<code> 1

I swung left into Mulberry Drive and headed back toward town, hoping Mayor Everson Fowler’s phone call to the local law had taken Sergeant Samuels and Officer Jonah off my tail for good. I was also hoping, with slight unease, that we’d been talking about the same people.

Those two guys — or at least the one I’d gotten an unappetizingly close look at — were sure funny-looking fuzz. And I have been very closely associated, though usually to my profit and pleasure, with one hell of a lot of fuzz.

I was pretty far from my home base, Sheldon Scott, Investigations in downtown L.A., and maybe that fact plus the unaccustomed chill in the Northern California air was responsible for the small knot of tension between my shoulder blades, and the coolness that once in a while spider-stepped along my spine.

There was nothing except that brisk breezy nip to give anyone goose bumps or even mild anxieties. This was the tail end of winter, one of those afternoons when spring steals a March day and shows off a week or two ahead of schedule, the air clean and clear, sun bright in a preposterously blue sky.

I had the front windows of my rented Cadillac rolled down, and the chill breeze, strong enough to bend even my bristle of white-blond hair, felt good on my chops. I’m thirty years old, six-foot-two and two hundred and six solid pounds, healthy, whole, and generally full of vigorous beans. I should have been feeling great despite the several hours of sleep I’d lost during the past week, particularly considering how uncommonly toothsome and friendly were the tomatoes who had helped me lose them.

But I couldn’t push that mild, constant uneasiness out of my mind, couldn’t shake the occasional prickliness that cobwebbed the nape of my neck. It had started when I first spotted that dark sedan, the odd blue-black color of a beetle’s wing, behind me early this morning. And the queer “something” had been bugging me, increasingly, ever since.

I knew what the trouble probably was.

In thirty years of living, and especially during my several years as a private investigator, I had been similarly bugged often enough before to recognize the symptoms. I was missing something. Most likely something very obvious, plain as a wart on a fan-dancer’s fanny, something I’d looked smack-dab at but failed to see clearly. Perhaps because, as in the case of the fan-waving dancer, I had not been looking for warts.

I hadn’t really been looking for much else, either, not yet. I’d been hired and pleasantly but firmly fired by one client, then swiftly reemployed by one of the wealthiest and — in view of what my fee might now add up to — most generous citizens of Newton. Newton, California, toward which I was now tooling my rented Cad. A slightly offbeat beginning, perhaps, and mildly perplexing, but nothing that struck me as unusually ominous or disturbing. Not, at least, on the surface….

The hell with it, I told myself. There had been other occasions when the “something” giving rise to symptoms of mild unease was no more than an overdose of L.A.‘s smothering smog or the fact that my shorts were too tight. So I leaned forward, stretching against the too-tight seat belt, and snapped on the radio, found some music that sounded less like elephants tap-dancing to a Watusi wedding chant than do most pop arias, and made myself relax.

Soon I felt that tight knot atop my spine loosen a little, and warm a little, like a chunk of soft ice commencing to thaw. But not for long.

I was rolling down Mulberry a hair over the 50 m.p.h. speed limit, not more than a couple of miles from the Newton city limits, when the truck careened around a curve maybe two blocks ahead of me. It wasn’t one of those little pickup trucks, or even a bigger cab and piggyback-trailer job for carrying furniture to warehouses or an acre of manure from the farm. No, it was a monster cab-over-engine diesel rig with attached trailer, fenders like Volkswagens, and front bumper big enough to anchor a battleship, with the driver — if it had one, which considering the erratic nature of its progress was a debatable question — perched eight or ten feet up in the air. It looked like a flying locomotive, a dozen mobile homes stacked together, like a beat-up 747 jet preparing to land on me.

It roared around the curve coming fast from my left to right, swerved, skidded, and swung back into the left lane. His left. My lane. The one I was in.

If we hit head on, closing at well over a hundred miles an hour, the driver of that monstrosity might be considerably annoyed but I knew there’d be nothing left of my Cad, or me, except a colorful tangle of metallic strips and chunks like the remains of a giant time-bomb clock.

But then the truck gradually pulled over into the right lane, away from dead-ahead, and I sucked my lungs full of the nippy pre-spring air, and had time to start letting it out in a sigh of happy thanksgiving and sweet relief.

So at least I was relieved, and almost happy, when the sonofabitch hit me.

</code>

<code> 2

As the happy sigh bubbled past my lips I could see Newton ahead, sprawled out less than two miles away. I was also aware that at the edge of the road on my right, beyond a few feet of rock-studded earth, the ground dropped off suddenly and then slanted downward at about a twenty-degree slope for a hundred yards before leveling off. The initial drop wasn’t great, ten or fifteen feet, but the thought struck me that a guard rail would be a good idea here, along this few hundred “dangerous” feet of Mulberry Drive.

By that time the big diesel was so close I couldn’t see the top of its cab without bending forward. More important — suddenly and nerve-splittingly more important — the truck had edged left again. Those monster wheels were well over the white line bisecting the highway, so far over there was no way — almost no way — to avoid a collision. I didn’t have even a split second for conscious thought. There was just the visual trauma of that mass of metal hurling itself down upon me and then I was yanking the steering wheel, still aware of the short sheer drop on my right but totally unconcerned about that lesser catastrophe.

I thought I’d made it. For a moment I was sure I had made it, maybe by only part of a thin inch but by enough. So when the left front fender of that huge rig smashed against the rear end of my Cad with a sound like metal surf crashing on jagged cliffs and my head snapped sideways as the car seemed to jump out from beneath me, even then I knew the crazy bastard must have slapped his own steering wheel over and rammed me deliberately.

And then there was concentrated chaos, crashing and shrieking of metal and squeal of rubber shredding on asphalt and splintering of glass and a yell splitting my throat and even, strangely, in all that other bedlam, the audible hush-whish of wind swirling through the windows and pulsing against my ears and face.

That, and sudden jarrings, wrenchings, thumping of my body against door frame, chest against steering wheel, head solidly slamming something unyielding. Landscape swirling as the car jerked and spun, rocked, reared up — glimpses of trees and earth, strip of skittering road, even that sonofabitch diesel barreling away as it slid right on the spinning earth and out of my vision, tilting crazily as though climbing the sky.

All of that crammed into an hours-long split second yanked out of now, and then … a flight, a soaring … a fine gentle quietness … and suddenly…

</code>

<code> In a few seconds I managed to move my head, saw the bent steering wheel, crumpled hood beyond shattered windshield. The car had come to rest on its side, and I was hanging from the seat belt, head dangling toward the Cad’s crumpled right side and the dark earth beneath it.

It took five minutes or more for me to get out of the car.

When I finally managed to unhook the seat belt, I fell to the bottom of the wrecked Cad, which in this case was its side. Or — straight down, like a stone. Naturally enough, I supposed.

Though my brain seemed to be functioning quite well for one encased in a skull that was undoubtedly split, I rested on the bottom of the car’s side for a while, groping around for my thoughts. Either I rested, or else I wasn’t quite able to move, after landing on my head for the second time in — how long?

I didn’t know how long. I didn’t have any idea of the minutes, or possibly hours, I’d been knocked cold. I worried about that for a while, then looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past 2 p.m., if the thing was still accurate. I found the suitcase I’d been lugging around all day, tossed it up through the left front window. After scrambling and many grunts, as I became aware of other exquisitely painful areas of my anatomy, I was on bare earth outside the wrecked car. The sun was still high. So even though I wasn’t sure what time that rig clipped me, I couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes, half an hour at most.

I looked around until I discovered where the highway was at. There it was, only about a hundred feet away, but a good twenty or thirty feet above me. I sighed, picked up my suitcase, started hobbling toward Mulberry Drive.

Knowing exactly where you want to go, they say, is half the battle. Swell. I was already halfway there. But with each step I took, I could feel stretched and bruised muscles protesting in my left thigh, and a large soldering iron barbecuing what seemed to be more ribs than I’ve got. So I stopped and sat down on my rear end, which by some miraculous circumstance appeared to have escaped noticeable injury, and rested a bit.

I was in some need of rest, true; but before casually tottering back up to Mulberry, where I had so recently been almost totally creamed, I felt it would be wise to decide, if I could, whether I had just survived an accident or a coldly calculated attempt to murder me.

I had not the faintest idea why anybody would want to kill me. Not up here. Back in L.A.-Hollywood, yes. There were lots of Southern California losers whose chief goal in life was my instant demise. But here?

It didn’t seem likely, but … maybe. Because whoever had been piloting that diesel rig hadn’t even come back to say “Excuse me.” And maybe was enough for me, since when guys want to kill you they usually cling to that old if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed saw, and — if they miss — try again.

So I sat on my miraculous rear end and mentally glanced over the several events of this day. I thought back to last night when it had begun, with the phone in my apartment ringing. And I looked rather closely at what had occurred since then, because if I found whatever the hell I was looking for I could much more confidently stagger onward and upward to Mulberry Drive.

More, I could look forward to seeing stunningly luscious and stupendously shapely Canada Southern again. Perhaps even to the good, or possibly very bad, luck of once more glimpsing Melinda Fowler’s water-sprinkled behind, sparkling beauteously in the sunlight as though studded with understandably incandescent diamonds, an apparition nearly as mystically inspiring — in its own way of course — as two Taj Mahals by moonlight. There was even the stimulating possibility that glacially lovely Martinique Monet might melt, grow warm, conceivably commence steaming.

It was as elementary as Dr. Watson: for all that, I had to be alive.

In addition to all that, there was also the scheduled Grand Opening tonight — only a few hours away now — of Newton’s much ballyhoo-hooed Club Rogue. With its plush appointments, jolly camaraderie among Rogue Members and Fellows, gourmet food and stiff drinks, and the honest-to-God presence — so it had been widely though rather discreetly rumored — of twelve exquisitely good-looking and gorgeously constructed “Rogue Hostesses,” or cocktail waitresses, none of whom would be wearing any pants. So, at least, it had been rumored.

For that, for that and more, I had to live. Most important of all, my chief goal in life — kept secret until now — is to die, at the age of not less than one hundred and fifty years, of a sudden seizure while attending solicitously to a friendly tomato of not more than seventy-nine.

Thus fired up by all kinds of goals, I scrutinized with some care the events of recent hours, gazed again on the scenes, the people, the faces.

Somewhere along the way, if I looked with clear eyes, perhaps I would find what I was after: that wart on the fan-dancer’s fanny….

</code>

<code> 3

Home is where the hearth is, and for me that’s the Spartan Apartment Hotel in Hollywood. It’s on North Rossmore, facing the Wilshire Country Club’s fenced-in green fairways directly across the street, a nine iron from Beverly Boulevard and a short drive in the opposite direction, and in a car, to the corner of Sunset and Vine.

The more literal “hearth” of the home — that is, of my three-room-and-bath apartment on the Spartan’s second floor — is the front room’s fake fireplace loaded with very outdoorsy-looking gas logs. On the wall above, Amelia, my wonderfully bright and bawdy nude, resurrected from a pawnshop where she’d been left by some oaf who lacked culture. Nearby, squatting on the thick shag nap of my yellow-gold carpet, is a massive chocolate-brown divan which, could it speak, I would burn in the fake fireplace.

Against the wall across the room, just left of the front door as you come in and kick your shoes off, are the two tropical fish tanks: the large one occupied by everything from vividly glowing little neon tetras up to a dashing red swordtail and the mate he dashes after, and a very fat, very gravid, black mollie; the smaller ten-gallon aquarium sparkling with rainbow-colored guppies and one-inch-long catfish.

It was not quite 10:30 p.m. Friday, March third. And I was out of the shower, heading for bed. Early in the eve for me to be turning in, true, but on Tuesday I’d hit the sack at 3 a.m., Wednesday night I’d not slept a wink, and last night I’d gone to bed at two this morning but remained awake for an hour thinking about Wednesday night.

Tomorrow evening, the peak of the week, I would be escorting to dinner for the first time one Anjarene Rubela, which sounds like a severe skin disease, but isn’t, and if it were I’d rub it on girls. Judging merely by the way Anjarene looked, which so far was all I could judge by, if we ate anything spicy I might not get any sleep at all from then until Monday.

So I was already yawning, sort of psyching myself into the mood, when my bare feet hit the bedroom’s black carpet, and the phone rang.

I sat on the edge of the bed, scowled at the bugger while it rang twice more, then shrugged, grabbed it, and said, “Hello.”

“Hello. Is this Mr. Scott? Sheldon Scott?”

The voice was deep, but it banged my ear with what seemed unnecessary authority, like the sound of those L.A. citizens who raise their voices when phoning Pasadena.

“Yeah, this is Shell Scott. Who’s calling? And” — I got a fleeting vision of Anjarene, and simultaneously a sickening premonition — “why?”

“This is Mayor Fowler, of Newton, California, Mr. Scott. Everson Fowler. The matter I wish to discuss is of some urgency, or I would not have phoned at this hour.”

“Oh?” Usually the calls I get at night on the bedroom phone are from very close friends, or hoods, informants — or lovelies like Anjarene. “You’re a mayor, huh?”

“Yes. Of course. Are you free? Could you come to Newton? As soon as possible — tonight?”

“Well … yeah. Sure. Yeah, if it’s horrendously important. I did have a little, ah, job to do tomorr — “

“You must excuse me if I’m brusque, Mr. Scott. I am very tired, and I have little time. If it is agreeable to you, I would appreciate your coming here to conduct an investigation for a few of my associates and me. This is not strictly official city business, but it would be profitless to go into details unless I am assured of your cooperation.”

“O.K., you’ve got it.” I sighed. I would not be sharing anything spicy tomorrow night with Anjarene. “Mayor … Newton — “

“Not Mayor Newton. Mayor Fowler.”

“Yeah, I know. I was trying to place Newton — it’s up north, isn’t it?”

“Yes, about fifty miles beyond San Francisco. You’re not familiar with our wonderful city? ‘Newton — the Newest, Nicest City in the Whole Wide West’? Our population has grown — “

“You bet. Sure.” He was a mayor, all right. “Of course I’m familiar with your city, Mr. Mayor. It’s just that I haven’t been north of San Francisco for years. If you’re in a hurry, I’d better fly up.”

“Excellent, excellent.”

“I’ll find out when my plane gets in tomorrow and let you know. By the way, my familiarity with your city is limited to what I’ve got from newspapers or television, but could I have read a few items recently about Newton that weren’t so wonderful?”

“Yes. That is precisely the problem, Mr. Scott, and my reason for contacting you. There is corruption here, serious corruption and criminal manipulation, malfeasance — much more serious than any of us realized until quite recently.”

He went on for a full minute, speaking crisply and concisely, cramming a good deal of info into the time. He filled me in on one recent case of proven “corruption,” which was the word Mayor Fowler used more than any other, and told me of several areas where suspicion of payoffs, bribery, felonious extortion, and even violent assault was more than justified by the available evidence, even though that evidence was not — yet — sufficient for the issuing of indictments or hope of successful prosecutions.

The violence, Mayor Fowler concluded, encompassed everything from mere threats of physical damage to persons or property, through mild-to-severe beatings including an assortment of broken arms and legs plus a concussion or two, to finally murder.

“Yes, now murder,” Mayor Fowler said. “Eight days ago a man named Ramirez, an undercover investigator for the district attorney’s office, was killed. Shot three times, murdered. He had been investigating the activities of a man named Hugh Grimson and his suspected connection with a local establishment, Silvano Enterprises, known locally as Silvano’s Garage, where individuals of highly unsavory reputation are employed and many others congregate, including paroled felons named — “

“Mr. Mayor, I wonder, could you slow it down a bit? You’ve thrown quite a bunch of names at me already, Ramirez, Grimson, somebody’s garage, and — “

“I am sorry, Mr. Scott. A man — of whom I hope soon to inform you — is coming to my home at midnight, and it is important that I be alert and perceptive when I meet him. I am now so weary I am mentally befuddled, and I intend to nap for an hour or so before he arrives. In the little time I have for explanation, I expect merely to give you a general understanding of the problem here, and its dimensions. After your arrival in Newton I shall explain in more detail. If I may simply continue, even if a bit helter-skelter?”

I said, “O.K., helter-skelter then, and I’ll try to keep track.”

“The only name you need concern yourself with at this point, Mr. Scott, is that of Hugh Grimson. He is the man you will be investigating. You will be studying in minute detail Mr. Grimson’s background, his associates, his current activities.”

“But … isn’t he the guy Ramirez, I mean the late Ramir — “

The mayor had not paused for breath. “Some of us,” he continued, “have for many months suspected Mr. Grimson of involvement in a variety of criminal activities and enterprises, suspected that he is one of the sources, indeed perhaps the very fount, of the growing corruption in our city. But there has not heretofore been any viable evidence to that effect, nothing that would enable us to take meaningful action against him.”

I hated to interrupt, but I asked, “Is this guy Grimson a real hood? I mean, like, does he go around killing lots of people and — “

“I cannot say with certainty at this moment, though later tonight I may be in possession of evidence that he has personally murdered at least one individual. I intend to inform you of this possibility if you will allow me to continue. Mr. Grim — “

“Hell, I only — “

” — son has resided in Newton for not more than four years, but during that time he has been unusually active in the political and commercial life of our city. He is also a man of very substantial means, and in consequence must now be numbered among the most prominent of our citizens, a man with powerful friends and considerable influence. He dines with state senators, our congressmen, even police officials, while at the same time consorting with decidedly unsavory individuals, some of whom are known to have criminal records. Despite this, it has been suggested that he enter the political arena, even run for office in the forthcoming elections — “

“Ah.”

” — and there have been fatuous comments in the less reliable of our two newspapers to the effect that the day might come when Hugh Grimson could, incredibly, become the governor of California!”

“I’ve got to ask this one, Mr. Mayor. Fire me if you want to. The political office, at which it has been suggested Mr. Grimson take a run, might that be a local office? Perhaps even the office of Newton’s mayor, which is incumbented by … well, which is the one wherein you are at? Let me try that again — “

“Your assumption is correct. What I am attempting to impress upon you, Mr. Scott, is: this man is dangerous!”

“Just one more quickie, sir. When would Mr. Grimson’s — and your — campaign commence?”

“I have personally begun my campaign for reelection, Mr. Scott. I do not, however, expect that Mr. Grimson will be campaigning at all. I do expect that he will be in prison, where I am certain he belongs.”

Mayor Fowler paused. I didn’t say anything.

“Indeed,” he went on, “if I have not been totally misinformed about your peculiar talents and abilities — “

“What do you mean, peculiar?”

” — I have every confidence that you, personally, may be largely responsible for assuring that justice is meted out to Hugh Grimson in full measure.”

I made no further comment, even though the mayor paused once again. After a long moment he continued, “Well, then. I now come to the most recent, and most hopeful, development since I and my associates determined that, for the good of our city, Mr. Grimson must be exposed — if, of course, there is anything significant to expose, if he is involved in criminal activities. I — we — wish to be fair.”

“Sure we do.”

“Unfortunately, as I have already stated, to date our most strenuous efforts have availed us little in this regard. However, earlier this evening I was phoned by an alleged informant. Not only has this individual for some time been associated with Mr. Grimson, including personally participating in various illegal enterprises all of which were overseen by Grimson, but he alleges that it was Hugh Grimson himself who personally and with purposeful deliberation murdered Joe Ramirez.”

“I see. I don’t suppose he expressed it in quite that way?”

“If memory serves me well, his precise words were, ‘I seen Mr. G. blast him myself. Two in the gut — blam-blam — and then one blam in the conk for security.’”

“Did this informant say who he was? Did he refer to the killer only as Mr. G.? And are you sure this guy said he saw the killing?”

“My caller did not give me his name. His voice was muffled, disguised I assume. He referred to the killer not only as Mr. G. but as Hugh, and as Grimson. His claim is that he did personally witness the commission of the crime. That was an accident, but he did indeed see the murder, which is of the utmost importance since if he was not a participant he is therefore an eyewitness who was not also an accessory to the crime.”

“Yeah, all well and good, if this guy’s who he claims to be, if he really saw the shooting, if he was not an accomplice, and if Mr. G. actually knocked off Ramirez in the first place. By the way, about Ram — “

“I am convinced of the man’s integrity — or, at least in this specific instance, his veracity. He is obviously privy to much that goes on in Mr. Grimson’s organization. Organization was his own word. Moreover, as I indicated earlier, we have arranged to meet, here in my home, face to face. I consider myself an extremely shrewd judge of men and their motives, if I do say so myself, Mr. Scott. And by midnight or soon thereafter — assuming I get a minimum of rest — I should be certain, one way or another, if this man is completely worthy of belief. Which I am already virtually certain he is.”

“I realize you’re a little pressed for time, Mr. Mayor, but there is one thing. Not really important, but I’m curious to know how you happened to call. Why me?”

“I have mentioned my associates. There are five of us, all deeply concerned about the corruption in our city. One of them mentioned your name to me quite recently. He spoke very highly of you, although I do recall he laughed…. Ah, it is his feeling, and mine — of our entire little group, in fact — that it might well be advantageous to enlist the aid of an outside investigator. My associate argued with some logic that, since our orthodox and conventional methods have to date met with little success, what we need is an oddball….”

The mayor stopped, started over. “We need someone with a fresh approach, an outsider — an individual not involved emotionally or in any other way with Newton’s problems, and not known to the local riffraff — one who has at times employed unusual but often peculiarly effective methods….”

Mayor Fowler paused once more. “In the interest of brevity, may I simply repeat the words of my associate, even though they may perhaps be mildly offensive to you?”

“Of course. I do not take offense easily, Mr. Mayor.”

“He said — and if memory serves me well I am simply quoting him verbatim — ‘Hire the nut if you possibly can. That white-haired ape may burn down the fire station and terrorize half the secretaries in city hall, but he’ll get the job done. He’s good, he’s tough, he’s got guts, but mainly he’s the luckiest bastard south of the north pole.’ Mr. Scott, please do not assume that I personally — “

“So,” I said stiffly, “he said that, did he? O.K., Fowler. Who is this bigmouth — “

“The, ah, recommendation was given me by Mr. Henry Wainwright, who is our district attorney’s chief investigator — “

“Hank?” I pulled my jaw back in, even smiled a little. “Hell, Hank Wainwright worked in the Intelligence Division here maybe three, four years ago.”

“Yes. He has been with the office of the district attorney for about three years now.”

“I’ll be damned. Tell Hank that after I get up there, he’d better not drink anything that smells funny. Once he put a whole ounce of — “

“I am pressed for time, Mr. Scott. Besides, you may personally inform Mr. Wainwright that you are going to poison him, or whatever it is you intend, tomorrow. I am to join three of my associates at the Sherwood for luncheon, and you will meet them at that time. If that is all, then….”

“Yeah. I get it. I’ll check with the airport and call you back in a few minutes. O.K.?”

“Excellent, excellent.”

“There is one other item, Mayor Fowler. Just a little bitty thing. The guy who got two in the gut, and one in the conk for security, he was digging into the doings of Hugh Grimson, right? And you suspected, and now know for sure if your informant spilled the real beans, that he was murdered by the said Hugh Grimson, right? And what you want me to do is come up there and start digging into the doings of Hugh Grimson. Right?”

“Precisely so.”

“Swell. Knowing what to expect in advance gives me a feeling of more … security. Well, I’ll call — “

“Mr. Scott, it occurs to me that you may feel your efforts here may expose you to some extraordinary danger. Please dispossess yourself of that thought. The areas of your investigation will very likely not require you to interview, or contact in any way, Mr. Grimson personally. Neither he nor his associates, who I must in all honesty say are a most offensive lot, need even know you have been employed.” He paused. “We of course have other investigators working on this matter. And if the testimony of my informant — who may at almost any moment now be hammering upon my door — proves to be both valid and valuable, there will be required only supporting evidence, corroboration of his claims, routine investigation. You see?”

He paused again. “So I believe I can assure you, Mr. Scott, that your work for us here in Newton will not place you in any jeopardy.”

I told him that was swell, and hung up.

Mayor Fowler made the whole thing sound like a piece of angel food cake.

At that moment, of course, I did not know if his appraisal of the situation was accurate or if he was off his rocker entirely. I did not know that soon — very soon — I would be reminding this pompous and pooped politician of what he had just told me.

I did not, could not, know that I would be standing before him — not exactly standing, more like bent over, taking a bit of the strain off my spracked bones and sprained ligaments, with fresh black-and-blue marks on my bruises and crankcase oil all over me and my tongue hanging out maybe half a foot — saying to Everson Fowler:

“Mr. Mayor, I don’t think you’ve got the faintest goddamn idea what jeopardy means!”

