a hundred for sure. Of course, I don’t suppose that has to mean anything wonderful — “

“Hundred and twenty-six, to be exact. On a one-eighty max scale. And it means plenty. Stronger the reading, the richer the reserves, the more massive the oil-bearing structure, at that point. Doesn’t tell you the field’s width, its boundaries — I’d have to test the entire area, take hundreds of readings, find the edges so to speak and within that periphery determine varying depths or thicknesses, and concentrations, of the hydrocarbon deposits, and from all of that compute the probable reserves.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it somewhat tousled. “Think of it in part as similar to determining the outline and mass of a kidney, or liver, any internal organ in a living body, much as you might X-ray it, only instead of X-rays you employ a combination of ultrasonics, and resonance and laser technology, and produce a hologram, a two-D map you can reproduce or project in three-D, in three dimensions for analysis.”

I shook my head, looked at his remarkable dingus, which was beginning to look less and less like a doodlebug, or even a dingus.

“That little beggar must be worth a few bills,” I said.

“I’ve got six hundred thousand in it so far.”

“Six hundred thousand dollars?”

“I don’t mean peanuts. If it weren’t for recent advances in solid-state, molecular circuitry, microminiaturization — and undeniable brilliancies solely attributable to Devin Morraigne, of whom we shall hear more — that little beggar would have cost ten times as much and be bigger than my house.”

He checked his watch again, adding, “To which I suggest we speedily repair.”

“Not too speedily, huh?”

Dev carried his instrument and I hauled its platform back to the motor home. There, just before he stowed it away and locked it up again, I took my last gander at the thing. And, I will freely confess, that rather ordinary black box with a few dials and plastic circles set into its top looked to me, at last, like a real zippety-doodah Magnesonant Holaselector.

When Dev clambered out of the camper’s rear I said to him, glancing back toward that abandoned well where we’d just been, “A hundred million barrels, huh? Of real — which is to say saleable, and not for peanuts — oil. Tell me again you weren’t kidding or joshing.”

“Straight arrow. Honest injun. Spoken in wondrous virtue — “

“OK, you don’t have to lie about it to convince me. What are we getting per barrel these days? A buck? Two?”

“Call it three bucks and a half for this quality crude. More if it’s low-sulphur — less polluting, thus more dear, more expensive. And the price for all grades is bound to go up, and up, you can count on it.”

“What I’m getting at, Dev, assuming you’re not laying some carefully designed weirdness upon me — you’ll have to forgive me if I still possess a few reservations about your absolute rightness, candor, motives, and even your sanity — is this: You are talking about maybe three hundred and fifty million bucks, waiting right over there short of the cow pasture, to be picked up by the first guy who smells it, and drills to it, and sucks it up.”

“Excellent, a hundred million barrels at three-fifty a barrel equals three hundred and fifty million dollars. You did that in your head, didn’t you?”

“It’s a gift. So, OK, if it’s there, since we’re not talking about loose change, why tell me?”

“Why not? You seem like a” — he snapped thumb and finger smartly — “fairly nice chap.”

That was all.

So as he started to climb behind the joystick of his GMC rocket I said, “I am, actually. And I’ll bet you overtip.” Then I thought about that for a moment and added, “But I’m going to have some dark suspicions, if I find out you don’t.”

When I was settled in the passenger’s seat — with belt buckled and feet planted solidly on the floor — Dev glanced across at me and said, “You mentioned motive, motivation, a minute ago. That, and your further mention of millions, gave rise in me to an amusing thought. Only you and I know about that field, and if you were not the fine, upstanding, righteous and noble towheaded lad you may, or perhaps may not, be, wouldn’t what I’ve told you provide a splendid motive for your murdering me?”

“I’m glad you thought of that,” I said. “Seriously, I can’t think of a much more amusing murder motive than three hundred and fifty millions bucks.”

“I can. Four hundred million. Or a few billions.”

“Uh-huh. But I was also thinking, Dev, right after you were thinking. And I couldn’t help wondering, what if, bubbling over with slyness and greed, I did knock you off, murdered you cruelly, then cashed in all my worldly goods and hired a rig and drilled three-fourth of a mile more than sixty-seven-hundred feet straight down, and there struck a great pool of alfalfa?”

“Of what?”

“Never mind. All this oil around here is upsetting my head. Let’s go.”

Needless to say, not more than half a second after suggested it, we went.

</code>

<code> Chapter Seventeen

The trip back was better. I didn’t squeeze my eyes shut once on the way, and we were even able to carry on a conversation much of the time.

Most of the talk was about oil, Morraigne’s Holaselector, a few odds and ends concerning my own work. But, nearing home, Dev made a couple of comments about “aspects” and other astrological terms, and I said, “That’s right, you and Cynara Lane are good friends, aren’t you?”

“We sure are. She’s a sweetheart, remarkable girl — and a remarkable astrologer. Best I’ve known.”

“You sound like you’ve known several.”

“A few.”

“You go for that stuff, huh?”

He kept his eyes on the road, but I saw him smile.

“Why not?” he said. “Fact is, I thought it was all hogwash a few years back, so I decided to prove — to Cynara — that it was baloney. Took me a year, but I learned enough about astrology to prove it was phony, if it was, but by then had discovered I could not prove it.”

“Huh. Couldn’t prove it was phony, huh? That’s strange.”

“Not so strange. A great many of the really competent — and well-known — professional astrologers today got started the same way, studying astrology in order to prove it was a false science, or fraudulent art, and found they couldn’t do it.”

“Couldn’t do it, huh? That’s strange….”

“You won’t buy it, will you?”

“I won’t even put a down payment on it.”

“And you haven’t studied astrology at all?”

“Hell, no.”

“Significant.”

“How?”

“Most of the bigdomes and alleged scientists who keep putting down astrology, calling it quackery and worse — especially the astronomers, who aren’t even aware that their own science is an outgrowth of astrology — don’t know any more about it than you do. Probably know even less than you — at least you’ve had a little education lately.”

“I guess I have. From….” I paused, looked to my left at Morraigne. “Yeah, but how did you know that? We only met an hour ago, and — unless I missed a curve — you never heard of me before then.”

“To keep the record straight, I’d never heard of you until about half an hour before we met. Incredibly, even though I had never heard of Shell Scott, my life had not seemed empty — “

“Half an hour before?”

“That’s right. After talking with friend Gippy Willifer, who was feeling so well he alleged you weren’t a bad sort, and Audrey Willifer, who blushingly confessed to me that she had kissed you, somewhere near your ear, I believe, which you undoubtedly tantalized her with deliberately, I spoke at some length to the beautiful Cynara.”

“In the hospital? Cynara was there?”

“No, she phoned to speak with Gippy. Specifically, to assure him she’d been studying his chart and was convinced the worst of his many problems were now behind him and he could meander forward with Audrey over Lemon Drop Road and into the Yum-Yum — “

“She didn’t put it like that, for God’s sake.”

“Hardly. This is my translation, for a nonbeliever. If you prefer, I can give it to you as progressed Scorpio Sun in the eighth applying to a trine with his fifth-house Jupiter in Cancer, while Jupiter transits Pisces and Gippy’s Ascendant, trining both Progressed Sun and radical Jupiter on its way toward his money-oriented second house, and Saturn has at last — “

“Into the Yum-Yum is OK. Ah … did Cynara mention me?”

He glanced my way, crooked smile aslant on his deeply tanned face. “She told me you’d probably ask that.”

“Goddamnit, she can’t see what I’m going to ask, ask you, whom I haven’t even met, from those dingdong doodles — “

“Of course not. Who said she could? I gathered this was woman’s intuition breaking out. She had some things to say about you also, some terrible things, but guardedly alleged you might not be a bad sort, over the long haul.”

“She called the hospital, during the brief time you were there, huh? That’s an interesting … coincidence.”

“Not at all. It was planned. Merely one more devious move in the tricky game she and I are playing, designed to snow you, steal Gippy’s eighty-two dollars, and overthrow the government — “

“Cynara had to go and blab everything — “

“She did mention that you come on strong as a sincerely suspicious type, and, sincerely, as a suspiciously strong type. This is no doubt due to your constant association with low individuals who drag you down to their level, from which point you sink. However, Shell, I consider this a fine thing — “

“She’s got a busy mouth, she has — “

” — or at least not hopeless, since if you failed to be suspicious of us innocents you might get snowed by the guilties.”

For the last couple of minutes we’d been on Granite Ledge Road, and I noticed Dev was slowing down even more. He swung right, gunned up the steep drive next to his home and braked to a stop.

“I wonder how what’s-her-name is doing?” he asked idly.

“You mean the lovely Lydia? I imagine she’s painting her nose blue by this time.”

“Seems the most logical thing,” he said, cutting the ignition.

Before opening the car door I said, “Speaking of Gippy reminded me of something he said to me yesterday. About you, I mean. Didn’t you just locate a sunken ship or something? In the Persian Gulf?”

“Yeah, only I didn’t ‘just’ locate it, that was nearly three months ago. This ship — actually, it wasn’t a very big thing, more of a good-sized boat — is supposed to have foundered in the waters off Abu Dhabi a couple hundred years ago. A group of men, young guys who could still get excited about treasure, which this barge was supposed to have been carrying from Bandar-e Lengeh across the Gulf on the coast of Iran” — he smiled that bright crooked smile — “called Persia then, which falls more sweetly on my ears, dug into the available records and got hot to dive for the wreck. So they contacted me and I flew over there to see if I could locate the thing for them.”

“How’d they hear about you? And is it true your ding — Holaselector — works to find other stuff besides oil? Apparently it does.”

He nodded, one arm looped over the steering wheel. “I’m not sure how they found out about me, really. It’s enough that they wanted to hire me — for my expenses, plus a piece of any treasure we recovered. And it’s much easier to locate a sunken hulk with the Holaselector than to map oil reserves. After all, if it’s there, it sticks out like a sore thumb, nothing else man-made, nothing but rock and sea bottom. Well, we located the wreck on the second day. Just a matter of finding the right area for search.”

“You actually found the thing, then?”

“Do you have to sound so incredulous? Hell, yes, I found the thing. Some treasure aboard, but not much. I may get five, ten thousand from the job, a year or so from now. But it was fun, that was the main thing.”

“You stuck around long enough for these guys to paddle down and take a look at the wreck, huh?”

“Yes. I watched the first couple of dives, but salvage operations will go on for a long time. I stayed for another week, though — and a memorable seven sweet days it was. Man, that was the best part of the trip, spending a week with — “

He cut it off suddenly, and there was a kind of thick silence before he went on, “A week at Azdrak, near Azdrak, that is. Great country over there, different from the States. Very different.”

“Seems to me Gippy also mentioned a palace of some kind?”

“Let’s move into the house, Shell. OK?”

He got out. I opened the door on my side, waited while he retrieved his instrument. Dev didn’t say anything as he climbed from the mobile home’s rear end, carefully as before, watching his step and hugging the black box close to his chest.

But as he turned and stepped toward the house I moved up alongside him and said, “Dev, I was wondering about that Roman Number One — “

And that was the last word for a while.

Right then, between one word and the next — I never did get the next word out — there were four shots.

I knew they were rifle shots, and from not very far away, less than a hundred yards away. They were loud, flat, and ugly, like thick bones breaking.

It might have been a different story if they’d all come in a carefully timed, and aimed, sequence but there was one shot and a two-or three-second pause, then the other three in a bunch, too fast, as though rushed — maybe because the bastard squeezing that trigger knew he’d missed with the first slug and could see us moving. For we were sure as hell moving in a hurry, at least I was.

A fraction of a second after that first sharp crack hit my ears I was in the air, jumping forward. My foot hit the ground and I took off in a second leap as the flurry of other shots were fired and I heard a slug hit the asphalt, somewhere near where my flying feet had been, and zingg as it ricocheted away.

But Dev, the idiot, was still no appreciable distance from where I’d been two bounds ago. He was bent over, hugging the heavy black box to his chest and moving forward at a pretty good clip, but planting his feet almost as carefully as when he’d climbed from the camper and therefore not generating nearly the speed he could have achieved without that damned dingus slowing him down.

And if ever, I thought, there was a moment when speed was of the essence, this had to be it. So I skidded on the asphalt, got turned around, took off in another jump, but this time back toward imbecilic Devin Morraigne.

His eyes were fixed on something ahead of him, apparently something very important, toward which he was scuttling like a big lame crab, eyes practically straining at the — I didn’t have the faintest idea what they were straining at.

I’d started out a good ten feet from Morraigne and was still a yard away when, having taken a very speedy glance toward the area which so gripped Morraigne’s attention, I realized there wasn’t anything over there except a rock. A big rock, true, actually a great huge boulder, but that was all, just — a rock.

That’s what Devin wanted. This guy was unreal, I told myself; the only thing that made sense was, he greatly desired to reach that rock and there place his black-box dingus, where it would be safe from all the bullets flying around, and that didn’t make any sense at all.

As I say, I was still a yard from him when this realization came to me, and as it turned out that was as close as I got. When I’d started leaping forward to knock the dumb bastard down and save him from getting killed, I’d yelled, “Drop that damned thing, you crock, and get down!”

So, already, I’d attracted some of his attention. Quite a bit of his attention. I was almost at him, turning to smack into him with my shoulder and knock him to safety, when I became aware that Morraigne’s head was turned toward me and, though his legs were still going fairly speedily in that shuffling movement, his right arm was stuck out straight and stiff toward me. I became aware of it because the heel of his open hand smacked me squarely in the middle of my forehead.

This is queer as hell, I thought.

In my mind was the vivid picture of many guys I’d seen in similar situations, but all of them were playing football. What was happening to me was exactly what star quarterbacks did to pro tackles when they didn’t want to get tackled — smack ‘em in the head with a good stiff-arm shot and, if it worked, hug their football and keep on galloping toward the distant goal.

Well, maybe in addition to racing cars for fun, Morraigne had put in a jolly season with the L.A. Rams. Hugging his box, he kept on moving toward his goal — the rock — but what happened to me shouldn’t happen to a pro tackle.

Partly, what happened to me was due to the fact that I wasn’t all set, ready, balanced, to get a shot in the head, since that was the very last idea in my mind. So, one instant I was three feet from Dev Morraigne and there was still time to knock him out of the way and maybe save his life, and then SMACK and I was, oh, twenty or thirty feet from him, rolling at first, then skidding, and at last coming to a stop with my chin apparently squashed between the rest of me and the asphalt driveway.

“Hey!”

I assumed that was from Devin Morraigne, for whom I felt no great warmth, at the moment. I also remembered somebody had been shooting at us, but that danger seemed to have lost much of its previous urgency. Besides, it was my impression that had been quite a while ago. So I lifted my head cautiously, and worked my neck, and got turned around enough so I could see him.

Yeah, he’d made it. He was there at his rock. The black box was on the asphalt against its base, and Dev was hunkered down next to it.

“Hey!”

“Ah, shut up.”

“Shell, are you all right?”

“Now you ask me. Where were you when I didn’t need you?”

“What the hell happened? Did you get hit? I mean, by a bullet?”

“No, it wasn’t a bullet.”

I realized, then, however, that if the rifleman was still around and wanted to shoot me, he wouldn’t have to adjust for a moving target this time. Therefore, he almost certainly was not still around. I got up, and hobbled toward Morraigne and his rock, and nothing very exciting happened except that I realized I had probably sprung my butt.

Dev looked at me soberly. “You all right?”

“I think I’ve sprung my butt — “

“My God, somebody was shooting at us — “

“But otherwise I’m in great shape. Except for — “

” — actually trying to kill us. Or you — “

” — my chin, which is very likely ruined, and some skin off my arms — “

” — or me. Who the hell would shoot at us?”

” — and legs and chest, and … I’m afraid to check anything else. Who’d shoot at us? Beats the hell out of me. But that’s a good question.”

It was a good question. That part was easy. What we needed was a good answer.

As we started into the house, I asked Dev what the hell he thought he’d been doing, tiptoeing over the asphalt as might one among the tulips, when slugs were flying. He told me his Holaselector was basically very sturdy, but had a couple of components — one of which was essentially a thin film of the element mercury forming the heart of his “Multiphase Vibron” component — that even a small jar or shock could ruin.

The explanation didn’t quite satisfy me. Maybe because I had not the faintest idea what a Multiphase Vibron was. And I couldn’t help wondering if anybody else did, either.

Inside the house, I immediately walked to the living-room phone and picked it up, and — just as immediately — Dev took the phone from me, dropped it back onto the receiver.

“I assume you were about to call the police — ” he began.

“Hell, yes, I was calling — “

“Forget it.”

“But, Dev, it’s at least eight to five that guy was trying to kill you. It’d be different if this had happened somewhere else, at my apartment, say, but this is your house — “

“Forget it, Shell.”

Same as before. So, the same as before, that’s where we left it. With the small exception that Dev said if I wanted to tell the law somebody had shot at me, that was OK, but to leave him absolutely out of it. I didn’t argue.

We did sit and talk about what had happened, for a little while — not long, five minutes or so. And a couple of those minutes were lost, if that’s the right word, when Petrushka toddled in once again, bare-assed — actually, bare-everythinged — and did a gay impromptu little dance before Dev sent her away. Not far away, just out of the living room.

We arrived at no wonderful conclusions, didn’t even decide if those shots had most likely been aimed at me, or Morraigne, or possibly at both of us. After brief discussion, we just let it simmer.

Dev seemed to be a short distance into shock, and I felt like going home and checking my anatomy, to make sure it was all there, so after those five minutes I shook hands with Dev, yelled goodbye to Petrushka, and — with reasonable care, looking about and moving without undue delay — went to my Cad and headed for the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

By two-thirty p.m. I was back in my three rooms and bath on the second floor of the Spartan, fresh from the shower and climbing into some clean clothes, indeed into another splendid outfit, I thought. By two-forty-five I’d quick-fried a thin New York steak, plopped it atop a piece of toast, and was chewing away, while seated on a stool before the two aquariums just inside my front door.

I was still seated there watching the fish when my phone rang, and then Eddy, downstairs on the desk, was saying softly to me:

“Shell, there’s a kind of weird guy down here….”

</code>

<code> Chapter Eighteen

Flat on my back in the middle of North Rossmore, I heard the engine-whine and shrill tire-screech as a car accelerated in one hell of a hurry, leaving, getting away. Getting away with, undoubtedly, the son of a bitch who had shot me.

Shot me twice. But I didn’t know how bad….

Gingerly probing, moving carefully, I felt myself over, finally got straightened up, and sitting in the middle of the street — on my so very recently sprung rear end — decided that not even this latest physical insult was going to stop me. It would slow me down some, yes; but stop me, no.

One of the slugs, the first one, had crunched along or bounced off my left ankle, and the second had whistled — probably when I was going down, moments before I smacked my head against the street — between my chest and left arm, taking a pretty good chunk of flesh from the underside of that arm. The arm was bleeding, and there was blood from the torn skin at my ankle, but the ankle bone wasn’t broken. Maybe chipped, and for sure painfully bruised, but not broken. I had a perfectly marvelous ache in my head, but no holes in it, and I felt lucky simply to be alive.

I got up, stood erect, easing weight onto that left foot, and it felt as if I was standing in a burning barbecue pit, but I could walk if I didn’t mind making a few faces. On my feet again, I looked toward the top of the Spartan’s steps, and there — before the open doors behind him — stood Sheikh Faisuli. All in black, he was standing with his legs spread, arms crossed over his chest, and even from here I thought I could see sunlight glitter on the arched bridge of his nose as it might glance from the sharp blade of a small scimitar.

And at that moment he unfolded his arms, walked springily down the stone steps like a man leading a parade, waited for me on the sidewalk as I limped to it, finding I could negotiate at least that small distance without extraordinary difficulty.

Facing me, looking up at me, his piercing eyes dark and hot as desert night winds, Faisuli said calmly, “For several of these most recent moments, I feared you might be very much unable to find my hareem.”

“I will tell you, Sheikh, Sir, what you can do with that misbegotten hareem. Six of them, hey? Well, one at a bloody time, and preferably feet first — “

“Please, I speak thus, of things of no importance, because it is the way of men, or should be the way of men. Indeed, I feared for you. Truly, I feared for you. But we need not speak of this, is it not so?”

Something in his tone got through, made me feel that he really meant it — or else, having a few other things on my mind, that’s what I wanted to believe. Anyhow, I said, “Yeah, sure, so it is. Or, it is so. Man, I’d like to get out of this goddamned street, the woods are alive with assassins.”

“It is less unnerving, less perilous, than this city of madness even in Azdrak,” he said.

“Azdrak,” I said. “Azdrak…. Yeah, I wonder why I didn’t pick up on it the first time. That’s where Dev said he spent his dandy week — in Azdrak.” I shifted my weight, moved my flaming ankle around a bit. “If you’ll join me in my apartment again, Sheikh Faisuli, it strikes me we may have a new thing or two to talk about.”

Patched-up and professionally bandaged by Paul Anson, MD, friend, and occupant of Apt. 208 two doors down the Spartan’s hall from me, and once again where it had all started — started, that is, with Sheikh Faisuli, which is to say seated on the oversize chocolate-brown divan in my front room — and, wearing my third outfit of this wearing day, I talked to the Sheikh and he talked to me.

But, at the beginning, it was mostly me talking to him. Things like, “…and having thus gaily gone forth to look for your vanished harem, and having instantly been shot twice, you can perhaps understand why I am not wild to go looking for any more harems.”

And, “That’s true, I said it, yes — I did tell you I’d take a poke at this problem of yours, and because I said it I’ll try mightily to do it, but unless you spill one whale of a lot more about what’s what I may not try with all my might.”

And, “There is something fishy in Denmark, Sheikh. I know it, and you better believe it — which phrase I’ll bet a bag of Mexican jumping beans you picked up from Devin Morraigne.”

Whereupon, the Sheikh said, “The you-better-believe-it one, yes, that one pleased my ear from the tongue of Devin Morraigne. But what is this of fish in Denmark?”

“This is from somewhere else, it’s not important. Your reason for being here is, though, and your reasons for saying my problems are closely entwined with your own difficulties is, and a whole lot of clarifying explanation from you is. Is important to me, anyhow. So, if we’re going to get along really swell, you might consider telling me now what you implied you’d spill after I found your gals, I should get so lucky. OK?”

Sheikh Faisuli considered this. He considered it for some time. And as he did so, silently, a scowl growing upon his bronzed and leathery face, that expression I’d thought might hint at hardness or strength within him looked more like the gritty stamp of cruelty than it had at any time before. Which didn’t mean he was a cruel or vicious man, not at all. But he for sure was not a guy I’d want angry, or even seriously uneasy, with me.

“I may use your phone, Mr. Scott, yes?”

“Sure.”

He was already seated at the end of the couch where my front-room phone rests on a small stand, and after checking one page of a small red book he returned the book to a pocket of his black suit and swiftly dialed a number.