</code>

<code> 4

When the Coastal Airlines jet banked for a turn that would line it up with Newton’s now-inadequate airport, I snubbed out my cigarette in the armrest ashtray and looked down at the sprawling city.

There was a lot of sprawl for an almost-brand-new city, a lusty and still-growing community. Less than ten years ago Newton had been born as one of the offspring of a large conglomerate that had earlier constructed on bare desert land in Arizona the hugely profitable — to the conglomerate’s stockholders — city of Golden Sands. Building on success, and profiting from a few mistakes, Newton had been intelligently designed to be, initially, a city of a hundred thousand — but with room to grow.

And grow it had. Newton’s population today, as the mayor had last night informed me with some pride, as though he had fathered a great many of the citizens himself, totaled nearly half a million.

With Newton’s booming growth had come multimillion-dollar expenditures for city streets, freeways and overpasses and interchanges, schools, homes, entire business and residential districts, official vehicles, police cars and buses and fire engines, and a thousand other things that cost more than a buck.

Also not to be ignored, not by a long shot, were U.S. government contracts and revenue sharing and grants that had grown suddenly — especially in the last two or three years — from a cute little monkey of governmental benevolence into a King Kong of Federal Funds for this-that-and-the-other, you name it and you can have it.

The “Federal Funds” alone — this being a Washington, D.C., euphemism for the billions of dollars extracted from taxpaying people — were sufficient to construct several Disneylands with enough financial fallout to make a hundred legitimate, and illegitimate, millionaires. So, inevitably, with the boom had come the sticky-fingered citizens, the grafters and leeches, the operators and freeloaders along for the sweet ride. And crooks. Real, professional, hard-working, dedicated-to-the-job crooks. Or, in the mayor’s words, “corruption and malfeasance.”

Newton didn’t look corrupt from the air. But what does? We landed smoothly, vibrated during the roar of reversed jet engines, then taxied to a stop.

Except for the clothes I was wearing — one of my more conservative “business suits,” beautifully tailored from smooth pearly-gray cloth that had in it rippling hints of colorful iridescences like dyed lightning — I’d brought along only one other suit, and a slacks-and-cardigan sports outfit. They were in my single piece of luggage, along with a full box of Super Vel cartridges for the short-barreled Colt .38 Special in the clamshell holster under my pearly-gray coat.

So, because I travel light, with only hand luggage and handgun, and had carried my one small suitcase aboard — and was moving in defiance of the stewardess’s admonition before the plane came to a complete stop — I was arranging to rent a car while other passengers were still coming down the ladder.

I’m used to driving my own convertible Cadillac in L.A., so I rented a year-old gunmetal-gray Cad convertible, signed the rental contract, and was on my way to meet Mayor Fowler. It was 8:15 a.m., exactly nine and a half hours since I’d called Fowler back to let him know I’d be taking a Coastal flight out of L.A. International, arriving in Newton at 8:05 a.m. I had told him I would rent a car at the airport and he’d given me directions to his home.

It was an uneventful ten-minute drive, except for one small, and probably unimportant, item. After leaving the airport, I turned right into Mulberry Drive, which went past the mayor’s house and continued on a couple of miles farther into Newton. As I spotted the private road I’d been looking for — a strip of asphalt ahead and on my left that led through acres of thickly massed walnut trees to the mayor’s home — a purple sports car crammed with teenagers swung around me, rocking on its springs, and zoomed away at not less than eighty miles an hour.

I got an odd, tight feeling at the top of my spine. Not because of the sports car, which had peace symbols and cute signs painted on it, but because when it pulled out from behind me I glanced at the rearview mirror and spotted a dark sedan a block or so back. For a second or so I couldn’t figure why sight of that buggy would trigger the mild tension. Then I got it.

Over the years it has become habitual for me to check people around me on the street, or cars behind me when I’m driving. It’s largely an unconscious process, but because it is automatic the faint alarm bells also go off automatically if I spot the same car or person two or three times in a row.

And I now recalled that when I’d stopped after leaving the airport, preparing to turn right into Mulberry, I had seen the same car behind me then. I couldn’t very well have missed it, because it was the only car on the half-mile stretch of road between the terminal and me — perhaps because I’d moved so speedily from plane to rented Cad — but I had also noticed its odd bluish-black color, and the fact that it was creeping along at something like ten or fifteen miles an hour.

I’d put it out of my mind — until now. But as I swung left at the private road and into the shadow of tree limbs arching overhead, a glance at the rearview mirror gave me a glimpse of the car as it zipped past, moving on toward Newton.

So, nothing. Some guy on his way to town from the airport. Or maybe even an old married couple, over thirty, clucking about purple sports cars and “What’s this younger generation coming to?”

The private road swung left and ended at an oval of asphalt surrounded by green lawn. Two or three acres here had been cleared of trees and tangled undergrowth and the land sloped downward from my right to left, so when I looked back toward where I’d come from, the treetops fifty yards or so away were about level with my eyes.

The mayor’s house was on my right, above me, reached by a dozen cement steps ending at a graveled path leading to the front door. It was a big house, one story but wide, painted an off-white with accents of charcoal gray. I trotted up the steps and started along the path, gravel crunching under my shoes, beginning to feel the bite of forty-degree air on my ears.

Before I reached the front door it swung open and a tall rangy man with a lot of dark hair streaked with gray, and “virile” gray-flecked sideburns reaching nearly down to his neck, stepped outside. He paused, head slightly lowered, examining me from dark heavy-browed eyes, his expression dubious.

“You must be….” Then he smiled — and the stern, even forbidding features suddenly became almost winsome. “Of course. Who else could you be? Good morning, Mr. Scott.”

His reaction was not unusual, one more evidence of the little crosses I bear above my neck. Most months of any year I am deeply tanned, face the approximate shade of a Tahitian lifeguard, and I have been told at least once that my hair resembles a horsebrush with thin ivory bristles and my eyebrows look like crushed cotton from the tops of vitamin-pill bottles.

So I merely smiled as winningly as I could, shook his outstretched hand, and said, “That’s right, Shell Scott. And you must be Mayor Fowler.”

“Precisely so. I am the mayor. And I welcome you to Newton, Mr. Scott. I — well, come in, come in.”

He seemed a little uptight for some reason, a bit on edge. My appearance is a mite unusual, but only rarely does it visibly disturb a new client. Particularly when, as was the case with Mayor Fowler, my description had already been conveyed to him. He stood aside as I walked in, then pulled the door shut and ushered me down two carpeted steps into a large living room with half the front wall given over to windows affording a view of the grounds, trees beyond, and I suppose the lights of Newton at night.

It was a great room. From my point of view, anyway. The room looked lived in and alive, somewhat cluttered but not by any excess of furniture. There was one massive dark-leather divan with a squat heavy table like a squared-off and polished tree trunk before it, two matching easy chairs covered with the same dark leather and big enough for big men to get comfortable in, a large table, and two comparatively spindly chairs at opposite sides of a small table in the corner to my left. Atop the small table were arrayed a number of gold and silver chess men, positions indicating a game already in progress. A small desk was in the far corner to my right.

That was all of the furniture. Bookcases occupied most of the far wall. The carpet, covering the floor and the steps I’d just come down, was the rich dark red of burgundy wine. Books, some open and face down, others in irregular stacks, covered the larger table, and there were more books, folders, piles of bond paper, and what looked like legal briefs at several places on the floor below the bookcases.

As we both sat down on the big divan I told the mayor I liked the room’s combination of warmth and solid comfort. He seemed pleased as I added, “A guy could kick off his shoes and thunder around in here without worrying about cracking the teacups or disarranging doilies. Of course, that may not strike you as a virtue — “

“Indeed, that is exactly — precisely my feeling. A man should not feel like an avalanche in his own home.” He paused. “You see, I am no longer married, Mr. Scott. My wife and I were divorced more than three years ago, immediately after I was elected to my first two-year term as mayor.” He paused. “I like to think of it, not as losing a wife, but as gaining a city.”

He paused pointedly, or thus it seemed to me, so I smiled and nodded my head. Seated this close to him, I could see the lines of strain, or weariness, in his face and noted that his eyes were a bit bloodshot.

“Subsequent to that,” he went on, “I threw out the — the teacups and doilies, in your telling phrase, and personally supervised the complete redecorating of the house.”

He continued with more small talk, discussed the home’s landscaping, even touched lightly on a few problems facing the mayor of a city growing with almost disturbing speed, then returned to home base, so to speak.

A couple of minutes went by like that, and I began to wonder. I did think the living room was swell, and it was undoubtedly a splendid entire house, but was there not work to be done, devilry to be undone, criminals to be confounded?

So before the mayor had quite finished describing the problems he’d had with his swimming-pool pump, I said, “By the way, did you get what you wanted from your informant last night?”

He became quiet, but didn’t answer immediately, so I said, “The guy showed up, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes. He did, indeed. Not until long after midnight, however. But his information was of little value. Worthless, in fact.”

He leaned forward on the divan and looked directly at me, his features assuming the more stern and forbidding, and probably more natural, expression he’d worn when meeting me at the door. “I will be completely candid, Mr. Scott. In truth, I have been avoiding this moment — I am exceedingly embarrassed.”

I’d guessed he was avoiding something and I had become increasingly curious about what might be eating at him, but I kept my mouth shut and let him finish.

“I have put you to some trouble, and expense, and all to no purpose. Quite simply, my — that is, my associates’ and my — need for your services is a matter of considerably less urgency than I assumed.”

“Oh?” I blinked at him.

“I am sorry. I know I told you I was convinced of my alleged informant’s veracity, that I was virtually certain he was worthy of belief. But I was then very tired, mentally befuddled — I never did get the nap I hoped would refresh me.” He rubbed his eyes briefly with the fingers and thumb of a large strong hand, then continued. “In retrospect, it is clear that I gave far too much weight to what my informant said to me last night on the phone — and, in consequence, acted precipitously in requesting your aid before I had actually spoken to the … the besotted hoodlum.”

“Besotted? You mean he was drunk?”

“Precisely so. Staggering drunk. Mr. Scott, when we spoke last night, I perhaps indicated that you could be of much service to me, and my associates, no matter what information might later be forthcoming from the individual I then mentioned to you. In some small degree I may have deceived you — because to a larger degree I deceived myself — by failing to indicate that, without the information, proof in a word, that I expected to be in possession of long before now, there is simply no starting point for a meaningful investigation. Without the viable evidence I anticipated, it would be profitless for you to pursue what has become a wild-goose chase. There is, indeed, no reason for you to remain in Newton at all.”

I said, “Could we put it like this: I’m fired?”

He grimaced slightly. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. But, essentially … yes.”

“Well, O.K., I’ll get on my horse — “

“I am extremely sorry, Mr. Scott. I will naturally reimburse you for your time, the expense of your flight.” He paused, and fished into his coat pocket. “Would three hundred dollars be sufficient?”

“Sure.”

He leaned forward and sort of hesitantly slipped me some folded bills, much as a five-foot hubby with a six-foot wife might sneak a sawbuck to the topless waitress. I managed to spread them apart and get a peek, however, and it was three C-notes. Splendid, I thought. It was more than sufficient, and the feel of real hundred-dollar bills was much more satisfying, even more smoothly sensual, than credit cards or a check. Such thoughts naturally turned my mind from negative to positive, and I must have smiled, perhaps dreamily.

Because Mayor Fowler said in a rather puzzled tone, “You seem quite … pleased, Mr. Scott. I confess, I feared your reaction might be less gracious.”

“What? Oh, I was thinking about a tomato named Anjarene — skip it. My mind was wandering. But you’re the client, after all, Mr. Mayor. You say stay, I stay, you say go, I go. However, I would like to know why in hell — “

“If I may anticipate your probable question,” the mayor interrupted me, “which you are probably not ungentlemanly enough to voice, I deeply regret my failure to inform you before now that your presence here would not be required.”

That was exactly what I’d started to ask him.

“As I have indicated, Mr. Dibler did not arrive until long past the hour when I expected him. By the time he left it was well after three this morning. I was very tired — and upset, angry at the outcome of our meeting, I confess — and simply went straight to bed. I had … almost … fallen asleep, when I realized I had not informed you of the fiasco. I did call you then, around four this morning, but there was no answer.”

He couldn’t have sneaked more meaning into that “…almost…” if I had deliberately bellowed “SURPRISE!” into his ear as he’d been dropping peacefully into dreamland.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “I’d left my apartment by then, since the only flight that would get me here at a reasonably early hour, before all the corruption and malfeasance got away, required my early departure from Los Angeles and a flight-change in San Francisco. So I had to transfer to a cute little plane, which took off … an hour and a half … later.”

The mayor cocked his head on one side. His heavy eyebrows pulled down and in, slowly moving closer to each other like a pair of belligerent caterpillars. He didn’t look entirely pleased. There was perhaps more to this man, I decided, than was apparent from a quick glance. I kind of got the impression, if he ever felt bugged enough, he might bite through a two-inch steel spike.

I stood up. “Well, I’ll see you around — “

“I — please, sit down, Mr. Scott. I don’t mean to be ungracious … brusque. You must have had as little sleep as I. Would you care for a drink? It’s a bit early in the day for me.”

“It’s also too early for me,” I said. But I perched on the edge of the divan, adding, “Too early for me to start, anyhow.”

“And I’m sure you must have some questions, Mr. Scott.”

“Well, I’ll admit I’m curious to know if, when the guy finally showed up this morning, he still claimed to have seen Hugh Grimson knock down Ramirez. You know, blam and blam — “

Mayor Fowler smiled a bit stiffly. “And one in the conk,” he said, nodding his own conk. “Yes, he repeated his allegations, and in almost precisely the same words. As though he had rehearsed it. Which I assume he did.”

“So what was his game?”

“Pardon?”

“What was he after?”

“Money. He labored under the misapprehension that, for his alleged ‘proof’ that Mr. Grimson shot Ramirez — to which, by the way, he said he would be willing to testify in court if assured police protection — I, or the city, would pay him ten thousand dollars. At least that was the figure he first mentioned.”

“Did he have anything to sell?”

“Nothing that was not available to everyone from accounts in the newspapers. A fact which soon became unmistakably evident. You see, when I spoke to the man on the phone I had no idea who he was. I assumed he was disguising his voice, but when he arrived here I realized he was simply drunk. Also, I then recognized him, and naturally expected the worst.”

“Why naturally?”

“He is a small-time hoodlum, a petty thief, but he never — so far as I am aware, at least — was associated in any way with Mr. Grimson. More important, on two previous occasions he offered his ‘eyewitness’ testimony to the police on the condition that he be paid for his cooperation. On both occasions his offer was declined, since his information was obviously fraudulent.” The mayor shrugged. “He is well-known to our local law-enforcement agencies.”

“He actually had the nerve to ask for ten big ones?”

“Nerve, or the temporary dementia found in bottles. Also, as I said, the ten thousand was his initial figure. As we conversed, and drank my best Scotch, he lowered his demand to a request for five thousand, two thousand, and, finally, ‘Well, yrhonor, what’ll you gimme?’”

It was a surprisingly different voice that suddenly popped out of the mayor, and I could almost believe I was listening to a whining hoodlum ready to settle for fifty bucks. The mayor was an excellent mimic — I guessed. I had to guess, not having ever spoken to the boozy Dibler. At least, not yet.

I said, “Maybe I should talk to this Dibler myself. I feel I ought to do something for my three hundred besides fly back and forth — “

The mayor blinked at me, raising his heavy brows. “How did you know the man’s name?”

“You mentioned it. I think.”

“I did? I was unaware that I had. Well … it’s not important, but, yes, his name is Eugene Dibler. Yoogy to those who know him, including the police.” He paused. “There is really no point in your speaking to the man, Mr. Scott. You may take my word for it. I, of course, have no objections; it is merely that I dislike to see you waste further time and effort. I have already put you to so much unnecessary trouble — “

“No trouble. I probably can’t get a return flight to L.A. for a few hours, anyhow. After all, if it’s a waste of my time, this Yoogy Dibler’s really the guy responsible for it. Seems to me I should at least use up a little of his time in return.”

The mayor smiled without lots of enthusiasm. But after a few more seconds, and some fumbling in various pockets, he produced a slip of paper and said, “Mr. Dibler left his ‘calling card.’ In case I changed my mind, he said, with wonderful optimism.”

I took the slip of paper, on which was scrawled in pencil, “1412 Oleta St.” “No phone?” I asked.

“Who would phone him?”

“Incidentally, since the guy at the center of all the trouble in Newton is, presumably, this Hugh Grimson, would you want me to pay him a quick call, size him up as long as I’m here?”

“No.” The mayor shook his head. “Not only would that be very difficult, but should Mr. Grimson find your manner, ah, abrasive — that is, should he feel you were in any way a threat or even a severe annoyance to him, which possibility I feel is not entirely remote — he could cause you no end of difficulty. I suggest that you forget about Mr. Grimson entirely, Mr. Scott. He is, no matter what some of our citizens may believe, an extremely dangerous man.”

“I don’t think he’d scare me to death, Mayor. But why would it be difficult?”

“Mr. Grimson is a difficult man to find, if he does not desire to be found.”

“I imagine I could find him. First, he’s not aware that I’ve got any interest in him, and besides that he doesn’t know me from Adam. More to the point, tagging guys who prefer to remain untagged is part of my job. At which, if I say so myself, I’m pretty good.”

The mayor appeared to be struggling to suppress some amusement. Either that, or he was having an attack of colic. But then all traces of amusement, if that’s what it had been, disappeared entirely and were replaced by the stern and unmistakably forbidding expression I’d already noted a time or two.

“Let me make myself clear, Mr. Scott. Under the circumstances, and in view of the delicate and, yes, perilous nature of investigations even now being pursued — to which, you will recall, I referred in our initial discussion last night — I prefer that you do absolutely nothing about Mr. Grimson, indeed, that you forget I even mentioned his name. In fact, sir, I insist.” He paused, sort of glowering from the bloodshot eyes. “Is that quite clear?”

“Quite,” I said. And I stood up again.

This time Mayor Fowler did not request that I sit down. Instead, he escorted me to the door.

We shook hands, he expressed once more his deep regret that I had been inconvenienced, then he closed the front door as I climbed into the Cadillac, started it, and swung in a tight circle to head back the way I’d come.

Rolling down the narrow drive toward Mulberry, I pushed a thought or two around in my mind. The “uptightness” or tension I’d initially noted in Mayor Fowler had never entirely left him during our conversation. There hadn’t been any discussion about it — and, conceivably, he was like that all the time — but something was unquestionably eating at him. Maybe it was merely lack of sleep, or a mild case of the twitches that afflict most politicians facing an imminent campaign for reelection.

More curious was the matter of Mr. Grimson and Mr. Dibler.

Though Mayor Fowler had made it quite clear he did not want me mucking around Hugh Grimson, even that I was to forget his name if possible, he had been less insistent that I forget about Eugene Dibler. In fact, I’d gotten the peculiar impression that he wanted me to call on Yoogy.

Or maybe I just wanted to give Yoogy a once-over myself. Either way, I could check the guy out in half an hour, and if he engendered no more confidence in me than he had in Mayor Fowler, I would be headed back to Los Angeles. And the Spartan Apartment Hotel. And Anjarene Rubela.

So I swung left into Mulberry Drive and headed toward Newton, thinking more of Anjarene than of Yoogy.

And the more I thought of Anjarene, the more I began hoping Yoogy wouldn’t be home….

</code>

<code> 5

Yoogy was home.

Oleta was one of the first streets inside the city limits, and I took a right at the start of the 1500 block, noting immediately that, if there were any tracks in Newton, Oleta Street had to be on the wrong side of them.

Maybe Newton itself was less than a decade old, but most of the houses here looked as if they’d been among the first built, possibly for practice. A couple of them were obviously empty, their windows broken and only scrubby clumps of yellowed grass remaining of what might once have been lawns.

The corner house on my right, just past the first intersection, was 1412. I followed a cement walk to the front door and, not finding a bell, knocked.

“Yo!” a voice yelled from somewhere inside. “Yo, that you, Barney?”

Before I could tell him it wasn’t Barney, the door swung open, clunking against something inside on the floor — I could hear it bumping over the carpet — and a short, thin, pinched-faced little man who actually looked like a Yoogy stared up at me with his mouth open.

He was wearing black pants, a pair of gray socks, and a white undershirt with a hole in it. “What happened to Barney?” he asked.

“Beats me,” I said.

His face had been a couple of feet distant when he spoke, and it wasn’t distant enough. Not only could I smell booze, but the fumes almost made my eyes water.

“Are you Mr. Eugene Dibler?”

“Ain’t we formal this morning? Yeah. I’m him.”

He let his chin dangle some more and just looked at me, so I said, “O.K. if I come inside for a minute, Mr. Dibler?”

“What for?”

“I’ve just been talking to Mayor Fowler — “

He winced. He actually seemed to sort of scrunch together and shrink, only a little, but visibly, and he squinched his eyes together, then opened them about half as wide as they’d been before, which had not been very wide to begin with.

I really got the feeling I had learned all I’d come here to learn, but I went on. “He told me of your conversation with him last night, or early this morning, and while I understand he didn’t think your information was worth paying for, I figure even Mayor Fowler’s judgment is perhaps not infallible.”

“Not what?”

“Maybe he goofed.”

“Yeah. Yeah, he sure did. Missed the boat, he did.” Yoogy opened his eyes a fraction wider. “You jawed with Fowler since I seen him, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“So what’d he say we talked about?”

“Mr. G., Hugh Grimson. The Ramirez killing.”

“Yeah. I guess you seen him, that’s what it was. So I guess you know he wouldn’t pay me nothing.”

I nodded.

“I don’t suppose you come here with a certify check all made out either?”

“Well, naturally not, Mr. Dibler. I haven’t even heard your side of the story yet. However, I was sufficiently interested to consider investing … a little of my time, at least, in checking the facts with you personally.”

I think the word “investing” grabbed him. He started nodding, and pulled his chin up.

“Of course, if you’re not interested — “

“C’mon in.”

I spent less than five minutes inside Yoogy’s house. It was more than enough. The carpet was a mottle of light gray and dark gray, the darker areas places where various fluids had apparently been spilled with some regularity. Among them, very likely, a good deal of Crocus-and-water, Crocus being a 70-proof bourbon, an empty bottle of which must have been the item I’d heard clunk when the door opened, since it rested on the floor near a not-so-easy chair with a coiled spring sticking up out of its seat.

During those five minutes, Yoogy tossed down two shots from a nearly full bottle of Crocus, and was generous enough to say to me, “You don’t want none, do you?”

I didn’t; it was still too early in the a.m. for me, but even had it been late I would have declined. Crocus was a brand I had seen in the booze stores, and if it’s true that you get what you pay for, I figured at $2.89 a fifth the stuff would give you a hangover before you could get a glow on.

After a couple of minutes during which Yoogy Dibler, in response to almost no urging from me, repeated essentially the story as relayed to me by Mayor Fowler, I said, “Well, if your story’s true, that should cook Mr. G.‘s goose.”

“What d’ya mean, if it’s true?”

“I’m not questioning your veracity, Mr. Dibler — “

“My what?”

” — but you’ve just told me that Mr. Grimson shot Ramirez twice, and then banged a slug into his head.”

“Yeah … so?”

He’d impressed me as pretty well tanked up when he opened the door, but Yoogy by now seemed only precariously conscious. Every once in a while he pulled his mouth shut, slid his lower lip against the upper one and forward in an exaggerated pout, then let his chin drop again. But he kept his half-lidded eyes on me.

“According to the homicide detectives, that’s about the way it must have happened. But the Medical Examiner’s report states that the victim — Ramirez — must have been shot in the head first.”

“First? That ain’t the way I … Why would he say that? Guy gets shot three-four times, it don’t make no difference what order he gets shot — “

“Ah, but it does, Mr. Dibler.”

“It does?”

“It does, indeed. You see, once a man’s dead, all vital functions cease, since there is no longer any vitality in the vital functions. Right?”

“I … guess, yeah.”

“Therefore, because there was no evidence of either arterial or ventricular osmosis, or oozing, at the sites of the body wounds, the victim must have been dead before the two bullets entered his body at those sites. Or, to put it simply, since he was dead when shot in the body, he must have been killed already. By the slug in his noodle. Which casts some doubt on your claim that Ramirez was plugged in the body first.”

“Well … it all happened so fast….”

“Which was it, Mr. Dibler? First in the body and then the head, or vice versa?”

“You — it could of gone either way, I guess. Like I said, it happened so fast, blam-blam and … Maybe it could of been in the conk first. Yeah, it could of been. Probably was. I wasn’t even supposed to be there anyways, see — “

“So Hugh Grimson shot Ramirez in the head. And then he put a couple more into the victim, after he was dead, just to make sure he was killed?”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“On the other hand, Mr. Dibler, the autopsy revealed that — contrary to what the M.E. originally assumed — there was seepage and even internal traumae, or black-and-blue spots, at the site of one of those body wounds, which was not as had been supposed an entrance wound but rather an exit wound. The medical clues were found at the entrance of that exit wound, or in the man’s back. Which is what confused everybody.”

I paused, but Yoogy didn’t say anything. He lifted the bottle and poured another shot of Crocus.

“So at that point it was clear Ramirez was first shot in the back. Then in the head. And finally in the front. Could it have happened that way, Mr. Dibler?”

He slugged down his bourbon, clamped his jaws together, and hissed breath out through his teeth. That was all.

I said, “I assume, for ten thousand dollars, you will testify in court to that story, Mr. Dibler? Or, rather, those stories? Or to any one or all of them?”

He slid his lower lip forward again, slowly, smacked his chops, scraped his tongue on his teeth as though removing a thin film of mold, and finally spoke. “You,” he said mildly, fixing his half-lidded eyes on me, “are one of them smart-ass bastards, ain’t you?”

“I suppose you could say that.” I stood up.

Well, it hadn’t been entirely a waste. I’d learned the mayor was a good mimic. Listening to Yoogy was almost like listening to Fowler imitating Yoogy.

I said, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Dibler,” and let myself out.

</code>

<code> Maybe it had just happened to wind up behind me earlier, when I’d seen it flash past Mayor Fowler’s private drive on the way into Newton. And maybe it was merely another coincidence that its driver, or even driver and one or more passengers — I hadn’t yet gotten a look at whoever might be inside the heap — was returning to the airport at the same time I was.

Maybe.

And if I had been planning to stick around I would for sure have made it my business to find out a great deal about the sedan and whoever was in it. But I was not planning to stick around. So I turned in the Cad’s keys, went into the airport, and checked at the Coastal Airlines desk.

It was barely past 10 a.m., and the next flight back to L.A. took off at eleven-fifty.

“Fine, I’ll take it,” I said to the clerk. “When will that get me to L.A. International?”

He was giving me the exact arrival time, but I had lost interest. I checked my watch, glanced up to my left, and my eyes landed on, and kind of locked with, a pair of dark eyes with too much unhealthy looking puffy flesh surrounding them, gunning me from not more than three or four yards away. Close enough so the thin-faced stringbean could hear what I might say, should he so desire. And I got the impression he did so desire.

He was a man about forty, nearly six feet tall, probably no more than a hundred and fifty pounds in weight, wearing a dark brown suit a little too large for him, especially in the shoulders where the cloth drooped down like soft, slanting epaulets. He was a mean-looking cat. Thin lips that looked as if they’d got that way from being pressed together in anger or bitterness for too many years. A thin straight nose with more than enough hair hanging out of the nostrils. And then the puffy eyes, like those of an ancient, dissolute, dying Pan.

He dropped those eyes the moment my glance landed on him. Dropped them too quickly. Then he slowly raised his head, looking away from me with apparent interest at something across the terminal. He reached into the breast pocket of his coat and fished out a wooden toothpick wrapped in protective paper, peeled the paper off, and casually began working on a couple of teeth. Looked away too slowly, waggled the pick a bit too casually.

Right then, watching him poke at a tooth, suck, spit something toward the floor, I knew I wouldn’t be seeing L.A. International very early this afternoon. Maybe not till tomorrow, or even next week. Depending on how much time it took.

I turned back to the clerk and made a few inconsequential comments, then asked him, “Where’s the bar? If I’ve got to kill an hour, I might as well enjoy the homicide.”

“Right over there, sir. Shay’s Lounge.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, sir, straight across — “

“I mean the name.”

“Oh, yes. It is a splendid cocktail lounge, sir, nonetheless.”

“Just so there’s booze.”

During this heavy dialogue, I managed to cock my head slightly and get a fuzzy glimpse of the interested stringbean. Not so fuzzy I couldn’t tell he was looking straight at me again. But when I turned around and headed toward the cocktail lounge, Puffy Eyes had his back toward the Coastal Airlines desk, clearly a man without any interest in me.

I went straight to Shay’s Lounge and through the double doors without looking back, but once inside I kept one of the doors cracked enough so I could peek through. My friend was talking to the clerk I’d just left, then he turned and headed toward the bar.

I walked past tables and climbed onto a stool, ordered a bourbon and water, and paid for it. Behind the bar, a mirror reflected my image, others at the bar, the room behind me. And the double doors, one of which soon opened. I tossed down a slug of my highball. The mean-looking character didn’t come in, just pushed the door partly open, glanced around till he spotted me, then took off.

That belt of bourbon had felt good going down. I hadn’t realized it till then, but my throat had begun getting a bit dry. So I had one more cool swallow before going back to work.

I would have been greatly surprised, even disappointed, if my nosy new acquaintance had failed to climb into the dark sedan. He got in on its right side, and the driver immediately started the engine and took off. I wasn’t able to get a look at the driver, but there was nobody else in the Chrysler. That’s what it was, a two-year-old Chrysler Thunderbolt.

By the time I’d arranged for transportation — which took a little longer than it might have, since for obvious reasons I didn’t want the same car I’d been driving before — my pals were long gone. But I had a hunch I could catch up with them on Mulberry Drive, and the hunch was right. Well, almost. If backward or inside-out can be considered almost right.

I’d rented another Cadillac, this one sky-blue like my own souped-up bomb back home, but a four-door sedan instead of a convertible. Even though it was highly unlikely that the men who’d been on my tail earlier would expect me to be anywhere in the area now, switching from convertible to sedan and from dark gray to light blue gave me a little more feeling of — security, I guess.

I was rolling along at a pretty good clip toward downtown Newton, with about two and a half miles to go, the road behind me empty. I lit a cigarette, glanced into the rearview mirror again, and there they were. The car was a couple blocks back, but there was no doubt in my slightly numbed mind: it was the Chrysler Thunderbolt I’d been speeding to catch.

So much for security, I was thinking. And then I began getting that familiar sensation, the cool prickle like invisible icicles melting on the back of my neck, the tightness atop my spine becoming a noticeable knot. Because those guys weren’t on my tail again, weren’t even aware I was dead ahead of them. They’d merely detoured briefly for reasons of their own — a quick visit, perhaps — and were now on their way into town again.

I’d passed a few cars, but none had passed me, and there was only one place that blue-black buggy could have come from. In the last mile or more there was only one side road into which my pals could have turned — and from which, unquestionably, they must have turned — and from which, unquestionably, they must have just come in order to pull in behind me on Mulberry Drive.

It was the narrow private road through thickly massed walnut trees, rising slightly and then swinging left and continuing on into the oval of asphalt before the home of Mayor Everson Fowler.

I tromped on the gas, pulled away from the boys, took a right at the first side street on the outskirts of Newton, U-turned, waited till the Thunderbolt flashed by, and then moved in behind them. Just beyond Newton’s “City Limits” sign only a couple of blocks past Oleta where I’d jawed with boozy Yoogy, I slowed down and let them stay well ahead, merely making sure I didn’t lose them.

So my first trip into Newton wasn’t a sightseeing trip. I was barely conscious of bustle and traffic in the streets, the growing concentration of new-looking store fronts, apartment buildings, high-rise hotels, because I kept straining my eyes for a flash of blue-black at an intersection ahead of me.

After we’d traveled entirely through the downtown business district and the traffic was lighter and the buildings smaller, I saw that flash as my boys ahead took a right.

The street was Orange Avenue. When I swung into it the other car was two blocks ahead, with no traffic between us. Half a mile farther on the Chrysler pulled to the curb, the right-hand door opened, and a man — my man, thin, in the ill-fitting brown suit — got out.

The Chrysler pulled away from the curb, accelerating rapidly. The driver was the man I hadn’t gotten a look at yet, which was one reason I followed him. But as I passed the spot where he’d stopped I saw Puffy Eyes just going through the door of a long low undistinguished building set back behind a now-unlighted neon sign, “Newtonia Hotel.”

I figured we must be getting close to the city limits on Newton’s north side when, in the middle of the block ahead of me on Third Street, the Chrysler suddenly swung right and out of sight. I drove ahead, slowed crossing the intersection, Birch Street. A big two-or three-story building filled the entire block on my right, its white paint mottled, peeling in spots. Halfway up the block there was a twenty-foot gap in the curb; there the sidewalk slanted up to the building’s entrance, its heavy weighted door swung up overhead.

As I drove past I peered inside. There was no sign of the Chrysler. It was dark, gloomy in there, but I could see a cement ramp about thirty feet back, rising upward toward the floor above. Over the gaping entrance was a painted sign, black letters on yellow: “Silvano Enterprises, Inc.”

Or, if I recalled Mayor Fowler’s words: Silvano’s Garage.

I drove to the next intersection, Maple Street, and kept on going. Nobody had shot at me; nobody had even hit me on the head; nothing seriously disturbing had occurred, unless it was a cold look from a pair of puffy eyes. But, clearly, something peculiar was afoot in this burg. I didn’t yet have the faintest idea what it might be, but I now had not the slightest doubt that whatever it was, I was smack in the middle of whatever it was.

I had my flight reservation, sure; I could be in L.A. and home in a few hours, thus leaving Newton’s curiosities, and any potential lumps and fractures and possibly greater catastrophes, behind me. Or I could stay here and bumble around and conceivably get partially, even totally, ruined.

Flying home — to Anjarene, yet — was perhaps the sane, sensible thing to do. But there wasn’t any choice, not really. Not for a man long convinced there’s no truth in the adage that what you don’t know won’t hurt you; not for a man who’s been sapped from behind as often as I have.

So, naturally, I turned around and headed toward downtown Newton again.

</code>

<code> 6

The sherwood was Newton’s biggest, tallest, newest hotel. And far and away its finest.

In it were three dining rooms plus two separate cocktail lounges, and by noon — after twice phoning Mayor Fowler’s home without getting an answer — I had visited all five rooms but hadn’t seen anyone I recognized. I was hoping, of course, to spot the cheerful and familiar, though not recently seen, face of Hank Wainwright.

However, in the Lotus Room, which looked as sinfully luxurious as it sounded, I had seen a gorgeous tomato seated in a booth across from a heavyset sixtyish guy with lots of gray hair and, I presumed, lots of money. If my presumption was correct, and the lovely liked them old and rich, I got the impression she included me out of both categories, and maybe a couple others I hadn’t thought of. Because when I beamed at her with perhaps more toothy enthusiasm than necessary, she had — after a reasonably encouraging half-second-or-so glance, possibly before realizing my white hair was not retirement-white — returned my friendly ogle with the cold, fixed scrutiny of a wealthy waitress eyeing a dime tip.

But she was a gorgeous lass. And there had, after all, been that encouraging half-second. So, not having spotted Hank anywhere else, I strolled back toward the Lotus Room to get another squint at her.

I spotted her before I got there. She was at one of a pair of pay phones in a little alcove just this side of the dining room, jazzy profile toward me, dropping a dime into the slot.

I walked toward her, watching as she dialed. True, she had come close to deep-freezing my spleen with that one long icy gaze, but maybe when she got a real good look at me, up close, she’d thaw. Maybe she’d keel over in a dead faint, too. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Right then it dawned upon me that this was the first girl I’d seen since leaving L.A. I mean really seen. At least, the first real girl. And this one was really a real girl. There was, though, a kind of distant, a cool or slightly wintry — even glacial — air or aura about her, a quality not evident so much in the sculptured-ivory features or the slow and graceful and almost studied movements, but more in an intangible atmosphere, more sensed than seen, around her.

Whatever it was, it didn’t detract from the overall blood-warming effect she almost surely had not only on me but on most males, or the impression I got that beneath the wintry surface might be a whole month of Fourth of Julys. On the contrary, that bit of surface frost added something, like salt rimming a Margarita, or the chill in a good white wine.

Occupied with such ruminations, I’m not quite sure how I happened to notice the number she was dialing with one red-tipped finger.

I did, however. Noticed, and also recognized the number, since I had dialed it twice myself within the past hour. She, too, was calling Mayor Everson Fowler.

She listened in silence for several seconds, then hung up the phone with an expression of mild annoyance on her face — an expression which, when she glimpsed me standing three feet away, became somewhat less mild.

She stared at me from eyes the bewitching cool green of goblins’ blood, smooth brows pulled down, full lovely red lips that should never have pooched except for the chummiest of reasons forming an almost prunelike pucker of disapproval.

I won’t say it was an encouraging expression. But I am, if nothing else, a man of optimism, persistence, and daydreams. So I said, smiling harmlessly, “Ma’am, I beg your p — “

I felt the breeze, I believe, as she whirled and sped away. For a moment I stared after her, my rudely interrupted mouth still open, chin hanging down in a fashion reminiscent of Yoogy. Then I snapped my chops shut with a sharp click, thrust my jaw forward, and started thudding after her. Who did she think she was? I was not some oaf inviting her out behind the garage to vulcanize a flat, I was Shell Scott, persistent, optimistic private eye with an important question to ask her. Several important questions.

Including how come she was phoning the mayor who’d hired me, and fired me, and to whose home had so recently gone some extremely suspicious characters, myself excluded.

I even began thinking some dark, suspicious thoughts about the shapely green-eyed lovely as I followed her, watching the miraculously fluid and rhythmic swingy-sway of firm rounded hips beneath trim taut waist — which made it somewhat difficult to think dark, suspicious thoughts. And I watched it sit down on the brown-leather seat of a booth, and slide sweetly over it, and come gently to rest.

And then, enlarging the area of my gaze, I realized not only had she returned to the booth where I’d see her before, but there were now two men seated at the same table, the gray-haired billionaire, and — Hank Wainwright.

That was a moment not only of some surprise but of multiple pleasures. Part of it was my instant understanding of why the cool-hot-looking lovely with the provocative walk and eyes of goblins’-blood green had been phoning Mayor Fowler, and that, thank goodness, she was one of the good guys. Part was from finally locating the mayor’s three “associates,” which was why I’d come here in the first place. But most it was from suddenly seeing Hank Wainwright once more.

Not that we’d spent a lot of time together when he was working out of Central Intelligence in Los Angeles; we hadn’t. We’d toured the town two or three times, that was all. But he was a bright, energetic, happy-go-lucky go-to-hell guy, a few years older than I, who was always a pleasure to be around and, now, a pleasure to see again.

Hank noticed me walking toward the table right after I spotted him, and he sort of reared back in the booth and started grinning. When he grinned, you could tell it from two blocks away, because even in sober repose his good-looking, slightly satanic face looked ready to crack wide open in a smile.

As I stopped next to the booth he stood up, bent slightly forward as he stuck his arm out over the table, a man about six feet tall but so lean he looked longer.

“Shell, you sonofagun,” he said. “What in hell are you doing in Newton?”

“Same old thing, Hank,” I said, shaking his hand and grinning back at him. “Nose to the grindstone. I was following this young lady here.”

I gave her a suspicious sideways glance, as Hank said, “Sorry I asked,” and noted she was looking at me with mild interest. Which was a considerable improvement.

“I have some kind of reason to believe,” I went on, “that she may be the long-lost daughter of the late Emir of Istanbul, and thus heiress to eleven billion piastramis. My most vital clue is the fact that the real heiress has a tiny mole the size of a gnat, located, I am excited to reveal — “

“Behind her left ear,” Hank said dryly.

“You took all the excitement out of it. But, yes, behind her left — “

“It’s good to see you anyway,” Hank interrupted. “Shell, I want you to meet Miss Monet.”

I beamed down at her, and she came very close to smiling, I think, and nodded her head slightly.

“And Mr. David Bannister,” Hank said, indicating the heavyset man seated on my right.

We shook hands. His grip was firm, blue eyes clear and bright as he looked up at me. He appeared fit, with a bit of tan and more muscle than fat on him. He had the look of a man accustomed to steam baths and massages, golf at the country club, good food and drink, and money.

“So you’re Mr. Scott?” he said. “Henry was speaking of you only a week or so ago.”

“I know.”

“What does bring you to Newton … you know?”

“Yes. Mayor Fowler mentioned Hank’s interesting comments about me. I assume you are the people he referred to. He said he was going to have lunch here at the Sherwood with three of his ‘associates,’ and mentioned Hank Wainwright’s name.”

Hank said, “We’re the three, all right. The mayor should have joined us by now.”

“I just phoned him, Hank,” the girl said, “but there wasn’t any answer. He must be on his way here.”

Bannister was still looking at me. “Mayor Fowler mentioned this luncheon to you? Spoke of us?”

“Yeah. Last night, when he hired me. And he mentioned you, that is his associates, again this morning. When he fired me.”

There was silence around the table for several seconds, then Bannister said, “How extraordinary. Please sit down, Mr. Scott. You can join us, can’t you?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

I glanced at the cool dark lovely, and she smiled. Only a small smile, but she moved a foot or so to her left.

As I sat down next to her she said, “So that’s why you were lurking around. And there really isn’t any huge inheritance?” I shook my head sadly and she asked, “How much would eleven million piastramis be worth?”

“Eleven billion. But at the present rate of exchange, nothing. So I guess it doesn’t make much difference.”

I was satisfied with the way the conversation was going, but Bannister — who seemed to be the let’s-get-down-to-business type — broke in with, “I’m interested in what Mayor Fowler said to you, Mr. Scott. You say he employed you? Last night?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“And you spoke with him this morning?” I nodded. “Would you explain, please? I assure you, we would all be extremely interested in further details.” He paused. “I’m puzzled that he asked you to come up here — without consulting us, I mean.”

“I’m sure he intended to. This morning, most likely. But in the meantime — let me start at the beginning.”

I told the story quickly, merely hitting the high points but covering everything of importance, including my brief conversation with Yoogy Dibler.

When I finished there was more silence for a while, then Bannister spoke. “This is all quite extraordinary. I can understand Ev’s — well, his excessive enthusiasm, when he thought there was an eyewitness to the Ramirez shooting, because we’ve all discussed the problem of Mr. Grimson at great length, on many occasions. But … this Dibler? Incredible.”

“His reaction was the same, Mr. Bannister. When he realized who the informant was.”

Hank was nodding. “Yeah, he couldn’t have known the guy on the phone was Yoogy. Hell, I can’t blame Fowler for jumping the gun. We’re pretty sure Grimson killed Ramirez, or had the job done, but it’s only suspicion, not proof. And an eyewitness, well, that would have been our best break in a long time. We’ve been trying to get something solid on Hugh Grimson for a good year now. The mayor tell you about that?”

“He hit it lightly. He was going to fill in the details this morning, but Yoogy sort of changed his plans.”

“I’ll fill you in later myself, Shell. If you’re going to stick around?” It was a question.

“For a while,” I said. “I did just get my walking papers, but I’m interested in why those two guys were so interested in me.”

Bannister said, “Entirely apart from that, Mr. Scott, I would personally like to request that you stay in Newton for at least a few days. At my expense, of course, and I’ll pay your usual fee if that’s agreeable to you.”

“O.K. by me.”

“I don’t understand why Ev didn’t make the same arrangement, certainly when you were already here. But he can undoubtedly explain that when” — Bannister glanced at a thin gold watch on his wrist, and frowned — “if he ever gets here.”

He asked me what my fees were and I told him. He merely nodded, and then indicated I would receive a sizable bonus if I was even half the help to him and their “group” that Hank had suggested I might be.

“There are,” Bannister said, “several areas of investigation we’ve discussed during the last few weeks where your efforts might prove of great value to us. Don’t you agree, Henry?”

“It was my idea in the first place, remember.” Hank looked at me. “I’m as interested in those two guys as you are, Shell. You didn’t get a look at the man driving?”

“No. I guess my description of the other one doesn’t ring any bells.”

He shook his head. “How about the car? You get the registration?”

“Yeah.” I pulled my notebook from an inside coat pocket, flipped it open, and tore out a page. “Dark Chrysler sedan, two years old. I wrote down the number.”

He took the paper. “I can check this later, if it’s necessary. But I’m sure the mayor can explain who they are and why they were on you — if he knows anything about it. You’re sure, after leaving the airport, they drove to his house?”

“They must have.”

I described the narrow tree-shaded road leading off Mulberry, while Hank nodded his head, then I added, “I didn’t actually see them drive in, so I don’t know how long they were there, but it couldn’t have been more than two or three minutes. All I know is, they had to come out of the drive and turn toward town to wind up behind me again.”

“No place else they could have come from, Shell, and Fowler’s is the only house up there. Could they have just driven up and around and back, you know, like a private security patrol? Checking?” He shook his head. “Hell, you wouldn’t know.”

“Nope, and I wouldn’t buy it, either. A private patrol checking on me?”

“A point. So, we ask the mayor.” He frowned, chewing his lower lip. “Wonder what the hell’s keeping him?”

It became evident that it was most unusual for Fowler to be late, and after all three of them made comments to that effect, I said, “Let me throw something at you. This is just a wild guess, but I’m starting to wonder if the mayor was alone when I talked to him this morning.”

Bannister lifted his brows, and Hank said, “You didn’t see anyone else there, did you? A car or anything?”

“No, but I didn’t look around, and I was only in the living room. I did get the impression Fowler was wound up, nervous, though. Of course, I don’t know the man, maybe he’s like that all the time.”

Hank shook his head. “Not Ev. Not unless something was really bugging him.”

“Anyway, he struck me as noticeably edgy. I wondered about it then. And since he hasn’t shown up here yet, well….” I let it trail off.

After a short silence, Bannister said, “I’m sure we’re getting edgy ourselves, for no reason. However, Mr. Scott, since you’ve agreed to work for us, I would suggest that you do return to the mayor’s home. Let’s say, if he had not arrived by” — he glanced at his wristwatch — “quarter of one. Just to make sure everything is … all right.” He turned the sharp blue eyes toward me. “You did phone him before joining us here?”

“Yeah, twice. I intended to go back and talk to him then, but called first, and there wasn’t any answer. If he doesn’t show, I’ll ring him again, and if there’s still no answer I’ll check out the house.”

“I think we’d all feel better if you did that, Mr. Scott.” Bannister finished a drink on the table before him. “And now, I must go — I’ve an appointment, but I will be at my home later this afternoon. You’ll inform me of what you learn, Mr. Scott?”

“Sure thing.”

He slid a little to his left, preparing to get up from the booth, then stopped. He rubbed an index finger against his lips, apparently thinking about something. Then he looked at Hank. “I hesitate to suggest this, Henry. But, since Mr. Scott is here in Newton, perhaps he should be my guest tonight at the Club opening. I know you’ve been looking forward to this evening, but — “

“Forget it. That’s a damn good idea. I can go next week, and there won’t be a better chance than tonight for Shell to meet nearly everyone we’re interested in.” Hank looked at me. “Half the men in town’ll be there. Hugh Grimson, and a couple of other respectable crooks. Police chief. My boss. A pack of politicians.” He shrugged. “Including Mayor Fowler, for that matter.” He looked back at Bannister, nodding. “Done.”

Bannister got up. Miss Monet said, “I might as well go, too.” She glanced at Hank, then let the deep green eyes rest on mine. “I’m sure Mr. Scott and Henry have some old times to talk about.” Her expression, or so it seemed to me, said they must have been simply scandalous old times. Then she slowly lifted her gaze from my eyes and looked up, saying, “Can you drop me off, Ban?”

He said he could, and I moved, stood next to the booth. She slid sweetly over the brown-leather seat again, and I said, “When people stop calling you Miss Monet, Miss Monet, what do they call you?”

As she stood up and started to step past, she leaned slightly toward me. “It’s Martinique,” she said softly.

I felt the heat. I swear I felt it whoosh out from her and wallow all over me. Like when you open the oven door and look in to see if your TV dinner is cooked. Then, with one of her hands resting on David Bannister’s arm, she walked with him from the Lotus Room.

I sat down, looked at Hank, and said, “Wow.”

He flashed his quick grin at me. “She’s a bright girl, too. I.Q.‘s around a hundred and sixty, they tell me. Well, you old goat, I’m glad you’re here.”

Hank and I jawed a bit about old times, and quite a lot about Newton, the mayor, Hugh Grimson, Yoogy, and such. I also learned some more about Martinique and Bannister. They, Hank, and Mayor Fowler, plus on occasion a police officer named Delcey, had for about a year been meeting for lunch or dinner here or at a small Italian restaurant, the Rigoletto, and sometimes at one of their homes — usually Bannister’s — in the evening.

The get-togethers had begun simply as casual and private discussions among citizens interested in the welfare of their city, and the problems accompanying its rapid growth. In recent months, however, their attention and concern had become focused almost entirely upon the undeniably increasing, and increasingly visible, evidences of criminous activity and political skulduggery in Newton.