After a moment, he said, “Ah, so, you are there. Excellent. This is Sheikh Faisuli.” He listened briefly, smiled — again looking extraordinarily handsome, teeth and eyes flashing — then said, “It is so. I am here, which is to say there, now, at this moment. It is he I am with presently. And he insists with some belligerence of suggestion that I tell him all those things we discussed partially, and even more. Yes … yes … no … yes.”

What the hell’s going on? I wondered. And who’s he talking to? Even then, though, I had a little bit of a hunch about the second question I’d asked myself.

“What?” he was saying. “Ah, this, yes, his insistence arises from the condition that he was shot at. No, at. Well, slightly otherwise. Just now, yes, only minutes past…. Indeed, it is a pretty good reason, you better believe it. No, he is walking about and speaking with me now, he is a man, this one. The bullets struck him and off-bounced from his invulnerability” — and here, while still speaking, Sheikh Faisuli actually glanced at me, and winked, really winked, smiling that white and bloodless smile, then continued — “while hugely he roared, this one. It was incredible…. Yes. Yes, with much seriousness.”

Following that, he listened for almost a minute without speaking, said, “Splendid, I thank you. I shall reward you — no, no, I insist. You will hear from me.” And he hung up.

“What was that about?” I asked him.

“All is well. I have been assured by Miss Cynara Lane — “

“Dammit. I had a little bit of a hunch, but — dammit.”

” — that I may divulge to you my secrets, secrets of huge import and peril, and they will stay undivulged from you. I need not fear that you will reveal to anyone — “

“You mean, for Crissakes, she told you I can keep a secret? For Crissakes, couldn’t you ask me?”

Sheikh Faisuli appeared puzzled. He gazed upon me from the burning black eyes and said seriously, “Why should I ask of you? Wisdom requires that I ask of one who knows and will reveal this knowledge without consideration of personal interest or gain from doing it. How could I know if you spoke truth or pulled the wood over my eyes?”

“Wool.”

“Wool? What is this?”

“Never mind. Go on. Tell me about me.”

“If you assure, vow, swear as one would an oath, that what I say will not pass from you to others, I may be peaceful in the thought — thus assures me Miss Lane — that none will hear from you my secrets even should a querent tie much of you to several horses going in many directions. These are not precisely Miss Lane’s words, I possess some of it mixed-up.”

“I sure hope so.”

“But the quality is similarly strained. Therefore, will you now vow not to repeat — without previous my granting of permission — what I now proceed to tell you?”

“Sure.”

“What?”

“Sure.”

“Is that all? Just sure?”

“What more do you want?”

“Why, perhaps you could arise, and … make motions with your hands? Or some little ceremony…. It hardly seems enough.”

“Look, I promise. Cross my heart and hope to … uh. Cross my heart. Honest. Your secrets will be — secrets with me. And, Sheikh, I wish you’d get started. I’m consumed with curiosity. Overconsumed.”

“Let it be done, then. Prepare your attention.” That almost metallic but flowing and resonant voice of his rang in the room.

There was something different following that moment, there really was. Most of it arose from the obvious seriousness with which Faisuli gazed at me, the importance he unquestionably attached to what he was about to tell me. And part of it, too, was in the complete gravity with which he spoke his next words.

“For knowledge of what I am now going to inform you, Mr. Scott,” he said, “there are men — some of whom I know well — who would murder a man, or a thousand men, or a nation.”

He paused, either considering his next comment, or to let that one sink in. Whatever his reason, that one sank in.

“But, let us present this as a detective might wish it,” he said with less gravity, in fact with most of his former lightness. “In the order chronological, as it proceeded. First, it is known that in my land, and the lands surrounding — the several states or emirates of the Persian Gulf — there is oil. Much oil. Indeed, recent estimates issuing from knowledgeable men in this country, your country, place the proceeds to the owners from these vast quantities of oil reserves at and near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, at a trillion. This is not the total return, but the return only to those of the Persian Gulf area itself, the owners and rulers thereof, for their own purses.”

“I missed something,” I said. “Return of what? And what’s a trillion?”

“Return — or payment — of dollars,” he said. “And a trillion,” he gently added, “is a lot of dollars.”

“Uh, that kind of trillion. It’s a lot, all right. Man, it’s plenty.”

“I would say so. I say also, there is great — worldwide — interest in this area, and its oil, and the finding and producing and sale of this oil. This is not difficult to accept?”

“Not difficult.”

“My own country, the capital and heart of which is Azdrak, is not large in size, and we have … how shall it be said? … lagged behind our brothers in finding and development of our own reserves of oil. In all of Kardizazan — “

“Is that where you’re from, Sheikh? I wasn’t sure if I got it before — “

” — at least until very recently, there were only one hundred and twenty wells, producing only a little more than seventy thousand barrels of oil a day.”

“Only seventy thousand.” I nodded.

“Now, it happened,” said Sheikh Faisuli, and, as he then gazed past me toward the wall of my apartment and continued, that softly ringing musical voice of his took on almost a meter or rhythm, and he spoke as though he were spinning a tale from a time not recent but long and long ago, “that there came to Kardizazan a man, this Devin Morraigne, a man of genius and remarkableness by many unsuspected, unsuspected even by the ruler of that land — me, I am the ruler — and this Morraigne searched for a ship lost centuries past, using for this accomplishment an instrument of much ridiculousness, because of which many spoke of him in whispers. Yet the ship was found. Yet the ship was found very swiftly. Of all this the ruler of Kardizazan — me, I am the ruler — was kept informed without exception, including that which the ship-finder himself professed, that his instrument of ridiculousness was designed not for ship-finding but for directing its possessor to oil, to reserves of oil no matter where they might be, no matter how deeply buried. So, being wise, which is necessary thing for rulers, this ruler invited this Morraigne to stay, as his honored and most welcome guest, at the royal palace.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, mainly to myself, “that’s where the memorable week came from, all right.”

“Since this ruler was of power, possessed of forty-seven succulent wives, ruler over innumerable other succulents, absolute owner of vast quantities of moneys and jewels and other desirable things, it was made possible for him to prevail upon this Morraigne to demonstrate his oil-finding ability, made possible mostly by the cleverness of presenting to this Morraigne — “

Of a sudden, Sheikh Faisuli stopped speaking, sort of blinked, shook his head.

“Go on, go on,” I said. “And then what? Presented him with what? Open, o Sesame? Vast quantities of moneys and jewels — ?”

“With nothing.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nothing he could put into his purse. Sincerely, no, there was no cash payment, no jewels. This Morraigne, so confident was he of the virtues in his instrument that willingly to take nothing he agreed, no payment of moneys, only my promise — which is like one all those horses going wild, you recall, could not change a single iota — that if after drilling where indicated by him, should we do so, oil was produced, for his purse he would receive a return of five percent. Off the top, that is how he put it.”

“Sounds like him. Boy, this is fascinating. Did you drill a bunch of wells and — ?”

“Let me proceed as I was proceeding and fascinate you with how and what happened, in due order.”

“Well, OK.”

“On four days, of those seven days as guest in my palace, this Morraigne went with men of mine who are most knowledgeable in the ways of oil, and also, on twice of those, was accompanied by the ruler — me — and on these days he indicated, and my men marked with stakes in the ground, drilling places for oil. Now, partly as a test for him and his machine, my men represented to him other places where they had made preparations to commence drilling holes, making oil wells. They insisted he tell them, of those places, how much oil and how deep, all these interesting things of importance.”

“Did he do it?”

“He did do it. His answer, of how much oil and how deep, for two of these places, was none, and nowhere.”

“No wells, were there at that time, right? This is where your oil guys were going to drill?”

“Precisely so. The other two places, said this Morraigne, from the first, two hundred barrels daily if done properly, drilling to a mile and point-one-four-eight something or other in depth.”

“That’s him, all right.”

“And from the other, four hundred barrels, similarly. Of the greatest interest, he indicated his own six places, his personally selected locations, of which he waxed wildly glad, claiming impossible oil quantities, saying all his life this was where he had been looking for.”

“Well, then,” I said, “if I’ve got it straight, Dev Morraigne told you what to expect at four locations picked by your men, and also at six sites chosen by him alone. Is that it?”

He nodded.

“Well, how did he do? You drilled the wells, didn’t you? You are going to tell me, aren’t you?”

“I am telling you. This, all of this, was mostly three months past, now behind us. We were not impatient to drill these wells of Morraigne, having had some experience of similar instruments, which proved not only useless but very expensive. Some of those men who proclamated such instruments would now be unable to locate their heads even if they could know where to look for them, or how.”

He didn’t pursue that any farther. I didn’t want him to pursue it any farther.

“So, first were drilled the four wells we most were sure of, leaving the selected six for later times. As for those two wells, of which Morraigne said none and nowhere, it was as he said it.”

“None — and nowhere?”

“You better believe it.”

“And the two-hundred, and the four-hundred barrel — “

“Precisely so.”

“But … good God Almighty, that’s — wow.”

“You can say wow again.”

“How about the six others? The locations he picked out?”

“All producers. As he said. Within reasonable allowances for error, yet all vigorous producers. One of them, this Morraigne said, at a depth of twelve thousand feet would from there produce ten thousand barrels a day. This equals one-seventh of all production from the entirety of one hundred and twenty wells before this in all Kardizazan. Consequently this happening was not possible. You will agree with this, surely.”

“Surely. Sure. Of course, it’s impossible. But….”

“Precisely so. The impossible was — is — possible. Was — is — ten thousand and four hundred barrels a day.”

There was silence.

Silence during which I felt a queer deep prickling all over my body, as if chill goosebumps were growing on the inside of my skin.

Then I turned toward Sheikh Faisuli and spoke slowly, staring at him. “Do you know what you’re telling me?” I said. “My God, you’re telling me Dev Morraigne’s got a doodlebug that works.”

“Precisely so,” he said.

</code>

<code> Chapter Nineteen

It was nearly four o’clock when I stood up, began walking carefully back and forth over my living-room carpet, trying to ease some of the ache and stiffness from my left ankle.

The Sheikh had been telling me that, because I was now in possession of the full story, the “incredible facts,” I should not have difficulty comprehending the sense of urgency that seized him, his almost feverish desire to conclude a “binding agreement” with Devin Morraigne.

However, he continued, there was the matter of, “…my traveling hareem. To them, these succulents, I possess an obligation most binding. Aside from this sultan-like necessity, it must not become known that the — this segment of my — hareem has been strayed or abducted, whatever it has done. The repercussions from this knowledge becoming wide could produce — I cannot explain fully — agonies unmentionable both to me here, and in my country there.” He made one hand into a hard brown fist. “Secrecy is of the utmost! If you intend to act, you must act with blinding speed, not to mention absolute guardedness.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “You’ve really got me convinced it’s entirely impossible for me to do what you want done, if we include the fine print, Sheikh. However, I’ll hack at it — very soon. But one other thing, I assume Devin Morraigne has been anticipating your arrival — I know he was expecting a call from someone important, and I assume you’re that someone.”

“He, Morraigne, knows I am here, or about to be presently. One week ago I phoned on the long-distance operator from Azdrak to his home, and told him then that I would today arrive at the Los Angeles International. Also, once ensconced, with my six sensuousnesses, in the topmost floors of the Casacasbah. I would make communication with him for discussions of the most serious nature.”

“I assume you haven’t been in touch with Morraigne since your arrival this morning — assume with some logic, since he just got back from a trip. In fact — “

I was going to mention being with Morraigne, and those several shots at us, having no doubt the Sheikh would be much interested in these items, but he interrupted me, his bronzed face darkening in a scowl for some reason.

“Yes, back from the land of Texas!” he almost shouted.

Then he calmed himself, lowered his voice, and continued quite normally. “In this conversation one week ago, he, Morraigne, mentioned his soon departure, even mentioning — deliberately, I now conclude, to play with my fears — this Texas. But he assured me he would make strenuous efforts to return by this day, since it would be unfortunate — not to mention unwise, which he didn’t mention — to keep this Sheikh of Kardizazan waiting around like anyone else.”

I sat on the divan near him again, saying, “Let’s pin it down a little more. Did you tell him you’d brought in all those marvelous wells at the locations he’d selected, and, therefore, were prepared to make him a billionaire in return for his services and the doodlebug that works?”

“Not … precisely.”

“What then, imprecisely?”

“He does not know the wells have been completed with vast satisfaction. No one knows of this — or if they do, heads will….”

“Roll?”

“You comprehend, surely. We have made sincerely great efforts to keep these things concealed. No explanation of this why should be required for anybody, including you. It is possible, Mr. Scott, to drill wells and keep secret all matters of depth and production and even that anything has been done whatever, but only if one controls all who were involved in the entire matter. We have done this sufficiently, it is our belief, yet when there are so many with some knowledge it is not possible to be certain. Therefore, with this thing of such unprecedented importance, to me — and to my country, Kardizazan, of which me, I am the ruler — I have fears. Fears that others may know now what and how we have done in our drilling, and how we knew how to do how we have done.”

“What? Let me pry a word in here, Sheikh. In sum, so far as you’re aware, Morraigne doesn’t know what’s happened with those wells he located or analyzed for you, or about anything else that’s happened in Kardizazan since he left your palace and came home — except that you’re here probably by now and want to see him.”

“Precisely so. One of my fears is that others may awaken to the light I have seen, become aware that the instrument of this Morraigne is of incalculated value — and power, to him who holds it — and capture this Morraigne before I can demonstrate to him the wisdom of remaining uncaptured, except by me.”

“Or, you want to sign him up before somebody else gets his John Henry on the dotted line.”

“John — ?”

“Let’s not get into it. You fear others may achieve a ‘binding agreement’ with him before you do, right?”

“Yes. Indeed, Mr. Scott, since the long-distance I have caused inquiries to be made. It is alleged openly that Morraigne has been in the land of Texas — as he himself told me — there making maps of areas to drill in for rich Texas oil men, of whom I am apprised there are many. But not so. This is alleged only for covering up. It is a falseness.”

“Does that mean Dev wasn’t locating drill sites?”

“You better not believe it. This was a subterfuge designed as a ruse, to conceal the piercing news that he was discussing his instrument, his services — everything — with these Texas-land oil men of huge richness.”

“Ah….”

“Yes. Worse than Ah. It is now not as it was when he enjoyed the languors and splendors of my palace, and all that. Now he may escape. I must proceed with outstanding wiliness and in unmistakableness altogether, I must whelm him over by dangling before this Morraigne such marvelousness and richnesses and desirings that he will be whelmed over uncontrollably, and tell the oil men of rich Texas to go jump.” He paused. “This go jump it is another one that pleased my ear from the tongue of Morraigne.”

“Uh-huh. I get a clearer picture now, Sheikh. And I’ll bet, if there’s anybody who can whelm him over, you’re the guy who can dangle it.”

“I do not comprehend your language.”

“OK. Well, I guess this is a pretty interesting time for Dev Morraigne, since he knows you must be here by now, or damned close, and that call he mentioned expecting might be from the Texas interests, besides which there’s another guy I know who conceivably — “

“Another? More than Texas?” The Sheikh was showing very evident concern. “I feared this, of course. What else has more naturalness than that evil men from all over would attempt to counterploy me in my pursuit of this Morraigne? But how could this even commence unless they know what, or even part of what, I know — “

“Relax, Sheikh. I don’t know anything about the Texas oil men, but the other guy I referred to hasn’t got a chance in this league. He doesn’t even have his first billion. But, after all, if there’s Texas interest, there could also be Oklahoma interest, Louisiana, Calif — “

“Stop! I have enough to worry about from Texas, without adding Oklahoma and Louisiana. Not to mention — “

“Sorry. It was mere conjecture. But even more important to me than ten thousand barrels of gold a day is the certainty that somebody’s trying to kill me. And Morraigne.”

“Morraigne? Someone is trying to kill — Morraigne?”

I looked up at Sheikh Faisuli — up, because he had shot erect, as though flipped by giant springs, was now standing — and if I had thought he was evidencing some concern a moment before, that had been as nothing compared to the apparent seizures of sudden agonies he was experiencing now.

“Don’t get so excited,” I said. “I’m not really certain….”

I stopped, did a little private wondering before going on.

Almost surely, it seemed to me, whoever had thrown those rifle slugs at Dev and/or me earlier, was also the son of a bitch who’d plinked me twice and screeched away in his speeding car — which car, unfortunately, I had not even glimpsed.

But that s.o.b., having seen me go down, probably thought he’d wiped me out, put me down for good. At least, it wasn’t likely he could know I was alive and reasonably ambulatory. So….

I got up, stood briefly next to the Sheikh, then walked toward the door.

“What is this?” Faisuli said. “You are departing?”

“A little more than an hour ago, somebody took four shots at me, or Dev Morraigne, or maybe both of us. But at least one or two of those slugs were meant for me, because that somebody wasted no time in trying again to kill me. As you know, Sheikh, you observed. He probably thinks I’m done for, which means there is a very good chance he’s getting ready to kill Dev Morraigne, right about now….”

I opened the door, started out, but said over my shoulder as I left, “If, that is, he hasn’t already done it.”

I don’t really know why I went into the bedroom.

Well, I do know, of course. I was looking for Dev, alive or dead, and all the other rooms in his house were empty. So, considered as a logical exercise, going into the bedroom was the only thing left to do.

Once there, I didn’t say “Hello” or anything, figuring Dev must have heard me clumping inside and banging the door and all. Besides, I didn’t have to say anything to attract his attention, since his head was already turning, slowly, cranking around almost a full hundred and eighty degrees, and about then his eyes fell on me.

“I don’t believe it,” he said in a strange, high, almost squeaky voice that wasn’t like his real voice at all. “I’ve wondered if, some day, this would happen to me. But I really never thought it would. I really never thought it would. I — “

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Hi. Nice Petrushka.”

Then there was on of those embarrassing silences you hear about. Which are much stickier to experience than to hear about.

After a spell I said to Petrushka — I was leery of saying anything right then to Dev, because of the strange way he was gazing at me, besides, I was afraid he was going to injure his neck — “Well, how’s it going? I mean, how are things … what’s up — what’s new, what do you say, how have you bee — ?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just fine.” Then, after a brief pause, “What do you want?”

“Oh….”

That was all I said. Probably it was enough, under the circumstances. Sometimes there’s no easy answer to a simple question.

Then there was another of those embarrassing silences.

“Well, I guess I’ll run along,” I said.

Dev Morraigne spoke then, with his voice lower, about an octave and a half lower. “Yeah.”

“Dev, I think — as long as I’m here already — I should tell you why I’m here, right? I mean, why I’m here, in the house. You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“I can wait.”

“Well — “

I decided not to pursue the matter.

“See you,” I said, and went out into the living room. Why they call that one the living room is a mystery to me. But there I waited, not so very long as it turned out, until Dev Morraigne joined me. Petrushka wasn’t with him, and I didn’t ask what he’d done with her.

“OK,” he said. “I’ll bet this is going to be good.”

I guess it was good enough. After I explained what had happened — to me, for abiding by Sheikh Faisuli’s instructions I did not even mention Sheikh Faisuli — and showed him the bandages on my arm and ankle, Dev leaned back in his chair and whistled. I could tell; I was forgiven.

So my next problem would be to convince Dev he should move, get out of this house, and, as I already knew, his was a tough mind to change when it was even halfway made up. More, if he was as determined to stay as he was to avoid calling the law, I had to convince him I was right and he was wrong without using any of the info I’d gotten from Faisuli.

During part of our conversation at the Spartan, Faisuli had made it clear I was not to mention his presence in Los Angeles, certainly not the reason for his presence, to anybody, and that included even Devin Morraigne. The Sheikh felt that, although probably no harm would ensue if I told Morraigne Faisuli was here and I’d talked at length with him, “probably” was not good enough for Sheikh Faisuli.

He feared that Morraigne might wonder why the Sheikh had approached me even before contacting him, that Morraigne might become unwarrantedly suspicious of the Sheikh’s motives, might correctly guess that those locations he’d selected in Kardizazan had produced the quantities he’d predicted and that, therefore, he, Morraigne, was “holding aces back to back.”

So said the Sheikh, employing American poker terms, presumably for my benefit. In the same vein he said that this was, in a very real sense, “international poker” with the stakes — he used the marvelous word again — “a trillion,” only this time his phrase was “a trillion or two.” He concluded this gentle but unmistakable warning to me by saying that, in a matter of such “perilous delicacy,” every single act and word bearing in any way upon its progress and outcome was pregnant with possible consequences, either for good or ill, and — not meaning to belittle me or my undoubted fantastic abilities, none of which I’d used yet — I might, without meaning to do so, put my foot in it. Which was another phrase he’d picked up somewhere along the way.

In sum, concerning any and all matters hinging upon Sheikh Faisuli or his harem or his oil wells or his presence or his business in the City of the Angels, I was to keep my mouth shut.

So I decided that, if Morraigne wouldn’t take my advice for his own benefit, perhaps he’d be more amenable if I asked him to do it simply as a favor to me. That was good, I thought, that was probably the way to influence a guy like Morraigne, maybe the only way. So, having considered, I assumed, all the essential factors involved, I leaned toward him and said earnestly:

“Dev — “

“Maybe it’s a good thing I’m getting out of this joint.”

” — I’d consider it a personal…. What was that again?”

“I’ve already packed the little stuff I want to take along. I’ll be sending Petrushka back home to the farm — joke — so I thought, before leaving. I’d, ah, say goodbye to her.”

“That’s what you were doing, huh? That’s nice. Leaving what?”

“Leaving the house. Maybe only for a day or two, but I’m sure not going to stay here.”

“Seems like a good idea. Now you mention it. But … isn’t this kind of sudden? I thought you had to stay here in case you received an important call…. You already get it?”

If he had, I was thinking, it could hardly have been from Faisuli.

“No,” he said. “And I don’t want it, either, not on this phone — it’s tapped.”

I blinked. “I’ll be damned. But … it makes sense. How’d you find out, Dev? And when? You didn’t say anything about a tap or bug when I was here before.”

“Didn’t know about it then.” He scratched his cheek, where a little dark stubble was beginning to show. “First thing, somebody broke into the joint while I was gone. Then there was that shooting. It all got me to thinking about … several things. So I went through the house more carefully than I had the first time, checked around the house, outside and inside, for a bug or tap — I’ve got the equipment to do it — and finally found the goddamn little crystals and cuteness in the phone.”

He pointed at the phone I’d started to use earlier, when he’d stopped me. “That one right there,” he said. “It’s the only one in the house.”

“Is the wire tap still in? If so, somebody could be listening to what we’re saying right now, Dev. Depends on what the thing is, but it’s possible — “

“I know. But it’s not in the phone any longer, don’t worry. Besides, I played around with the little bastard for a few minutes after I found it, and there was no activation — so far as my instruments could determine, and they’re sensitive — until the phone was in use. I’m not sure, because I’m not positive of what I’ve got, but I imagine this thing also actuated a switch to start and stop a tape recorder, no telling where in or out of these Hollywood Hills, which is the most likely setup.”