Bannister was among Newton’s wealthiest citizens, most of his money coming from construction and real estate, one of his companies having been responsible for some of Newton’s more attractive residential developments.

Martinique was one of those gals with such a superabundance of energy that she’d naturally assumed positions of leadership in several local organizations such as the little theater group and musical guild, and had on two or three occasions served as chairman for fund-raising parties and balls. About a year and a half ago she’d run for, and been handily elected to, Newton’s seven-member City Council. As the only woman “councilman,” and a good friend of the mayor’s, she’d been part of the weekly get-togethers from the beginning. I also discovered from Hank that she’d been married in her teens and divorced a few years later, and was now my age, thirty, though I would have guessed she was several years younger.

Inevitably the conversation turned to Hugh Grimson, and I said, “Hank, I’ve just picked up bits and pieces about the guy. Is he a pro hood, an ex-con?”

“That’s the trouble. He’s a hood, take my word for it, and he’s pulling millions out of this town in a dozen different crooked ways. But he’s clean, he hasn’t got a record. Oh, he was busted a couple times back east, but he’s never done any time.”

“Where did he operate, before he came out here?”

“New Jersey. Hit Newton four years ago. And after him, the deluge. Lot of hard cases showed up, we began getting hints, then some evidence, heists, hijacking, muscle, extortion, and even if we can’t prove it we know most of the rough stuff was handled by the mugs who work, or hang around, at Silvano’s. None of it’s rubbed off on Mr. G. yet. He’s smart. Lets his boys take the falls, if any, stays clean and sweet himself.”

“This Silvano’s Garage sounds like a lot of fun.”

Hank shook his head. “Any day of the week, there are so many toughs, ex-cons, paroled felons in that place it might as well be a branch of the state joint.” He paused. “That’s where Joe got it.”

“Joe?”

“Joe Ramirez. He worked directly under me, in the D.A.‘s office. I don’t mean his body was found in Silvano’s, but I figure he got it there. Body was found a couple blocks away, on Fifth and Spruce. The way it looks to me, whoever killed him didn’t want to get tagged driving his corpse around and dumped him fast. Two blocks. Might as well have left him propped against the front wall.” He paused. “But that’s not the kind of argument the prosecution gets very excited about.”

“How many times was Ramirez shot, Hank?”

“Three times. Gut shot, chest, and head.”

“Well, Yoogy had that much right.”

“The rest of it’s right, too, take it from me. And if we could prove it, I think I’d die happy. Hell, even if we got Grimson on fraud or extortion charges, that wouldn’t put him away long enough. But murder one would be about right.”

“If I want to brace this smoothie, which I do, where would I find him? Fowler said Grimson might be a little difficult to locate.”

“He told it the way it is, Shell. Grimson’s got two or three apartments, drops in on businesses he has absolutely nothing to do with, makes a lot of trips out of town, sometimes visits Silvano’s — hard to say. But when you want to meet him, I’ll make sure we know where you can find him.”

After another minute I asked Hank what Bannister had been talking about when he’d suggested I go to some kind of club opening with him tonight, apparently in Hank’s place.

There was a flash of that quick grin again, and Hank explained to me, with interesting details and asides, about the Club Rogue.

I said slowly, “You mean they’re going to stroll around up there bare — naked?”

“So it has been alleged, asseverated, stated, hinted, promised, promulgated, and avowed.”

“All that? Must be something to it. What are these gals, tired old hags fired from Wally’s Diner?”

“Not exactly.” He smiled, looking past me. “Judge for yourself, pal. Here comes one of those tired old hags now.”

I glanced up. Maybe it’s enough to say that from the moment when I saw her approaching our booth, to the moment when she went through the Lotus Room door and out of sight, I did not glance away once.

She was fairly tall, perhaps five-eight, and unfairly fashioned, that is, she was shaped in a way unfair to others of the fair sex, swooping, thrusting, curving, fantastic, stupendous, almost unnerving. It wasn’t that incredible body alone, for with it was a face of unforgettable beauty, all of it, face and form combined, presenting a vision of eye-blistering beauty as she walked smoothly nearer, stopped next to our table.

“Hello, Hank,” she said in a low warm voice.

She hadn’t even taken a peek at me yet, so far as I could tell. I would have noticed.

“Scotch on the rocks for you tonight?” she continued.

“Ah, Canada, this will be a terrible disappointment to you, I know, but I will not be present at the Club Rogue this evening. In my place will be this large, dull individual here, Mr. Sheldon — “

“Oh, Hank! I am disappointed. It’s going to be such fun.”

“He was about to tell you about me, Miss — ” That was as far as I got.

“You can say that again,” Hank said to the lovely, grinning. “That is, if the reports are true.” He leaned over the table toward her and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Canada, we’ve known each other long enough so you can level with me. You know what they say about the outfits the cocktail waitresses will be wearing…. Ahm, is it true?”

“What are they saying?” Right then she glanced around again and must finally have become aware that someone besides Hank was in the area, “Oh, hello,” she said pleasantly, and instantly looked back at Hank.

I got up quickly. “Hi,” I said. “Well, I — “

“You know,” Hank said. Then he noticed me making faces and waggling my hands. “Canada, this seriously disturbed old-timer here — he can’t help all that waggling, something to do with his nervous system — is Sheldon Scott. Shell, Miss Canada Southern.”

This time she took a good look at me. At least, a reasonably long look. Long enough for me to say hello again, and shake her hand, and to hear her say, “How do you do, Mr. Scott?” and for me to memorize her face.

It was topped by thick swirls of blonde hair — blonde, that is, with traces or streaks of darker tones in it, kind of a blondish goldenness touched with accents of tan or beige. Dark brows, smoothly arched over light-brown eyes, almost beige or tawny eyes with little flecks of color like bits of a tiger’s stripe in them. Straight nose, smiling mouth, lips red and undeniably warm or even hot, full lips that might have had their bright redness sprayed on from little flamethrowers.

She was wearing a rust-colored sweater of epic dimensions, a skirt the same shade clinging to rounded flaring hips, a necklace of small metal links and circles worn in several loops around her neck and resting on swelling breasts that should have melted them down to nuggets, and a beige belt of rough leather, three inches wide, snug around a waist my two hands could almost have enclosed, which struck me as a splendid idea.

Hank was saying something to her, and she looked at him, saying, “I just came down from the top floor. The other girls and I were up there for an hour making sure we’re all set for tonight.”

Hank said, “All set — like what you’ll wear, I suppose?”

“Well, I’ve got to run.” She turned and looked at me again. “I’m glad we met, Mr. Sheldon.”

“It’s Scott. Scott. Sheldon — you can call me Shell — Scott. Huh. Mr. Sheldon. It’s — “

She was laughing silently.

“I know it’s Mr. Scott,” she said, smiling deliciously. “I just said that to see if you’d waggle your hands and make those faces again.”

“Ah, you noticed!”

She didn’t reply, just stood there, for not more than a second or two. But I’ll take an oath, during that brief tick-tick there was more sparkle and bubble and merry effervescence silently sizzling in and from Canada Southern than there is in a ton of Alka-Seltzer.

Then she was walking away, moving smoothly among the tables in the Lotus Room, through the doors, and out of sight.

It was twelve-forty, and for the next five minutes Hank and I didn’t say much, each of us presumably thinking his own private thoughts. After two or three minutes I did ask him about the police officer he’d mentioned.

“Did you say his name is Delcey?”

Hank nodded. “Sergeant Oren Delcey. He was a lieutenant until a year or so ago. Pushed Mr. G. a bit too hard, and Mr. G. pushed back. So he’s a sergeant again, works out of Homicide.”

“If he’s part of your group, he should be one cop I can trust for sure up here.”

“He’s that. There are plenty of others, Shell. But plenty we’re not sure about, too. Lot of money’s involved.”

There wasn’t much more. At fifteen minutes till one I phoned Mayor Fowler’s home again. No answer. So at the entrance to the Lotus Room I caught Hank’s eye, gave him a small salute, and took off.

</code>

<code> That was the only sound from inside the house, so I tried the door and was not greatly surprised to find it locked. And then I heard another vaguely familiar sound that I wasn’t immediately able to identify. It was a thumping or clunking followed by a sort of liquid kerplunk.

It was a puzzler. But only briefly. Because a few seconds later I heard a rhythmic splashing, a period of silence, then the former puzzler repeated. The sound had come from my left, and I recalled Mayor Fowler telling me something about his swimming pool out there. So even before I began walking along the front of the house toward the pool I realized the sound had been made by someone — not the good mayor, I had a hunch — bouncing on a diving board and then going kerplunk into the water.

I was right. Both times.

It was someone diving into the pool.

And it was not the good mayor.

</code>

<code> 7

As I walked past the side of the house and got a clear view of the swimming pool, she — it was, unquestionably, a she — had just stroked her way to the ladder at the pool’s far end. As I watched, she climbed up the ladder, paused a moment while she bent forward to shake bright sparkles of water from her hair, then stepped onto the cement deck and turned toward the board a few feet away on her left.

I guess the first thing I noticed about her was that she didn’t have anything on. In fact, I know that’s the first thing I noticed about her. All by itself that was enough to sort of rivet my attention. But also, when she’d leaned forward to shake her head vigorously, the very act of protruding her head in one direction had caused her derriere to protrude in the other direction, which is to say toward me. It seemed briefly to float there, glistening in the sunlight, sparkling with a kind of gay insouciance I had never associated with a hind end before.

She stepped onto the board, placed her feet, took the three measured steps forward that are typical of professional and good amateur divers, and bounced. The next bounce, normally, would have been the big one, the bounce that sent her soaring gracefully into the air. But while still rising upward from the impetus of the little bounce she spotted me — I could see her eyes; as they slowly rose and paused briefly in the air and then started sinking down again, get very wide — and she let out a strange high fluttering sound.

When she came down onto the board, therefore, she did not spring briskly up and away. Instead she landed sort of flat-footed with her knees bent, and the board vibrated fiercely with a barrungarrung sound, transmitting such vibrations up through her legs and rear end and fore parts that I feared for a moment she might lose a thing or two of great value.

Gradually all that fascinating movement ceased. For a memorable moment all was still. Then the very shapely and very wide-eyed young gal, still in something like a quarter-crouch, flung one arm over her bare breasts and flipped her other hand out and down and in with such a sharp slap that for a weird instant I got the impression of a living G-string running amok, but then she smiled weakly and said, “Oo — ah — ooh. Well … hi?”

She really did make it sound like a question. That part was easy. But if that was a question, what was the answer? I managed to get my mouth open. That was all I managed.

So I stood there for several seconds, with my mouth open, wondering. How do you answer “Hi?” while the lovely little gal remained on the board, but then she made my reply unnecessary.

With great presence of mind, she jumped into the water.

Well, all I ever need is a little time to gather my thoughts, so by the time she’d popped to the surface and swum over to the edge of the pool just below me, I was back to normal.

“Don’t panic,” I cried, yanking off my coat, “I’ll save you.”

She laughed. “You gave me an awful shock,” she said, hanging onto the pool’s edge. “I don’t know you, do I?”

“Not yet. In fact, I’m sure I never saw…. This is Mayor Fowler’s house, isn’t it?”

“Of course. You don’t think I’d be swimming in the nude anywhere else, do you?”

“Beats me. Is there something special about — “

“Don’t tell Daddy you caught me. He doesn’t think it’s ladylike to go skinny-dipping. Even when you’re alone.”

“When you’re alone it can hardly be called — don’t tell who? Did you say Daddy?”

“Sure.”

“What do you mean, Daddy? Like in — father?”

“Sure. I’m Melinda Fowler. Who’re you?”

“I’m Shell Scott. You wouldn’t be the mayor’s daughter, would you?”

“Sure I’m his daughter. Who did you think I was? His mother?”

“Don’t be ridic — look, I only came out here to see the mayor, and … he isn’t around here anywhere, is he?”

“No. I’m — I mean we’re — all alone. I only got here an hour ago. I’m home from school for the weekend — “

“From … high school?”

“That’s silly. I graduated from college last year. I’m taking some postgrad courses at S.F.U. High School! How silly can you get? Anyway, Daddy wasn’t here when I got home, so I took my clothes off — “

“Yeah.”

“And … well, here I am.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you just going to stand there?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that all you can say, just ‘Yeah’? You sound like an oaf.”

“Listen, baby, I know what an oaf is, and if you don’t want to get whacked — “

“Don’t get so hot. I was just having some fun with you. What did you say your name is? Shell?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“Listen, baby — “

“Why don’t you come in the pool and join me? After all, Daddy isn’t here. I wouldn’t ask you if he was. I wouldn’t even think of it.”

“You and me both.”

She had at the beginning of our getting-acquainted dialogue rested her arms on the pool’s edge, but after the first sentence or two she’d pushed herself out at arm’s length, even kicked her feet and thrashed her legs and stuff around a little, and toward the end she let go and spun around in the water a couple of times before dogpaddling back to the edge near me.

I undoubtedly do not need to remind you that she was naked as a plucked jaybird, and that water is transparent, and that I am not known as a man who would look away from such a combination should it appear simultaneously amidst floods, earthquakes, and typhoons. So when the fetching Melinda said once again, “C’mon in and join me, Shell … unless you’re an oaf,” I said: “I’ll show you who’s an oaf.”

I yanked off my shoes and socks, ripped off my tie, peeled off my shirt. And paused, thinking.

I had earlier wondered, because of Mayor Fowler’s air of uptight tension and the fact that he appeared later to have skipped lunch, if someone else might have been in the house with him this early a.m. I had, indeed, briefly entertained such ridiculous thoughts as the possibility that a dangerous crook, possibly even one of Hugh Grimson’s hoods, could have been holding a gun on him from behind a cracked doorway or heavy draperies, the way villains do in movies.

But now, somewhat charged up, my thinking was so clear I knew there was hardly one chance in a million there could be any truth in such wild suspicions. Still….

I said, “Melinda, when you arrived home — from school, for the weekend — you must have entered the house. And roamed around inside a bit? And thus know the house is empty, right?”

“Are you out of your maracas? Of course I went in the house — where do you think I left my clothes? Do you think I’d be skinny-dipping in the pool with you — with you, if you ever get in it — if anybody was in the house?”

“That makes sense.”

I had to admit there’d been another silly thought in my mind: maybe there was a dead body in the house. Even a dead Mayor Fowler. What rot, I said to myself and then, to Melinda, “O.K. Here I come, ready or not.”

“What do you mean, ready or not? I asked you — hey! You aren’t going to jump in with your pants on, are you?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Why, you’re all crouched down like you’re getting cranked to jump clear over the pool. You look like you’re ready to beat on your chest and — “

“Melinda, that’s enough. Well, I guess I really should take my pants off. Yes. Incidentally, how do you know that’s not what I was about to do?”

“You were about to broad-jump back over the house, if you ask — “

“Melinda, we’re not going to have any fun at all if you keep bugging me. O.K., I’ll be honest about it. I did have it in the back of my mind that I might, sort of, start out with my pants on. I know the house is empty, and we’re isolated and alone up here, and there is nobody else about, but I have this nagging little … nag. I’ve got this queer feeling — “

“Queer. Queer, eh? O.K., keep ‘em on — “

“Melinda, that’s unkind. Little do you know, babe — look. At certain times I do have a kind of psychic ESP, and right now I’ve got a profoundly uneasy conviction that the very instant I get my pants off — “

“Shorts, too.”

“Shorts, too?”

“Maybe I’d better explain what skinny-dipping is, Shell. Mr. Scott. Sir. The word skinny in skinny-dipping doesn’t mean you go on a diet, it — “

“You do not,” I said stiffly, “have to explain it to me.”

“Anyway, you don’t want your shorts to shrink.”

“I don’t?”

“You know what happens to men who wear too tight hats all the time. They get bald.”

“The shorts have got to go.”

I unbuckled my belt, saying, “What I was getting at, Melinda, is that I have this queer — this peculiar — sense that no sooner do I fling my garments to the winds than a whole crowd of beady-eyed people will rise up out of nowhere clicking Polaroid Land Cameras and — “

“You’re stalling. You’re scared. You’re chicken.”

“That does it,” I said.

Soon I was bent way over and was preparing to pluck one bare foot out of a bunch of clothing bunched around my ankles, when Melinda made the odd noises.

She had already made a couple of odd noises, but they were soft little noises. These were bigger ones, much louder and of a different nature entirely.

“OH!” she yelped. “There’s hyu — whoo — hah — hee — “

“What?”

“It’s — he — he’s here.”

“He, huh? Who? He?”

It was, as they say, a rhetorical question. I knew already. She didn’t have to tell me. I knew. But she told me anyhow.

“Daddy.”

“Daddy … huh? How about that?”

I didn’t say it with huge shock. I didn’t say it with consternation. I didn’t say it with anger, nor even with surprise. I said it merely as a man commenting, after the fact, upon the inevitable catastrophe. True, I spoke with some sadness.

It did not help that I was bent forward, clutching two handfuls of clothing bunched around my ankles, and that in this marvelous position I could not possibly have presented a picture less striking than had lovely Melinda atop the pool ladder. Rather less enchanting, it goes without saying; but not one whit less remarkable.

“Hurry, hurry!” Melinda yelped.

“Ah, shut up.”

I was already erect, trying to find the ends of my belt. As I found them and looped loose end through buckle, and gave it a yank that forced a lot of breath from my mouth, Melinda paddled into the middle of the pool, then as though dizzy or in panic spun about and paddled back.

Hanging again onto the pool’s edge she rolled huge sapphire-blue eyes up at me and softly screamed, “What’ll I do?”

“Why don’t you drown?”

“I hate you!”

“Better late than never.”

I heard the faint squeak of brakes. Then the chunk of a car door being slammed shut.

“I do. I hate you! Thank God he didn’t see you with your dumb pants down.”

“Dumb is ri — what do you mean? He didn’t see me?”

“Of course not. If he had, I would drown myself.”

“Well. I figured nobody within three-fourths of a mile could possibly have missed it. Maybe I’m just conceited — “

“I saw Daddy’s car through the trees, coming up the — coming up our driveway.”

“Through the trees? Ah, maybe…. How could you tell it was Da — the mayor’s car?”

“I couldn’t, but who else?”

“Yeah.”

“Besides, right after that I saw it. And he just parked it, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, I was only grasping — “

“Anyway, he couldn’t have seen you then. Even if he had, it would have just been a blur, you moved so fast. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

“Will you shut — “

“What in the HELL is going on here?”

“That’s … Daddy,” Melinda said.

“No kidding?”

Until this point I hadn’t once looked around. Hadn’t even taken a quick peek behind me. What for? I had known what was there. Even before it was there I had known what was there.

But at least the good mayor had not seen me at that uninspiring moment when Melinda had commenced squawking. That would help, I told myself, then I glanced down at my bare chest, and bare feet, and added to myself: help a little.

I turned, smiling.

It was clear that the mayor — for it was, needless to say, he; my ex-client; his naked daughter’s daddy — had moved with considerable speed, since he was just skidding to a stop two feet from me. He came to a rigid halt, inclined his head menacingly toward me, pushed his jaw forward about half an inch, and repeated, “What in the hell is going on here?”

I said, “Now, sir, Mr. Mayor, I know you’re going to be very fair and open-minded about this. Right? Well … this is not what it may at first blush — ah, uh — first glance — ah. Not what at first it may appear to be. No, it isn’t.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. It is … will you give me a minute?”

I think I could have come up with something pretty good in maybe just a few seconds, but then Melinda cried in a voice of such angelic innocence that it here, were the same guy. Sure, Yoogy’s the boy who sickened me, “Ohh, Daddy, I know you told me never to swim in my birthday suit, but — “

I missed a word or two there, partly because painful acids were attacking my duodenum and partly because I was thinking some negative thoughts. So, that thing in which she had been swimming around, and which by now I had examined from at least half of all possible angles, was her “birthday suit,” huh? Wonderful. The way she sweetly cooed the words, as though they were hummed by a female dove who had never laid an egg, it sounded like something I not only hadn’t ever seen before but didn’t want to.

On she went, a regular little Rebecca destroying Sunnybrook Farm. “I didn’t know what to do when this big man started taking his clothes off.”

I groaned. I smacked my head and rolled my eyes toward Heaven, but there was no help there, either. I shouldn’t even have looked. The really miserable thing was that Melinda suddenly sounded about eight years old.

Now, I’d had a pretty good look at her, and it was my guess she had lived at least twenty-five pretty full years, so if she’d graduated from college only last year it followed that she must be a stupefyingly dumb broad who’d flunked several semesters. On the other hand, that was not a truly logical conclusion since, judging by the performance I was observing and stuck with, she should have been able to lie herself to the top of her class and graduate in a year and a half.

The reason I was doing all this thinking was because, even if I’d had a lot of great things to say — which I didn’t — there’d have been no opportunity for me to zing them into the conversation.

For a good minute, the verbal rippety-pop had been bouncing back and forth solely between Melinda and Papa Fowler. It had been made clear that, perhaps by the grace of God, I had not in fact leaped into the pool and committed various vandalisms upon the person of Melinda Fowler. I had merely looked. I hadn’t really done anything physical. But I had looked.

“Looked” was Melinda’s word, and she did as much with it as she’d done with “birthday suit.”

There was brief silence. Mayor Fowler was staring down at his daughter from the edge of the pool directly above her. He moved a yard to the right and coldly eyed what was visible above, and below, the water’s surface. Then he moved a yard or so to the other side and studied her some more from there. Then he nodded his head significantly.

“Melinda!” he hooted in a loud voice, waggling a rigid finger alongside his head. “Melinda!” He left the rest of it unsaid, but she understood it all.

“Yes, Daddy,” she said softly, sinking even deeper into the water until it was not quite against her eyeballs.

It was not really the best of all possible things for me to do, but my record of doing the best of all possible things has a bunch of holes in it.

I walked over to the edge of the pool, and smiled at her, like a man who, even before thanksgiving was over, had swallowed the wishbone, and said gently, “Thanks loads, Melinda. I don’t want you to think it hasn’t been fun. But this is — good-bye.”

I was hoping she’d try to call me an oaf while her mouth was under water, but no such luck. She did smile, though. I could see her sharp white teeth gleaming beneath the wetness.

“Mr. Scott!”

I winced. Fowler’s voice had boomed too close to my ear.

I turned and looked at him. “Hey, cool it a little, will you?” I poked a finger into my ear and wiggled it around. “You could seriously injure a guy. Maybe it runs in the family — “

“Perhaps you can explain,” he interrupted me, “why you have dispossessed yourself of shirt and tie and coat?”

“Perhaps? Yes … perhaps. Dispossessed, I like that — “

“Can you explain, sir?”

“Well, would you believe….”

He was looking at my nearby coat, shirt, tie. And my shoes and socks.

“The hell with it,” I said.

This explanation, I felt, was rooted securely in logic:

If it is true that the best defense is a good offense, it must logically follow that if you have an immovable defense you should launch an irresistible offense; therefore, I might have to explain by socking this guy.

But he looked at me curiously for a while. Then he said, “Mr. Scott, what are you doing here? Why are you here?”

His tone was a bit more conciliatory, as though he had begun to feel he should belatedly give me the benefit of whatever doubt there was, if any. So I tried to reply calmly, but my remarks came out stiff as boards.

“I’m glad you asked,” I said, glancing at Melinda who was peeking at me over the edge of the pool from eyes that appeared entirely too merry. “You may not be aware, Mayor Fowler, that your daughter possesses the gift of describing an acorn as though it is a forest of oaks. If so, you may suspect that I came howling out of the trees leading a pack of my relatives, the bull apes. Try to believe me, sir, I did not. I drove out here like any other human being, to see you. I — that is, some of your associates and I — were concerned about you. Perhaps not dismayed to the point of entering convulsions but concerned. So you see, Mr. Mayor, my presence here is explained by motives so pure as to be practically pellucid — “

“My associates?”

“Huh?”

I was still stuck there on “pellucid.” I wasn’t completely sure I knew what it meant. It sounded like something gooey and putrid, which was far from the thought I meant to convey.

“My associates, did you say? You — have you seen them?”

“Sure. That’s what I was — “

“Where? How did you happen to meet them, Mr. Scott?”

“At the Sherwood. I recalled your saying last night you were going to have lunch with them there.”

“So I did. Then you have now met Mr. Bannister and the lovely Miss Monet?” He paused. “And your friend, Mr. Wainwright?”

“Yes, we all spent half an hour or so together. It was Mr. Bannister’s suggestion, by the way, that I come out here again.”

“Of course.” He nodded. “I see. They must have been exceedingly perplexed when I failed to join them. I was called away on a matter of some urgency, Mr. Scott — which we need not concern ourselves with at the moment — and neglected to inform my associates of the emergency.”

He was silent for a few moments. “How does it happen, Mr. Scott, that you were at the Sherwood Hotel? You must excuse my confusion. I understood that you were returning to Los Angeles.”

“Yeah, well, that’ll take a little explaining.”

He pursed his lips, scowled slightly, and seemed to reach a decision. “Come into the house. Yes, join me inside, Mr. Scott.” That last was in a more pleasant tone, or at least without the full note of dudgeon present until now.

“Sure. Fine.”

It was the first thing he’d said that made me happy. I wanted to go inside, for a good reason. The good reason was that I was freezing my butt off. I estimated the temperature was only slightly above the point at which oxygen becomes a solid, and having for years been accustomed to the Southern California sun and balmy breezes I felt as if I had frost on my chest, and I wasn’t certain I had toes left.

Mayor Fowler strode to his front door, unlocked it, and went inside.

I got my socks and shoes on, stomped my numb feet while buttoning my shirt and knotting my tie, then slipped into my jazzy dyed-lightning jacket while I walked to where man’s nemesis, Melinda Fowler, still dangled in the water.

It was really the water I wanted to know about.

“Pretty chilly in there?” I asked hopefully. Actually, my teeth were beginning to chatter, and I asked if it was “ch-ch-chilly.”

“No, they — the water’s heated. We keep the temperature at eighty degrees all the time.”

It’s true, the mind has great control over the body’s functions. But everybody knows that. What everybody doesn’t know is that the mind has great control over the weather, too. For, as soon as Melinda said “eighty degrees,” it was suddenly at least forty, maybe forty-five, degrees colder, right there where I was. My knees started knocking. I couldn’t see it happening of course, but I could feel my lips turning blue.

While I thus went swiftly downhill, Melinda leaned back at arm’s length, fingers lightly gripping the pool’s edge. Then, rubbing salt in my wound, she deliberately rocked her shoulders back and forth, rocked them slowly but with sufficient vigor that her full white breasts waggled and bobbered and performed several other interesting maneuvers, one of which appeared to be an unsuccessful attempt to leap out of the water entirely and smack me.

I would have thought that Melinda, having already won the exchange hands down, though probably there’s a better way to say it, would have had the common decency to shut up. Had I then carefully considered the nature of my other recent thoughts I would have known this one wasn’t likely to be smack on the button, either.

Wallowing around in the hot water, she burbled, “It’s too warm, really.” Waggle-waggle. “Shell, you look a lot bluer than you did before. Like your blood’s decaying. What’s the matter?”

“You’re fu-fu-full of cu-cute questions, aren’t you?”

Smothering laughter, she cooed innocently, “Why did you ask me if the water was chilly?”

“Baby, you know g-g-g-goddamn well wh-wh-wh … forget it.”

Melinda pushed herself away from the pool’s side, and her head sank beneath the water. Some bubbles came up. Maybe she was laughing. That is not what I hoped she was doing.

I turned to follow my host into the house. Turned quickly — while Melinda was still under water, and the bubbles were still coming up — so that if my guardian angel had not yet requested an easier assignment, that sight would be my last sight of Melinda.

</code>

<code> 8

By the time I finished telling Mayor Fowler what had happened since our earlier talk, my toes were beginning to tingle, and I deduced I was thawing. As I spoke, the mayor pursed his lips and nodded a couple of times but made no comment.

I left what I considered the most important sequence of events till the last, and watched him closely while describing the car I’d spotted several times on my tail, and the appearance of the man who’d been eyeballing me at the airport.

The only reaction I got was when I described the lean cat with puffy eyes. Fowler blinked rapidly two or three times, leaned forward slightly, and seemed about to speak, but remained silent.

I finished it up. “I was naturally curious about these guys, so I tailed them for a change. One of them got out at a hotel on Orange Avenue, and the other drove to a place called Silvano’s Garage. But the thing that fascinated me, Mr. Mayor, is that on their way into town from the airport these two bums made a detour.”

Fowler had started to smile slightly, and he was nodding his big head again. “Samuels and Jonah,” he said softly.

“What?”

His smile broadened. “Never mind. Please continue, Mr. Scott.”

“Well … they came here. Obviously to see you. I naturally wondered why two such unsavory characters would so speedily call upon Newton’s mayor. After tailing me around for half the morning.”

“Two such unsavory characters? From your remarks I assumed you closely observed only one of them.”

“Yeah, that’s right, the guy bugging me at the airport. But one was enough. He sure looked like a hood to me.”

The mayor’s smile broadened. It made me oddly uncomfortable, like when everybody else at the party is laughing and you didn’t get the joke. I said, “Are you going to tell me I’m wrong, Mr. Mayor? That the men didn’t come here to see you?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Scott. They were here. In truth, I appreciate their interest and concern. The men are police officers in whom — “

“They’re what? You’ve got to be kidding.”

The mayor gave me what I can only describe as a look of excruciating bleakness. “In whom,” he concluded deliberately. “I have the greatest confidence.”

Those bushy-browed dark eyes of his, for a moment, were colder than my toes had been. We just weren’t hitting it off well lately. I said, “You could have fooled me. How did they explain their reason for being on my tail?”

“That is the one oddity in the situation. They did not mention that fact. They did not mention you at all, Mr. Scott. They merely came here to assure themselves that I was all right, in no difficulty. I assume they were watching my home — staked out, you would probably say — and saw you arrive, or at least saw you leave.”

He paused. After a few seconds he went on. “There have been threats against my life, Mr. Scott, in recent weeks. Even threats telephoned to me personally in recent days. Any prominent official of a large city must expect that sort of thing, particularly in these times when we are all surrounded by raging malcontents. However, I reported these incidents to the police, and was visited at my office in the City Hall some days ago by Sergeant Samuels, one of the men who called on me briefly this morning and, apparently, led you erroneously to believe you were being pursued by demons.”

There was a nice bite to his words, and I could have done without the heavy sarcasm. But I said pleasantly, “Is Samuels the boy scout I spotted at the airport?”

“From your description, that would have been Officer Jonah.”

“Yeah, it fits him. He looked like he’d just been puked up by a whale. Well, if they’re cops, O.K. But a thought occurs to me. I’ve been informed, and you mentioned it yourself, Mr. Mayor, that this guy Hugh Grimson has some of the local law in his pocket. Are you sure of these two — “

“I believe I have already said,” he interrupted, “that I have great confidence in Sergeant Samuels and Officer Jonah.”

That was clearly supposed to put me in my place. So I merely replied, “Swell.”

Fowler pushed his lips out and played with the lower one. “I shall, of course, see to it that you are not subjected to any further annoyance.” He lifted a heavy eyebrow. “Mr. Bannister has asked you to remain for a while in Newton?”

“That’s right. I’m supposed to call him later. Mainly to let him know you’re O.K.”

“Excellent, excellent.” He nodded. “I am now inclined to agree that Mr. Bannister’s action was wise. Yes, I now agree….” He glanced to our right. Toward the swimming pool, I think. “With some reservations,” he added. “There are areas in which your efforts may well produce results gratifying to us all. And we cannot have our law officers monitoring your every movement, can we?”

“I’d be happier not being tailed even unto the john, Mr. Mayor. Frankly, I’d be more at ease if Jonah was assigned to Philadelphia.”

Those heavy brows twitched down and moved closer to each other, in what I now — having seen it a number of times — recognized as an indication, if not of real honest-to-goodness anger, at least of disenchantment.

Mayor Fowler rose slowly to his feet. “I cannot ensure your ease by asking our chief of police to remove Officer Jonah from the planet, but I can guarantee your increased happiness, Mr. Scott. You will, however long your stay in Newton, be free from further police attention.” He glanced toward our right again, then let his dark eyes fall on me. “Assuming, of course, that you conduct yourself … ah, that you do not commit any crimes.”

He turned and walked to the far corner of the room, where a phone sat on the small desk, picked up the receiver, and dialed. He drummed briefly on the table top with the fingers of his free hand, then said, pausing after each query, “Who is this? Officer West, is it? Has Samuels returned to the police station? Of course. Sergeant. Sergeant Samuels … yes.” I saw the brows come down and in, then Fowler said slowly and distinctly, “This is the mayor.” After a short pause, “Yes. Please have the sergeant come to the phone.”

Half a minute went by. Then, “Sergeant? Yes, Sergeant Samuels, this is Mayor Fowler. When you and Officer Jonah were here earlier, you did not mention that you had been following a man who was briefly at my home this morning. He has just informed me personally of your surveillance, and I am concerned…. Yes.”

He drummed on the table top, listening, then said crisply, “The gentleman of whom I speak is Mr. Sheldon Scott, a pri — ” — apparently he decided not to mention that I was a private detective — “a friend of mine. He is, indeed, in Newton at my request. He will be here for a few more days, and his movements are not to be interfered with in any way.”

Some more listening, punctuated only by the mayor’s “Yes,” “No,” and “That’s right” a couple of times. Then he said, “Excellent, excellent. I shall assure Mr. Scott that he can expect complete cooperation, not only from you and Officer Jonah, but from the entire police department. He is to be considered as my personal guest.” Fowler nodded a few times, then said, “See that you do, Sergeant. And thank you.”

He hung up, walked back, and sat down on the divan. “I think, since you heard my conversation with the sergeant, I need not assure you that you will experience no further difficulties with the police.”

I nodded. “And thanks. I guess it helps to have the mayor on your side.”

He smiled, but without putting a lot of effort into it. “It does.”

I stood up. “Well — “

“Please sit down, Mr. Scott.”

I shook my head, feeling that events were repeating themselves, but resumed my seat as Fowler continued. “My first concern was to make sure that you would be able to move about in Newton freely from now on. But I do have some questions.”

“O.K. Fire away.”

“You commented briefly on the fact that you visited Mr. Dibler. My prized informant. I realize I had assured you his allegations were completely without value, but perhaps you came to a different conclusion? Since you are a trained investigator?”

“Not at all. You had him pegged perfectly. I really dropped in on the guy, primarily, in the hope of earning maybe ten percent of the three hundred you paid me. I’ll admit I thought I might pick up something you could have missed, but I didn’t. I merely got corroboration of what you’d already told me. Plus a slight attack of nausea.”

After he’d asked me to expand on a couple of other comments I’d made in my brief rundown earlier, I said to him, “We both know this Yoogy Dibler is a washout, and he’s tried to sell baloney to the police before. But that doesn’t change the probability that his basic information was correct, even if he was trying to sell you a bill of goods. I mean, the info that Grimson committed the murder.”

“I am, myself, convinced that Hugh Grimson, personally and with purposeful deliberation, murdered Mr. Ramirez. My associates agree. Indeed, that is why I placed so much hope in the informant’s allegations — before I realized who the informant was. I overreacted, undoubtedly, because that kind of genuine evidence, eyewitness testimony, would have been of such great value.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I’ve been thinking. And I was wondering about an idea that kind of brushed my mind a couple of times. Are you sure the man who phoned you was Yoogy Dibler?”

Fowler looked at me, blinking. He seemed puzzled. “Am I sure … I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Well, you told me about the call from your informant — which charged you up enough that you phoned me in L.A. You also told me you assumed your caller must have been disguising his voice, and you later decided — assumed — he was, instead, merely drunk when he first spoke to you. Further, he wouldn’t give you his name then. It’s also my impression you have no idea where he was when he called you, whether he was alone or not, whether there was any possibility of his having been overheard.”

“That is quite correct. But I fail to — “

“What I’m trying to get at is this, Mr. Mayor. Judging from the information I’ve got, I’d guess you’ve no way of being completely certain the man who phoned you, and the man who later showed up here were the same guy. Sure, Yoogy’s the boy who called on you early this a.m. loaded with booze; but maybe he’s not the man who phoned you last night.”

It took Fowler a while to respond this time. Finally he said, nodding, “I understand. That had not, I confess, occurred to me. I must admit the possibility. However, considering both of my conversations with the man, I must also say that, even now, I believe both were with Mr. Dibler.”

He was silent briefly, then looked at me with what almost appeared to be approval. “Even so, I commend you for deducing the possibility, which we must now at least consider. I am impressed, Mr. Scott.”

“It’s just an idea. Having spent a few minutes inhaling the atmosphere surrounding Yoogy, I can’t quite see him trying to con Newton’s mayor with a story so full of holes. I can understand your reaction to the call, and to the disappointment of realizing the call was from Yoogy. But I can’t quite buy it from Yoogy’s point of view.”

“It becomes complex. Well” — Mayor Fowler glanced at his watch — “I shall be in my office by … 2:30 p.m. I would appreciate your keeping me informed of any progress.” He got to his feet.

“Of course.”

I stood up. I was beginning to get the idea. While the mayor was seated, you were entitled to his full attention. But when he stood up the interview was over, and the sooner the better.

He shook my hand and, for the second time today, escorted me to the front door. As I walked down toward my rented Cad, I glanced one last time at the swimming pool. Its surface was rippled, as if a warm body might have been cavorting in it no longer than a minute or two ago, but there was no body in sight. Either Melinda had gone into the house, or she had stopped bubbling.

I started the Cad, swung in a circle, and rolled down the private drive toward Mulberry. Half a dozen thoughts rolled slowly in my mind, bumping occasionally, but not giving off any sparks.

I couldn’t get rid of the idea that, despite the apparent innocuousness of most things that had occurred to me today, at least one of those things was far removed from innocuous. I was more than halfway convinced I was missing something. Something important. But I didn’t have the faintest idea what it might be.

Thus preoccupied with my thoughts, and with a sense of only mild unease, I swung left into Mulberry Drive and headed back toward town….

</code>

<code> 9

I rose, creaking slightly, to my feet and glanced over my shoulder at the nearly unrecognizable mass of crumpled metal that only minutes ago had been my rented Cadillac.

Then I started walking toward Mulberry Drive.

I was unhappy. Not merely because I’d been clobbered, the Cad was a wreck, there were unpleasant aches at numerous places in my anatomy, but also because I’d just thought back over all that had happened to me in this case without finding the thing I’d been looking for — whatever it was.

I stopped trying to pluck it from memory. Maybe it would come to me in due time, but until it did there were plenty of things to do. Another visit with Yoogy Dibler, for one. A little talk with Officer Jonah and Sergeant Samuels for a couple more. And a chat with Hugh Grimson, as soon as I located the presumably slippery Mr. G. And, for what now struck me as a doubly logical reason, a trip to Silvano’s Garage.

Lugging my suitcase, I scrambled up the last ten yards of earth rising to Mulberry and reached the edge of the road. A car was approaching on my left, going in toward Newton. I waved and the car slowed. But it slowed only briefly, then veered past the center line and clear over into the wrong lane — bringing briefly to mind the vivid and unpleasant memory of that erratically weaving diesel rig — and sped past, picking up speed.

Hanging onto the wheel with both hands and staring at me from wide eyes was a middle-aged, gray-haired, and undoubtedly apprehensive lady, her mouth forming an “O.”

I couldn’t really blame her. I hadn’t gotten a look at my face yet, but I knew my suit coat was torn and there was a streak of blood on my white shirt. I’d felt a couple of lumps on my skull and forehead, and a crust of blood had dried on one side of my face.

Since it has been suggested that, even at my most magnificent, I am not an unqualified blessing to behold, there was no way I could now be considered a reassuring sight, I supposed. So I decided that unless a brave man came along I might have to leg it into town, and started walking. But not for long.

The next car stopped, though it was touch and go for a while. This one was in the far lane, coming from Newton, and as it neared me I waved my arms and yelled, “Hey!”

As before, the car slowed, then picked up speed. But this time the driver hit her brakes — it was another woman — and the buggy, an off-white two-door Mercury, skidded past me and came to a stop twenty feet away.

An unforgettable face topped by a swirl of beige-blonde hair popped out of the window, and the girl cried, “Mr. Scott? My God! Is that you?”

It was Canada Southern.

I didn’t even stop to question my good fortune, just assumed my bad luck must be behind me and started hobbling across the street.

“Yeah! It’s me. Hi, Miss Southern — Canada. Don’t get … scared, and go away.”

“What happened to you?”

I thumped up against the car’s side, just behind the driver’s door, my left knee tricking me a little when I tried to stop hobbling too suddenly. I grunted a couple of times, then pulled my tongue back into my mouth and said, “It’s O.K. I always look like this. Can you give me a lift?”

“Of course. Get in. I’ll drive you straight to the hospital.”

I started to reply, but by then I was moving behind the car and around to its right. As I opened the door and slid inside I said, “Just drive me downtown, will you? To where I can get a cab — “

“I’ll take you to the hospital!”

“Canada, if I was hurt bad enough to require hospitalization, I’d probably be dead, right? Haven’t you ever wondered why so many people die in hospitals? Why, it’s because those places are dangerous — “

“But, Mr. Scott, you look … ugh.”

“That bad, huh?”

She had already started the car and was making a speedy U-turn, so with her permission I swiveled the rearview mirror around until I could get a look at myself. Canada had come close to using the word of choice. I did look quite ugly, but it was mainly because of the dried blood. There was somewhat more of it than I had expected to see.

It hadn’t come from the lump I’d found on my forehead, but from the other one, higher and partly hidden in the hair on the left side of my skull. Probably because of the way I’d been hanging for a while in the car, from the spot where my scalp had been split blood had trickled across the top of my head, continuing on down the right side of my forehead and ending near, or maybe slightly inside of, my ear. Where the blood had thus oozed it had turned an inch-wide strip of my white hair an unattractive strawberry blond, and that wide reddish mark arching across the top of my head did make it appear that I might have been standing straight up under a guillotine when somebody goofed.

“It’s not really as bad as it looks,” I said. “My skull isn’t really laid wide open. Mostly it’s just blood — “

“Ugh,” she said softly.

“Sorry. I forget you girls are … by the way, since you’re saving my life, couldn’t you call me Shell?”

“Anything you want, Mr. — Shell.”

“All right. Then if you’ll pull over there, Canada?” I pointed to a Standard station on our right.

She glanced quickly at me. “The gas station?”

“Yes. Not the pumps, ah, near the men’s room? I thought I’d freshen up a bit.”

She pulled to a stop and cut the ignition, looking straight ahead. I went into the men’s room. After ten minutes I’d done all it was possible for me to do in there, and I gave myself a last check in the mirror before stepping outside. Getting the blood off my face had helped a lot, and even though there was still a yellowish tint to that inch-wide strip of hair it did not now appear that my face might fall off.

Probably in part because of that, and in part because just sitting without me decomposing near her must have helped. Canada appeared to have regained much of the sparkle and sizzle I’d first noted about her.

When I slid onto the seat next to her again she eyed me coolly from the tawny tigerish eyes, then smiled slightly and said, “Why, it is you.”

“Didn’t I tell you? Canada, there’s a phone here, so this is where I’ll get off. But a thousand thanks for the lift.” She smiled again and I said, “I’m lucky you came along when you did. Where were you going?”

“Home. I live in an apartment at the Gladwyn. It’s about a mile past the airport on Wisteria Drive.”

“Good, good.”

“I thought I’d nap for an hour or two. You know, before the opening tonight.”

“Good, the — ah! Yes, now I remember. It all comes back — well, I’ll see you there then, right?”

“You aren’t going to the Club Rogue opening, are you?”

“Why not? I know it’s an exclusive joint, but I’m to be the guest of a member. A Rogue Fellow, in fact. They’re the charter members, or big spenders, or something.”

“No. I mean the way you must feel.”

“Oh, that. The little aches and pains and things?”

I was struck then by Canada’s expression, which was deliciously tender, concerned, almost maternal. The maternal emotion is not one a man would set out deliberately to induce in a stupendously vital tomato, particularly one so marvelously constructed as to appear engaged in sexual isometrics even when yawning. Still, the maternal emotion is closely allied to other emotions without which there would be no maternal emotions; and Canada was bending upon me the kind of sweet-soft gaze one might bend upon a babe getting gored by its diaper pin; and, like most other men, I have a bit of the Old Adam in me, and even a bit of the New Adam; so, with barely a pause, I sped on:

“Yes, that — those. All the aches and pains and anguish, and like that?” I shrugged, and winced, peeling my lips back.

“You’re overdoing it,” she said.

“I was afraid I might be. But don’t stop me now I’m going good. I may not — we both know, don’t we? — have long to live, as any fool can plainly see. But isn’t that all the more reason for savoring to the full these last fleeting moments?”

“You’re really — “

“Canada, if you’ll promise to personally serve me a drink tonight, I’ll hire male nurses to carry me in on a stretcher. Hell, I’ll hire pallbearers.”

“I’ll do anything you want — within reason — if you’re really going to be there.”

“I have been trying to tell you I’ll be there, and why I’ll be there. If I didn’t give you a hint, how would you know I like you?”

She threw back her head and laughed softly, then looked at me, those flamethrower lips curving deliciously, and said, “I’d know. You can’t keep any secrets from me.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Shell,” she said, more seriously. “You do look less — dismembered now. But it really frightened me when I first saw you. What did happen?”

I didn’t go into detail, merely said, “Had an accident, driving into town. Clipped by a hit-and-runner and went off the road.”

“Yes … I saw the wrecked car out there. You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

I opened the car door and said, “Thanks again, Canada.”

She looked at me silently for a few seconds, then leaned closer. Not much, no more than an inch. But, as in so many other situations, that inch made a foot of difference.

“Shell,” she said, “we don’t really know each other at all. But I’d feel awful if you did get killed. I really would.”

“Never fear,” I said. “Shell Scott lives. I haven’t mentioned this to many people, but I won’t die until I’m a hundred and fifty years old. It’s all arranged.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. I got it from an old woman who reads coffee grounds. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it much.”

“Why, that’s wonderful,” Canada said with mock seriousness. “How do you finally die?”

“I fall off a trampoline. However, the point I am clarifying, Canada, is that despite a little twinge here and there” — I pulled my lips back from my teeth again and groaned — “nothing can prevent me from renewing our acquaintance at the Club Rogue tonight. But, in case something should, all I ask is that you remember me as I was.”

“Keep it up. Maybe I won’t feel so awful after all.”

I smiled at her and got out of the car.

I was in the phone booth, looking up the number I wanted, when Canada pulled back onto Mulberry and headed out of town again. Watching her go, it occurred to me that some of my most enjoyable moments in this case had been while sitting in a gas station.

But that was because I’d been talking to Canada Southern. Which was a lot different from getting my tank filled with ethyl. Or … maybe it wasn’t.

I found a dime, dropped it into the slot, and dialed.

</code>

<code> 10

Dave Bannister swung his big Lincoln Continental limousine into the brand-new black drive curving in a wide arc before the Sherwood Hotel. As he slipped the stick-shift into “Park” and glanced past me toward the gaudily garbed attendant trotting forward, he asked, “How’s the head now, Shell?”

“If I am not mistaken. Ban, it is still in one place. But” — I grunted as I leaned forward to get out of the car — “I could be mistaken.”

All in all, I was in surprisingly good shape. Some aching bruises and a bit of a limp, but nothing of overwhelming importance — except for the head, which pounded wildly from time to time. Fortunately, the painful pounding wasn’t constant, and the really fierce jangles inside my skull usually lasted only a few seconds before subsiding to no more of a problem than I’ve become accustomed to from hangovers.

It was 7 p.m., and I’d spent the last three hours with Bannister. While at the Standard station, I had first called Hank Wainwright and brought him up to date, becoming a mite vexed with him when he kept saying things like, “The hell with your head, pal. Tell me more about Canada.”

After hanging up on him, I phoned Bannister, who drove into town and picked me up, clucked appropriately at my marks and lumps, then suggested that we both return to his home.

It was some home. He told me without boastfulness or apology that it had cost him a quarter of a million four years ago, and he’d put another hundred and fifty thousand into improvements, gadgets, and landscaping. There were twenty-eight rooms in the place, actually two separate houses connected by a covered walkway walled with frosted glass.

The larger building was a low steel-and-concrete building with sweeping curves and clean lines, twenty-two rooms “to flop around in,” as Bannister put it. The adjoining six rooms were where Bannister worked, exercised, rested when he felt like it, or just “goofed off,” and I spent most of my time there.

What he called his exercise room was six hundred square feet filled with everything from barbells and weights, and combined steam bath and/or sauna, to machines that stopped just short of rolling you flat as a pancake and pouring syrup on you.

That’s where I spent more than an hour getting rolled and rubbed and cooking in the sauna, then lolling in an alternating hot and cold whirlpool bath. After all that I felt lively enough to tell Bannister he should be arrested for practicing rejuvenation without a license, whereupon we’d simply talked for another good hour. And it was a good hour.