Dev got to his feet. “This one may surprise even you.” He walked to the beautiful green bust of Polynesian Meluma, tipped the jade, stuck a finger under its base, and pulled out what looked like a square of metallic foil. “Secret pocket,” he said, smiling.

When he stopped before me I reached for the foil but he pulled it away, shaking his head, then carefully opened it and slid something into the palm of his hand. “Don’t sneeze,” he said, “or we may never find it again.”

Dev wasn’t exaggerating much. I’d seen microminiaturized mikes, transmitters, amplifiers, you name it, but I’d never seen an outfit quite like this one before. It looked like a pair of grayish salt crystals, one slightly larger than the other, connected by a thin flat “bridge” of shiny white material about a thirty-second of an inch long. “Ah-choo,” I said, “and there goes CBS and — is the little one NBC?”

“May come close to that even before nineteen eighty-four, Shell,” he said. “Soon afterwards, spies will be busily mounting audio-TV units on motes of dust and blowing millions of ‘em acrost the oceans wide.” He pointed. “There’s the business, for pickup and transmission of the signal, or voice, and the smaller beauty is a high-gain amplifier.”

“You can’t kid me, that’s sugar from Mrs. Willifer’s bowl.” I tried to keep it light, while I asked him my next couple of questions. “How do you know the tap isn’t effective except when you’re talking unless you made a phone call? Or did you?”

“Matter of fact, I did. But it wasn’t necessary for checking this outfit.” He put the little grains back into the heavy foil, folded it again as he walked to Meluma. “It’s actuated when the phone’s lifted off the hook, inert when the phone’s replaced.” He hid the square of foil in his secret pocket again, came back and sat down, saying, “As soon as I took the tap off, I buzzed the head operator and arranged that any calls to this number be intercepted and transferred to the mobile phone in my GMC bus, so I won’t miss any calls….” He stopped, looked up toward the ceiling, frowning. “Which is a hint to me, maybe I’d better check out that phone, too.”

“Good idea. When I started to call the cops earlier — you didn’t know the phone was bugged then?”

“Of course not. I told you, Shell, I just found the thing, a few minutes after you left.”

“Yeah. Well, put two items together. For a guy to gimmick the phone itself, he’d obviously have to break into the house to do it. During this past week, somebody broke into the house. Therefore — “

“I don’t think so. I know what you’re getting at, of course, but I’ve a hunch the thing was in there before. Couple of weeks ago — no, more like nine, ten days — I happened to notice the phone was shinier than normal. It had been wiped clean. Figured a gal, futzing around and cleaning up, you know, they’ve just got to straighten the pictures and all, had helpfully washed and dried the phone, or at least dusted it heavily. But now … I’m not so sure. Phone’s nice and dirty now.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong. Hope to hell I am wrong.”

“You’re having calls transferred to your mobile job? That must mean you’ll be living in it temporarily.”

He nodded. “Good a place as any. All the comforts of a truck.”

“Maybe you’d better give me your mobile number in case I want to get in touch. And if you’re about ready to split, I’d be glad to accompany you for a mile or so — as a sort of professional truckguard, shall we say?”

“Suits me,” he said grinning. “If one of us has to get shot, it might as well be the one that’s already half-ruined.”

As I came in at the rear of the Spartan’s lobby and headed for the stairs, Eddy called from behind the desk, “Hey, Shell, a guy left some stuff here for you ten minutes ago. Package.”

“Say where it’s from?”

“Some kind of detective agency.”

“Must be the Vetterman info.”

“Yeah, Vetterman, that’s what he said.”

I got the package from him — a large manila envelope half an inch thick — and went up to 212 again.

I’d wondered if Sheikh Faisuli had waited, or, tiring of that, returned to the Casacasbah, or, tiring of even more, begun seeking his vanished harem himself.

As it turned out, he had not only waited in my living room but, according to his own words, spent every minute there worrying with great furiousness.

After I’d informed him that my mission had been eminently successful, that Morraigne was OK and I could get in touch with him at virtually any time I desired — though I did not tell the Sheikh where Morraigne was, nor did he ask — Faisuli clasped his strong hands together and cried fervently, “Praise Allah that allah — all — is — wells — well!”

“You want to try that again?” I asked.

But I accepted it completely that he hadn’t been kidding me about his furious worrying and the agonizing upsetedness this day had done him.

Faisuli was going on, still fervently but more intelligibly, “It is a blessing, he is alive, safely unendangered. Ah, if only my other agonies could so swiftly be downcast. The Texans, the other evils, these abominable shootings…. And those — these — my wives, those juicy and sensuous pumpkins, my robustly anatomical hareem — why, it may shrivel up and die of ancientness before — “

“About that, Sheikh. It’s the very next thing on my agenda, the very next. You have to admit, I’ve had my own problems, too. But just as soon as I go through some reports I have here, I’ll get cracking on this urgency. Can’t be too tough to find six babes in shazikhs and goup-goups — “

“Ghazikhs and shoup-shoups.”

“Well, that should make it even easier. As for the rest of it, Sheikh, Dev and the doodlebug and binding agreements and such, hell, don’t work yourself into an ulcer over it. After all, when you boil it down to the bottom of the pot, it’s only money.”

“What do you mean, only?”

For five minutes or so, I’d been studying the typed reports and copies of documents so efficiently assembled and speedily sent here by Red Vetterman. At first I’d flipped through the pages quickly, scanning them and moving on, although a couple of interesting-looking items caught my eye. I had just turned back to the first sheets — a four-page typed report covering what the Vetterman Agency had dug up on the backgrounds of Trappman, Banners, and Riddle, most of it devoted as I’d suggested to Arnold Trappman — when Sheikh Faisuli stood up.

“I go,” he said. “I go forth.”

I got to my feet. “I ought to be out of here in five minutes more myself, Sheikh. And don’t worry, at least keep the faith…. Well, I’m a whiz once I get started — sometimes…. And if I get lucky enough….”

I stopped, started over. I was getting cracking on the Sheikh’s job so late, the least I could do, I figured, was ooze a lot of confidence. Faisuli was probably a little disappointed in me already. So I smiled at him, confidently.

“Where,” I oozed, “shall I bring your harem?”

“To the Casacasbah, of course,” he said, somewhat stiffly. “If you can find it.”

“Now, Sheikh — “

But he was gone.

I went back to my papers. The hell with him, I thought Who did he think he was?

It took me not five but ten minutes to go through all the stuff from the agency, and even so I was able to give only cursory attention to most of it. There was plenty of meat to chew on, however. First, I digested all the dope about Arnold Trappman. There was a good deal of information about his primary business, the Trappman Oil and Gas Company, also what appeared to be a fairly complete listing of his investments and holdings, most of it real estate.

Trappman owned a couple of small apartment houses, an interest in a Costa Mesa shopping center, and four other buildings. One of those four was on a good corner in Glendale, but all three of the others were in the white-elephant category, costing him money instead of producing income, since one of them — in the deadest commercial area of Hollywood — was empty, as were the two listed as a “Garage” and a “Supermarket” located on the wrong side of Main Street in Los Angeles. The rest of the “real estate” under Trappman’s name wasn’t owned but consisted of land on which he’d obtained leases from the individual or corporate owners, granting him the right to explore for oil or gas during certain specific periods, usually for the one-year period following date of agreement. Several thousand acres were thus available to him for exploration, but I noticed that most of the leases would soon expire, many in a couple of months or less.

Profits from the Oil and Gas Company, which included substantial income from employment of his three company-owned drilling rigs, was good — fortunately so, because the impression I got was that without it the losses and expenses from his other interests might have pulled Trappman under the financial waves. He did own a couple thousand shares of various stocks, most of them low-priced, and now, at what some observers referred to as a market bottom, worth much less than he’d paid for them from one to several years previously.

That was enough, for the moment, as far as Trappman was concerned. The info on Easy Banners was less extensive, but much more interesting.

I recalled Cynara’s comment about Trappman, “I’d say he’s a crook,” and for a moment I wished I had Easy Banner’s birthdate to give her, just for fun. Because, with the info in hand, dug up only today by Red Vetterman, no horoscope was required to know Banners was a crook. He’d done time, two years at Q. And, reading the concise info on the sheet before me, I remembered where I’d seen Banners before.

I’d almost had it earlier today in his office, when for a moment I’d seemed almost to “recognize” him from somewhere. It hadn’t been personal acquaintance, but fuzzy familiarity with the much thinner and nine-years-younger face from newspaper photos, accompanied by stories about stolen securities, theft of negotiable bonds from brokers’ offices, stolen and even forged stock certificates used as collateral for loans in the million-buck category.

Nearly four million, all told, according to Vetterman’s info. Which info I wouldn’t have remembered otherwise, because the crime — for which Banners and several others were convicted — occurred before I’d opened my office downtown.

Banners had spent two years and a bit in San Quentin, which meant he’d been out — and, presumably, reformed, having been rehabilitated in the jug — for nearly seven years. He’d been “E. Zane Banners” then, not “Easy.”

He had also been E. Zane Banners at least eight years before taking that fall here in L.A., eight years before then — or seventeen years ago.

A bit more than seventeen, actually, and he was apparently not involved in criminal activity at that time. He was involved with Arnold Trappman, however. Which wasn’t necessarily felonious.

The involvement had appeared so innocent to Red that he’d personally scribbled a note to the effect that this was the only thing he’d turned up for the approximate time I’d mentioned, and he included it merely because there’d been brief legal action then. Which was also, apparently, how he’d managed to come up with the record.

The lawsuit — naming Arnold Trappman as one of the defendants, and settled out of court prior to trial — had been initiated by a man named Dikes, an investor in an exploratory or “wildcat” well, one of the first drilled by the Trappman Oil and Gas Company, which had then been incorporated for only a couple of years. Dikes was the sole financial backer of the operation, and his complaint was that, although drilling of the shallow well had been “completed” eleven months prior to his bringing suit, there had been no production, no contract for sale of the crude oil, and consequently no royalty payments to him in return for his forty-thousand-dollar investment.

It was a criminal complaint, so Dikes had been alleging fraud, but the case never got to trial. Whether it was part of an out-of-court settlement or not I couldn’t be positive, but Vetterman reported — for he’d dug up some record of this transaction — that payment of an undisclosed sum, which I guessed must have been about one buck, had been made to Arnold Trappman by Mr. Dikes for all of the Trappman and Banners interest in the “Fowler Number One,” which was the name given that well for legal and other purposes.

It was interesting, naturally, in view of the combined experiences of Gippy Willifer and Dan Corey with the “Roman Number One,” which were curiously similar, at least in part, to the earlier experience of Dikes alone. That was all, of course, just — interesting.

Benjamin Riddle: odds and ends of colorless background, nothing very interesting there. Apparently clean, certainly no available criminal record, retired engineer, fifty-nine years old, divorced, two married children living out of state. Worth, at a guess by Red, two or three hundred thou net, not luxuriously rich, but comfortable. No help for me in the single page on Benjamin Riddle.

I looked across the room at my frisky fish, then flipped some typed pages, wrote down the addresses of those three “white elephant” buildings, one in Hollywood and the pair in L.A., then noted the date when “E. Zane Banners” had entered Q and the day of his release, jotted “Fowler Number One” below all that, flipped my notebook shut and sat. Just sat.

I had been a bit optimistic in telling Faisuli I’d be out of the apartment myself in five minutes, because I sat there like a colorful lump on my chocolate-brown divan thinking, not even watching the fish, for that length of time. But then I straightened up, stretched, smiling — because I had firmly concluded that this interesting situation in which I’d become involved was either horrendously complex or ridiculously simple, and I was about to start placing my bets on simple — and grabbed the phone.

After dialing the Vetterman Detective Agency’s number I checked my watch. It was five-twenty p.m., on the nose. That surprised me: a lot had happened in the last two or three hours. So much, in fact, that I seriously doubted the next two or three could hold very much of interest or excitement. But it took only the next two or three minutes for me to find out — or at least start finding out — how wrong I was.

It took almost that long for Red’s secretary to find him, but when he got on the phone I thanked him for the speedy, and excellent, job he’d done and went on, “It may not have looked like much to you, Red, but the info on that” — I glanced at the notes in my open book near me — “Fowler Number One well, seventeen years back, is on the button for me, I think. See if you can get more details on it, particularly what production turned out to be — how much oil, how many barrels a day pumped and sold — when, and if, the Fowler well ever got on line. OK?”

“Sure. You sound eager enough to pay top dollar, so I’ll spend at least a year on it, if necessary.”

“Try to find out before spring. Anything trickle in after you sent the report over, Red? Particularly on Trappman or Banners — “

“Nothing on them, but I guess you haven’t heard about Riddle.”

“Riddle? What about him?”

“He’s dead. You should kick the TV habit and start listening to radio, it was on the four o’clock news. Found him in a well — “

“A well? Don’t tell me, he fell into an oil — hell, no, he couldn’t — “

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll charge you for this. Not an oil well, a water well, actually it wasn’t finished yet, just a hole on his property, back behind his house. And he didn’t fall in, not with a bullet in his chest or in his heart, which is what killed him.”

I held the phone at arm’s length and looked at it briefly, for no clearly evident reason, then put it back to my ear and said, “Police have any idea who knocked him off, or why?”

“They aren’t broadcasting it, if they do. But, since I figured you’d be interested, I called downtown and asked if they’d turned up anything yet. Nothing, just a stiff, except they’d got the slug out of him.”

“They mention the caliber?”

“Thirty-two, but it was too mashed up to tell them much more. And there’s a lot of them around.”

Lot’s of .32’s around, all right. Even Gippy had one. But he’d only injured a tree with his. That was bad enough — maybe trees have got feelings, who knows? — and though Ben Riddle was nothing to me, for a moment I could see those typed words on white bond again: “…retired engineer, fifty-nine years, divorced, two married children living out of state….”

That was all the news Red had for me, so I thanked him again and hung up.

Then, since I was now wearing electric-blue slacks, I put my debonair-blue jacket on, not for warmth, but to cover up my Colt Special and gun harness, and went out — or went forth, as Sheikh Faisuli might have said — to find and restore unharmed to him his exquisite young female wildnesses, or his unsurpassed passel of sweet plumpnesses, or a hot half-dozen of the most passionately nutritious and provocatively out-pooching cupcakes ever cooked to a sexy sizzle by the swinging Lakashami, or even Shakalami….

Or, rather, that’s — approximately — what Sheikh Faisuli hoped I would do, if I ever got started.

What I did was set forth, once again — much as, earlier this day, I had set not very far forth — to find Sheikh Faisuli’s hareem.

In my Cad on the Hollywood Freeway, realizing I had left the Spartan without getting shot even once this trip, I recalled telling the Sheikh, “I’m a whiz once I get started — sometimes.”

It was a jolly little jest, of course. But, sometimes….

Because this time, from start to finish — that is, once I got started whizzing — it only took me half an hour.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty

By six-thirty p.m. on that warm Friday night in October, I was standing in a paper-and garbage-strewn alley behind the second of those wrong-side-of-Main-Street buildings owned by Arnold Trappman in downtown L.A., this the once-thriving but now abandoned former supermarket on Esther Street.

On the way here I had stopped at the morgue to view Ben Riddle’s body, his clothes and effects, after which I’d prowled the old and empty garage, half a mile from where I was now. There was little traffic in this depressed area, but I heard the hum of tires as a single car passed by on Esther Street. I’d parked my Cad out there, close enough to see the barely legible sign, Wellington, on the building’s front.

That had been a well-known name twenty years before — the three Wellington Brothers, owners of a chain of seven supermarkets in and near Los Angeles; but now all of those buildings were either used for other purposes, or empty, and all the Wellington Brothers were dead.

But right then I forced such thoughts out of my mind. Probably I was a bit preoccupied with death because I had so recently been looking at the pale, white, dead body of Ben Riddle in the morgue. But if ever there was a moment above all other moments not to be thinking of dead ones, this had to be it.

No, this was a time to whiz, whatever that was, if possible. This was a time to be thinking of harems: of pale white bodies, perhaps, but not any dead ones: of ghazikhs and shoup-shoups and hoo-hoo hotsy-totsies; and Visdrailias and Shereshims, among others — four others.

Why, this had to be, at least for me, the case of the century, the private-eye opportunity of a lifetime! And here I stood in an alley with the papers and garbage.

There was, of course, a reason for my being here. Or rather, several reasons. All of them good ones, too, I kept telling myself. Kept telling myself over and over, keeping it positive, because according to no less an authority, there’s no such thing as a negative-thinking whizzer.

Actually, I believed I had been led here by the most rigorous logic; still, what it all revolved around and hung upon, in a manner of speaking, was: “an affliction in Virgo.”

Earlier, my optimism had cooled somewhat during the minutes I’d spent prowling the dusty and abandoned garage a half-mile from here, prowling the emptiness and discovering only more emptiness — and three thin but lively rats, which scared me enormously, to tell the whole truth, when they ran rustling over crumpled papers near my feet.

To the left of and adjoining the building’s wall, there was a long shed, its swinging doors held closed by a rusted hasp and padlock. Standing at the alley’s edge I twisted the padlock, pulled, and the old boards were so weak that the padlock and hasp, with a half-inch splinter of crumbly wood, came off in my hands.

Inside — gleaming, highly polished, bright and new, in jarring contrast to its decaying surroundings — was a black Lincoln Continental sedan. Or, call it a limousine. Like the ones people ride in from the airport to downtown hotels.

I didn’t discover any door open, or windows unlocked — or, oddly, even broken — at the building’s rear, so I found a window that I could reach, in the building’s wall beyond the shed, and broke out the glass in it myself.

I’d brought with me a roll of thin plastic tape, and once strips of it were crisscrossed over the window pane it was a simple matter — though a bit noisier than I liked, since it was heavy frosted glass with little wires fused into it — to hammer on the glass and then pull taped-together hunks of it out, placing them in a pile at my feet, until there was a hole big enough for me to climb through.

Inside, it was as silent — and seemed as empty — as the deserted garage I’d earlier been in. Outside, the sun would still be shedding a glow over the land and the city, not yet beyond earth’s edge; but along Esther Street the surrounding buildings turned any late afternoon into dusk, and inside this abandoned supermarket the darkness was almost, not quite but almost, complete.

After a minute my eyes, more familiar with the darkness, could make out old shelves and bins, still in place but empty now. Shelves where not many years ago cans of soup and packages of bread and bars of soap, even toothpaste and deodorants and Permagrip glue, had been arrayed in bright packages, all of it looking good enough to eat. Now, bare shelves and dust.

I’d come through a window in what — looking in from the street out front — would be the building’s right wall, and I stood about halfway between the front and back of the store. In the rear wall, approximately at its center, there was a little brightness still, a glow; somewhere over there a light was burning. A light burning in an abandoned supermarket, a Lincoln Continental limo in a shed; I could feel tightening of tendons alongside my spine, involuntary clenching of buttocks, band of muscle pulling between my shoulder blades.

With the Colt Special in my hand, thumb moving slightly against its checked grip and my index finger barely touching the curved trigger, I walked past empty shelves where all the bright goodies had been, back to the rear wall and halfway along it to where the light glowed, quite brightly now.

It came from beyond a pair of metal-covered swinging panels, each less than a yard square, hinged at both sides of an otherwise open doorway with empty spaces both above and below the panels. You sometimes see them in the rear of supermarkets, separating shoppers from an area back there containing storage space and often a paper-piled desk, sometimes little offices.

I bent my knees and squatted, feeling a quick sharp stab of pain in my left ankle, started to lean forward — then froze as I heard a sharp click followed by a scraping sound. I waited, slowing my breath, let half a minute tick by, then squeezed the Colt’s butt tight, moved quickly under the metal-covered panels and stood erect inside the room.

Plenty of light now, coming from my left, very bright down there. Old bins and wooden shelving were back here, too, and beginning near where I stood, extending almost to the far wall, was a high four-foot-deep wooden structure with both large and small cubical compartments in its face, like the surface of an irregular honeycomb, where tins and boxes and sacks of produce must once have been stored.

When I turned to face the light, with that honeycombed structure on my right and on my left the bare wall I’d just come through, it was like looking down a square ten-foot-wide tunnel at — well, at the light which, according to mystics and wizards and philosophers and even dingbats, is supposed to be at the end of the tunnel.

I’d never believed it before, not for an instant; but it was possible that the mystics and wizards and philosophers and dingbats had just been joined by a new believer.

I could see clearly through my square tunnel into what must once have been a small office — about ten feet square, base of wood for the first three feet up from the floor and glass from there on to the small room’s ceiling — and beyond the glass, inside the room, a flurry and flutter of movement and color and girls that was a shock to my entire optic and even parts of other systems, not because it was unexpected, for it wasn’t, but in part because it was so bright and vivid after the dimness and bare dusty shelves where I’d been.

But, even as that sight gladdened my eyes and made my heart pump a little faster, my ears took some of the pleasure out of it all. Part of what I heard was the not entirely depressing blending of feminine voices in a sort of squeaking and squealing and trilling high-pitched pandemonium, faint from behind that office wall, but nonetheless audible, entirely too damned audible. Because the other part of what I heard was the same scraping sound, or something much like it, that I’d heard before; and I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but then realized it was a man walking.

A few feet before the glass face of that softly squeaking and trilling office, very close to the left wall, was a wooden chair, empty, near it on the concrete floor an overflowing ashtray, paperback book, a folded newspaper. Undoubtedly a man, a guard, had been sitting in that chair, was walking back to it now — the thought was no sooner in my mind than the man himself was in my sight, stepping past the far end of that honeycomb and moving toward the wooden chair on my left, but not looking toward it. Nor was he looking toward me. And naturally he was not looking behind himself, either. Where was he looking, then?

Right, he was staring intently, and with growing alarm — as far as I could tell from the back of his head — directly at the glass-enclosed office, wherein those dizzy foreign-brained broads were not exactly concealing how thrilled they felt about being practically rescued, which didn’t exactly thrill the hell out of me, since this could hardly fail to arouse some curiosity, at least, in the guard, who no matter how extensive his experience of guarding offices almost surely had not known one before that broke out into squeaking and trilling.

That, needless to say, was not all it had broken out into.

Every single one of those babes — yes, each of the six — was waving, and/or jumping up and down, and/or waggling both her hands, and/or spinning about in a fine frenzy.

In a way, I was pleased. It meant they were glad to see me. And I allowed myself an instant, while the guard was starting to turn around — or, it might be more accurate to say, spinning about like lightning — to savor the thought that, for at least once in my life, a real, live and luscious, mind-blowing, the-kind-you-dream-about harem had, merely at the sight of me, gone out of its gourd. Or, out of their gourds.

Whichever, I would have liked to savor that instant longer, but we don’t always get what we’d like in life, and it sure looked as if I wasn’t going to in this one, assuming nothing terminal happened to it in my immediate future.

It perhaps should be mentioned that this guard was not a little fellow, not one of those scrawny unfortunates you see in the “before” pictures of advertisements gracing the pages of Barbell and Muscle and Beautiful Hunka. No, this guard looked like the guy who beat up the guy in the “after” picture, and really ruined him.

He was a big one. I’m pretty fair-sized myself, but this bald-headed egg — not a hair on his head — was at least as tall as I am, and a lot thicker; I’d have put him at two hundred and forty or fifty pounds, and I’d have preferred to put him in a cage somewhere — somewhere else — and feed him hunks of cheap meat.

He was the size guy who, if you have to fight him, you’d like to shoot first, to make the odds more even. But I couldn’t take a chance on shooting him — though I seriously considered it — because if I missed him I would inevitably hit at least one and possibly more vital parts of the harem directly behind him. So I shoved the Colt back into its clamshell holster and sprinted toward the burly bruiser.

He didn’t have a gun. At least there was none in his hand or belt, and if he had one in his shorts, or out in the car, I knew I could sprint to him before he could draw — even though I wasn’t sprinting like I used to.

I decided I’d been wrong this afternoon in assuming, when I’d been shot on North Rossmore, that the slug hadn’t broken any bones in my ankle. Obviously, it had broken all of them. If they weren’t broken, I knew it would have to work better than it was working now.

But I believe when you make an irreversible decision you should stick with it, even if it’s a wrongo, so I kept hobbling at him.

I wasn’t really worried. It didn’t even bother me too much that the guy was bigger than I, and heavier than I, and probably had two good ankles. Some men are expert at golf or tennis or bridge or changing tires, everybody’s got some sort of special talent, and I can say without real modesty that what I can really do well is fight.

I fought in school, and during graduation, and in the Marine Corps, and in a number of streets and houses and alleys, and once in a girl’s dormitory. I became an expert in unarmed defense while in the U.S. Marines, and went on from there to study and practice half a dozen more eastern and western, and I think even one northern, manly arts.

So, I wasn’t worried. I knew once I got to him it would be Goodbye Emily, and then I could proceed to what I’d come here for in the first place. So, I wasn’t really worried. Except about one thing. That was getting to him.

But surprise was on my side. Those girls had surprised hell out of him. And after he spun around he hesitated for a second or two, with his huge arms dangling like tree limbs, or trunks. And when I was only a couple of yards from him and slowing down, I started to grin —

The thing is, I knew I could handle him. No matter which arm he came at me with, or even leg — I tiptoed through kung fu years ago — and I could hardly wait for him to start his attack, so I could counter it. Left hand, right hand, left leg, right leg, even knee or elbow, I didn’t care. I was ready. The only flaw in my analysis was — well, what the son of a bitch did was, first, he didn’t wait there till I got all the way to him but sprang toward me, bringing us closer together, or rather absolutely together, somewhat sooner than I had expected.

But the really dirty thing was, instead of flailing his arms or even legs about where I could get at them, he simply bent over and aimed his huge bald head at my stomach. Well, from that distance, he couldn’t miss, and he sure didn’t.

I felt my feet come off the floor and knew I was sailing back through the air a surprising way, and I also knew when I came down it was going to be a mess, and since I had not in my wildest imaginings expected to get clobbered in the gut by a head, there was probably less air in my lungs than at any time since six months before I was born.

I never did go completely out, and fortunately I kept my wits about me. I knew at all times where I was. I knew I was on the floor of an old supermarket, that’s where I was, feeling like last year’s lettuce.

The big bruiser took full advantage of his temporarily superior position, and came over next to me, and kicked me in the side. I let him kick me that once. I knew I wouldn’t feel it much, and it gave me time for my next move. However, his move was to try to kick me again, but this time in the head, and that was a nearly fatal mistake — for him — because, no matter what anybody says, I’ve got a pretty speedy head.

As his foot kicked through the air I sped my head out of its path, almost completely, and while he was off balance I managed to get onto my knees, and grab his foot, and somehow I got all the way up on my feet knowing all the bones in my ankle were gone, but I still had his foot and his leg was in the air and I started cranking it around like Henry trying to start the first Model-T Ford.

And this time it was the guard who wound up on the floor.

Now that he was down, he probably expected me to kick him, and I did not disappoint him. I aimed at his head, to get even, but got only his chin a glancing blow as he rolled away with surprising speed, and sprang up and hit me with even more surprising speed. It was a little unnerving. I like to keep my confidence up, any way I can, even with little poems and affirmations, but with this kind of guy something more was needed.

However, I ducked a couple of his roundhouse swings and landed two very good ones in his gut, each of which slowed him down a little more, and there came a moment when he was staggering backward with his arms at his sides, not much with it any longer, and I knew I had him.

We’d moved around more than a little, and as he staggered and then steadied himself, slowly raising his arms, I noticed that we were almost back where we’d started. That is to say, directly behind him was the glass-enclosed office, and behind the glass were those six lovely girls.

They weren’t yelling or screeching, or making any noise at all now. All six were close to the glass window, side by side, staring. And I realized then that this, too, was the sort of thing a man might dream about.

Yes, if he’ll admit it, almost any male between the ages of twelve and a hundred and twelve will admit he might dream, and be forgiven for dreaming, of taking on a monster in a winner-take-all battle to save the lovely Guinevere — or whoever — who, when the dream’s really good, is not off in a castle someplace but right there watching him, fascinated, torn between hope that he’ll win and save her and fear that he’ll be messily killed and she’ll get ravaged by the monster, but naturally he saves her, and what else? Why, he claims his prize, that’s what else. And ravages her. That’s the way it is in all the books I’ve read. Which, before long, was going to tell me something.

At the moment, though, I was overwhelmed by the wonderful thing that was happening to me; yet, in a way, I was disappointed. Disappointed that I had only this instant realized what a wonderful time I was having. I’d wasted at least two or three bloody minutes, while these beauties had been admiring me and pulling for me, concentrating all my thoughts on somehow getting this big ape to fall down again. Of course, that was a pretty good idea, considering what a difficult thing it was turning out to be.

But, man, I thought, what a dream of dreams I had going for me here. Before, I was just fighting a big ugly bald-headed bruiser. Just him and me. Where was the romance in that? Give me even one beautiful broad, though — to watch, and pull for me — and it would have to steam me up twice as much. So take one gorgeous tomato, like Guinevere, make her a hell of a lot better-looking, and multiply her by six! How lucky could one guy get? Talk about inspired! Right before their twelve admiring eyes, I was going to kill this son of a —

I knew where I was. I remembered it from before.

When I got up this time, I was mad. I mean, I was furious. For one thing, he’d hit me with his head when my own head was turned. But I told myself that wouldn’t happen again, and it didn’t. I really concentrated on chopping him down, and as a result the fight only lasted another two or three minutes.

But, by that time, I’d won. He was on the floor, and I was not, and it was certain he didn’t have the least idea where he was, either. In fact, I seriously doubted that he would come to in less than an hour. So, I guessed it was time to claim my prize. Or, prizes. That’s what the dumb books say, only the guys in them never felt as lousy as I did.

After another minute or two, while I got used to breathing deeply with what felt like several cracked rib cages and a bone-bruised stomach, during which time I also mopped my face with a handkerchief, which I then looked at briefly, with real concern, and threw away, I approached the now silent and big-eyed hareem.

I smiled at them all, as best I could, then plucked at the door. Which was locked, naturally. I went back to the unconscious bruiser and found a key in his pocket — how, I wondered, and where, did he get a key to a room in this joint? — then unlocked the door and swept it wide.

As the girls filed out and formed a group a few feet from me, looking at me — silently — I didn’t say anything myself for a while. I just looked. I drank them in. I memorized them, absorbed them, imprinted each and every one of them on the fabric of my mind.

There was no question about it, they were beautiful. Almost irritatingly beautiful, if that makes any sense. Now that I could really look at them, really see them, it was with a sense of something close to physical shock. That is how gorgeous, how shapely, how softly feminine and wonderfully warm and sweetly desirable each of them was.

Of course, that’s the only way a real harem should be, I suppose. But how often are things what they should be? Besides, Sheikh Faisuli had gone on and on, and yet on, so much about his flaming femininities and so forth, that almost without being aware of it, even while I “pumped myself up” with positive hotsy-totsies and visions of angelic belly dancers flaunting excitingly busy navels in an ultimate Paradise, I’d gradually been veering toward a half-formed conclusion that the lecherous old sheikh might not actually know a good-looking babe if he saw one; that for all I really knew he might be weak in one eye and stone-blind in the other; that he might think a fine-looking lass was one three axe-handles across the rear, in each direction, and without more than a couple of moles on her nose.

What a fool, I thought, I was then.

Perhaps things are not always what they should be; but once in a while they’re better than they should be, or at least better than you expect, better than you’ve even begun to imagine. Like this, the six-pack hareem of Sheikh Faisuli, the me-I-am-the-ruler-of-Kardizazan, on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

These were all, indeed, absolutely and compellingly gorgeous, entrancingly lovely of both unforgettable face and magnificent form, with those high-and-full-breasted, incredibly trim-waisted, lusciously and provocatively hipped bodies clad super-seductively in filmy ghazikhs and shoup-shoups — now I knew what they were, and they, too, were even better than I’d imagined.

These six sweethearts were — well, you wouldn’t believe it. No, you wouldn’t, and even I had some difficulty.

“Well, girls,” I said finally, smiling, then reaching up to feel it and make sure, “I guess you feel pretty happy, huh?”

Right then, before I could even get rolling, the bruiser who was going to be unconscious for an hour started coming to fifty-six minutes early.

“Excuse me,” I said to the girls. “I’ll be right back — don’t get impatient.”

I hauled the guy, who was beginning to wiggle and mumble, down the corridor, or tunnel, and around the end of that wooden honeycomb, so my harem wouldn’t have to watch if it became necessary for me to sock this guy again. They’d seen enough; I didn’t want to spoil them in one night.

The man came around quite fast. So quickly that, while he was still pretty much undecided about anything, I found some wire, in the absence of rope, and wired him up. Not long after that he was able to talk. And, happily, willing to talk as well.

“Shee-it,” was the first thing he said to me after I asked him how it happened that he was here guarding a harem — “I knowed this one was screwed up as soon as I was put on it. One broad’s trouble, but six? And, my God…” — his already deep and scratchy voice got deeper and practically all scratch — “such broads!”

“Yeah. What’s your name?”

“Call me Clam, if you want to.”

“Clam?”

A hood — and this one sure struck me as a hood — with that monicker, I was thinking, shouldn’t be spilling so freely. Something was very wrong here.

No, it wasn’t.

“It’s that I like clams,” he said. “Like to eat ‘em. Fried or raw, any old way. Drink clam juice, love ‘em, I’d probably keep ‘em for pets if I knew how. Raise ‘em up, then eat ‘em — “

“You do like clams, don’t you? Listen — Clam, how about spilling this to me as simply as you can? OK, Clam? Pretend you’re dictating a short confession to the police. Which, by the way, is what you’re doing.”

“I know, I know. I got a right to a attorney, if I can’t afford it you’ll get me one — “

“No, I won’t.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“Everything you do.”

From there on, it was a breeze.

He’d been paid a couple of C-notes by a longtime acquaintance of his, whom Clam had helped out on a couple of capers before, to spend a day or two here keeping an eye on “six broads,” with another hundred bucks due him if he had to guard them more than twenty-four hours. Which his acquaintance hadn’t expected would be necessary.

“Who was this guy?” I asked him. “What’s his name?”

“Easy,” he said. “Easy Banners.”

“Uh-huh. Did somebody else snatch the broads for him, or did he do it himself?”

“Did it himself. Clever how he done it, rented a Conty sedan exactly like a limo for a whole month just to use it a day, and drove up to wherever these broads was, with a cute cap on his head — they being in expectance of a limo — and chauffeured ‘em here, which probably surprised ‘em when they seen what it was like here.”

“You know where he picked them up?”

“No, don’t know that.”

“He picked them up at the airport, L.A. International. Private jet from overseas. You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t. How about that? I thought them broads looked foreign. Airport, huh?”

“Yeah. Did Easy say how he happened to know these gals would be arriving there?”

“News to me. I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Who was in this with Easy? Besides you, I mean.”

“Beats the socks off me. That wasn’t mentioned.”

“You know anything about Arnold Trappman?”

“Who?” I gave him the name again. “He’s news to me, too.”

“What was the idea of the caper, what’s Banners after?”

He didn’t know anything about that, either; Clam had just gone along for the two hundred.

“And maybe a little fun with a half-dozen broads?” I asked him.

“Shee-it,” he said, “no way. Easy says I’m to act around this stuff like I’m a younuck, or else that’s who I’ll be one of.”

“A eunuch?”

“That’s him. I didn’t know what it was. Easy told me. You know what I says to him?”

“What?”

“I says, ‘I wish you hadn’t told me.’”

There wasn’t much else for me to get from Clam, and when I was about ready to leave him he said, almost plaintively, “Ain’t it strange how things happen? I was just setting’ here, watchin’ the broads a little, and readin’, and scratchin’ my ass, all very peaceful. Then there you are, comin’ at me like a goddamn engine of some kind. Hell, I didn’t bring no heat along, and I sure didn’t want to get in no fight — not over broads, that’s for sure.”

“You what? You didn’t — ?”

“If you’d of just give me a chance, I’d have done whatever you wanted, peaceful as a clam. I sure didn’t want to get the shee-it beat out of me.”

“Clam, you know what?”

“What?”

“I wish you hadn’t told me.”

He’d been groaning quite a bit during the last minute or two of our talk, so I asked him, “Anything I can do for you?”

“Ain’t you done enough?”

“I mean, the way you’re groaning and everything, well, are you all right?”

He looked at me as if he’d bitten down with his sorest tooth on a clam with too much hot sauce and its shell still on. “Of course, I’m all right,” he said scratchily. “I’m fine, I’m just groanin’ because I’m feelin’ so much better.”

I guessed he didn’t have much more to spill, so I left him there and went back to the harem. It was, or they were, still waiting patiently, silently, gorgeously.

I stood before them, and rubbed my hands together — which didn’t mean anything special. I knew, of course, especially now that I’d calmed down a bit, and my brain wasn’t working so feverishly, and now that I was so exhausted after forcing Clam to half kill me, that I not only would not “claim” anything whatever from these dream-boats, no matter how overwhelming their gratitude, but I could not. And/or must not. I had no difficulty in recalling certain significant things the good Sheikh had laid on me, even including a verbal picture or two of one very significant Harim Babullah.

I wondered how much bigger than Clam Babullah was. Probably twice as big.

Still, there was no reason why these fine girls and I couldn’t at least get a little better acquainted. A little friendlier. A little — closer.

“Well, girls,” I said for the second time, still smiling, “I guess you all feel pretty happy, eh? Eh? Pretty charged-up? You know, glad, glad that I came along and saved you from a fate worse than…. Well, saved you? Who cares from what? I’ll bet you’re all…. Hello?”

I tried a different tack. The old tack wasn’t doing me much good. I couldn’t remember all the unfamiliar words and phrases Sheikh Faisuli had used when speaking to me, but I sure enough remembered the six gorgeous names of his six gorgeous wives.

I poked a finger toward a stunning brunette, recalling Faisuli’s rhapsodizing about the “bountiful breasts of” and I said, “You’re Zezik, right?”

Nothing.

“Visdrailia? Monesha?”

More nothing.

The wife next to whoever that one was, well, she was almost impossibly difficult to believe, even when she was only a couple of feet away, gazing magnetically upon me. Really something

So I said to her, “You’ve got to be wild-eyed and blossom-lipped Rasazhenlah…. No?”

I quit then.

Since I am, after all, a detective, and thus accustomed to swiftly deducing, I knew instantly that there were only three possible explanations for this impasse: All of these succulent wives were deaf; or none of them spoke so much as a letter of English; or — I hated even to think of it — I had saved the wrong harem.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-one

It costs no more to spend a weekend at the Casacasbah then it would to fly to Morocco and rent a little casa and spend a month in the real thing; besides which, to me, it had always seemed a bit snobbish and stuffy.

Despite this — and its name — the Casacasbah is one of the loveliest and most efficiently run hotels in Los Angeles, or in the entire U.S. of A., for that matter. It boasts an experienced and professional staff, one capable of handling with aplomb and dispatch almost any situation that might arise.

Almost any.

After getting the six girls moved from that former supermarket into my Cadillac, which I accomplished with the expertise of a cowhand herding sheep into a Volkswagen, I had been planning, at my first opportunity, to phone the police and report the exciting events I had just been so thrilled by. This was a most natural thing — especially for me — to do; but it was at that point I realized I had got myself impaled upon both horns of a dilemma.

First horn: I couldn’t tell the law about my rescuing a harem, for I had assured Sheikh Faisuli he would get his “secrecy to the utmost” doubled and redoubled from me if possible. Not only had I meant it when I said it, but after what that flaky Cynara had told him, he would have lost all faith in human nature, and even wild horses, if I’d blabbed it around about anybody’s six vanished wives. But the cops take a dim view of this sort of thing.

Second horn: I couldn’t even let Clam confess to the police, which he’d seemed quite eager to do the last time I checked with him. Not only would that blow the harem bit all by itself, but Clam very likely would tell, even convince, the fuzz that I had attacked him viciously without provocation and —

To make a long dilemma short, I had not phoned the law; and, still wired-up, but conscious, cramped into the trunk of my Cadillac until I could arrange more spacious accommodations for him, was Clam, who was getting pretty sick of me.

So it happened that when I pulled up in front of the colorful awning before the Casacasbah and stopped just so at the end of the brilliant red carpet on which guests were allowed to walk to and from the spacious lobby, that had genuine banana plants in it, I was concerned about many things, but feeling a kind of groggy peace, a well-earned — I thought — letdown, and becoming more relaxed than I had been for some time. I had quite a bit left to do, of course; but I was ready for a change of pace, a brief respite in the battle.

I cut the ignition. Looked around at the gorgeous haremness in which I was virtually inundated. Said, smiling, “Well, girls, here we are! Soon, in only a minute or two more, you will be restored to your maker — master — and … ah, drop dead, why don’t you?”

From them, nothing, of course.

I got out, trotted around the car and opened the door for them, again a natural thing.

I had been to the Casacasbah before, but I’d forgotten all the spit-and-polish overassistance here, reminiscent of those TV commercials about gas stations where, when you drive in to check the air in your tires, a whole army of nuts in padded uniforms dash out and do everything but give a driver a bigh-octane enema on the spot, so upon beholding all the activity, I was slightly taken aback.

There was a liverish, or liveried — I never can remember, not at the Casacasbah — doorman; and a tall old guy of indeterminate identity who, unless I am mistaken, was a general in the Peruvian Army; and a bell captain and two bellmen; a youth to drive your car away; and, I think, a guy to shine up your golf clubs, if you had any.

They were there, all of a sudden, looking at me as if I was the last of the big tippers.

“Well,” I said agreeably, “I think there may be enough of you. But — what did you have in mind?”

The General stepped forward, smiling a smile so false I wondered if a dentist had made his lips, too, and said, “Welcome to the world-famed Casa…. What was that? Sir.”

“What was what?”

What else could I say? Clam had been a bit edgy all along, and he wasn’t a guy of the most even temperament to begin with, and he was inside the trunk, kicking on things. Kicking on the trunk lid, it sounded like. Or maybe beating his head on it. Probably that, because there was only one big thomp, but it was a big one.

“My word, what is that?”

There had been another one.

“Nothing,” I said.

“But I can hear it, we can all — “

“Nothing. Well, it’s — just a guy I know, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

“I beg your pardon, sir … ?”

I had not the faintest idea how I was going to explain this, but explanation turned out not to be necessary.

The doorman, the bell captain, the two bellmen, and the youth who drives your car away advanced in a swarm upon my Cadillac from all directions, preparing to do whatever such swarms do, but then, at the same moment, all in a kind of rhythm, they slowed, stopped, and simultaneously achieved a rigid state that looked like permanent paralysis.

Shereshim, or at least a vision I had decided must be Shereshim, was stepping with the grace and beauty of a flesh-and-blood goddess from the open door of my car, followed by the lovely lissomeness that was Yakima, then one more, another, still another, and the last the incredible Rasazhenlah.

We just strolled — the seven of us — away from the statues and over the red carpet and into the lobby, with the banana plants in it. I didn’t even have to tip anybody.

</code>

<code> I hadn’t seen her for what seemed a very long time, but she still looked like the class of anybody’s harem, especially moving like that.

“Shell,” she called while still several feet away.

As she stopped near me — us — I said, “Can’t you see I’m busy?” But I said it in a jolly way, with a big smile. I thought.

“Why, what do you mean?” she deadpanned. Then “What happened to your — to you?” she asked, staring at my mouth, nose, eyes, ears, legs, all over.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. I’m surprised they let me in here. Well, I….” I pressed the fingers of both hands against the sides, or lopsides, of my head. “This job of mine, it’s sure rough on clothes. Well…. Do I have to tell you?”

“No, I only…. I stopped you because Gippy’s been trying to reach you, Shell. There’s something he wants to tell you, I think. None of us knew where you were.”

“Neither did I. I mean, I wasn’t sure of my destination until I got there…. Gippy didn’t tell you what he wanted?”

“No, he phoned me earlier and asked if I knew where you were. But I think you should see him, or at least call the hospital.”

All this time her eyes were going crazy, pretending to look at me but flitting from flower to flower, so to speak. She was dying to ask what was going on, I knew, but the elevator reached the lobby and its door slid open. Then we were crowding into the elevator, me and my harem, and I could see Cynara walking quickly away, as the doors closed and we started upward.

I was delighted that things were going along so smoothly. I had stopped only briefly at the desk, and said merely, “Good evening, my name is Shell Scott” — when there was nearly as much activity in here as we’d experienced outside.

The clerk hit a bell four times, hit another bell five times, and I think if he’d had a piano he would have played it. In swift succession the manager of the hotel, then the owner of the hotel, and I believe the chairman of the board of the conglomerate which was planning to buy the hotel, asked what they could do for me.

“Well, I’d just like to go up — ” I said, pointing, and needed explain no more. I was directed to the proper elevator, assured my desires were the Casacasbah’s commands, and wished everything but a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I had merely considered it wise to make sure there would be no difficulty in my escorting the girls to their floor next to the top, which presumably might be surrounded by the National Guard, or Harim Babullah. Apparently I needn’t have worried, and I remembered Sheikh Faisuli telling me he would arrange for “carte blanche of the most-high degree,” which unquestionably he must have done. No argument about it, the Sheikh was as good a man to have on your side as any.

There were twenty-two floors in the Casacasbah, and soon the elevator doors opened silently at twenty-one.