It was only by sitting with him, having a beer and chewing the fat, that I was able to appreciate the quickness of his mind and breadth of his knowledge, combined with a kind of relaxed take-me-or-leave-me attitude that I liked but hadn’t been aware of during our brief discussion earlier in the day. By the time we left for the Sherwood, Bannister — who soon was “Ban” — and I were getting along like longtime friends who wore the same old kicked-out-of-school tie. He had polish and a smooth slick surface, but he was a rough cob underneath and didn’t give a damn if it showed.

Also by the time we left his home Bannister had made a dozen phone calls, to Hank Wainwright among others. Later tonight we were to meet Hank and Martinique Monet at the Rigoletto, where the police sergeant, Delcey, would join us. Hopefully, by then there’d be something to celebrate.

But not at the moment. As the result of his various calls, Bannister reported to me that: Mayor Fowler had not arrived in his City Hall office at 2:30 p.m., or at any time since then; Yoogy Dibler was nowhere to be found; nor had Hugh Grimson shown up at any of his usual apartments, hotel rooms, businesses, bars, or Silvano’s Garage; and Melinda Fowler — I’d suggested that she might know where Daddy was — hadn’t been located yet, either. I refrained from suggesting they drag for her in Fowler’s swimming pool, since I felt no uncontrollable urge to blab everything that had happened to me this day. Finally, nobody had reported hitting a sky-blue Cadillac sedan with a big white-haired guy in it, not on Mulberry Drive or anywhere else, which was no great surprise to me.

I made some calls myself, one to Coastal Airlines, and another to the people from whom I had rented two Cadillacs and to whom I had returned one Cadillac. They — and the local law, too, for that matter — were reasonably nice about it.

Shortly before 7 p.m., Bannister put his nearly full half-quart glass down on a black-marble table and said, “I am sick unto suicide of beer. Let’s go get a man’s drink, Shell,” and I said, honestly, “You took those blessed words right out of my mouth.”

</code>

<code> “You’d think they were opening the entire hotel, Ban,” I said, “instead of just the top of the thing.”

“When our estimable Mr. Grimson does a job, he likes to make a splash — if it’s legal. Otherwise, of course, not a ripple.”

Bannister’s reference to Grimson was based on his educated belief that at least a million bucks of Mr. G.‘s own loot was in the Club Rogue, the remainder of the required capital having been supplied by a few large and several small local investors.

“How legal are the waitresses up there?” I glanced again toward the top floor as we walked to the hotel entrance.

He smiled. “Hundred percent. Tonight. Maybe all year. It’s a private club, and just about everybody in town who might say no-no is a member. Unless we get pressure from outside the county or from Comstock’s ghost, there won’t be any trouble.” As we entered the express elevator he added, “The ladies should add a touch of class, don’t you think?”

“Ban, you know what I think.” That was all I had time to say before the apparently rocket-launched elevator stopped with a pshoosh. The doors opened, and we stepped out for our first look at the brand-new Club Rogue.

We were early. Only about a fifth of the expected five hundred members and guests — all male — were present. A few were moving around or standing in small groups, but most sat in the man-sized mahogany-and-black-leather chairs around low tables that looked like black flat-topped mushrooms.

“I am impelled to go to the can,” Bannister said indelicately. “Stand here by the elevator and think elevating thoughts until I return.”

“Yeah, sure. It’ll probably take you an hour and a half. Or more. I’ll miss all the fun.”

“Fun is a temptation, Shell. And abstinence is good for nothing. Remember that when you are tempted.”

“At least get started, will you?”

“I intend to. First, however, I feel it would be wise to determine whereat is the toilet.”

I shook my head. “Here, where the members have so much class, it’s probably the door that says ‘Can’ on it.”

“Ah.” He walked off.

I moved to my right, farther into the huge room, and glanced around. The walls were composed of huge smoky-gray mirrors alternating with clear plate-glass windows, through which could be seen the lights and color of the bustling and new-rich young city sparkling below. Seen, that is, if any of the lively lads here tonight cared to look.

I was no longer wearing my swell suit, not only because it was damaged beyond repair, but because black tie was de rigueur for tonight’s opening. Bannister had arranged for several stylish outfits to be delivered to his home, each a slightly different size, so I was now inside a tux that fit nearly as well as if it had been built on me.

I was gazing, somewhat askance, at my rather dashing, I kept telling myself, reflection in one of the huge mirrors when the first of the dozen long-promised and highly touted Club Rogue “Cocktail Hostesses,” each guaranteed to be exquisitely good-looking and gorgeously contoured, strolled past behind me. In the gray-tinted mirror, I wasn’t able to get a really good look, but this first one lived up to every adverb and adjective of the advance billing, plus several extra superlatives. Including the fact that she was naked. Yes, she really was quite nude. Strolling, thus, not more than two yards behind me.

Until that memorable moment, I guess I hadn’t believed. Not honest-and-truly. Not really. Not in my heart of hearts. Until that moment, too, I had been reasonably content to examine my not entirely unpleasant reflection, which occupation palled instantly.

By the time I turned around, which was pretty quick, I realized that the astonishingly proportioned and wondrously wavy lady was not entirely nude. She wore high-heeled shoes the shade of rich burgundy, hardly noticeable against the thick carpet of the same deep red — very similar to the wine-colored carpet I’d admired in Mayor Fowler’s home — and a similarly tinted puff of what could have been dyed goosefeathers in her blonde hair.

And then I became aware of something else about her, something familiar. This lovely was certainly gorgeously contoured, well in excess even of the guarantee, but the thing triggering near-recognition wasn’t that one-of-a-kind body — smooth white back, incredibly in-swooping waist accenting lyrelike hips, long smooth pale thighs, and firm rounded calves — at least not entirely. It was her almost-visible profile.

Then she turned her head farther toward me, and — Hell and Hot Dog, it was Canada. Luscious Canada Southern.

“Hey — hi!” I yelled.

She had turned her head away from me again and was still strolling ahead, also away from me — and at last I noted she was carrying a small tray on which were some drinks. There was quite a hum and bubble of voices, and possibly she hadn’t heard me.

I opened my mouth, but Canada was pretty far off, and I wasn’t sure she’d appreciate my bellowing her name. So I let her go, but watched with more than idle interest until she served her drinks to some vulgarly staring men at a table near the far wall.

By the time Bannister rejoined me, I’d spotted several other girls floating to and fro in the dimness of the Club Rogue. They weren’t difficult to spot, since they were the only girls here, and also the only people without clothes on, and it was thus not difficult to determine that they were girls.

Bannister clapped me on the shoulder, saying, “It was easy to find. Would you like to know why?”

“Not really — “

“Because there is no girls’ room. Impossible to make a mistake here.”

“Don’t kid yourself. Wait till you get a look at the waitresses.”

“I have already surveyed the scene with rising attention. My judgment is that we should sit down. Where would you like to settle?”

I pointed to the area where I’d seen Canada serving drinks, and we wound our way between tables, took seats before a mirrored section of the wall. After about a minute I caught sight of Canada again, and this time she saw me and smiled, then lifted the tray she was carrying, presumably so I could see that it was loaded with highballs. I raised a hand over my head and waggled it, pointing down at the top of our table, and she nodded.

“I have ordered drinks,” I said to Bannister. “At least, I hope that’s what I did.”

“Do I know the charming girl who will serve us?”

“Do you know Canada Southern?”

“Indeed I do. Ah, wonder of wonders. You have a keen eye, Shell, and faultless judgment. Where is the impossible Miss Southern?”

She had just finished serving some men four tables away, and was turning to go back to wherever the bar was. I pointed and Bannister craned his head around. “Saints preserve me,” he said. “I could become an alcoholic here.” He paused. “I fear that self-made sonofabitch, Grimson, will somehow make a billion dollars from this enterprise.”

“Have you seen the guy?”

He shook his head, though his eyes did not stray from Canada’s whitely gleaming form as she moved away from us. “In my survey, I made a quick tour of the room, and Mr. G. had not yet arrived. Even though it is still early, I did find already present our congressman, three state senators, two judges, and the man who does my dry cleaning.”

He pointed them out to me, adding more soberly, “Ev isn’t here yet, Shell. I can’t help being seriously concerned now. Just before I joined you I called his home again. And, again, no answer.”

“This has been a damned peculiar day. The last time I talked to Fowler he mentioned being called out on some kind of emergency. But he never got around to explaining what it was.”

Bannister frowned, then nodded toward the wall on our right. A long dais had been set up there, on it a cloth-covered table with thirteen chairs behind it. “There’s still an hour before the formal greetings, speeches of welcome, and Roguish remarks. Probably the mayor and guests of honor won’t arrive till shortly before they’re to take their seats on the dais.” He paused. “Just in case Ev isn’t here by then, I’ll speak to Cantor about it.”

“Cantor’s the chief of police, isn’t he?”

Bannister nodded, indicating a large red-faced guy at a nearby table with three other men. “The bald fellow talking to him now is the district attorney. Hank Wainwright’s boss.”

While I had been wasting time looking at all those law-enforcement officers, Canada Southern had been approaching, and by the time I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye she was only a few feet away.

I pulled my head around, feeling a smile growing. She undulated the last few feet to our table and stopped, not exactly all at once, but in wondrously impressive stages. This gal had a body that was practically articulate. And I’d thought of a couple questions to ask it.

When all was still, she nodded at Ban and said, “Good evening, Mr. Bannister.” Then, “And hello again, Shell. What would you like?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Scotch, bourbon, brandy, Martini? Rum and — “

“Couldn’t we just talk?”

Her lips curved in a smile but she said sternly, “If you don’t hurry up and order, I’ll have to go to another table. The room’s beginning to fill.”

She was right, the size of the crowd had doubled in the last fifteen minutes. “O.K.,” I said, “bourbon and water, then. Ban?”

“Scotch and Calso water, Canada.” She looked at him, still half-smiling. “I am fifty-seven years old. In all those years I have never seen a more beautiful woman.”

He wasn’t laying a flip line of flattery on her but clearly making a quiet statement of fact, and I think Canada was startled. Startled, but pleased.

“Well … thank you,” she said, just a bit flustered. “I’ll get your drinks.”

“Yeah, hurry,” I said.

“You get the cheap bourbon,” she said coolly, then turned and undulated away.

After a minute or two I glanced around the rapidly filling room, and something near the dais caught my eye. I got a very queer feeling, and stood up, to get a better view. I hadn’t been mistaken after all, and I was relieved but at the same moment strangely puzzled.

Because seated alone at a table just below the dais, with his back to the dais, and thus facing me, was Mayor Everson Fowler.

The puzzling thing was that one of the nude waitresses was bending toward him, and therefore had what might loosely be described as her back to me, and the mayor’s hand was gliding over one of her rounded and gleaming buttocks.

Even more puzzling, I would have sworn I had seen that marvelous fanny before. It is not true, at least in speaking of fannies, that if you’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘em all, and if I had not known such a thing was next to impossible, I would have believed I was once again gazing upon the delectable derriere I had first seen water-besprinkled and glistening beauteously in the afternoon sunlight.

Then the girl laughed, turning her head and glancing briefly around the room, and I was forced to believe the well-nigh unbelievable. It was indeed the same derriere, the same merry face, the same girl.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” I said aloud.

Bannister had been looking at me curiously. “Goddamned about what?”

“I am happy to be able to report, Ban, that His Honor has put in an appearance at last. But either looking at Canada up close has completely ruined my eyes, or what I really do see is the mayor patting his daughter’s rear end.”

“What? Ev’s here…. He’s what? Melinda?”

Bannister got to his feet, located the table I described for him, and stared. “Yes, I — wait a minute. You’re talking about the mayor’s daughter? Melinda Fowler?”

“Yeah. And only seconds ago His Honor was — there he goes again.”

There he went, indeed. The big paw reached around to brush that same rounded hemisphere.

“The mayor wouldn’t think of allowing his own daughter…” Bannister let it trail off. Then he said in an odd voice, “That’s not Melinda Fowler, Shell.”

“What do you mean? I tell you, I saw her in the pool….”

Bannister went on. “I know her, though. Went to a three-day party in Phoenix a couple of years ago, and she was part of the entertainment. Name’s Kitty Wilson — at least that’s what she called herself.”

“Kitty? But — “

“I don’t know what she’s doing now, but then she was the highest-priced whore in Arizona.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, then went through the same motions again. Something was trying to get said, but it wasn’t ready to come out.

“And unless I heard one thing and you said another,” Ban continued, still with that odd note in his voice, “I get the impression you did say His Honor. Shell, just in case you really don’t know it, the man over there playing with Kitty’s ass isn’t the mayor.”

His voice seemed to become fainter. I was starting to get it. The jumble of thought was rising inside me, bouncing around inside my skull, and my head started thumping and aching as if a rock-and-roll band was tuning up inside my brain.

Bannister’s voice really did sound fainter to me as he continued speaking, but I heard every word quite clearly.

“That sonofabitch,” he said, “is Hugh Grimson.”

</code>

<code> 11

For about three seconds I felt as if I’d had an overdose of novocaine. I got half numb all over, but when the sensation of chill and shock passed I automatically moved around the table and took a couple of quick steps forward.

But then I stopped, shook my head, went back to my seat.

This was no time to charge over there. Not just yet, not until I made a lot more sense of whatever the hell was going on.

Bannister had continued to look across the room, but then he also sat down and said to me, “Maybe I got the wrong impression, Shell. When you said His Honor, I thought you meant — “

“The mayor. Yeah. You got the right impression.” Bannister started to speak but I held up a hand. “That guy, with the graying hair, bushy eyebrows, sideburns a foot long, sparkly blue dinner jacket — it is not Mayor Everson Fowler.”

“Shell, I told you, that sonofabitch — “

“Hugh Grimson. Oh, brother. He is the guy I talked to today. Twice.”

Bannister tried to say something again but I shook my head. “Give me a minute, Ban. I’ve got to think. Just a minute.”

I used maybe a minute and a half. Then Canada was back with our drinks. There wasn’t much gay conversation this trip, and when she ankled away I sighed, had a pull at my bourbon highball, looked at Bannister.

“Well, here it is,” I said. “To start with, I have today experienced the snow job of my life. And it requires of me strenuous rearrangement of my thinking, you should excuse the expression. By the numbers: One, the man who met me this morning — and again this afternoon — at Mayor Fowler’s home was Hugh Grimson. Two, God knows where the real mayor is, or even if he’s alive. Three, there could be another explanation for some of this, but eight to five Mayor Fowler’s phone is tapped — very likely has been for some time. Four, since I did not at any time speak with the real mayor, you can bet your boots I didn’t talk to the real informant, either. So Yoogy Dibler — like the mayor’s dear sweet daughter, Kitty-Melinda — was part of the snow in which I have been buried throughout this interesting day. It follows that somewhere, either upon or a few feet beneath the earth, is the real informant … whoever the hell he may be.”

“Shell, you’re going too fast for me.”

“It takes some getting used to.” I paused. “Tell me something, Ban. Does Grimson look at all like Mayor Fowler?”

“No — ” Bannister cut it off, letting the sharp blue eyes rest on me. “I see what you mean. So let me start over. Yes, he does. To someone who’d never seen either of them before. They’re about the same height and weight. Both have graying hair, long sideburns. But that’s about it. Nobody who’d seen them both could possibly mistake one for the other.”

“Uh-huh. Nobody who’d seen them both. Grimson counted on that, obviously. Had to take a small chance, but after we’d traded our first sentence or two he knew I’d swallowed the hook.”

I had a second sip of my bourbon and water. “What I can’t figure is how the may — damn, I still want to keep calling that wart the mayor — how Grimson could have believed the con would work. Maybe for an hour, even for a while longer, but in time I was certain to….”

I stopped, thinking about it. “Yeah, it just might have worked like a charm — if I’d flown back to L.A. soon after our talk. Which I was supposed to do. Which I came damned close to doing. But once Grimson realized I was still in town and was going to stick around for a while, which he knew for sure after our second chat, he also had to know he couldn’t show himself in public, like here tonight for example, as long as there was a chance I might see him and — “

I cut it off and let the rest of the breath sigh from my mouth as that novocaine feeling rippled over me again and then was replaced by heat, a sensation like fire swelling up from my gut into my chest and burning the inside of my head.

“Why, that sonofabitch,” I said softly. “He sent that kamikaze trucker to kill me.”

I was halfway out of my seat when Bannister grabbed my arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Why, I’m going to have a little chat with the darling,” I said. “I may pull his tongue out and strangle him with it. Yes, something like that — “

“Shell, I’ve done more than hint at this before. Grimson may not look it, but he’s Trouble with a capital T. I’m serious, the man is dangerous.”

“I know. He told me so himself.” I pulled my arm free.

“Well,” Bannister sighed. “If you’ve got to, I’ll stroll along.”

“I can handle this alone.” I no sooner said it than I changed my mind. “It might be interesting to see how he reacts to me — while you’ve got an eye on him — at that.”

I walked across the room, Bannister close behind me.

When I was still ten feet from where he sat, Grimson saw me and his face registered shock, perhaps mixed with alarm. But only for a second. Then his face smoothed, he let his eyes glide from my face, looked up at Kitty again. At least he looked at the girl Bannister had said was Kitty, the little lovely who’d told me she was Melinda Fowler. Among other things.

Grimson said something quickly to her. I didn’t hear the words, but saw her glance quickly at me, eyes widening, then back at Grimson. By then I was next to the table, pulling out a chair, sitting down, smiling at Hugh Grimson.

He looked blankly at me, then past me to David Bannister and rose smiling to his feet.

“Welcome to the festivities, Dave,” he said cheerfully.

“Sit down,” I said to him.

He stared at me, managing to look sincerely puzzled, and remained standing. “I could help you,” I said. “If that’s what you want.” He frowned, but slowly sank into his seat again.

“Mayor Fowler,” I said gently, “I think I’m going to need your help in finding Mr. G.”

Grimson carried it off quite well. The half-puzzled, half-amused expression, dark eyes raised to Bannister, quick glance at me with the heavy brows lifted, then the more serious look up at Bannister again. “Dave it’s one of my busy nights, and if this is some kind of joke — “

I reached across the table, hooked two fingers beneath his blue-velvet butterfly tie, and pulled him six inches closer. At the same time I leaned forward, so our faces were no more than a foot apart. “Who was driving the truck, friend?”

“Get your goddamn hand — “

I gave him a pretty good tug toward me. Unfortunately, the tie wasn’t a do-it-yourself job but one of those held on by a little hook, and the hook either bent or broke because the tie came off in my hand. I dropped it on the table.

“I don’t suppose it would have been Sergeant Samuels? Or Officer Jonah? I don’t suppose you’d tell me anyway, right? Not right this minute, I mean.”

His face was a little flushed, but impressively hard, with that almost stern and forbidding expression I’d seen hints of earlier, open and undisguised now. And no longer “almost.” He lifted a big fist, pushing his teeth together, glanced around, let his hand drop. But the jaw stayed clamped shut.

“Maybe not this minute,” I continued, “but you will. You can bet your life on it.”

Grimson managed to stay on his side of the table. After a long silence he sighed and got to his feet.

“Dave,” he said to Bannister, “I’ve no idea what the hell’s going on, but I hope this man isn’t a friend of yours.”

“He’s my guest,” Bannister replied coolly. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen him before?”

“Of course not. What’s the meaning of this charade? Who is this” — he let it slide off his lips as he turned to stare down at me, then deliberately finished the question — “son of a bitch?”

I stood up, grinning, getting ready to pop him. But Bannister yanked on my arm. “Haven’t you made enough mistakes already, Shell?” he asked quietly.

There was so much painful truth in the question that it cooled me down a little. Not a lot, but enough. Bannister was going on, speaking to Grimson, “Hugh, this is my good friend, Shell Scott. Shell, Mr. Grimson.”

“If he’s a friend of yours, I’d suggest you get him out of here, Dave.”

“Is that a request, Hugh? I mean, do I have a choice?”

Grimson struggled to do it, but managed to put on a more congenial expression. “Of course it’s a request — I mean, it’s entirely up to you. It’s simply that” — he let the hard eyes dig me again — “I didn’t invite this sonofabitch to my table.”

Bannister jerked his head toward me, but I was well in control by this time. Well enough, at least, that I managed not to hit him. I even had a small idea instead.

We were all standing at the table now, in rather tense postures. Even Kitty, who so far hadn’t said a word. Nor had she so much as looked at me since that one quick glance.

“Ban,” I said, “I don’t suppose you need any convincing about the tale I told you.” He started to shake his head but I went on. “I think I can arrange a little fun for us, anyway. This young lady — did you say she was Kitty Wilson?”

Bannister nodded.

“Miss Wilson?” I said, speaking directly to her. She looked at me finally, face quite composed, lids drooping over the sapphire eyes. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen me before, either.”

“Of course not.” She swallowed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Hold that thought, dear — ridiculous, I mean.” I looked at Bannister. “I’m going to say something that isn’t funny. So nobody should laugh, right?”

Kitty swallowed again. It was obvious she was keyed up, in the kind of emotional state when a girl — anybody — is most open to suggestion, so I laid it on a little more. “Ban, before I pick up the table and tap Mr. G. with it, and possibly drop this dear girl out the window, I shall drop a senseless remark or two. And nobody will laugh … except Kitty.”

She was starting to look scared. As though there was not a bit of fun, not anything even remotely near laughter, in her anywhere. Which was the way I wanted her.

I stared at Kitty Wilson until she looked at me, waited till her eyes were on my face. Then I hunched over a little and sucked air through my teeth, letting them click like chilly castanets, and said, hoking it up quite a bit, “Muh — Muh — Muhlinda.”

I knew what had to be instantly in her mind’s eye. A picture of me, freezing my recently — and oh-so-briefly — bared butt while she frolicked in the eighty-degree pool. And the first ten percent of the bit went off nicely. The corners of her lips curved up automatically, as she came very close to smiling. So close that it scared her even more — she did not, definitely did not want to smile at any “senseless” thing I might say in front of Hugh Grimson. Who’d never seen me before either.

So I tried for the other ninety percent.

“Melinda, whuh-whuh-whuh — ” I stopped, made myself shiver, clicked my teeth some more, and started over. “Baby, wh-wh-where did I g-go wrong?”

Perhaps at another moment she wouldn’t even have smiled. But it was the right moment. She cracked up. She dissolved. She cackled and snorted and tried very hard not to laugh, but then just let the shrieks peal out.

“You bitch, get your ass out of here!”

That was Grimson, of course, and she heard him, but she couldn’t stop. Not soon enough. When she did manage to cut it off, suddenly, after four or five shrill seconds, I thought she was going to faint.

She was on my left, Grimson straight across from me. I walked around the table, came up behind Grimson while he was still glaring at the girl.

I planted the fingers of my left hand on his biceps, squeezed hard, pulled him halfway around to face me.

There was momentary indication of pain on his face before he smoothed it away. Fine. I’d wanted him to feel it when I clamped onto his arm.

I grinned at him and said, “That wasn’t really for Kitty, Grimson. And Ban didn’t need the convincer. It was for you, sweetheart.”

“You stinking son — “

“Chop it.” I moved closer, put my face six inches from his, and went on softly. “I give you the first rounds, all the points. It was a smooth con, you took me for a sweet ride, made a marvelous sap of me — that part’s O.K., it’s happened before. I could even overlook it. But the truck, sweetheart, that I can’t overlook.”

Grimson started to speak, splitting his lips and looking as if he were going to spit in my eye, but then he let out a shuddering sigh and pulled his eyes from mine.

“Bannister,” he said flatly, “I told you I don’t know who this sonofabitch is — “

“Hold it.” I got my fingers around his bicep again and leaned into him. “I was planning to leave, Grimson. But if you call me a sonofabitch once more, I’ll stay long enough to satisfy you.”

Then I let go of him.

Maybe, as Bannister had said, you couldn’t tell the man was dangerous just by looking at him. Well, probably that was true most of the time. But not at a time like this. He looked dangerous, deadly, teetering on the edge of mania. That and more, none of it reassuring, was in his dark eyes as he stared back at me.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Find out. Try it one more time.”

He looked at me for a long while. Probably five or six seconds, not more than that. But it was a long while. Then he kind of shivered, like a man breaking out of thin ice, and turned his head away again.

“Bannister, I was about to suggest to you,” he said, the words smooth, quiet, cold and slick as icicles, “that this — individual obviously has confused me with someone else. I give you my word, I have never seen him before. However, in view of his insulting and irrational actions, he is not welcome here. I realize, Bannis … Dave, that you would probably like to enjoy the Club Rogue’s entertainment tonight, but as for your friend — “

“Forget it,” Bannister broke in. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Sure we do,” I said pleasantly.