I made waving motions with my hands, indicating to the girls that it was OK for them to move. I had them trained pretty well by now, because they were all out of the elevator before I could even attract their attention to wave at. But, at least they were out, and that’s what I’d wanted, even if the dumb broads weren’t paying any attention to me.

So I stepped out of the elevator myself, its doors closed behind me, and I realized: We’d made it. I began realizing even more: By golly, I was thinking, I’d actually gone out there into the wilderness and found the Sheikh’s harem and rescued it single-handed and brought it home to him all in one piece. Well, six pieces. It almost overwhelmed me. I started feeling stupendously pleased with myself, and I admit it freely.

But this bit of my job wasn’t completed, really, not until I’d actually made delivery, and maybe got a receipt. The girls had found their tongues, and were using them, making trilling noises and looking around, becoming quite animated. The whole gang was tripping lightly down the hallway, squealing and trilling, and it sounded like — even looked a bit like — a whole flock of giant colorful birds hopping about in a long carpeted cage.

I waved my hands at them, before they disappeared, saying, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s the way to go.”

Then I called out, “Harim? Oh, Harim! Hello! Mr. Babullah? Anybody?”

Nobody answered.

Sure, I thought, if Sheikh Faisuli was in the hotel he’d be on the floor above, and Harim would undoubtedly be with him, having had nothing purposeful to do down here before now. So I walked ahead over red carpet that was thick, spongy, almost like foam rubber underfoot. The birds had flown in several directions, and doors were opening and closing to the accompaniment of more noise from the gals than I had believed them capable of creating, noise that increased in volume when one of them — Yakima, I liked to think — stood with her back to a door she’d left open behind her calling out, “Kooluminemamararakizzamaiziziam!” or something in that general area.

At which the other five lovelies converged excitedly upon Yakima, and all of them disappeared into that room, whatever it was. Hoping it wasn’t a bathroom, I walked over to the open door and followed the gals inside. And just stood still, and looked, for a while.

That’s what the girls were doing, too, and once again in silence.

This enormous room occupied, I guessed, nearly a fourth of the entire floor, and either the Sheikh himself or the management must have spent a fortune making it look like something out of the best parts of A Thousand and One Nights.

The carpeting was white and fluffy, with at least a hundred brightly colored pillows and hassocks and cushions scattered upon it, and there were velvety couches, and low tables, massive vases filled with flowers, huge baskets of fruit. Tapestries and loosely woven panels covered the walls, and gauzy draperies of shimmering cloth that almost glowed in the soft light separated parts of the whole room into smaller, jewel-like areas.

From somewhere, muted music spilled upon and swirled in the air — in the delicately scented air, I realized — the thin sweet sound of reeds, faint thumm-thumm as though of fingertips tapping and brushing stretched skin, rhythmic and almost hesitant ling-lingling-ling from strummed strings and perhaps those little cymbals slender dancers wear on the fingers, with behind it all and beneath it all two other melodic sounds difficult to name, one that must have been voices humming, and the other a liquid bubbling that might have been water rippling over rounded stones but that I preferred to believe was warm honey gurgling in old jewel-encrusted water pipes….

It was about then, when my imagination reached out far enough to start fondling jewel-encrusted water pipes, that I realized for a second or two, or possibly longer than a second or two, that I had quite literally been thousands of miles from here in my mind; and I wondered what had happened to the girls here, while I’d been there.

Certainly they were not anywhere handy, and for a moment I experienced a sort of sickening vacuum in my stomach and queasy emptiness in my head as my fired-up imagination, not yet all the way back to cool, made me wonder if the Sheikh’s — and now my — enemies, black of robe and eye and soul, had piped opium or even worse in through the air-conditioning system, from delicately scented opium pipes or even worse, and had restolen my recaptured harem while I stood here entranced by hypnotic gasses and the splendid thumm-thumm and lingaling and bubbleubble.

But then, even before I located them visibly, I heard the — welcome, sweet — sounds of giddiness, or childlike cooings and gleeful cheepings, or female oozings and oohings and aahings of unrestrained exuberance, either that, or the whole gang of huge birds was laying feather-covered omelettes.

It was, therefore, not difficult to find them.

They had not been rekidnapped.

But at first I could not comprehend what the hell they were doing.

Why, they were — all six of the beauties were — flopping about like kids in the Fun House on a water bed larger than entire bedrooms found in most duplexes. It struck me, upon first view as, really, equal in area to some alfalfa fields I’d seen, and it had to be a water bed because no other kind of bed cooperates so enthusiastically with whatever you do to it, or upon it, or with it, or sometimes merely near it, as all who have ever poked one with a tentative finger must surely agree.

I walked forward, looked down upon a sight even the Lords of Heaven must have gazed upon with some appreciation, if not a good deal more, and said, “Beautiful! Hey-boy!”

It wasn’t really necessary for me to think up marvelous and poetic phrases, since these gals didn’t pay any attention to anything I said anyway.

“Hot damn!” I said.

“Go, go!” I said, waving my hands at them.

For once, they listened. To my hands, I mean. And, of course, they heard it all wrong.

They stopped. All that wonderful movement ceased.

“No, you dummies,” I said sharply, “go! Come on, go!” And I waved my hands at them again.

Didn’t do any good. They just lay there.

Well, even that — a harem laying there — was better than almost anything else I could think of. And for once I had all the attention of all six parts of it. So I decided to give all of it or them a little speech, which I had been going over in my mind, on the off-chance that we might one day all be together again, at a banquet or something.

“Girls,” I said, “the most important thing I forgot to tell you before now is that I, your benefactor, your savior — make that the guy who saved you — your rescuer and all … am Shell Scott.”

“Shell Scott, I said,” I said.

“Yeah, well, maybe it doesn’t mean a whole lot to you now — but remember that name, OK?”

“Ah, you dumb broads…. Well, even if you can’t understand all of this consciously, I am comforted by the knowledge that everything I say will enter into your subconscious minds, which never forget, and … forget it. All I want to say is, even if we haven’t hit it off the way I might once have dreamed we might hit it off, I thank the horny Sheikh for his part in bringing all of us together for this wonderful time we’re having. I even thank Audrey and Gippy, and Cynara Lane, and Mrs. Gernbutts. And, certainly, I thank Devin Morraigne, for were it not that he and his doodlebug … went forth to find … a sunken ship….”

Something was happening.

“What did I do?” I said. “What did I say? What — “

One of the beauties had bounced vigorously off the bed, and, the way water beds are, instantly each of the five remaining gals seemed to be waving all the others at me — and now the lone lovely stood before me against the background of the waving five, and there was no doubt this one, at least, was gazing at me with unconcealed interest, if not lust, at last.

But my hopes had been dashed too many times before.

“What was it?” I asked her, controlling my excitement. “Couldn’t have been ‘sunken ship,’ no magic in that one. I’ll bet it was ‘doodlebug,’ right? Doodlebug!”

“Mahhhrraayyenn,” she sang, in a way songs have not been sung before. It was a song of beauty, sweet and husky and syrupy, but not in any sticky or gooey way. It was a beautiful experience.

“Great,” I said. “That’s very good. I knew there had to be something to turn you gals on. Try it one more time and I’ll have it. Maaahrrraaah … how’d it go? Honey, you don’t know how exciting this is to me — don’t think I didn’t read The Arabian Nights under the covers as a kid, and even plenty since — and I’ll never forget that. ‘Open O Cockamamie’ or whatever it … Sesame, yeah. All you need is the right word, and ‘Open Sesa’ — what? What was that?”

“Daaayyhhavvannn….”

Oh, it was beautiful, really….

All of a sudden I thought I was getting it. Sure. The key, the magic word to open the cave where all the jewels and secret treasures were hidden, was:

“Devin Morraigne?” I howled. “Is that it?”

I smiled at her, and she did more than merely return my smile, she beamed all over, and if you don’t think a gal can do that — particularly one in a ghazikh and a shoup-shoup and apparently nothing else at all — then you can go stand in a corner at the foot of the class.

But I had not yet realized the full significance of my discovery, and, foolishly, as it turned out, I waggled my hands — it was almost a habit by now — and cried, “DEVIN MORRAIGNE. Open, o Devin Morraigne — “

“Daaayyhhavvannn Mahhrraayyenn!” she sang melodically the whole song from beginning to end this time.

And, from behind her on the water bed, “Daayyhhavvannn — ” from one of them, and then another, and “Mahhrraayyennn!” from a couple more, and movement, bouncings, and wigglings and numerous artful beautifications as the five of these moved sinuously toward here, while the lovely closest to me touched my cheeks with cool hands and then let them slide down my arms, and at last gripped my own hands in her fingers and stepped back, pulling me with her.

Or, at least, trying to pull me with her.

Because — while I didn’t really mind too much being pulled with her, or finding myself, as suddenly I was finding myself, surrounded and sort of set upon by six of the most gorgeously turned-out and turned-on tomatoes upon the planet — I like to have at least a faint idea of what’s going on under such circumstances.

Too, way back in a well-hidden corner of my mind, lurked various comments of Sheikh Faisuli, and a tiny but horrible image of a huge one called Harim Babullah, plus wee heads rolling around like microscopic BB’s.

But, most of all, I was starting to realize the sort of half-full significance of my discovery.

“Hey,” I said, “cool it, hold it — no, don’t do that — ladies, I think somebody’s made a little — no, a big — mistake … here….”

But by the time I got all this out, which took a while, I had been pulled and pushed, or tricked, onto the water bed by those six lovelinesses.

I’m absolutely not certain how it happened. But however it happened, suddenly I was there, and bouncing, and not exactly fighting to get away from there, or even from bouncing, since there were too many new experiences and memorable sensations and harplike strummings of multi-plucked stimuli for one brain simply to absorb, much less to have any brains left over for directing a battle against a whole bunch of determined girls.

Naturally, since I had no intention of deliberately deceiving these splendidnesses, I did my best to explain to them their error, whatever it was, as best I understood it. But no matter what I said, they listened to me in the same old way. And when I tried to explain by waving my hands significantly, well, I don’t suppose I could have done anything more perfectly designed to make them assume I must be enjoying myself.

However, to be candid, I should confess that — after trying to push them all away without severely injuring them, or even injuring them a little bit — I sort of let myself become grudgingly reconciled to the idea that there wasn’t any way I could get out of this ghastly predicament, that somehow I had wound up in one of the most magnificently sensuous rooms ever created, at the approximate center of the biggest water bed in the world, being attacked by six of the most aphrodisiacal beauties ever to grace the finest harem out of Kardizazan, and I’d just have to make the best of it.

Thus it was that, half a minute or so later, I heard the ringing of a metallic and melodically crashing voice — not a girl’s voice, needless to say — delivering a short snappy phrase that I could not understand but had a sinking hunch I had already interpreted with dismaying accuracy.

Before I even saw him, I knew: The Sheikh, the absolute ruler, the head-lopper, of Kardizazan, was aware that I had saved his harem for him.

I was able to glimpse him pretty quick, because a bunch of girls got out of the way of my eyesight pretty quick, and there he was, gazing, without a whole lot of benevolence, down upon me — me, bouncing alone, in the middle of the huge water bed.

There had been other times in my life when I experienced some difficulty in picking out the just-right remark to make, in order to carry off a sticky situation with a certain air, with aplomb, with grace. There had even been times, like this one, when I couldn’t do it.

Maybe I could have thought of something, given a minute or two, had it not been that with my first glimpse of Sheikh Faisuli I got a glimpse of more than just Sheikh Faisuli.

There was something with him.

Behind him, towering over him — indeed, also sort of spreading out at both sides of him — was a something that at first I assumed must be King Kong with all his skin peeled off. Then I realized it was a very large human being of sorts. Talk about muscles, they looked as if they were on the outside, like those gruesome pictures in medical textbooks. Man, I told myself, I couldn’t beat up that guy with an axe.

Well, nobody had to tell me who he was. You don’t have to hit me on the head.

A very speedy and very odd little ceremony then was performed before my fascinated eyes. Probably nobody else in the entire world had witnessed a ceremony quite like it before, but I would have been pleased to let any of them take my place for this one.

Sheikh Faisuli stood where he had been all the time, all the time at least since I’d glimpsed him, and his six beloved and cherished wives stood in a — well, it sure wasn’t a straight line — before him.

I already knew, for Faisuli himself had told me, that in his country all a man need do in order to divorce a wife was repeat three times the phrase, “I divorce you.”

Well, that is what the old Sheikh said.

Eighteen times.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-Two

Nothing much happened.

Oh, Sheikh Faisuli turned and impaled me with his black and fiercely glowing eyes; the girls continued to stand where they were, unmoving; Harim Babullah, merely breathing shallowly, flexed his muscles in a horrifying way.

But, so what?

It was nothing. For by this time, of course, I knew who had conned me, and how, and why. Certainly there had been enough clues, more than enough.

I slid off the water bed, walked over next to the Sheikh. Next to Babullah, too, since he was not far from the Sheikh, certainly not far enough. And it was a queer sensation for me, looking way up there at a guy.

But this was my moment, and I meant to milk it.

So I stretched up as tall as I could get, then, grinning very widely, bent forward so my face was close to Faisuli’s, and said, “You blew it, Sheikh.”

I saw the flicker, or dance, in his dark eyes and I believed — that is, had a moment to believe — he understood, or at least was beginning to understand.

Unfortunately, Harim Babullah did not understand. On the contrary, he made a terrible mistake in his interpretation of my toothy grin, and my leaning close to the absolute ruler of Kardizazan, particularly when this had been immediately preceded by what I must have appeared to be doing on the water bed.

Harim started lifting his left arm — the Sheikh was on his right; besides, I was closer to his left arm, which, I suppose settled it for Babullah — with a fist at the end of it like the biggest prize turnip ever seen at the County Fair, sort of purplish-white and ugly — hell, I don’t remember the color, but it was sure ugly — gazing at me from coffee-saucer-sized eyes the color of grounds, impassively, no strain, quietly contemplating a little job to be done.

What he was doing, obviously, was raising his arm and the turnip up over my head, upon which plainly his intention was then to crash it down. He wasn’t moving like lightning, either. More like a ton of turtle. Just kind of leisurely. As if he had all kinds of time. Which, judging by what he accomplished, I suppose he did.

“Hey, Harim,” I said tentatively. “I mean, Mr. Babullah — OK if I call you Harim? Look, pal, you’re all screwed-up.”

He was really moving slowly. In the first place, to get his arm up higher than my head wasn’t such a big thing; it seemed to me he shouldn’t have had to raise it more than a couple of inches or so. Actually, what was happening kind of fascinated me, as if it was happening to someone else. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

But I kept talking to him. Yeah, brilliant, just like those great conversations I’d carried on with the babes. Maybe he fascinated me like snakes do to little animals, just before they kill them and eat them. I was aware with part of my consciousness that Sheikh Faisuli was scowling in concentration, obviously puzzling over my remark to him.

And, actually, I did realize that Harim Babullah probably couldn’t speak English, at least not fluently. I just didn’t concentrate on that realization and its ramifications enough to become fully aware that, right here in Sheikh Faisuli, whose thoughts were elsewhere, was a handy interpreter, and what I needed very much, oh so very much, was a handy interpreter.

In fairness to me, let me also say that I was giving a whole lot of my attention to that simply unbelievable arm and fist, the entire mass of which was now quite high enough, if I was any judge.

“Look, baby,” I said, “I mean Harim, I just got through taking care of a guy half your size, so you’d better think twice unless you want something terrible to happ — “

Something terrible happened, all right. Because that is what Harim intended. And he didn’t even think once about it. I saw the arm and fist coming down, sure I did. So naturally I put my own arm up to break the blow. So instead of my arm breaking the blow, vice versa. At least, that’s what it felt like, for about one two-hundredth of a second, which I’d say is the length of time it took for his arm to move from the point where it began breaking my arm to the point where it began caving in my head.

</code>

<code> “Sheikh, will you give me another minute?” I was trying to stretch again, up as tall as I could get, and it seemed to me I couldn’t stretch up as much as before. “It’s tough enough understanding you sometimes when I’m completely conscious.”

“Harim understands now, and he regrets.”

“Beautiful.”

“I have spoken to him, severely. Be assured, he will not strike you further.”

“I’m sure glad to hear that. If he struck me any further, I’d be out past the city limits. Well, in answer to your question, you blew it” — I sighed, went on — “when you divorced your six wives in English.”

“Ah….”

“Ah will have to do, I guess. Take it from me, these babes understand nothin’, unless it’s unintelligible. By the way, do you suppose one of these days you might thank me for saving them?”

“Yes, of course, I am filled with thankfulnesses.”

“Yeah, you’re so full of them they’re falling out of you in bunches.”

“Blew it. I commence to understand, this is the same as goofed?”

“Precisely so,” I said, fondling my head.

He started to snap his thumb and middle finger, a very American gesture synonymous with “Damn,” or “Aha!” or even “Shucks.” Then he paused, looked fiercely at me, and said questioningly, “Then you have pierced my secret?”

“From beginning to end, it is pierced.”

Then he snapped his fingers. It was a Middle-Eastern “Shucks” if I’d ever seen one. Which, come to think of it, I hadn’t.

“Astray in my designs, where did I go and how?”

I waited a beat, to make sure I had that one, then said, “Well, you went astray all over the place, when I look back, Sheikh. Very often you started to say the succulents or the everloving lotus blossoms, then quickly changed it to my whatever, my wives, or my beloved loving cups. Also, the last time you mentioned your harem to me, when speaking of being in your palace in Kardizazan, there the possessor of jewels and moneys and such, you also referred quite naturally, unconsciously I suppose, to your forty-seven wives. Soon after we met, the first time I asked you how many wives you had, you automatically said forty-seven then, too, which undoubtedly is the number of your wives at home — I mean, after deducting old Haherain, and Mushlik … did I get those names right?”

“Beautiful.”

“However, that first time, knowing you did indeed at that moment have forty-seven wives at home, but were also supposed to have six more traveling with you, you raised the total to fifty-three. And, after some futzing around, managed to make them all add up to the right number, how I’ll never know. It wasn’t really necessary, but once started you were stuck with it. And you had a little trouble juggling them around yourself, I recall. You don’t add as speedily as … I’d better not say his name out loud again.”

“Ah….”

“Uh-huh. Ah is even more significant this time. You commence to comprehend my final, or, rather, next-to-final, clue? The final one, of course, was your sextuplet divorce in English, which they could not understand, but I could.”

Sheikh Faisuli nodded. He’d probably picked up on that next-to-final dandy before I hinted at what it was, but he went on to say, “For, some or otherhow, you mentioned aloud to them the name of Devin Morraigne, is it not so?”

Shrillings and trillings and sweetly excited feminine flutings, but only about a half-second of birdcalls this time, for Faisuli flicked them with his eyes and said, “Shapatapa!” or something that sounded like that and meant “Shut up!” no matter what it sounded like, because they sure did.

Then Faisuli looked at me, and there was no doubt about the merriness, perhaps combined with a soupcon of deviltry, dancing in his eyes. “Thinking with unmistakableness that you were he, they proceeded with vigor to whelm you over.”

“That sums it up well enough, I’d say.”

“It is fortunate I was informed speedily by those of the lobby desk that you and six beauteousnesses had consummated an arrival and were asking for me.”

“Well, actually, I didn’t exactly get around to, ah, asking for you, Sheikh.”

“It is the same thing in the end.”

“Yeah. And I suppose it is fortunate that you speedily got here. Who can say what might have happened?” I paused, added glumly, “I guess I’ll never know now, will I?”

Perhaps Sheikh Faisuli smiled a flashingly satanic smile at that, I’m not sure. I was carefully turning my head to look at those six marvels, all sitting quietly around the edges of the water bed, their wondrously vivacious fannies only gently rising and falling now as something like a small tide, in the really very large bed, came in and went out.

That was the cruelest blow of all. They had watched me at my best — well, maybe not my best, but I’d been pretty good — and then….

Sheikh Faisuli’s words interrupted my brooding. “…Thus one never knows,” he was saying about something, “for Allah in his merciful wisdom is mercifully wise.”

“Would that maybe be wisely merciful?” I asked him abstractedly. “Not that I’m trying to tell you — “

“We shall discuss such considerations when others of more pressing nature are not developing upon us. At least, Mr. Scott, you have, true to your determined avowal, done as you said you would attempt to, and crowned your success has been with.”

“Crowned, I have been with.”

“Some might say that you, as the phrase about is bandied, have even gone the extra mile.”

“A mile is a bit much, Sheikh. Several thousand feet much. But that reminds me, I’ve work to do before I sleep — sleep anymore, that is — miles and miles to go before — “

“Is it not so, as I stated in the beginning with you, that your pursuance of my difficulty would in probability converge upon your own pursuances? That each endeavor might well bear upon the other?”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Sheikh. You were leveling with me, all right, because it sure has worked out that way. In fact, if you hadn’t come along I might not be about to wrap up the rest of it right now.”

“Then the pursuit of my hareem has furthered you closer to your own desires?”

“Some of them, yeah. There are a couple of things I still don’t understand, but I think in this case I can cut through the knot even without full understanding. And I’d better get cutting. May I use your phone, Sheikh? If there is one, in this vast expansion of magnificences here?”

I shook my head, then groaned, carefully stopped shaking it. If I was around Sheikh Faisuli much more, I decided, I well could wind up total incomprehensibilities alone with myself having.

“Babu,” he called, which I supposed was familiar for Babullah, unlikely as that seemed to me.

The biggish fellow was standing not far away, and after Faisuli spoke softly and briefly he walked around, obviously looking sincerely for something.

“Sheikh,” I said, “if you sent Babullah off to find a phone, he’ll pull it out and bring it and some wall back here to me, and I want to make a call on it, not eat it.”

“Have no fear,” he told me.

“Uh-huh.”

When Babullah returned, for a moment I thought he really had yanked the thing from a wall, because the white Princess-type phone was almost hidden in one of his big hands. But then I noted a long white cord trailing behind it, hardly visible on the fluffy white carpeting.

He stopped before me, extended the phone. I took it, but Babullah continued to stand there, then slowly lifted his right arm, extended his hand toward me.

“Sheikh,” I said, “please tell him if he’d like it back, he can have it. I’m not sure I wanted it in the first — “

“No, he is extending, for a shake as you say, his hand. He hopes with him your hands you will embrace, in friendship.”

I started to tell him what he could do with that jazz, but then became aware of Harim Babullah’s expression as he looked at me — looked down at me, from way up there.

The great brown face was impassive, stolid, unsmiling. But the eyes, like coffee grounds I’d first thought, did not seem like that to me now. They were soft, very large and very soft, like a liquid brownness, a melting duskiness. I had never really looked at him before, I guess — hell, I hadn’t had much of a chance to — but it seemed to me there was in those large shining eyes a gentleness almost feminine, and also something that was very much like pain, like a bruise there, almost hidden, deep within the darkness of his eyes.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine you see all kinds of things even in earlobes, if you try hard enough; and the eyes have no expression anyhow, so we are told.

But I stuck out my hand, said, “OK, fine, shake. Anything you say, pal.”

It wasn’t a smile, exactly. He didn’t show any teeth, or do much at all, actually. But the lips moved a very little, curled up slightly at the corners, and he nodded the great head as he clasped my hand and shook it.

I had never known any man, not even those wispy limp-fish guys, to grip my hand so gently when he shook it. It was as though he realized it was delicate, a perishable thing, and he would perform this ritual with proper care. Oddly, the palm of his hand was very soft, much softer for sure than mine.

I nodded back at him. “Fine, OK, we’re friends now, I guess. I hope. Fine, Babu.”

He let go of my hand, looked at the Sheikh, still nodding. “Babu,” he said, and nodded some more. Then he moved away from us.

Sheikh Faisuli smiled at me. Everybody was smiling at me — I glanced back toward the water bed. No, not everybody.

“He feels much better now, of his grave error in damaging you. He is pleased, Mr. Scott — and this in consequence means I am pleased.”

I fingered my head gently. “That’s nice,” I said.

Then, holding the phone’s base in one hand and receiver in the other, I dialed the Morris Memorial Hospital, got put through to Mr. Willifer’s room.

When Gippy answered I told him it was Shell Scott, and I’d heard he was trying to get in touch with me.

“Yeah,” he said quickly, “for the last couple hours or so. I was afraid you were dead or something, maybe went and got yourself killed — “

“Gippy — “

“But what I wanted to tell you is, you know about Mr. Riddle being found killed, too? I mean, killed period?”

“Yeah, I already took a look at his body in the morgue.”

“How could you do that?” he asked. Then, after a moment, “It’s in the night’s paper, with a picture of him. I told you I’d never met him, never seen Riddle, you remember?”

“I remember.”

“Well, once I looked at his picture in the paper, I found out I did see him once.”

“When was that, Gippy?”

“Night before, last, when I went — you know, with my gun, and crazies in my brains — over to Trappman’s house. Well, there was a guy with him then, I told you, and this guy in the paper, the picture of Mr. Riddle, that’s who it was.”

I grinned. “And that wraps it up, Gippy. See you in ten minutes — I’m on my way now.”

And I was.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-three

Gippy was nervous enough to stammer.

Sitting in a wooden chair near his bed, I said, “Relax, Gippy, what can go wrong? The only thing you’re going to do is phone Trappman and con him, give him back a little of what he’s been giving you and everybody else around here. Hell, it’s a small serving of poetic justice, that’s all, not more than a couplet or two.”

“All I m-mean is, I’m so nervous he’ll know I’m bullsh-sh-sh — crapping him.”

“No, he won’t. And what difference will it make if he does tumble? Simply means I’ll have to figure another way to get to him. But this is so right, and the timing’s perfect — looking at it from his point of view, I mean. He’s got to be about half-split out of his skin already.”

Gippy scratched his neck, scratched under his chin, rubbed his large nose vigorously. Part of it, in fairness to him, was that Gippy would indeed have to con Trappman, baldly and even convincingly; but, mainly, Gippy just wasn’t used to causing static about anything, wasn’t accustomed to hitting back, returning even a slap for a sapping. He had always preferred to just “get along” and “go along,” and it would be hard for Gippy to break the habit.

“I can’t,” he said, not for the first time. “I just c-can’t do it.”

It was eight-fifteen p.m., and I’d been talking with Gippy for five minutes. When I first came in, he showed me the newspaper story, with photograph of Ben Riddle, the same man I’d seen in the morgue when I’d examined the small hole bored into his chest over the heart, and also the hole rather low in the loose-fitting “Hawaiian”-type sports shirt he’d been wearing at the time of his death. No coat had been found near him, but his wallet and the usual papers had been on his body.

Gippy and I were alone in the hospital room — Audrey had, finally, gone home for a few hours of sleep in her own bed — and he was sitting up, with a couple of pillows behind him, looking quite vigorous for a man who’d been gut-shot last night and out of surgery for only twenty-four hours. His color was good — for him — and his voice was strong even when he stammered.

I said, “You may not be able to reach him by phone tonight, but there’s a fifty-fifty chance you will, and that’s good enough odds for me. The thing is, Gippy, he wouldn’t believe me, but if you call him and say you’re ready to sell out your Roman interest — or anything else, that part doesn’t matter — he’ll buy the rest of it from you. After all, I’m the guy who’s planning to see the son of a bitch.”

“Y-y-ye-yahh, dammit. Yeah, I kn-kn-know — hell with it.”

What I’d told Gippy about me was true enough. If all went well, Trappman and I would be face-to-face, very likely over a gun — his gun — before another half-hour was gone; and whatever happened then, I was kind of anxious to get it over with. I was also, therefore, a mite impatient with Gippy’s stalling.

“Will you quit playing with your nose?” I asked him. “And do something useful?”

He let go of his substantial beak, but swung his head around and glared at me. I mean, really glared. Like he’d just as soon have socked me on my own beak if he could get out of bed. A little more fire in Gippy tonight, I thought; not much, but some.

So I said, perhaps a bit nastily, “Gippy, our resident lady expert on starshine and similar goodies you profess to believe in, Cynara Lane, tells me that for several years you’ve had Saturn mugging your Moon or some such thing, among other such things, but the drag is about over and the good stuff’s just now showing up, and you’ve got a chance to start coming out on top for a change — if you’re ever going to.”

“Y-yeah, she told me,” he said, starting to quote some of the trines or parallelograms she’d mentioned, but I went right on.

“If all this good star stuff is supposed to be coming along, maybe you ought to climb up where it can do you some good — or you can do some good for yourself — instead of hoping it climbs up in your lap, and griping if it doesn’t.”

“Hey, that’s not a very — “

“Gippy, if you’re ever going to start coming out on top isn’t it time you grabbed the bull by the horns instead of hanging onto his tail while he poops manure on you and the rest of the losers?”

“Why, you got a godda-da-da-DAMN big mouth — “

“Beautiful. Listen, maybe you haven’t got eight pounds of proof yet, but you’re convinced, you practically know Trappman’s been screwing you every time your back’s turned, and the exciting action you’ve taken so far is to cry about it, approximately hourly.”

“Why, you big white-headed slob bastard — “

“Attaboy, baby. All you have to do is help set Trappman up, and as far as taking his lousy head off, I’ll handle that detail. But if you haven’t even got enough backbone to pick up that phone and give him a social call, the hell with it.”

He was glaring now, all right, not speaking or swearing, but giving me a look — a really dirty look, I guess you could say, a gaze almost with a trace of healthy malevolence in it.

I appeared to have one hundred percent of his attention, so I went on, “And this even though I’m willing to bet fifty bucks to four bits from your last marvelous royalty check that Trappman himself either put that hole in your gut last night or told someone else when, and how, to do it.”

That intense and kind of hot look didn’t change but it wasn’t directed straight at me anymore. He was looking past me as I finished. “And don’t tell me you haven’t been lying there sucking Pablum soup through a needle without thinking the same thing yourself.”

After five long seconds, I stood up. “So the hell with it. See you around, Gippy. I’ll do it myself.”

“Sit down, goddammit. I’ll call the son of a bitch.”

He didn’t really sound like the bodyguard for a professional assassin. The words were there, but not the tone, or delivery. In fact, he spoke softly, almost apologetically. But he got it said. Without stammering. And he got it done.

</code>

<code> “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him, sliding behind the steering wheel.

“Just going along for the ride, detective,” he said cheerfully.

“The hell you are.”

“Come on. It’s my crate. Not to mention the face that it’s my only-one-of-its-kind Magnesonant Holaselector.”

“With its insides out. I hope with them out.”

“You better believe it. You don’t think I’d let a clumsy ox like you run around with anything but the outsides of my darling, do you?”

“Fine. Well, OK, then. Get the hell lost, Dev.”

“Will you please proceed, driver? I’m already late for an appointment with this chap who wants to kill me.”

I got Dev to agree only that he would remain in the rear of the camper, out of sight, and would not take any action whatever unless I got killed. When he agreed cheerfully to that, saying he could hardly wait to get cracking when his turn came, I headed for Morraigne’s home in the Hollywood Hills.

After a few blocks, he asked me, “How did Gippy do?”

“He was gorgeous. Indeed, quite pleased with himself when he hung up. Took him a while to get started, but he came on like Walter Cronkite — ‘Mr. Trappman, ah, glad I happen to catch you at your home where you reside, sir, this is Gip, this is Mr. Willifer, the major investor in our Roman Number One, and how are you tonight, sir?’ — quite a bit like that. And very good, really. He didn’t have to worry about bringing your name up, because Trappman did not waste any time asking about his friend, the likable Mr. Morraigne, which I had bet Gippy one bean he would at the first opportunity, or sooner.”

“So Gippy told him I’d just been in to visit him, was going back to my house — for what? Even Trappman wouldn’t buy if it Gippy said I was lugging my Magnesonant — “

“No, you’d have been proud of him. Said you had to take something, cut that off, mentioned the vault in your home, wound up saying you wanted to get something out of the vault, then neatly dropped the whole thing — don’t worry, Trappman bought it. I was listening at the same time, I made most of it up for him, and Gippy still almost had me convinced.”

“Well, good for him,” Dev said. “So his success means friend Trappman will have had — by the time we get there, anyhow — plenty of time to arrive before us, and cock his little gun, and all that?”

“It’s my guess he’s already there.”

We had only another three or four miles to go, so I pulled over to the curb and stopped. “I’d better get changed. You did bring along those clothes you had on this afternoon, didn’t you?”

“In the back.”

While I was getting into Dev’s white pullover T-shirt and trousers, arranging to keep the pants on with his rope belt, Dev asked, “What’s all that groaning?”

“I’ve got plenty to groan about, but you would neither understand nor sympathize, so — “

“What was that? Did you make that noise?”

“No, your bitty pants just split up the ass. And don’t give me any noise about these being your favorite strolling slacks. I’ve contributed three entire outfits to the cause, just today.”

“One of which you’re still wearing, right?”

“Well, sure, I was, that’s true — it’s still ruined, isn’t it?”

I climbed back behind the wheel, started driving, as Dev said, “You made that noise again,” and I replied, “Yeah, I may be wearing shorts by the time we get there. But if he doesn’t try to shoot me in the, well, in the back, he may never know I’m not you.” “And if he does try?”

“It depends. If he’s close enough to take real good aim, he’ll say to himself, ‘That can’t be bitty Dev Morraigne,’ and if he’s too far away to notice, I expect he’ll miss me. Oh … Lord.”

“Having second thoughts?”

“No … well, yes. But not about what you think.”

I told him briefly of my adventure at the old supermarket, or part of it, adding, “So, Dev, if I happen accidentally — or any other way — to get killed, take the keys reverently from my body and let long-suffering Clam out of the Cad’s trunk. If, that is, long-suffering Clam is not long-suffocated.”

He whistled. “Don’t you suppose he might have preferred going to jail?”

“I know he’d have preferred going to jail.”

“By the way, Shell, Faisuli phoned me. I guess it was right after you left him.”

“I know. I gave him your number, having become convinced you wouldn’t mind.”

“You’re forgiven. I got the distinct impression that Sheikh Faisuli thinks you’re quite the red-hot hot-shot investigator.”

“How perceptive that man is. I am a red-hot hot — “

“Cool it. But, ah, now I have to thank you myself — again. For so courageously pursuing, and doggedly rescuing, my harem. I mean, of course, my temporary harem.”

“Temporary, yeah. Yeah. I didn’t think he was going to give it to you. I mean, not to keep. But, even temporary, I suppose that’s better than nothing in these difficult times.”

“I’ll try to make us even one of these days.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dev. Who knows? I may, eventually, think of something suitable myself.”

“Shell, I’ll be honest, I’ve got to hand it to you for getting those gals back, any way at all. But to stumble onto them in an old building that happened to be owned by Trappman, well, admit it, you’ve got to be the luckiest damn — “

“Lucky? You foolish imbecile, luck had nothing to do with it.”

“You’ll never convince me, pal. I really think you were shopping for Corn Flakes and took a wrong turn — “

“Dev, I went to that old supermarket because it was one of the old empty buildings owned by the kidnapper, or at least the guy who engineered the job. Where else was he likely to hide in a hurry six tomatoes in those transparent cornflakes they were wearing?”

“Come on, after the fact it’s a great story, but you couldn’t have known Trappman had hauled the girls off — “

“Who else? Oh, sure, I thought about you and your doodle-mm-ahh-olaselector, and big oil companies, dark conspiracies, all that rot. But I ignored such remote possibilities in order to look closer to home, primarily because of an affliction in Virgo.”

“A which — in what?”

“Exactly. Very good, you got it on the first try.”

“I didn’t think you bought astrology.”

“Do I have to buy it? I’m not talking about some sort of astrological inevitability, anyway. That bit about some kind of afflicted planet in his stomach is a term Cynara used — when referring to Gippy — shortly before he took a slug in his Virgoish digestion.”

“They’re all Virgoish, not just his. I mean, ruled by Virgo — “

“Must we really care? My point is Gippy, our own Gippy Willifer, and I don’t care if the Big Dipper rules his gallbladder. Look, whoever shot at you and/or me earlier today” — I pointed ahead, for we were now turning into Granite Ledge Road — “right up yonder, almost had to be the same bastard, or one of the plural bastards, who hit me outside the Spartan. Or do you feel like arguing that point?”

“No argument there, but — “

“Hold your but, please. If the same guy tried to scratch both of us, or even tried twice for me, the first time being coincidentally at your home — which is what I buy, incidentally — at least we can agree it was essentially one cat responsible, one basic motive, one ‘case’ to put one word on it. OK?”

“So far, sure.”

“So add another element, that affliction in Virgo — which is merely my playful way of referring to the sad but undeniable fact that somebody for sure shot Gippy Willifer in his affliction last night. Gippy, your friend, for whom you psyched out the Roman Well — and my client, for whom, with his spouse, I was casually checking on this same puny well, among other things.”

“You mean you think the Roman well is the whole — “

“It’s not the whole anything, just a piece. But a pretty big one — it’s the piece that damn near got Gippy killed. Look, if we agreed there was one guy, one basic motive, when considering only the attacks on us, do we now say the shooting of Gippy Willifer was a crime entirely unrelated? And that whoever shot Gippy is a mysterious stranger, his attack on the one having no connection with attacks on the other two — shall we say, the other two of us three? — a tall stranger from Philadelphia, skulking in the shadows — “

“You make it sound ridiculous.”

“On purpose. I say it’s not ridiculous. I say it’s not three cases and three motives and three skulking strangers from Cincinnati — “

“Philadelphia.”

“That’s another case entirely. As for Gippy, that rough-cob son of a bitch Arnold Trappman personally put the slug into his belly. Either did it himself or had someone else do the job — he’s played crooked footsie for years with Easy Banners. And Banners has plenty of hood connections, both from while he was in and when he was out of stir, if they needed that kind of help along the way.”

“Shell, you go on like — well, hell, you can’t think Trappman went out and lay murderously in wait for Gippy because of this miserable Roman — “

“I don’t. I told you that was part of the mess. No, Trappman wanted our small friend killed because Gippy was the only other man alive who knew Trappman was with the late Ben Riddle an hour, or maybe only minutes, before Trappman killed him.”

“How could you … ?” Dev didn’t finish it; I did.

“Gippy didn’t know who the guy was, just that he saw somebody with Trappman Wednesday night about eight p.m. So he was as good as dead if Trappman found out Gippy had seen Riddle there with him at his home. Which, obviously, Trappman did find out. I can give firsthand testimony to that disaster, because….” I paused. “I’m the fathead who told him.”

“You told him? But if Gippy himself didn’t know who it was — “

“I didn’t either, not till tonight. Maybe I’d half guessed, but I didn’t know. However, I told Trappman Gippy was there Wednesday night, brilliantly managed to mention the significant hours, and even before that I’d asked Trappman’s secretary if anybody had taken a shot at him — enough, Dev. More than enough.” I swung into the last curve before reaching his home. “So, I have a more than casual interest, this time, in the welfare of my hospitalized client.”

“Yeah, well…. You can’t be positive about all of this, Shell.” He sounded a bit subdued.

“So who’s positive? Yet, I mean. But you can bet your squeaky harem I will be pretty damn quick.”

“Well, sho-nuff,” he said, obviously attempting to switch the conversation to a lighter level, but not doing it exactly brilliantly, “if it is abrasive Arnold up yonder, sho — “

“Will you quit that?”

” — nnn. But if it isn’t — what do we do then, a nine-second hundred?”

“I couldn’t dash much faster than a fertilized plant, tonight. But I do not plan to be moving briskly about.”

“If it becomes necessary, don’t expect me to trot alongside you. In college, I was the fastest man in the entire United States.”

“With what, high-school girls?”

“In addition to them and younger dropouts, the hundred-yard dash, and the fifty — wasn’t at my best in the two-twenty and up, but in the shorties I could go. Still can.”

“Like a quarter horse, huh?”

“Right. Champeen sprinter, ver-ry speedy out of the gate.”

“I’m supposed to be fascinated by this?”

“I was afraid you might not be.”

Morraigne’s steeply up-slanting driveway was half a block ahead on our right. The night lighting was as Dev had promised, the only illumination coming from street lamps along the road, so that around and near the house it was not fully dark, but neither was it so bright that one man could be sure of recognizing another more than ten feet away. Which was part of what I’d been counting on.

“Into the back, pal,” I said.

He swiveled around and left his seat, moved into the rear. I gunned up the drive, pulled sharply right and stopped in an open area well short of the carport. I wanted plenty of room around me for as long as possible. I cut the engine and headlights, stepped back near Dev. He had already picked up his “Holaselector” and was holding it ready for me. I’d hefted the real thing, and it weighed a good seventy pounds or more. Which meant its “working” insides accounted for better than sixty pounds of the total, because this outer metal box seemed almost feather-light to me.

As I took the black box, making sure all the impressive dials and doodads were still visible in its top, Dev whispered, “I just realized, I didn’t even bring a gun, they’re all in the house. What if I have to — “

“You won’t have to anything, you imbecile,” I whispered, about as savagely as one can whisper. “Stay here and keep quiet — and don’t whisper so loud.”

“Why, you idiot, you’re — “

“Will you shut up?”

“OK,” he whispered. “I can understand your being a little nervous.”

“Me? Nervous? Don’t be ridiculous. Well….” Holding the box in my left hand I made my right into a fist, shook it over my head, and whispered earnestly, “Let’s win this one for the Gippy!”

“I’m sure glad you’re not nervous.”

“Maybe a little,” I whispered casually. “Well … goodbye, old buddy…. Well…. Don’t forget about those keys. Well….”

Then, with the impressive-looking doodlebug still balanced on my left hand — the one attached to the more painful arm of my two — I used my other hand to open the rear doors, and stepped out onto black asphalt, into dim light, feeling a soft rippling chill over my skin despite the warmness of the night air.

I stepped around the mobile home, took one long stride toward the house, and there were at least a dozen things moving in my mind right then. There was the conviction that I was right, yet there was doubt; a kind of thin fear like a shiver of nerves joined with the familiar sweet excitement, pulse-quickening anticipation, awareness that within me glands were pouring more of their juices into the blood.

And, as always there were the sharpened perceptions and more alive senses, a kind of brilliance to everything, even in near darkness, that you miss during ordinary moments, or at least that I miss. As I took another step toward the house I was aware of its bulk yards ahead and, closer to me, the bumpy korean grass I would soon step upon, the near wall of the carport on my left and almost level with me now, and beyond it the slanting hillside rising to another street above.

But more than those things, there was the clear chirping of several crickets, hum of an insect near my head, something briefly glittering behind me and on my left near the junction of asphalt and hillside, halfway up the hill a tree that looked to me, whether it was or not, like a grapefruit tree, and a sweetness from unidentified blossoms I hadn’t been aware of before this moment.

These were all familiar things; I’d felt them dozens of times before, but this time they all seemed filtered or strained, diminished, as if I was still too calm, wasn’t charged up enough.

Missing was a — something, hard to put into words. A kind of fever or mental trembling and slowing of time, a lot of apparent and probably even subliminal things. I just didn’t have it. At least, not yet. But maybe it wasn’t important. Maybe nothing requiring that slight extra “edge” was going to happen….

For no special reason except a half-formed hunch, I had been expecting him to appear well over on my left, past the far wall of the carport. But soon I would be on that korean grass, nearing the back door of the house, and as I swung my right leg forward again, feeling the now-familiar ache from increased pressure on my taped ankle, two disturbing thoughts crisscrossed in my mind.

One was that I was blithsomely toting my priceless seventy-pound Magnesonant Holaselector around as if it were a mere eight or ten pounds of empty box, which of course it was; the other was the idle thought, a silly one really, that if anyone was behind me, I hoped my — or Dev’s — pants hadn’t split any more, which of course they had.

This completely unhelpful thought occurred to me as I stopped and planted both feet, bending forward and pretending to tussle with my burden, getting a firmer grip on it, as from behind me the man said in a deep, rumbling voice, “Don’t move, no sudden movements. I’ve got a gun on you. Turn around, slowly — easy now.”

Just as simply as that it came.

Not from the place I’d expected it, but from the man I’d expected — and that’s when I felt it, and it was something like a scab pulled from nerve and swift fire in my blood as I turned to face him.

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-four

“Now, very easy, put that thing down, Morraigne.”

He was about twenty feet from me and walking slowly closer, bent a little forward, right arm thrust out before him. I caught a faint rippling shine where his hand would be, explaining that quick glittering I’d seen moments ago.

He hadn’t recognized me yet, but it wouldn’t be long now, so I said, burlesquing the lines a bit, “Well, I’ll be darned, if it isn’t Arnold Trappman! Where did you come from?”

He stopped instantly and stood perfectly still.

“What-who the hell … ?”

He moved slowly forward again. “Don’t be a goddamn smart-ass, don’t try anything. If I have to, I’ll kill you.”

“You’d damn well better not, Trappman,” I said — and he made me on that one, stopped ten feet away.

“Why, you — it’s that miserable asshole — I’ll be God — it’s Scott, that goddamned smart-mouthed miserable stinking son of a bitch — “

“That’s who it is, all right,” I said. “At least, it’s me. And, as I seem always to be doing, I asked you a question, Trappman.”

He actually responded to that. “A question?”

“Yeah. What are you doing here?”

It took him a while to answer. He didn’t have to answer at all, needless to say. But, obviously, things here were not going the way he’d planned, just as obviously, that was the way I wanted them to go.

“What happened to Morraigne?” he said finally. “Why isn’t he here?”

“He fell down the hospital steps,” I lied easily, remembering what Gippy had said to Trappman, “and broke his nose. And maybe an arm or two. They carried him back up the steps and smack into the hospital again.”

Trappman seemed to be only half-listening, moving his head around, but of course seeing nothing of great interest. Then he looked straight at me again. “More important, what are you doing here, you goddamned miserable son of a bitch?”