Bannister gave me a quick dirty look and went on. “I was just about to ask Mr. Scott to leave with me. Within the next few minutes, that is. I appreciate your implied invitation to stay and enjoy the program, Hugh, but I would prefer to leave with my friend.” He looked at me then, cocking his head on one side.

“Splendid,” I said cheerfully. “Hell, I only came to hear the mayor’s speech. And I guess we’re out of luck there, what?”

Nobody answered me.

When Bannister walked off, I followed him. He led me back to our table. We’d left our barely touched drinks there, and Bannister picked up his glass, put it down empty.

“Good Scotch,” he said blandly.

“Swell. What else is new?”

He looked at me, shaking his head very slowly, as if his neck was stiff. “I’ve had a bit more than I can readily absorb in these last few minutes. But I do know this, Shell. In a short time I have come to have a strange, possibly warped, and admittedly ephemeral, affection for you. More, you are only thirty years old, by my lights a youth in the first bloom of maturity — or, perhaps, judging by your actions, the last bloom. You are too young, too vigorously offensive, too callow a boy to die within the week.”

He paused, holding his head still at last while he looked soberly at me. “Which, had it escaped your awareness, your little exercise of suicidal bravado, just concluded, has made as inevitable as the sunrise.”

“You make my assassination sound almost poetic. Speaking of which, do you think Fowler’s dead?”

“I can’t believe that. Oh, it’s not just wishful thinking, though Ev is a damned good friend, of many, many years. Nobody murders the mayor of a big city unless he’s some kind of psychotic. Certainly nobody with sufficient imagination to visualize the almost inevitable consequences. And Grimson’s no fool. I know much more about him than you do, Shell, and he’s not just hard and dangerous. He’s shrewd, intelligent, a very canny bastard.”

“Yeah, and he puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. Maybe he’s a very hard-boiled boy, but he’s got soft spots all over him. I never met a hood who didn’t. And that exercise of — suicidal bravado did you call it? — just might have psyched the sonofabitch a little. Even if it didn’t, what could I lose?”

“Do you really need me to tell you?” He shook his head, frowning. “But forget that. Right now we should decide what, in the light of our present understanding, we should do. Any suggestions?”

“A few. I’ve no doubt I talked to Fowler last night — Grimson wouldn’t have had any reason to phone me. But we know I didn’t talk to Fowler this morning, nor to the alleged informant. We can assume everything the mayor told me last night was true, and start from there. Including Fowler’s remarks about his caller’s information, info that got him charged up enough to phone me. The informant, I repeat, who was not Yoogy Dib….”

“What’s the matter?”

“Just a minute…. Yeah, sure. Before we walked over to chat with Grimson, I told you Fowler’s phone must be tapped. Unquestionably true. I just didn’t carry the thought far enough. It could explain, at least partly, how come Grimson was there to meet me at the mayor’s home, and more important, how he managed to pull off the con without blowing the mark, me.”

“I don’t understand. You’ve already suggested he was aware you hadn’t met Ev Fowler, wouldn’t recognize him — “

“Sure, but it was more than that, Ban. Grimson had Fowler’s voice down pat — well enough, at least, so a man who’d only heard the mayor on the phone wouldn’t tumble, wouldn’t have any reason to suppose he wasn’t talking to the same guy he’d had a long-distance chat with.”

Bannister nodded once, moving his head in a little jerk. He hadn’t been just listening, he’d been thinking, too, and he jumped ahead of me. “Shell, Ev’s a bit pompous and he had a distinctive way of expressing himself at times, certain words or phrases he uses — “

“On the button. And — hindsight — Grimson almost overdid it. He rolled off bits like ‘Excellent, excellent!’ and ‘Precisely so!’ about right. But there were other things the mayor said last night that Grimson repeated to me today in almost exactly the same words. Maybe a little too rehearsed, if I’d been looking for it. Which, of course, I wasn’t.”

An idea was starting to grow, wiggling around up there, but I couldn’t quite bring it into focus. I had a sip of my drink, lit a cigarette, then went on. “I’m the only man with firsthand knowledge that Grimson was impersonating Fowler, in the mayor’s home, this morning. Even the girl, Kitty, probably doesn’t know what Grimson was up to. I’d guess he got word to her and told her to keep me there somehow until he arrived. But why? And how did he know I was there?”

Bannister shook his head. “Anyway, how could she have kept you from leaving if — “

“Ban, let’s … stick with the important things, huh? She did know he was going to show, stick with that fact. When he came up the drive she started to say, ‘There’s Hugh,’ but caught herself and made some squeaks and noises. Needless to say, I missed it.”

Bannister was only half listening. “Shell, the one thing I’m concerned about now is Ev. If he is alive….”

“If he’s alive, Ban, he’ll probably stay alive — at least until I’m not.”

“How’s that?”

“If he’s dead, we can safely assume Grimson killed him. But let’s say he hasn’t been killed. If so, Grimson can hardly knock him off now, not after impersonating the mayor, not with what I know, and what I’ve told you. If Mr. G. can get rid of me, then it won’t matter if a hundred citizens accuse him of strangling Fowler personally, there won’t be anybody around who can tie him in legally. Hell, even what I know isn’t enough by itself, it’s unsupported, uncorroborated, entirely circumstantial. So the mayor’s disappeared, and Grimson was in the mayor’s house? So what? And I’m the only person who could even testify to that.” I paused. “Except Fanny — I mean, Kitty — Wilson. I wonder if she’s got any idea how little time she may have left?”

Bannister rubbed his lips again, eyes troubled. “You started to say something about Yoogy Dibler a while back?”

“Yeah, let’s shake out of our heads everything Grimson conned me with and pick up from what the real mayor told me. Whoever phoned him knew plenty about Grimson’s organization. The mayor was impressed with his info. The big thing, this informant is — or was, since we don’t know if he’s still alive, either — an eyewitness to the murder of Joe Ramirez. And Ramirez was shot and killed by Hugh Grimson. So if we can find out who that informant was, and if he’s still alive, there’s still a good chance of wrapping Mr. G. up for delivery to Q.”

“Q?”

“San Quentin. Folsom, the Gulf of California, anyplace he can’t get out of would suit me. I’ll call Hank Wainwright, fill him in, get him moving. Since you know the police chief, it might not hurt to buzz in his ear. Incidentally, just how deeply has Grimson poked into the local law? What about the chief himself?”

“We don’t have to worry about Cantor. And I’m sure ninety percent, or more, of his men are honest. It’s just that, now we realize Grimson’s got to so many more of the officers than we’d guessed, we might be suspecting some of them unjustly, good men we’re still not sure of.”

“Yeah. Well, while you jaw with Chief Cantor, why don’t I phone Hank? Would he be at the Rigoletto yet?”

Bannister glanced at his thin gold watch. “He’s probably picking up Martinique about now. Should be there in the next few minutes. I’ll take Cantor aside. Probably should call Delcey, too — yes, no question, he’s got to know about this. But then I think we should leave, Shell. I can’t see sitting among the merrymakers of the Club Rogue when Ev’s….”

He didn’t finish it, so I did. “We’ll just keep on assuming he’s alive, Ban. But I agree we should get a move on. Because even if Fowler isn’t dead — yet — it can’t be much of an exaggeration to say he’s in a lot of trouble.”

Bannister nodded, stood up. Then he paused, looked back at me, and said cheerfully:

“When you stop to think about it, so are we.”

</code>

<code> 12

I found a row of three pay phones opposite the elevator, waited half a minute until the one man there finished what I deduced was an argument with his wife, which he lost, even though he ended the conversation by hooting, “I will not leave this sinkhole of sin — ahk, will you quit calling it — hon, how can a sinkhole be on the twenty-second — ahk, the hell — ‘bye for now, sweets,” and hung up, and went back into the bubble and conversation and laughter, and sin, of the Club Rogue.

With nobody else near the phones, I called the Rigoletto. No luck on the first try. Mr. Wainwright and Miss Monet had not yet been observed. But on my second call I got Hank, told him simply to listen for a minute then pop with questions, and filled him in.

When I stopped there was silence and I said, “No questions?”

“Too many. What I was really thinking about was Joe Ramirez. Could be we’ll tag Grimson for it yet.”

“Could be, Hank.”

“At least there’s a chance now. You really think Grimson set up the play with that truck, huh?”

“Hell, who else? He must have done everything but drive it. And how do you like the timing?”

“Yeah … I was just thinking, if that diesel had got you a little heavier, we’d still be laughing about Yoogy’s self-generated hallucinations. Not to mention a lot of other great jokes.”

“Sure. That was the idea. I guess I’ve covered it for now, Hank. Any of it not clear?”

“No, I got it all. I made some notes in my secret shorthand. Just a sec…. It’s so secret, I can’t read it. Ah, O.K. I probably already know what you want me to check, Shell. Anything special you’re after?”

“That wiretap, first of all. I figure it could have been on Fowler’s phone for quite a while. And if there’s a tap on the mayor’s phone, it isn’t reaching to assume there might be others. If so, who did the work, set it up? Who’s been riding the earie? I know it could be a tough job trying to find out — “

“Maybe not, Shell. One of the top men at Bell-North, our phone company here, is a guy I went to school with, good friend and a good man, too. If anybody can speed this part up for me, he can do it.” Hank paused. “I expected you’d say to push on the real informant, whoever he is.”

“Sure, only he’s dead, or knows by now his future is bleak. Either he showed up at Mayor Fowler’s last night — and, recall, the mayor ain’t around — or had good reason for not showing. Take your pick, he’s not going to be on Fifth and Main watching the lights change. As for Yoogy, I don’t need to tell you — “

“Yeah,” Hank broke in. “Grimson set him up, coached him, in case you did happen to drop in on Dibler — which he hoped you would do, pal. In the confidence game that’s called the convincer, right? Or don’t you remember?”

“Now I remember. And now I remember why. The hell of it is, even though I didn’t have any idea I wasn’t talking to the real Mayor Fowler, I still got the feeling he wanted me to check out his boozy informant. Which I did, cleverly following the ring in my nose.”

“Don’t be so tough on yourself, you dumb ape. Sounds like a pretty smooth job to me. Might have convinced anybody.”

“Any dumb ape, you mean?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I sure wasn’t one of the brightest monkeys around. I should have tumbled somewhere along the line — the second time I visited Fowler’s, at least. I don’t know, every goddamn time a good-looking babe gets her pants off, I do some dumb — “

“Pants off? Babe — who? You didn’t say anything about — “

“And I’m not going to. Forget I mentioned it. Get cracking, boy! You’ve got work to do.”

“Uh-huh. But you just reminded me. Here I am, at the Rigoletto, my Martini getting warm. You are at the Club Rogue. Is it true what they said? Of course, I never really believed it — “

“Neither did I. We should have more faith.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus. You are beginning to comprehend then, Shell, old friend, what a magnificent, and stupid, sacrifice I made for you?”

“Appreciate it, Hank. Really do. Tell you what, in return, I may some day introduce you to a lovely creature named Anjarene. Like, well, maybe a year and a half from now.”

“You’re a real friend, old friend. I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I’ll get to my man at Bell-North, put some lines out. Never can tell, one of our informants might have picked up a rumble. I’ll run down what I can on those plainclothes hoods, too. Have I got the names right? Officer Jonah, he’s the skinny mean one with the eyes?”

“Right.”

“Too bad you didn’t get a look at the other one. The alleged sergeant. That was Sergeant…”

“Samuels.”

“Wait a minute, I just remembered something, I think. Seems to me a year or two back there was a big muscle-bound hood did odd jobs — like breaking necks, dipping guys in wet cement — for Hugh Grimson. And his name’s Sargent.” Hank spelled it. “They didn’t call him that, though. Called him Sam Jelly. Mean anything to you?”

“Nope.”

But it did. There was that wiggle, or wobble, or faint spark up there again. Then, nothing.

“Well, I’ll get on this stuff, Shell. And we’ll naturally start turning over the county for Mayor Fowler. Not that I expect he’ll be any more prominently displayed than Dibler.”

“Too bad you can’t haul Grimson in and ask him a few pointed questions.”

“Too bad about a lot of things. With what we’ve got now, if we brought him in you’d go to the joint. Well, I’ll get back to you when I have something. Where’ll you be, here? The Rigoletto?”

“Yeah. Half an hour from now, say. Maybe less.”

“Bannister with you?”

“Around here somewhere. While I filled you in, he was going to talk with Cantor.”

“Who?”

“Cantor — your chief of police. So I’m told.”

“Yeah, sure. Cantor’s O.K. He’d love to see Grimson get about a dozen consecutive hundred-year jolts. I’ll tell Martinique she’s not being abandoned. You and David will soon join her, and laugh and joke while I work my ass off. By the way, she asked about you.”

“She did?” I smiled. “What did she say?”

“She just asked, ‘What happened to the big dumb ape?’ I told her you were eating banan — “

I hung up on him. Twice in a row now.

When I turned around I was surprised to see Bannister only three or four feet away. Not unpleasantly surprised, especially since close to him was Canada Southern. Very close. He had his arm around her ridiculously small waist, fingers resting on her smoothly curving bare hip. Resting lightly, I had to admit. He wasn’t clutching, or poking at her, or anything like that. Still….

“Well, hello, you two,” I said, looking significantly at Bannister’s hand. And, of course, at Canada’s hip. “I didn’t know we were supposed to maul the hostesses.”

Canada smiled and said, “Only special people are permitted wild attacks like this.”

“Special? Huh. What’s so special — “

“People like Mr. Bannister, because he says such nice things to me. And people like you…. Are there any people like you?”

“There’s me. Isn’t one enough? Just so I’m included. When — “

“Well, let’s go, Shell,” Bannister said, withdrawing his arm from around Canada’s waist.

“Mr. Bannister told me you have to leave,” Canada said. “I wish you could stick around a while longer.”

“You and me both. Well, maybe there’ll be another time, there’s always the gas station — “

Bannister, having already poked the elevator button, was saying, “Goodnight, Miss Southern. And thank you.”

“For what?”

“Just — thank you.” He was beaming at her like an old lecher. Worse, like a young lecher.

“You’re sweet,” she said, smiling a gooey smile.

Pshoosh went the elevator doors, then Ban was hauling me by the arm. “What are you trying to do, you creep?” I asked him. “Beat my time?”

“What else?” he said as the doors shut and the bottom seemed to fall out of the elevator. “The reason you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is because old dogs already know ‘em.”

The elevator door opened then, twenty-two floors below where he’d started speaking, so I let him have the last word. For now. My head had started banging something fierce again.

</code>

<code> Holding the olive between two long red-nailed fingers she smiled brilliantly at us. “I need another Martini,” she said happily. “They can leave out the olive this time.”

I said, “Hi,” and as we sat down Bannister asked her, “Did Henry explain why he had to leave?”

“Just that he had something to do, and you’d tell me about it when you arrived. And apologized for leaving me alone.” She smiled again. “I didn’t mind. Two men already tried to pick me up. But I told them I was expecting a baby.”

“You were kidding them, of course?” I said.

“Well, you never can tell,” she replied lightly, then looked across the table to Bannister. “What was Henry in such a hurry about, anyway?”

“There have been some astonishing, and disturbing, developments, tonight, my dear,” Bannister said. He wiggled a finger at a swarthy, sinister-looking waiter lurking nearby, gave him our drink orders, then began telling Martinique what had just occurred at the Club Rogue.

While he explained, and she gasped and softly cried “No!” and “But that’s fantastic!” I glanced around.

The Rigoletto was a small dinner club, with about twenty tables each covered by a pink tablecloth and with a glass-enclosed candle at its center. The candles were all lighted and provided most of the illumination. On the ceiling above each candle a soft round blob of light moved gently and erratically, pushed by imperceptible currents of air. A small bar was in a separate room adjoining this one. The waiters all looked like pirates.

Our drinks arrived. While we finished them, the conversation was about Hugh Grimson, his impersonation of the mayor, the question of who the man might be who’d phoned the mayor last night, and if there was any chance the informant was still alive. The big question, naturally, was: What had happened to Mayor Fowler?

Martinique said, again, “It’s all just fantastic. Wouldn’t we feel funny if Ev walked in the door and said, ‘What? You’re starting without me?’”

“I wish to hell he would,” Bannister said. “By the way, Shell, in case Ev should show up, or if Chief Cantor finds out anything we’d be interested in, he’ll call me here.”

On our way to the Rigoletto, Ban had told me about his conversation with the police chief. Cantor had been very interested in what Bannister had to say, but at the same time professionally skeptical. For example, one of Cantor’s remarks had been, “Who in hell is this Shell Scott, and how do we know he’s not some kind of nut?”

Finally we ordered dinner. I enjoyed my tossed green salad, but before I could start on an enormous platter of ravioli smothered with baked cheese our waiter returned to the table and said there was a phone call for me.

I took it in the adjoining room at the small bar there. The bartender pointed to the receiver on the bar-top, then walked several feet away to serve a young couple who were chewing each other’s ears. The call was from Hank Wainwright.

“Things are moving along,” he said. “We start with the assumption the mayor’s phone was tapped, and if so it follows there must be other taps, maybe a lot of them, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ve talked to my old school chum. That kind of operation would be a lot easier with help from somebody who works for the phone company, and he gave me the names of three men with the technical know-how. If there was wholesale phone-tapping, any one of those three could have handled it. The third man’s so clean and pure I’m not even going to check him unless I draw blanks on the other two. One of them’s a former convict named Wallace Black, the other’s a man named Jim Wade. If either of them did a job for somebody else, I might be able to turn out enough pressure to squeeze the somebody’s name out of him.”

“Especially if it’s the ex-con. That’s Wallace Black?”

“Yeah, but he’s been out three years, no trouble, married and with two kids. Besides, he went up for vehicular homicide, did thirteen months — wasn’t convicted for a stickup or anything like that. Wade’s younger, single — divorced — just bought a new car, and paid off the mortgage on his home six weeks ago. Not a fortune, but he gave the finance company a check in the amount of forty-eight hundred bucks. Of course, he makes more than three times that much a year. Doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“If it does, it’s interesting he came up with the money six weeks back.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve been worrying a little about that myself. Maybe for nothing. I’m going to check out Black, and if he isn’t even nervous I’ll call on Wade. If I come up with anything I’ll stop by the Rigoletto and fill you in. That’s where you’ll all be?”

“Far as I know. If not, we’ll leave word here.”

“O.K. Now, before I get going, here’s a little more I dug up for you. We didn’t have anything here on that registration you gave me. But we got the word from DMV in Sacramento a little while ago, and it’s for a Chrysler Thunderbolt sedan. Registered to one Samuel Whitlow Sargent, residing — a year ago, anyhow — in San Francisco. Ring a bell?”

“Sam Jelly.”

“You’ve got a good ear.”

“Not as good as yours, Hank. Didn’t you say he was around Newton a year or so back?”

“Right. Definitely linked with Grimson then, for a couple years at least. Local Homicide had him in twice for interrogation. Delcey brought him in. He was a lieutenant then. All they could do was ask Sam Jelly questions he couldn’t answer until his lawyer arrived. Or afterwards, either. Nothing on him for fifteen months — until today, that is.”

“If we asked, I suppose he’d say he got homesick for Newton. There is something about this burg that gets under a man’s skin, like hydrophobia — “

“Here’s the rest of it, Shell. Neither the police department nor my office has any record of a Jonah, and the only Samuels is a short fat police sergeant who’s going to retire next year. There’s a ‘Jonah’ in the monicker file, though, and his description fits your skinny shadow to a T, including the prominent wrinkled bags under his beady glimmers.”

“Very interesting. And damned good work, Hank. Has to be the pair who left me at the airport, then stopped by to see the mayor. Put ‘mayor’ in quotes, of course.”

“What wraps it, while our muscle-bound Sam Jelly was breaking things up around town, his buddy and partner in mayhem was the just-mentioned Jonah, real name Lou Wykoff.”

He paused. “Look, it’s after nine now, and I’ve got at least two calls to make before Dick Cavett comes on — I never miss him, you know. You should see him behind twenty toes. Fun-ny. But I do sometimes glance uneasily over my shoulder when the audience laughs — “

I knew, now that he’d started getting gay again, Hank had finished his formal report. So I hung up on him. That made it three in a row.

When I returned to the table my raviolis were still hot, though their baked-cheese blanket had cooled a bit much. While I put away several delicious mouthfuls I passed on the info Hank had phoned in and said with luck he’d be joining us in an hour or two.

Bannister placed another call to Delcey, came back and said the sergeant wouldn’t be able to get here until ten o’clock.

For half an hour after we’d finished eating, we chatted about the mayor, Grimson, odds and ends. Then the dialogue became mostly small talk, with more lengthy silences than there’d been earlier. It was five after ten, and Delcey still hadn’t arrived, when we heard it.

Everybody in the room heard it. Heads at all occupied tables jerked toward the front of the restaurant. That’s where the sound had come from, out there in the street. Even the people who’d never heard that sound before must have known those hard flat blasts were gunshots. I’d heard it before. Too many times before. This time it was the deep crack of a heavy handgun, maybe more than one, the fast rattle of half a dozen shots very closely spaced.

I must have been going through the door before Martinique or Bannister started out of their chairs, if they moved at all. Because I not only knew that sound, but in me was the gut-tightening fear that I knew what it meant. I was on my way before the last shot was fired. A waiter carrying a tray was between the door and me and I didn’t try to go around him. He jumped back but I hit the tray and knocked drinks flying, then slammed into the door and was outside, shoes sliding on the cement walk as I tried to stop.

On my left there was the quick bright-red flare of a car’s taillights and with it the shrill screech of tires biting into asphalt, skidding. I got a glimpse of the car fishtailing, cutting right from Sixteenth into the cross street half a block away. A glimpse, then it was out of sight.

Across the street only three or four cars were parked, but one of them — almost directly opposite the Rigoletto’s entrance — was angled oddly, right front tire up over the curb. The door on the driver’s side opened. But only part way. I could see the man inside, hanging onto the door with both hands, faint movement like white shadow as he slumped forward, staring toward me, then the face moved downward slowly, still staring at me, till it rested on one of those hands.

I knew who it was, I knew, I knew. But I ran across the street, reached past the door, grabbed his arm, held him.

“Hank,” I said, “don’t worry, old friend — “

“Listen. I got to tell you while there’s time.”

His voice was surprisingly strong, the words clear. But when I put a hand against his chest to hold up his slumping body I felt the warm stickiness like thin honey against my palm. And I felt it pulsing from him, felt it flow over the back of my hand.

He went on. “We had it right, must be a dozen taps, maybe more, Christ knows. Man worked with a little hood named Biggers. G.‘s man. Little Biggie they call him. Got ten thousand for helping Biggie….”

“Chop it, Hank. Don’t use up your — “

“Screw yourself, I got to tell this.” His voice changed slightly. It wasn’t that it got weaker, exactly, just more jerky. Scratchy. Words left out. “Mayor’s phone, mine, Bannister, Delcey … bly Martinique’s, cops, others. Some he didn’t know who. This Biggie handles it all, listens and records from the taps. Room someplace, house, room, don’t know. Don’t … where.”

“Hank, I’ve got to leave you a minute. I’ll get an ambulance on the way and be right — “

“Ah, shut up. Just listen.”

Something caught him then, grabbed him, and for a long second his weight lifted from my hands. There was a barely audible squeak in his throat, then his weight was heavy again. Heavier.

“Please, Hank — “

“You dumb sonofabitch. I’m dying. I’m dying, you big white-haired ape. Got to let me say … what I can.”

I looked back across the street. Half a dozen people were standing over there, gawking. I yelled for somebody to call an ambulance, saw light spill from inside Rigoletto’s as the door was opened.

Hank’s body jerked, hit the door, and as it swung farther open his legs flopped out and he rolled toward the street. I tried to hold him up, but I couldn’t. I can press two hundred and thirty pounds, and he weighted no more than one-sixty, but I couldn’t hold him.

I managed to ease him down to the street and he sat there on one bent leg with the other crazily twisted away from him, and when I told him, “You’re not going to cash in, Hank. Sure, you took a slug, but you can’t — ” he managed a smile. I noticed, for the first time, there was blood on his lips.

And he said, “Don’t tell me what I can do.” His eyes were dull, glazed. “Anyway, I took a couple,” he said, and finally the voice was tired, weak. “Maybe three. From the bastard in … back seat. Back of the car.”

I heard the sound of shoes in the street behind me. Scuff of leather, click of high heels. Bannister and Martinique, I supposed. I didn’t look around. And the kind of thick, black, rolling pain I’d been feeling inside me, the chill in my middle went away. All at once. As if a cool wind came by and swept all of that away.