“Why, I told poor Morraigne I’d bring his dingus here for him,” I said. “He seemed quite worried about it for some reason.”

But then I strained and puffed and grunted while turning slightly to one side and raising my heavy black box a foot-and-a-half, and said sharply, “But if you keep swearing at me, you godamned miserable son of a bitch, or even come one step closer, I’ll take this Magnetica — this Holawhosit — this — this thing, and I’ll smash it on the asphalt — “

“NOOO — “

Just about like that, short, quickly cut off, and very loud.

I suppose he’d started to say “No, don’t do that,” or something similar. It didn’t matter, because from that moment on I felt like king of the mountain. Almost the entire foundation of my at least partially assumed and diligently pumped-up confidence had been a near certainty that Trappman wouldn’t even think of shooting Devin Morraigne, which is to say me, unless he absolutely had to of course, until the priceless black box — for possession of which virtually everything he’d done had been done — was safely upon the level ground. And that “NOOO” told me it had been a solid foundation.

So I started talking to him, or more like at him, demonstrating surprising strength by continuing to hold the black box fairly high, telling him what I knew and what I’d guessed, and that baby listened.

I threw a question or two at him during my monologue, but the first thing he said when I finished was, “OK, you’ve had your yack-yack so put the box down, Scott. And easy, or — “

“Sure, I’ll put it down right away, and then you’ll shoot me right away, won’t you?”

“I’ll plug you right now if I have to, you goddamned — “

“Hold it. And be reasonable, Trappman. Just answer those unimportant questions I asked, satisfy my idle curiosity, and I’ll get rid of this thing. I really will. Take my word for it. And, hell, you already know I’ve got you tagged all down the line. You’re here, aren’t you?”

He said slowly, “You will? No crap?”

“You’ve got my word on it, Trappman.”

“You’ll set that thing down, nice and easy?”

I hadn’t told the bastard that. I’d told him I would really “get rid of” it. But if he hadn’t been listening closely, that was his tough luck.

I said belligerently, “Didn’t you hear a word I said, Trappman?”

“OK. I’ll take your word on it, Scott. But if you’re lying, if this is some kind of trick, I swear to God I’ll pump six into you.”

“Trick? You are a suspicious — “

But I shut up, because he was still talking.

“Sure, you and that miserable Willifer poop both know I killed Riddle … but it was self-defense. The bastard got greedy, went clear off his nut. Anyhow, you already know the only way for us to get any oil we might pump from the Roman Number One well to a sales line was by laying pipe through Riddle’s land — you asked me about that yesterday, why I didn’t have a right-of-way agreement with Riddle in writing. I did have, of course, you can bet your ass I did, before we even spudded the Roman. But when the son of a bitch came in so big, I wasn’t going to let that much money go to poops like Willifer, not from my well. So I made a deal with Riddle to tear up the signed agreements. I’d claim I hadn’t got anything in writing from him before we completed the well, and afterwards he refused to give me the right of way — and Riddle would back me up, tell the same story. Then I could hold off on production, keep delaying, till the investors got fed up and wanted out. Hell, I paid Riddle ten thousand of my money, more than he deserved. But Wednesday night at my house he tried to squeeze me, said either he got more cash or he’d blow the whistle on what I was up to, and…. Well, he jumped me, crazy … and I had to shoot him.”

The creep, even when he was confessing he had to lie a little. I had no doubt most of what he’d said was true, probably including Riddle’s attempt to squeeze him. But the self-defense bit was a lie, and I knew it, which might come as a surprise to Trappman. Along with, perhaps, another surprise or two. But I wasn’t inclined to interrupt him when he was rolling along so good.

“Afterwards, I had to get rid of him, so I dumped the body in that unfinished well back of his own house. I figured there was no way I’d be connected with his death, no proof, nothing, and I only needed a couple days more….” He left that unfinished, adding, “And the way it was, I had to shoot him, couldn’t help it.”

After a brief pause, he went on, “So that takes care of one question, Scott. What was the other … ? Yeah. Sure I tapped Morraigne’s phone, after I studied the figures on those five wells of mine he hit in a row, and found out from checking around he’d hit a dozen others in the last year. Easy got the stuff for me, but I did the job myself, no sense bringing anybody else in, not when this deal was shaping up as such a goddamn big thing. So naturally I knew this freaky prince or sheikh, or whatever the hell the jerk is, was flying in today and I knew why by then. I knew Morraigne was in Texas someplace and was supposed to get back today, but I didn’t know where he was or what time he’d be back, and I had to keep those two from getting together, any way I could figure it, until I could … until I could get to Morraigne myself first. Well, even as important as that was, I wasn’t anxious to snatch some goddamned foreign head of state or whatever he is, but I’d heard the crumb telling Morraigne he was bringing that gang of broads along, only he called it a succulent and aromatic handful of hareem or some such bullshit. Well, it was clear as a fart to me why he was bringing those yielding fleshinesses or whatever else that freaky foreigner called the broads — what is he, some kind of international ass peddler? — so I set it up with Easy, and a guy he could call on for help, to snatch the broads, figuring that would at least help put a monkey wrench….”

Clam!

As soon as Trappman mentioned Easy Banners and “a guy he could call on for help,” I remembered Clam again. Poor old Clam. I hadn’t meant to put the guy through such a long, cramped, confined, and undoubtedly excruciatingly boring captivity; it was just that I’d had other things on my mind, and kept forgetting the guy. It distressed me so much I almost missed what Trappman was saying.

“…came off like it was greased, it was so smooth.”

I must have missed a little bit after all, because Trappman stopped talking then, after adding only, “The rest of it you already figured out close enough. And that’s it, Scott.”

“Well, ahh…. Then I was right when I said you … ?”

The worst thing, about Clam, I couldn’t help thinking, was that I’d had so much equipment and junk in my trunk already, that stuffing him in there had been like adding an extra sardine to the can. Or, perhaps more correctly, a clam to the sardines. I’d felt bad about it at the time. By now he must have got the wire off his wrists and ankles — but where could he go? I was really going to have to apologize to him. If I didn’t get killed here, of course.

Trappman was still waiting for my question. At least, he hadn’t shot me yet. So I finished it, “…that you shot Gippy Willifer yourself? And me?”

“Not you. Easy and a couple men he picked up tried for you at Morraigne’s, then at your place — I’d told them to leave Morraigne the hell alone until I could be certain of getting … what I wanted from him. But, sure I shot Willifer myself, it was a pleasure. All right, that’s it, Scott. Put the thing down — “

“Let me tell you one last bit first, you cold-blooded bastard. Part of it’s about this ‘thing’ you want me to put down. But part is because I wouldn’t want you to think you’ve conned me here, tonight. Sure, I’ll buy it that Riddle got greedy, but it wasn’t just for a few G’s. And you didn’t kill him because of the Roman well alone. You murdered him — that kill was not self-defense — not merely because if he blew the whistle about your deal with him you might lose all the gravy you meant to suck out of the Roman well, but because that would blow any chance you had of getting your hands on this.”

I lowered the box, held it below my waist with the impressive top slanted toward him. “And for this you shot Riddle while he was standing with his hands raised. I saw his body and the shirt he was wearing, and the only way those holes could match was if he had his hands stretched as high over his head as he could get them. You killed him in cold blood, probably with the same gun you’ve got in your hand, for a doodlebug — “

“It’s not a doodlebug!”

“Well, it is now,” I said shortly, but I don’t think he would have heard me if I’d yelled, because he hadn’t stopped speaking, was going on even more loudly.

“You son of a bitch, I told you — any tricks and — all right, you bastard, you’ve asked for it and now — “

This really was “it,” I was convinced.

Trappman had even gone automatically into a sligh’ crouch as his voice rose to a roar, and I saw light glimmer on the gun as he moved it slightly He was either squeezing down on the trigger, or damned close to squeezing it when I spoke, and maybe I got it out barely in time, but I did get it out.

“Here you go, baby,” I yelled at him, “catch!”

Then I threw my arms up and flipped my hands and tossed the empty box — or the very-real-looking umpteen billion-buck Magnesonant Holaselector — just about as high into the air as anyone might have expected me to fling it, considering my varied injuries and temporary debilities.

More, having really expected to be painfully shot two or three times before I got all that said, the amount of extra juices pumped into my bloodstream was increased instantly from micrograms to a teaspoonful, and I speedily became more overjuiced than I really needed to be, now that I didn’t need it.

I didn’t need to watch the thing flying up — I knew where it was going and from whence it soon would come back — but Arnold Trappman watched it. You can bet he did.

He not only watched it as if it was a super-powerful magnet and his eyes were solid steel, but accompanied the soaring black box in its graceful flight with a howling sound of stupendously tragic proportions.

“HoooaaaAAAAHHNOOOOOO — “

Something like that. But a lot louder.

And right then there was also a separate bang and a crash and clatter and the slap-slap of feet — yes, that’s who it was, dashing Devin Morraigne, dashing very speedily forth to rescue me.

During this, the magnificently crescendoing “AAAAHHHNNOOOOOOO — ” continued.

“Hey, Dev — ” I called, but he paid me no heed. There was no heed to pay, all else was squeezed out of his awareness except that one beautiful purpose.

Even if he’d heard me, though, it would have made no real difference, because by the time I’d said even that much he was as close to Trappman as I had been to him that time when he gave me such a calamitous shot in the head. The head again, I thought. Must be something screwed-up in Aries today. Screwed-up somewhere.

I had no opportunity to explain to speeding Dev Morraigne that Trappman wasn’t paying any attention to him at all. That there wasn’t really any danger that Trappman would shoot me because he was much too busy watching a box. And, of course, going “AAAAHHHHNOOOOO.”

Too, after Dev leaped from his motor home as might a champeen sprinter from his blocks, and sprinted with wonderful singleness of purpose toward Trappman, and was about halfway to his intended victim, I had very clearly seen agonized Arnold spreading his arms and opening his fingers, thus better to catch the falling box, which of course required that he drop his little gun, whether he was aware of that or not, and I think not.

So Dev needn’t have been in such a foaming sweat about it all, really. But he was, I realized, doing a courageous thing. Dumb, maybe, but courageous. He was risking his life — or at least thought he was risking his life, and for sure was risking almost certain multiple dislocations if he hit his target or anything else going at that terrific speed — to spare me from getting shot and murdered.

How I could get murdered by a gun lying unattended on the ground, or even by a guy armed to the teeth and looking straight up into the air with his arms outstretched, and his mouth also outstretched to just this side of fracturing, was not immediately apparent. But, I thought, why lessen for Dev the flavor of this moment when, later, he thought back upon it with quiet pride and self-congratulation? Why tell him it had all been a dumb waste? Why, indeed? There were lots of reasons why. Good ones, too.

Perhaps I wouldn’t tell him, though. Certainly I would never reveal to him that Trappman’s gun, throughout Dev’s entire heroics, was not only on the ground but aiming kitty-corner up the hill at a grapefruit tree. But … never was a long, long time. Maybe never was too long. I suppose a lot depended upon how badly Dev hurt himself.

And I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find that out. In fact, not any — he had reached Trappman and they were about to —

It was the goddamnedest sound I ever heard.

I couldn’t have imagined it in a million tries.

And nobody could pronounce it, or, certainly, spell it, and because the identical circumstances couldn’t possibly occur again, there was no way that sound could even happen again.

It was a one-of-a-kind thing like the Magnesonant Holaselector itself, which shortly after that weirdly shocking SSSHHPNGGGCHK with lots of air coming out of it — no, that wasn’t it, maybe there’s no way … not GGNNGGGCHCHGG, there’s just no way, it wasn’t SHPP-UGGGHBBK or SHMMCCCCCOCOCHPPH … it was just a noise, maybe like two dinosaurs falling off a cliff, into the Grand Canyon, and landing on a brontosaurus, and some rocks — tumbled the rest of its way lazily through the air and landed on the asphalt with a tiny, tinny clink.

Landed, indeed, exactly where Arnold Trappman had been, but of course no longer was. He wasn’t even close. He hadn’t been anywhere near there since Dev CHCH-HGGCCHD, or whatever into him; I hadn’t seen him since his howl stopped on its last “O — and there was blessed silence except for the sound of something, a couple of guy’s bodies, actually, rolling over some asphalt and then rustling some leaves.

</code>

<code> “Goddamn,” he said groggily. “What’d I hit?”

“Well, first there was Arnold Trappman. You did that right, Dev. You did hit him — boy, did you! He’s over there someplace. But, after that … well, I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me, Dev. Or else neither of us is ever going to know.”

“Right now … I don’t think it’s very important.” He felt his chest, arms, head, neck. “I think I broke my neck,” he said finally.

“No. No, looks OK to me.”

“What would you know?”

“Very little, actually.”

“Well, at least he didn’t get to shoot you,” Dev said dully.

And I said, “No, and do you know why, you dingdong? Because….”

Couldn’t do it. Not that minute anyhow.

“Because that was a very brave dumb thing you did,” I said.

“Hell, I didn’t think about it at all,” he said. “Not at all. If I had, I wouldn’t even have considered it.”

After a few moments he said, “I think I ruptured something inside … maybe my spleen. Where is the spleen, exactly?”

“Oh … it’s … in there.”

Just before he passed out, I said, “Look, Dev, old buddy, if you’re going to be laid up for a while — and it does seem likely doesn’t it? — well, what are you planning to do with your harem?”

</code>

<code> Chapter Twenty-five

“So the important thing is,” I said to the Willifers, “that when some experts — honest experts — go back into the Roman Number One well and complete it right, it should produce better than five hundred barrels a day. I haven’t figured out what that would mean to the two of you, but it’s got to be better than a couple hundred thousand a year.”

Gippy was propped up in bed, pillows behind him, and Audrey sat in the wooden chair next to him, where she’d been the last time I saw her here in the Morris Memorial Hospital.

Nobody else was here yet — but the whole gang, you might say, soon would be. There had been general agreement that it might be fitting, before we went our separate ways, to hold a brief and — since Gippy was still being fed through a tube, and not yet very lively — subdued party, here in his hospital room. I had already been to my apartment and changed clothes again; but I was getting down to outfits I wasn’t really crazy about.

As I finished speaking, Audrey just looked at me from eyes that appeared enormous, doing something fidgety with both hands in the area of her solar plexus, but Gippy scratched his ear, his neck, his quite ample nose, then shook his head.

“You must of made a serious mistake somewhere,” he said. “A couple hundred thousand? In a year?”

“Yeah, every year for quite a while. As I told you, when the well came in, only Trappman and Easy, the driller, and a couple of the roughnecks Banners hired to work on the rig, were there.” Roughneck is a term common in the oilfields, not part of the hoodlum’s argot, but in this case both sources were applicable, because Banner’s roughnecks were also part-time hoods. “So they were the only people who knew the initial test indicated production of about five hundred and fifty barrels of oil a day.”

“And they did what?” Gippy asked, still dubiously. “Took out all the pipe and screwed up the bottom some way?”

“They pulled the whole string of drill pipe, which they had to do before putting in casing anyway, then ran casing in the hole and completed the well in exactly the same way anybody else would have done it — with one exception. The exception being Trappman’s interesting idea that the first, or bottom-of-the-hole, length of casing be one he had taken pains to plug thoroughly with cement. So thoroughly that nothing — like lots of oil — would come up through the top of that forty-five-foot-length of pipe. Then he had holes perforated through the casing wall above that bottom length of plugged-up casing, and still got a small amount of production, but not much. Also, he gimmicked the records, substituted an electric log from another well entirely, and — I told you about his deal with Ben Riddle, the rest of it.”

“But … it’s just too damn good to be true,” he said dully, like a man in shock.

“Gippy, nothing’s too good to be true. Certainly not if it happens to you. And, dammit, it has happened to you.”

“Huh … I got to remember that,” he said. “It takes … getting used to….” He was silent for a while. “Who’d think he’d put a plugged-up pipe down there? How the gawdamn hell did he come up with something like that?”

“He had seventeen years to think about it, Gippy. The first time he pulled a similar deal — without the plugged-pipe gimmick, and not quite so carefully thought out — was that long ago. Trappman’s Oil and Gas Company was just getting started then, he was feeling a financial squeeze, pretty much like this past year in fact, and his company drilled a well for a guy named Dikes. Hit it pretty big, like the Roman well, over three hundred barrels a day — “

“I thought you said my well was over five hundred a day.”

“I did, and it is. The other well, not yours, was three hundred plus. And, Gippy … ,” I smiled, “the Roman well isn’t all yours. Not yet. But you probably will wind up with part of the Trappman and Banners interest, under the circumstances.” For a moment I looked curiously at him and Audrey, wondering what the Willifers would be like a year or two from now.

But I quickly ended such profitless conjecture and went on, “With the help of Easy Banners, even way back then, Trappman screwed up the hole, falsified records, and claimed that in the opinion of the operator there wasn’t enough production to justify connection to a sales line. Usually that would have ended it and the hole would have been plugged and abandoned — temporarily, in Trappman’s view. He figured he could wait months or even years, and work things out so he could go back into, or at least very near to, the same hole again, this time minus what he calls the poops … pardon, without any other greedy investors in his well. He’s like that, when there’s something he wants he starts thinking it’s already his.”

Gippy nodded briskly. It bothered me, somehow.

But I went on, “This guy Dikes, though, knew quite a bit about the oil game — the kind of investor Trappman tried to avoid from then on — and he refused to settle for a dry hole, brought suit. To make a long story short, our boy Arnold wound up completing the well right and paying Dikes a good chunk extra to pacify him, besides signing over to Dikes all of his and Banners’ interest in the well.”

Gippy nodded some more, but it didn’t bother me as much this time because he said, “I still can’t comprehend it all, Sheldon. But I sure got to be grateful Dev was around, since I’m one of them dumb poops you mentioned, no way of denyin’ it. Looks like I’ll have to study some more about this oil game, yessir. And I got to be grateful to my little Audie, sure enough, for bringin’ you into this, Sheldon. Why if it hadn’t of been for you — “

“Don’t forget your progressed sun in Scorpio now, trining all kinds of junk.”

“Hey, don’t tell me even you finally — “

“Little joke, Gippy, merely a little — anyway, on this Roman well Trappman lucked out, for a while at least, because he did have that extra forty-five-foot length of casing at the well’s bottom, extending down into the oil zone. Because when Dev checked on that — as he did, you know — he knew the hole had been drilled as deep as he felt it should be, that there was pipe down there, the casings went all the way into the reserves he’d mapped. He was pretty sure something was wrong, but he wasn’t sure what.”

“Yeah, I remember him saying something was screwed-up to beat hell, and he’d check out his Holaselector, maybe it was … something or other. I can’t understand him much when he talks about the insides of that thing.”

“Who can? That’s pretty much the size of it, Gippy. What it boiled down to at the end was Arnold Trappman’s absolutely consuming desire to get his hands on, to possess alone, Dev Morraigne’s dingus, excuse the expression. In the beginning he was just like me, if not worse, passing it off as one more dippy doodlebug. But when the Roman Number One came in big, just about the way Dev said it should, that’s when Trappman really started wondering. After that there were five more ‘hits’ by Dev, so by the time Trappman eavesdropped on Faisuli’s long-distance conversation with Morraigne he was ready to split open down the middle and sideways.”

“Yeah, I can believe that now,” Gippy said. “Trappman told you all this, just before you throwed the Holaselector up in the air?”

“Well, both before and after. He spilled quite a lot after that. Of course, at first, when he came to, he kept saying over and over, ‘Why didn’t it whistle? Why didn’t it whistle?’”

“The Holaselector, up there in the air? He expected it to — ?”

“No, he thought a train hit him.”

“Mr. Scott,” Audrey said, speaking for the first time since I’d begun my recitation of the evening’s events, “this is so wonderful. It really is. I can’t hardly believe it — but I do, I do. I know it’s true, because I know you wouldn’t lie to us about it. It’s so wonderful, and you’re so — “

“Watch it,” I said.

Then I walked to the door and looked up and down the hall, came back next to Gippy’s bed. “Nobody in sight yet. You’re sure you want a whole bunch of people in here? It won’t be too much for you, when it’s been such a short time since — ?”

“No, it sure won’t. I can’t hardly wait. Man, the way I’m startin’ to feel, I’ll get out of this joint before Dev does. If he’s what you said he is — what kind of basket?”

“Not a basket, a basket case.”

“He’s gonna be all right, isn’t he?”

“Well … I think so. Dev’s basically in very good shape. He was. But he shouldn’t be laid up for more than a week, I’d guess. He’s just down the hall here, on the same floor. Did I tell you?”

“You mentioned it.”

“I left before they were through putting him together, but at last count he had a broken arm, something wrong with his leg, and back, and neck, and a mild concussion, and several million bruises. He kept asking the doctor where his spleen was. You’d think a genius like him would know a simple thing like that, wouldn’t you?”

“To tell the truth, I’m not even sure which side mine’s on. Where is a guy’s — “

“Well, anyway, Trappman’s in a hospital bed from which he couldn’t escape even if capable of moving, which he isn’t, and Easy Banners and a couple of other hoods are in the clink, and….” I knew there was something else. It was right on the tip of my mind. But when I almost had it, through the open door of Gippy’s room stepped Sheikh Faisuli.

And he was — for the first time — not wearing that black suit I had become accustomed to. He was magnificently arrayed in an outfit that damn near knocked my eyes out. Faisuli looked now very much as, back there in my apartment at the Spartan awaiting Eddy’s “weird guy,” I had imagined a Sheikh from the middle of the East might look.

White tunic, buttoned up the front and close to the neck, white turban or mass of some kind of intricate wrappings covering the short black curling hair and falling at both sides of his dark face, glittering belt, trousers of some kind of loosely flowing iridescent stuff, strange white-leather pointy-toed sandals on his feet, and all over he was jewels.

The buttons of his tunic were impossibly large rubies; something that resembled a diamond the size of a turkey egg flashed at the center of his turban; his belt was studded with red and green and yellowish and blue stones; and he even — this pleased me — carried what was either a short curved sword or a long dangerous-looking dagger, snug in a bejeweled silver scabbard, at his side.

He was so resplendent that for those first moments I didn’t even realize Harim Babullah had come in with him, which is plenty resplendent. I leaned back and waved up at Babullah, saying, “Hi, big fella,” then placed my hands flat together before me, looked at Sheikh Faisuli, bobbed my head once, and said, “I see your stuff got back from the cleaners in time, Sheikh. Glad you could make it to Gippy’s party.”

“For nothing, I would not have missed it,” he replied, smiling — at me, at Gippy, at Audrey. He seemed to be in a splendid mood.

I made some comment to that effect, beginning to worry a little — not about anything, really, just worrying — and he replied, “Yes, indeed, you better believe it. This Morraigne, he and I have concluded that which you are aware I was in hopefulness of concluding with him. What I mean, it is concluded, I am overjoyous. He is overjoyous — “

“Well, maybe not everybody, Sheikh — “

” — and, by the grace of everloving Allah, allah — all — is consummated excruciatingly. Blessed be — “

“Sheikh, somehow I thought, when you showed up here you would, well, I sort of expected you wouldn’t just leave your harem, that is your six excruciatingly consummatednesses, lying about any old….”

Right then, outside, I heard a squeaky-giggly-shrieky-whoopy sound like a flock of big birds laying feathers in the hallway. And I understood what it was I had been worrying about.

It was moving this way, but not with much speed. Apparently, not with any speed. It took so long for them to bubble into view that I had plenty of time to think about it. Time to figure out what was slowing them down. Thus, when they came fluttering inside, it wasn’t such a shock as otherwise it might have been.

Because they were — naturally, how could it have been otherwise? — fluttering around Devin Morraigne.

It surprised me to see that the tall, slim, devilishly handsome creep was on only one crutch. I won’t say I was disappointed, only that it surprised me. The crutch was clamped under his right armpit, which apparently had escaped injury, and there was a bandage on his right hand. His left arm was in a sling. There were a couple of white patches marring the waving beauty of his long — too long, really — black hair. And that was all. It was really disgusting.

Of course, maybe he was in worse shape than I’d guessed. Maybe he would have fallen clear down if he wasn’t being held up, and supported, and patted, and probably goosed, by six of the most beauteous babes in Christendom — or Allahdom — or practically anywhere, you name it, and you can’t have it.

The dumb squeaky broads moved him inside the room and propped him against a wall, and then in the corridor was the sound of light, brisk steps, and through the open door and into Gippy’s room — smiling brilliantly, seeming to exude a sweet warmth and sparks of invisible electricity — came luscious Cynara Lane.

“Well, hi there — ” I began.

“Gippy!” she cried, marching right in front of me to bend over the side of his bed and give him a smack on his cheek. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Isn’t what?” he said.

“Everything, Gippy.”

Then she waved at Dev, called something dumb to him, and walked in front of me once more.

“Hey,” I said.

She was in animated conversation with Sheikh Faisuli by that time. I understood now that she’d been at the Casacasbah earlier to give the Sheikh some sort of astrological advice, and now they were at it agan, dingdong stuff about planets and aspects and progressions and such. He was eating it up.

I walked across the room and stopped near — as close as I could get to — Morraigne.

He grinned at me, and flipped his right hand up stiffly in what might have been a salute if it hadn’t hit below his belly button.

Then, looking soberly at me, he said, “General, sir — I’d like to resign my commission.”

I had to chuckle at the imbecile, but as soon as I could say it sternly, I said sternly, “Sorry, Major, the only discharges in this outfit come from the true-blue muzzles of the true-blue rifles of our firing squad.”

“Well … if that’s the best you can do, sir….”

Right then there was the thoop of a cork popping from a champagne bottle — Gippy himself, with only a little help from Audrey, not spilling a drop — and for the next few minutes there was a really very pleasant bubble of talk and laughter in the air, almost as fizzy as the bubbles in the wine.

At one point, Audrey — who really couldn’t handle that much champagne — slithered over and said she was going to give me a big kiss, and not on the cheek this time. She was looking pretty good to me by then, so I said, “Why not, baby?” and laid a little one on her, only to hear a stentorian bellow — that couldn’t possibly have come out of a Gippy Willifer, especially a wounded one — “What the HEY! Quit horsing around with my WIFE!”

But when I snapped my head around, having given Audrey a little push which enabled her to slide about six feet and reach the edge of Gippy’s bed without further effort on her part, I noted that, although the bellow had indeed come from Gippy, he was grinning, and it was quite a wide grin, for it appeared to start in front of his face and finish at the back of his neck, after which he whooped and then stuck his nose into his empty champagne glass, which I thought an odd thing for him to do.

There was a moment when I was talking to Devin Morraigne again, saying, “I do wish you and your wives well, Dev, and I promise to communicate with you while you are in prison for practicing polygamy — “

“Practice makes perfect,” he said stupidly. “Besides, I can divorce them instantly by saying — “

“Don’t say it. The memory is too painful. Especially, since that was before I realized Faisuli had instructed his flock not to talk — strike that — not to do anything, not even smile at anyone except Daayyhhavvannn … Maaahhrrraayyyennn — “

“What’s that?” he asked me curiously.

“Not what. Who. That’s you.”

“Me? I’m a song?”

“Yeah,” I said grumpily. “And apparently it is the only one they know how to sing. But I forgive them, for they know not what they did. To me.” Then I looked at the six beauties — yeah, they were still holding him up — and continued, “Girls, I say unto you — that’s it, smile at me, go ahead, now that it won’t do me any good — neither do I condemn thee; go, and sing no more.”

Devin seemed impatient to get away, for some reason, and as I turned around Cynara was walking past, toward Gippy’s bed again. “Hey,” I said.

Well, I had some last words with Sheikh Faisuli.

He bobbed his head, happily, pointing to Devin, who wasn’t out of the room yet, though he had started some time ago. “I tell it to you, Mr. Scott, that one, this Morraigne, he is incroidible.” Then he smiled at me. “And in view of this that you said you would done and have now indeed doed….”

Champagne was maybe getting to the Sheikh, too.

On he went, “You said it and you did it as you said you would done it, and I pronounce that you are also incroidible.” Then he paused, smiled, and added with a merry gleam in his black eyes, “Of course, as all will agree or be sorry they didn’t, I, too, am incroidible!”

“You can say that again!” I cried.

“And he replied, “OK, I, too, am incroidible, maybe of the most of it of all of us.”

And I said wonderingly, “I’ll bet you can’t say that again.”

He flashed his satanic smile at me and said, “Beautiful…. Or is it?” He pondered this, then continued, “Speaking of beautiful or is it brings upon my soon-departing mind the last finality of my visit. To you am I indebted rewardingly for the secrecy of the utmost, promised by you and fulfilled truly, in the matter of my traveling wives. That they are not my wives of a legalisticalness, you understand now fully. This is so?”

“This is so.”

“You understand also, Mr. Scott, for me this deceiving of you was not only a necessary … a necessariness? … a big need, but permitted.”

“Sure.”

“If I say it, it becomes legal. Of an immediateness. No waiting.”

“Right,” I nodded.

“However, a fullness of understanding by you is deserved from me for it is due to my request of you that you pursue and recapture these false wives that you have been damaged so grievously in your doing for me your pursuing for me. This is so?”

“I’m not sure. Damaged, yeah. But it won’t last long. Say, I sure like your outfit. Any chance I could get one someplace?” I’m not certain why I said all that; maybe I was still trying to figure out what he’d said. Then, too, I really did like the outfit, and I needed some new ones. I knew a couple of gals who would fall all over me if I wore it. “But, I suppose,” I went on, “that’s the official state dress of Kardizazan or something?”

“Or something,” he replied. “There is at the Casacasbah a tailor of great excellentness, who for me made this. To my direction, of course. Also, of course, now this is official formal dress, for the Sultan of Kardizazan. All I do is wear it. No waiting. Even informal dress if I — “

“Got it.”

“But come. For the rest of my sayings, into the hallway come. I think, for this of significance, there we should go.”

So there we went. In the corridor, with nobody else near us. Sheikh Faisuli said, “When into my employment I inveigled you, Mr. Scott, I spoke, with respectful regard for truth, of sincerely needed reasons for utmost secrecy. I merely left out some. If in my country it was proclaimed widely, or even narrowly, that the Sultan of Kardizazan — me — was jet-traveling in the land of U.S.A. with six beauteousnesses which are not the Sultan’s legalistical wives, this would be even more worse than with real ones. So?”

“So.”

“This would also become known swiftly and widely among my real wives. So?”

“So.”

“By the way, to me it was of an easy obviousness that, to your eyes and etcetera, even my false wives possessed attractivenesses worth mentioning. You should see the real ones. But this is aside. If words of my false ones here became even rumored to my real ones there, this would cause for me more difficulties than I like to think about. What I mean, you recall … Mushlik?”

“Sure. Her, and Haherain — “

“Forget her, old Haherain. She is dead, what good is she? Remember what I told you about Mushlik?”

“Well, she nagged — “

“So do the others.” This was said with great gravity.

“The others. Oh, Sheikh, not all — “

“Forty-seven!” He nodded significantly. “You added it up cleverly. Some more, some less, but not one that does it less than a little bit. None that do it none. You know how it is with one wife?”

“Oh, a couple of guys have said this or that. It’s only hearsay. I don’t have one myself.”

“Not one? That is worse than having forty-seven. But, in concludance of this matter, you now understand why it could not then — or not never, from now on — be proclaimed or even rumored of the six false ones. When one is absolute ruler of a great nation, no matter how small it is, to the entirety of all both abroad and at home one must present a strength, a mighty rulershipness, an appearance of … of….”

“Absolute being in controlerness?”

“That is it, I had forgotten how to say it. But to this in addition is what I have informed you regarding my real wives, the totality of my true hareem.” He paused, shaking his head slowly. “Now you know. There are many good things, even things of wonderfulness, due to possessing a hareem of infinite lusciousnesses and those things. But, as you say in America, all it is cracked up to be, it is not.”

I nodded sympathetically. But I was afraid there wasn’t much I could say that would help. Not much any bachelor could say.

Sheikh Faisuli straightened up, fully and springily erect, raised his head, and looked at me directly from the glowing eyes. “I have fulfilled my immoral obligation to explain to you these certain Sultanlike necessities. Needless to say, to you have I spoken with secrecy of the most utmost. None of this must ever pass away from your tongue…. Or else — “

“Don’t tell me the or-else. That’s kind of a tricky…. Now that you’ve already told me, now you tell me. No, now you don’t tell me. But — it’s OK, Sheikh. I’m not trying to tell you your business.”

“Fine. To the room, in again, now we may go at last.” He sighed. “From piercing together all that has been told, I have made arrangements that no words exploring this will be promulgated from those capable of it. To the high police officials, and others, have I personally spoken. And in the jails are this Trappman and Banners, plus the two criminal individuals in their — formerly, until this busy night, in their — employment. And except for you, there is none other who knows all. This is so?”

“Well, of course, there’s Devin Morraigne,” I said lightly, as we walked back into the. room.

“Of course,” said Sheikh Faisuli. “He is how it happened.”

The party was just bubbling along … but something was making me uneasy. It really bothered me, I started getting a cold, clammy feeling….

The Sheik was walking away, toward Gippy.

“Sheikh,” I said. “There’s another one.”

He stopped, turned. “What?”

“There’s … oh, I really feel miserable about it. Sheikh, we’d better go back out in the hallway.”

There I told him. “You see, Sheikh, there’s this guy in my trunk….”

When I had explained fully, to my surprise Faisuli seemed undisturbed. “I think, after his experience with you,” the Sheikh said, “this one will not speak a whole lot. This key to your car, its trunk, may I briefly possess it? In the front seat, I — we, Babullah and I — as we are leaving, will leave it. You will please?”

It isn’t often a Sheikh says Please to me. Or maybe to anybody. If that’s what he’d done. Even if he hadn’t, it made it hard to say No. And I didn’t. But first I asked him, “You aren’t going to lop off his head … or pull out his tongue with tongs … or anything like — “

“Nothing, we will do. Even touch him, we will not. Out, we will let him, this is all solely. From your saying of it, you might neglect this for no telling how long.”

“You’ll just let him out? Tell him he’s free?”

“Precisely so. Free. Go. Speak nothing, but go freely. No more. I am not a bad person. Usually.”

“OK, then,” And I gave him the key to my Cad’s trunk.

Then I looked around, spotted Cynara talking to Audrey, took a step in that direction only to hear Sheikh Faisuli saying to me, “One thing, in addition. This, I neglected.”

I turned, looked at him curiously.

“This I think you would enjoy knowing. No question about it. My mind, it slipped, but to me it has this moment come back. So now I inform you that delivered to your living place, this Spartan, from my personal jetting plane, have been already the ten pouches.”

“The what?”

“The pouches.”

“Of…. Not of gold?”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, now you mention it, why not? Anything you say, Sheikh. But … ten?”

“The six, one for each, as discussed between us. And a few more, as — it came to me as a whim. You are offended?”

“Not so you’d notice.”

“In due time, in a due short time, you would perhaps enjoy visiting me for a few days? At my living palace — which, as you know, is a place?” He snapped his fingers again, sharply.

But I said, “Sheikh, there’s no perhaps about it.”

“We can examine the beautiful oil wells.”

“Yeah, sounds exciting. I hope I can stand it.”

Then he was saying goodbye, and speaking to Gippy and Audrey, and I was shaking Harim Babullah’s hand, telling him, “I won’t say it’s all been fun, but good luck — go with Allah, or whoever. I may even see you in the palace place, Babu.”

He did that thing with his lips, much like a smile. “Babu,” he said, moving my hand gently in his big soft paw.

Then he, and the Sheikh, were gone, on their way back to Kardizazan. Dev Morraigne had finally hobbled out of sight, aided by his musical companions.

So, the party was over.

Except for the Willifers, and Cynara still here saying something softly to Audrey.

And for me.

So I waved at those three people, and walked out into the hall, headed for home.

I was halfway down the corridor when I heard the soft patter of light, quick steps. Then Cynara was walking alongside me, holding my arm and saying, “Will you drive me home, Shell?”

“Well — I guess — yeah, sure, ma’am. But, first, shouldn’t I introduce myself? My name is Shell — “

“Oh, don’t be an old bear.”

“Who’s a bear? When you failed to recognize me back there at the party, I naturally concluded we must not have met lately — “

“Don’t jump to any conclusions about me,” she said sweetly, and when I glanced down at her she was smiling a brilliant, almost a dazzling, smile.

When we reached my car I stopped and hit myself smartly on my forehead while gazing with growing concern at the lid of my car trunk.

It was still wide open, because the hinges were so obviously bent that it would take some doing for me to get it closed without the assistance of a garage and two mechanics.

For a moment I assumed Babullah must have lifted it a bit too vigorously, but then I remembered how gentle he was — or, could be when he wanted to be — and knew that wasn’t what had happened. And no sooner was that possibility eliminated than I saw in a painful split second, as though in a movie beamed smack into my eye, what had bent those hinges.

“Poor old Clam,” I mumbled aloud. “I just didn’t think — he must have gone straight up in the air.”

</code>

<code> So of course then I had to explain the whole thing … which might have been another little mistake.

</code>

<code> She had the female gall to claim she’d told me yesterday that for a few days I would be likely to overlook or even forget things, maybe leave important items lying about, and she rose to a peak of ridiculousness by claiming that some of tonight’s events proved she — and therefore her dingdong astrology — was right.

Needless to say, I insisted that my temporarily overlooking Clam didn’t fall into the category of “leaving important items lying about,” and there it went.

“All right,” she said, “forget Clam.”

“Maybe I did already. I can’t remember — “

“I mean, if you won’t accept that, you’ve got to admit I told you some things that weren’t complete misses. About you, for example, and Gippy — and how about Arnold Trappman and whatever crooked thing be was doing seventeen years ago? Didn’t I tell you he was probably into something like that right now, only maybe worse?”

“Well, yeah, you lucked out — I mean, picked up something there, sort of, I guess.”

“You never did tell me what be was doing then, not exactly.”

“That’s what bothers me. It was the same damn thing — on a smaller scale than now, of course, and not nearly so complicated, but it started eighteen years ago, not seventeen, and he was sued seventeen and a half years ago — “

“Stop quibbling. Shell.”

“I am merely being precise.” I repeated what I’d earlier told Gippy, and finished it up. “So Trappman’s settling Dikes’ suit out of court kept the attempted fraud from being widely noised about at the time. And, incidentally, probably kept Trappman from spending a lot of weekends in the old clinko.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Cynara said smugly.

I opened my mouth to make a devastating response, but she hadn’t stopped talking. “The interesting thing about seventeen — or seventeen and a half-years ago is, I didn’t see any confinement indicated then. An affliction to his tenth, that sort of thing, but his twelfth house was good, with Jupiter transiting through it. Certainly a different picture then from his chart now.”

“That is interesting,” I said. “If I understood some of it, you mean he wasn’t going to jail then, but probably is now?” She nodded, and I went on, “Hey, that’s great. I figured he would, of course, but these days you never know. Well, that’s a relief…. You understand, I don’t believe a word of this.”

Still smiling, she said, “I’ll convince you yet, Shell.”

“Ho-ho,” I said. “You wanna bet?”

She had a nerve, not saying anything, just sitting there smugly like that. I stood up, then sat down again.

“Well,” I said, “in fairness, for which I am noted among reasonable people, I will say that although I didn’t really need your seventeen-years-ago bit in order to solve everything, when I mystically laid it upon Trappman, and for that matter Easy Banners, I believe they went into profound shock, and their temperatures dropped eighteen degrees while I watched”

“I’d think so,” she said.

“Such shock that Trappman thereupon put out word that it was his desire to kill me absolutely, and instantly if possible. He had other reasons by then, but that tipped the scales over on top of me, for fulfillment of his desire was attempted almost immediately afterward, at Dev Morraigne’s home.”

“Shell, I’m sorry if — “

“It’s all right. It’s my fault for going along with such a flaky … to make you feel better about almost getting me fatally ventilated, however, that shooting, and Dev’s subsequent move from his house, undoubtedly kept Trappman from barging in on Dev that very afternoon — this afternoon, by golly — and if he’d got his bloody hand on the Holaselector then, killing Dev Morraigne for sure this afternoon. So, things … balance themselves out in mystical and hysterical ways — “

“Shell Scott, damn you! Can’t you quit making snide little cracks like mystic and flaky and dumbdumb and — oh! — especially about a scientific art like astrology. How can you be so stupid — ?”

“Stupid? What do you mean, stupid? Just because — ” I stood up and snorted and sat down again.

“Dammit to hell, Cynara,” I said reasonably. “Fun’s fun, but there have got to be billions of things you can’t see in those weirdo horoscopes of yours — “

“I never said I could see everything, and I certainly couldn’t see that you were such a closed-minded nincompoop — “

“Don’t you dare call me a nincompoop,” I paused. “What’s a nincompoop? Don’t tell me. Look, for a rational example, you haven’t got room on one of those wacky wheels to put in everything that’s happened to me. Why merely my injuries — “

“Oh — “

“Please don’t keep interrupting. Consider. I was shot at outside Dev’s place, at which time he gave me a shot in the head, insuring that I would skin myself all over, especially all over my chin. Then I was shot twice, left ankle and upper left arm, which is two more places. And when I crashed down — “

“No wonder you’re so irritable, you must be exhausted — “

“No, only a little shot, that’s all. But I’ll never finish if you keep interrupting. Where was I? Yeah, crashed down on the street. There went my head again. Then a reluctant assassin named poor old Clam — I got even with him, didn’t I? — hit me in forty-seven different places, many of them several times. And Harim Babullah destroyed a large part of my skull. And, don’t forget, you even bonked me on the head. That must take care of fourteen signs already.”

“There are only twelve signs, Shell — “

“See? What did I tell you? There isn’t room. And I haven’t even mentioned that crippling kiss you gave me. What sign do hot lips come under? Must be a fire sign. Hey, give me another of those and I’ll forgive you for anything you say — “

“There you go again. You can’t keep your mind off kissing, and sex, and all that, for more than five minutes — “

“Are you crazy? Haven’t you been listening? Who do you think I was molesting when my body was getting torn apart and mangled — ?”

” — I can see it all in your chart! You — and girls — and…. Well, how many girls have you been involved in, I mean with, just during the last day or two?”

“Well, in — or with? It makes a difference. Hey, watch it, watch the pencil.”

“Oh! Shell Scott, you — you’re a fiend — “

“I am not.”

“Answer my question. How many girls? Just during this — this case?”

“Well…. Hmm…. Let’s see, there was Audrey, and you — “

“Leave me out of this!”

“Hell, you were the best part — watch the pencil. And Zezik, Visdrailia, Monesha, Shereshim, Yakima, Rasazhenlah — don’t say I told you — and Petrushka. And I guess you could say Mary-Lu Watermooth, and Josephine and Madeleine, and little Melinda, and Lydia, and what’s-her-name.”

“All … of those?” Her eyes got — well, they seemed to get rounder. “Oh, dear,” she said in a soft voice.

“Just since yesterday,” I said. “And I didn’t even count Mrs. Gernbutts. But we’re through. All of us are. Except for me and Audrey, of course, and especially me and — do you really want to be left out?”

This went on until I remembered some sneaky advice from a book a guy had read, and told me about. Something to the effect that if you wanted to manipulate people — though who would want to do that? — you should talk to them about their interests, in their language.

“I’ll show you,” I said, inspired. She had brought out several of those paper-pie horoscopes, including hers and mine, and they were on a table before the couch where we sat. So I grabbed two of them — hers and mine — and said, “You are really going to learn something exciting now, Cynara. About astrology! Fascinating, huh?”

I could see it wasn’t working too good yet, so I put even more enthusiasm into my tone. “Fascinating, huh? Unbeknownst to you, I have been studying various crazy sciences! Behind your back! And behold! Look there!”

“Where?” She was gazing upon the scribbles at which I was pointing, and I could feel her warm shoulder cooking mine.

“Why, right there,” I said. “Observe this funny thing trine that funny … and those little transiting injunctions — “

“Conjunctions.”

“Right. And these trine things in conjunction with those things there. As any fool can plainly see, it means, according to the latest things in planets, we are now wildly driven — helplessly driven — astrologically driven — to make love! You and me, I mean. All night long! Boy, isn’t it great?”

“That’s not what it says.”

“How can you tell? I made it up.”

“Well, I can see what astrology really says, I really can, Shell.”

“Yeah. Yeah. So who believes it? You can see we aren’t going to make love all night long, not tonight, not tomorrow, not twelve weeks from tomorrow, not twelve years — “

“Oh, don’t have a fit. There are other things — “

“Name a couple.”

“And I told you, Shell, don’t jump to conclusions about me. I can tell you what astrology says, about us, about now, if you’re interested — “

“I’m interested. If it’s nice.”

” — but besides obvious astrological factors, we always have to take into account physical environment. Like your immediate physical environment — you’re a wreck.”

“Ho-ho,” I said. “A fat bunch you know. Why, I’m fresh as a — a daisy. No, a lot fresher than that — “

“We’ll see — or let’s see, then….”

She studied the two charts, then flashed that dazzling smile again. “What astrology really says, about this situation, is … not all night long.”

“You wanna bet?” I said, grinning like Gippy.

Well, I’ll tell you folks, though I sure hate to, I really do — but you know everything else I’ve told you is true, so it wouldn’t be fair if I chickened out right here at the end, would it? — as it happened, long before two o’clock in the morning, long before, I was just about terminally convinced that, though maybe Cynara’s dingdong astrology couldn’t tell a guy everything, it was a damn sure thing there was something to it.

</code>