“Who was it, Hank? You saw them?”

“Saw’m both.” His head dipped, bobbed, came back up, and the glazed eyes looked from inches away into mine. “It doesn’t hurt. No hurt. It’s just … oh … Christ … oh, it feels … empty. Like there’s nothing left … left inside. Oh, Christ, it’s like there’s no…”

“Who was it, Hank? Who?”

“Yeah, I saw’m. It was Wykoff … Lou Wykoff, and — “

That was all. All there’d ever be.

But it was enough. Enough, at least, for me.

</code>

<code> 13

I sat there for a little while, holding him. He was dead, and it didn’t make any difference, but I wasn’t going to let him sprawl flat on the street. I looked up once, and it was Bannister and Martinique standing near us, above us. And a little while later I lifted Hank’s body — like lifting feathers now — and eased him back into the car.

Then I turned to Bannister and said, “I’d like your keys. O.K.?”

“What? Keys? Is he dead? My God — “

“I’d like to use your car, Ban. Do you mind? And — I am in a hurry, Ban.”

He really looked at me then, fished in a pocket, shoved a ring of keys toward me. As I took them he said, “Is he dead? Did — do you know who shot him?”

“I know who one of the men was. So I probably know both of them. Maybe I know where to find one of the bastards. And one’s all I need.”

I started off, stopped long enough to say, “And, yes, he’s dead.” I could hear a siren. Then I was running to the Rigoletto’s parking lot.

I was pulling out of the lot, turning left, when a dark brown sedan pulled to a stop near Hank Wainwright’s car. Bannister and Martinique were standing there, and I saw Bannister wave, heard him yell, “Delcey! For God’s sake, come here quick!”

Delcey. Fine. You’re a little late, Sergeant. Maybe I’d ask Delcey what had kept him. Maybe. But later. When I finished.

</code>

<code> It didn’t take me long to get there; it just seemed long. I had to stop at two red lights; but only because a stream of cars was blocking my way both times. And I got stuck for a block and a half behind a car hauling a mobile home the size of a small apartment. But finally I swung right into Orange Avenue with the Lincoln’s tires screeching, and only seconds later was sliding to a stop before the Newtonia Hotel. Before the Newtonia, and behind another car parked at the curb. Not quite behind. I wasn’t able to stop soon enough and slammed into its rear bumper. I didn’t mind. It was a dark sedan, the blue-black color of a beetle’s wing.

I ran up the walk, through the double glass doors. The desk was on my left, a big burly round-shouldered man in a dark suit behind it, his back to me.

When I stopped before the desk he didn’t turn around, kept fiddling with some cards in a file drawer. I slammed a hand on the desk and said, “What’s Wykoff’s room number?”

He turned, squinting, an astonishingly thick-bodied man with a square red face, red as if sunburned, greasy with sweat. “Yeah? You want what?”

“Lou Wykoff. What’s his room number?”

He scowled, shaking his big head. “Well … I dunno about — “

I didn’t care if he was two yards thick and filled with cement. I leaned over, grabbed the front of his coat, and yanked him against the desk. It wasn’t easy, but I managed it. “Wykoff, friend. And in a hurry.”

He ran a pale tongue over rubbery lips. “Fourteen. Hell, mister, you don’t got to — “

I didn’t hear the rest of it because I was on my way. Ten feet from the desk a hall ran left and right and as I reached it I spotted the number 12 on the first door to my left. Beyond it was number 14. I didn’t knock, didn’t even try the knob, just stopped a yard from the door and kicked it near the knob. I’d forgotten about that banged-up left hip of mine and, when I put all my weight on it, for a few seconds that whole area felt as if something was breaking inside it. But the door sprang open, swung around, and hit the wall inside.

I went in low, Colt .38 in my right hand, hoping my goddamn hip and the wrenched knee would keep on holding me up. They did, but kicking the door hadn’t done them any good.

I was well into the room, yanking my head from one side to the other, listening to the wailing. I didn’t see Wykoff, didn’t see any man. The wailing was from a grossly fat woman sitting in a large chair not nearly as overstuffed as she was. That is, she’d been sitting in it. But when I came in she’d lunged backward and the chair didn’t have a chance. Over it went, her with it.

She hit, rolled, bounced, rolled again, and wound up on her back, yelling and pointing. Pointing at the ceiling. Screeching like a redwood going through the sawmill.

“For Christ’s sake, can it,” I yelled. “Where’s Wy — “

I cut it off. And even then, before I did another thing, I started to swear aloud.

There was only one other door in the room. I moved to it, threw the door open. Small bathroom, tub-shower, washbasin, toilet. Plastic drapes hanging by the tub were drawn aside, nobody was in there. And Wykoff, needless to say, was not sitting on the can.

I banged the heel of my left hand against my forehead, swore a little louder — while running back toward the lobby.

The hulking, square-headed, red-faced guy was no longer behind the desk. I was not surprised. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was not surprised. I moved around behind the desk and almost stepped on a thin man about sixty years old lying prone on the floor. He was entirely bald, and the mottled flesh of his scalp was split. He’d been hit solidly on the bulge at the back of his head. But he wasn’t dead.

He was making odd whining noises, “Yeeuh, yeeuh,” over and over, and moving a little, starting to press with his hands against the floor, but without enough strength yet to get any real push into it. I ignored him, yanked open a couple drawers, finally found a stack of registration cards. They were in alphabetical order, and “Wykoff, Louis” was the next-to-last card in the stack: “Room: 22.”

I didn’t run around trying to find Sam Jelly — who else would the half-ton sonofabitch have been? — because if he was smart enough to decide on the spur of the instant to wild-goose me to the wrong room, he was smart enough to know if I saw him again I’d kill him.

He’d be long gone, but maybe — not probably, but maybe — Lou Wykoff wouldn’t. I trotted up the stairs. Room 22 was the fourth room down another hallway to my left.

I didn’t kick the door in this time. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t locked. I had the Colt in my hand, again, when I went inside. But not for long.

I’d found the right room, finally. Lou Wykoff’s room. It even had Lou Wykoff in it.

Only he wasn’t in Lou Wykoff.

</code>

<code> The puffy eyes were open and staring, gunning me again. But not seeing me this time. He lay in the corner of the room, more on his side than back, as if crammed there by the force of the slugs that had killed him. His coat had flipped open, and a red stain — a very large red stain — smeared his white shirt. That was the one that had done it: that one would have killed a small elephant. But there was another hole, powder marks around it, above his left eye. I didn’t have to look to know the whole back of his head would be blown off.

Two or three little slivers of bone from part of his skull, and some of the jelly from inside it, were clinging to the wall, glistening there in the overhead light. A piece of it moved slightly, then dropped, as I watched.

A gun was a few feet away on the room’s faded gray carpet. It was a Smith & Wesson automatic pistol, .44 caliber. I didn’t touch it. But I did touch Wykoff, felt his face and neck, then took out his wallet — carefully — and opened it with a fingernail. All I learned was that his driver’s license had been issued in San Francisco; he was a male Caucasian, forty-two years old; he was six feet, one inch tall, weighed a hundred and forty-eight pounds; eyes were brown, and other unimportant items. Unimportant now.

A team of officers from the first patrol car to arrive at the scene came in. One of them moved to the body while his partner started asking me the usual questions. I’d been through it all before, and perhaps the young patrolman interpreted my matter-of-fact recital as callousness, or lack of interest in his important function here.

He’d asked for my identification, but hadn’t examined it very carefully yet, and gave me a stony look when I said quietly, in response to his last question, “Officer, in my initial statement I told you all there is to tell about everything that happened since I got here. I told it in full, in chronological order, I didn’t leave anything out. That’s all there is.”

He wasn’t supposed to do it, but he made a crack anyway. “You bored by this, fella? Or maybe you like finding men shot to death?”

“No. Officer, I don’t like it. But I was disappointed to find this creep already dead. Because I came here hoping I could kill the sonofabitch myself — “

“Scott!”

I don’t usually jump when I hear loud noises. I jumped. It was a sound like a steel hammer ringing on an anvil, and before I could adjust to how my name sounded exploding there was more: “You puking the usual crap out of that big mouth of yours? Max — “

By then I’d pulled my head around to examine the source of that Apollonian voice. I expected at least an ersatz Hercules, a man eleven feet tall, bent over and stuck in the doorway. But it was just an ordinary man, and a little guy at that.

Well, not little. Just not what my ears had led me to expect. He was a well-built man, wide in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, less than six feet tall, say five-ten or five-eleven. He stood inside the room with his hands balled into fists on his hips, legs spread. He was about forty years old, I guessed, and he looked more like an adult choirboy than a tough cop.

Because he had to be a cop.

After that “Max — ” he went on crisply, ” — call this in, that’s Lou Wykoff in case you don’t recognize him without the usual sweet smile on his kisser. And tell Watts in R. and I. to pull his package on Wykoff — his package, the one I talked to him about. I’ll take charge of this wise guy.”

That was me. I was the wise guy. And I’d never seen this bigmouth before.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked him.

“Delcey. Sergeant Delcey to you, Scott. Follow me!”

I followed him. I had nothing better to do. But mainly, when a police sergeant, or even police rookie, says “Follow me!” — you don’t loll around. Not if you’re smart, you don’t. And I like to think — I used to like to think — I go pretty good when I get that old gray matter bubbling up there.

Anyhow, I followed Sergeant Delcey with alacrity.

We went into the lobby, sat on a lumpy hotel-beige couch, Delcey with notebook in one hand, pencil in the other. A team of men from the crime laboratory filed in as we got seated, but after they went up the stairs we were alone. Only then did Delcey speak, and when he did it was in such a normal voice that I unconsciously leaned toward him, as though straining to make out the words.

“About time we met, Scott,” he said. “Sorry it’s like this. I just” — his tone changed for a second or two — “left Hank Wainwright. Got what I could from Bannister, but he tells me you were the only one with Hank except for the last few seconds.”

“That’s right. That’s why I came here, Sergeant — “

“I know that, but do you have to puke it around to every goddamn patrolman you get in the same room with? That Max is — “

He cut it off abruptly, but then sighed and said, “I guess I have to take a chance on you, even if I never saw you before. If Bannister — and especially Hank Wainwright — say you’re O.K., I’ll buy it. You were popping wise to Max Korcell, who happens to be so deep in Hugh Grimson’s pocket he’s got lint in his ass. So you tell him you were dying to blow Wykoff’s head off. He passes that niceness on to Grimson — “

“I appreciate you telling me, Sergeant. But what difference does it make? Our busy Mr. G.‘s been trying to kill me for … well, what time is it?” I checked my watch. Ten-fifty p.m. “For more than eight hours already.”

“The difference is, you try not to make it any easier for him. For example, would you know Max is on the pad if I hadn’t told you?”

“O.K. Sorry … I’m still kind of racked up.”

“Hank a good friend of yours?”

“Not exactly. We prowled the town a few times when he was with the L.A.P.D. But I liked him. He had a…”

“He had a way. Style.” Delcey was silent, rubbing knuckles under his chin for a few seconds. “Let’s say Hank was a good friend of mine and leave it at that. Now, tell me what happened. And just in case you did leave something out when you gave it to Max, put it in now. I want all of it.”

I hesitated. But not for long. Up here in this area of what appeared to be Grimson’s jungle, I badly needed the help of somebody on the inside, especially a police officer who couldn’t be, or at least hadn’t been, bought and paid for. And, to turn Delcey’s phrase around, if Hank gave the sergeant high marks that was good enough for me, too.

So I merely said, “O.K., Sergeant, you’ll get it all. Just give me a flash of your I.D., will you?”

He grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He was Sergeant Oren Delcey, all right. He even had one of the cards he’d used in the days, more than a year ago, when it had read “Detective Lieutenant.”

So I told him the tale. When I’d filled him in on what had happened from the time of those shots outside the Rigoletto until now, he said, “Tell me about the phone call from our old mayor, and your two visits with our new one. Bannister gave me some, but I want the details.” So I gave him the rest. All of it. When I finished he knew nearly as much about my day in Newton as I did.

Then he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pipe and tobacco pouch, deliberately filled the dark, stained bowl, taking his time. Only when he’d got the tobacco lit and drawn on the pipe a couple times did he say anything. “Well, either Grimson knows Fowler’s dead — whether he killed him or not — or else he snatched him. And that would be nearly as dumb a play as murder.” He sucked on his pipe, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. Grimson’s nobody’s fool. He’s willing to take chances, but he covers himself.”

“He’s sure covered for everything that’s happened tonight. Probably on the dais at the Club Rogue taking bows when Wykoff and Sam Jelly killed Hank.”

Delcey pulled the pipe from his mouth and jabbed the stem at me. “Now there you go again. Just like you popped off to Max Korcell. You know it was Wykoff, sure. You don’t know it was Samuel Whitlow Sargent.”

“The hell I don’t. Hank named Wykoff half a second before he died. He just didn’t have time for more. When I got here, I banged into Sam Jelly’s car. You know who I found with his head blown open, Sam’s buddy. And maybe I’ve never seen Sam Jelly, but the guy behind the desk was practically standing on the clerk, whose head had been conked maybe five seconds earlier, and I’d make him six feet or six-one and close to two hundred and fifty pounds, forty years old, square red face, probably has high blood pressure, sweats like a pig, and he has now split. Maybe I couldn’t argue it before the Supreme Court, but it’s enough for me, because if I wait for affidavits I may not be interested by the time they get here. So even if the real Sam Jelly’s an albino midget, it’s going to take an angel singing it in my ear before I believe that ox wasn’t him.”

Delcey shrugged. “You got him pretty close. Six-one and a half, two hundred and sixty pounds. Forty-one years old. He does have high blood pressure, that’s a fact. And flat feet.” He got up. “You stay here, Scott.”

As he turned to walk away I said, “Could you make it sound less like a goddamn royal command, Sergeant?”

He stopped suddenly, but when he turned around he was laughing silently, eyes squinted. Then he smoothed out the choirboy’s face and said, “It’s a habit. Can’t help it, always mingling with hoods and ex-cons and private detectives with low boiling points. Would you please sit there, sir, on your bleeding piles, until I return? I shall try not to make it long. Would you do that for me?”

I shook my head. “Jesus. Talk about police brutality. Go. Just go, will you?”

He grinned and walked off, rolling a little like a first-trip sailor home from the sea. He bugged me, but I liked him. And I had a hunch, if I was in a tight spot, it would be hard to find a better man to have alongside me than Delcey.

He spoke briefly to an officer at the hotel’s desk, then went upstairs. In less than five minutes he was back. “Come on, Scott,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the double glass doors as he strode past.

Then he glanced back over his shoulder — but without slowing his stride — and added, “If you don’t mind.”

Outside, we sat in Delcey’s plainclothes car while he used the police radio to call in, ask some questions, and get a few answers. Then we sat for a few minutes longer, talking.

Delcey said, “Well, we’ve got Sargent’s Chrysler. Abandoned on Ficus Street. APB out on him, but I don’t know what the hell for. Sure, you can tag him as the phony desk clerk — and so what? The clerk says somebody hit him from behind, he doesn’t know who. If we get a chance to ask Jelly about that, you can guess what he’ll lay on us, can’t you? He’ll say, ‘Why, officers sirs, I heard dis horrible groanin’ and I looked to see could I lend a aid to duh poor man. Which is how come I never did get to room 22, to where I was goin’ to visit with my dear pal, Lou. Ain’t it tumble what hoppen to’m, must be somebody sick done it.’ And out he goes.”

Delcey was almost as good as Grimson. But I was more amused by his act than by the words. Or rather, what was behind the words. Because despite the exaggeration it was all too true.

Delcey looked at me. “Let’s get back to those phone taps. I know you already told me what Hank said. Do it again.”

I did it again. When I finished, I said, “Delcey, I’ve been wondering how come those two hoods caught Hank right there, at the Rigoletto. The obvious answer was that somebody tipped them that Hank was going to meet friends there, but just because a thing seems obvious doesn’t mean it’s the right answer. As, by now — “

“Who should know better than you, right?”

” — I should…. You couldn’t let me say it, could you? You just had to — “

“Go on, I think I know what you’re getting at.”

“O.K., if you’ll just keep your — ” I clamped my jaws shut, snorted, shook my head. “O.K., Hank told me he was going to check two men, a Wallace Black and a Jim Wade. Considering the elapsed time, he must have got his info about the several taps from one of those two. Now, if one of them did that kind of sizable job for Grimson, or rather for this guy Biggie — about whom I’d like all the info you can give me, by the way — then it’s not unlikely Grimson would have been watching the guy. Maybe not under normal circumstances, but I don’t feel I exaggerate when I say this has not been a normal day. So maybe we should — “

“Check up on Black and Wade, right?” he interrupted. “Well, as it happens, the idea had occurred — “

His speaker started squawking and Delcey reached for the mike, smiling slightly as he said, “This could be a case of marvelous timing.”

It was. From listening to the conversation, plus a little extra fill-in from the sergeant himself, it was clear Delcey had earlier called in and asked that both Black and Wade be visited by teams of officers. They’d talked to Wallace Black. They had not been able to converse with Jim Wade.

“Not just because he was dead when they got there,” Delcey said, “but because he was a godawful mess, hell beaten out of him and his neck broken; it had to be Sam Jelly.”

I smiled. But I didn’t say anything.

Delcey noted my smile, possibly because I made no attempt to hide it, and added, “That’s a reasonable working hypothesis, at least — oh, hell. Sure. Christ, yes, it was Sam Jelly. Who else?”

“I agree with you, Sergeant. Who else?”

“There won’t be any evidence, not even skinned knuckles on Sargent’s big hams. He wears special gloves for that kind of job.”

“So his hands don’t get marked up, huh?”

“Partly. Padded against his knuckles, but with a layer of heavy buckshot next to the padding and just under the leather. He’s a wonder.”

Delcey was still holding his pipe, but he knocked ashes out the car window and then turned to me. “At least we’re getting more pieces of the picture. And don’t forget the most important thing in the picture. I don’t mean Hank — I mean Fowler. The mayor’s number one, if he’s alive. And that’s what we aim at. That’s what this is all about. He never did show up at the Club Rogue, you know.”

“I hadn’t heard anything lately, but I didn’t expect him to. And I already told you, if he’s alive I figure there’s a good chance he’ll stay that way.”

“Yeah, but if he’s alive, there’s another guy doing more than you to keep Fowler healthy. That is, if he’s still alive.” Delcey shook his head. “We sure got a lot of ‘ifs’ around here, don’t we? I suppose you know who I mean?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll give you a hint. I don’t mean Yoogy Dibler.”

“Thanks for letting me peek at the answers, Sergeant. The trouble is, all we’ve got to go on is what Fowler himself told me on the phone last night. From that we know, whoever the informant was, he knew plenty about Mr. G.‘s business. Plenty, I mean, besides his claim he saw Grimson poop Ramirez. But hell, we don’t even know if he got to the mayor’s house, and we can’t ask him — or the mayor.”

I lit a cigarette, took a puff, trying to pull some scattered ideas together. “Delcey, there should be some way to tag the guy, find out who he is. Or was. Look, we know the guy called Fowler last night. We know Fowler’s phone was — is — tapped. It requires no brilliance to deduce that’s what set Grimson off in all directions, doing … whatever he’s doing. Because, from my own knowledge of Grimson’s act this morning, there’s no doubt he got an earful of the mayor’s call to me.”

“Are you sure it was Mayor Fowler who phoned you last night?”

“Frankly, Sergeant” — I’d only had two puffs of my cigarette, but I jammed it out in the tray — “the only thing I’m sure of now in this goddamn case is that my name is … I forget. Except that — “

“Don’t be so twitchy, Scott. I wasn’t trying to bug you — “

“I’m not sure you have to try, Serg — “

Delcey interrupted. “What I’m getting at is, some other things that’ve happened tonight make a little more sense — the way my head works, anyhow — if Grimson hasn’t yet found, which means killed, the informant. It’s a long-shot. I really think he’s buried someplace in the county, where we might find him in a hundred years. But I’ve been a busy cop tonight, and there’s no noise about anything happening to one, or more, of Grimson’s men. Could be there hasn’t been time, but if there is any word I’ll hear about it. And I haven’t heard a damn thing yet.” He stopped speaking, a queer expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“I was just thinking. I haven’t heard a word about anything happening to one of Grimson’s men. Except — “

“Hell, yes, Lou — “

” — Wykoff, yeah. But that doesn’t make sense. If it was Wykoff, he’d have been chilled a couple minutes after Grimson got his hands on him.”

Delcey stared at nothing for a few seconds, then shook his head and said, “I have to get back to the Rigoletto. Told Miss Monet and Bannister to wait there for me.”

“How are they taking it?”

“Well, Bannister’s sort of stiff-upper-lip, but he was pretty thick with Hank. Martinique got pretty shook. When Bannister and I went into the restaurant, she was finishing a Martini and ordering another one. She may be under the table by now.” He looked at his watch. “You’ll have to come in and give us a statement.”

“I know.”

“Think of anything you left out?”

I shook my head. “No, but I would like whatever you can tell me about this guy Biggers.”

“Ernie Biggers. Been working for Grimson about three and a half, maybe the whole four years Grimson’s been here. Little guy, five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, skinny. So they call him Little Biggie, or just Biggie. Fact is, I don’t know what he’s been doing for Grimson the last year or so. I can look in the files if you want more.”

“I probably will. Incidentally, Hank said Biggie got this Jim Wade to do the real work, setting up the taps, but he only had time to name a few of the people involved, and I gave you the little there was. Have you got anything else on it?”

He shook his head. “No. We’ll get more. May take a little time. Be easy if we could ask Wade.”

Delcey swore softly. “You think about it yet? The way it figures, it was Wade, Hank, and then Wykoff. Three murders in less than an hour. Maybe less than half an hour. It’s a bloody epidemic.”

“Yeah, I thought about it,” I said. “And I couldn’t help thinking, maybe it’s not over.”

Delcey’s voice was tired when he answered. “I wish you hadn’t said that. Well, back to the wars.” He shook his head. “I do wish you hadn’t said that, Scott.”

</code>

<code> 14

I drove Bannister’s Lincoln Continental limousine back to the Rigoletto, beginning to be thankful I hadn’t totally despoiled it on my wild ride to the Newtonia Hotel.

Delcey was at the table with Bannister and Martinique by the time I got there. An empty highball glass sat on the table before Bannister, while Martinique held in her hand a half-full, or half-empty, Martini glass.

“Well, ‘lo,” she said to me, smiling with her mouth open, as I joined them.

After that, the conversation was nothing to write home about, unless you’d been trapped in a cave for a large number of years. In a few minutes Bannister, having decided to leave, told me to keep the Lincoln so I’d have some transportation, and asked Delcey if he’d drive him home.

“Sure,” Delcey said. “Couple things I’d like to go over with you, anyhow.”

“What abou’ me?” Martinique asked. “Dozzen anybah care ‘bou” me? Shell? Shell?”

“Yeah?”

“You care ‘bou’ me. I c’n tell. You dri’ me ho-um.”

“Oh, boy, this and eczema is all I need,” I said.

I thought I was thinking it, but I said it aloud. Sometimes that happens. At certain moments of stress. I occasionally think I’m merely thinking when in fact I am mumbling audibly.

“Tha’s good,” Martinique said. “I knew you’d.”

“Would you see that she gets home all right?” Bannister asked me. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure. O.K. I can handle it.”

“Shell, I — it’s terrible about Hank. What’s there to say?”

“Nothing. I guess you know one of the men is dead. There’s a strong possibility the other may join him in spook land even before spring, if I get — “

Delcey was giving me a scowl that looked almost official, so I left the rest unsaid. Delcey got to his feet, then Bannister stood up and they left.

“Shell,” Martinique said, pretty close to my ear, “how ‘bou’ ‘nother Marti — “

“For-get it.” I signaled the waiter, ordered a pot of coffee.

Martinique must have had a marvelously vigorous metabolism — a thought which had at other moments occurred to me — because she was almost sober after thirty minutes and four cups of black coffee.

Handled that pretty well, I was thinking, as we got up to leave. Then our pirate came over and gave me a little rectangle of cardboard.

“What’s this?” I asked — though I knew, I knew.

“That is the check, sir,” he said in a hushed, sad voice, as though at a funeral.

I glanced at the numbers, the total, the obvious mistake. No wonder he talked like that.

“Who,” I asked wonderingly, “could drink so much….”

“Shell?”

“Never mind.” I paid the check.

And as we walked out of the Rigoletto, Martinique clinging to my arm as shipwrecked sailors cling to bits of flotsam, I was thinking again. I was thinking, maybe things were getting a little bit better, but I still wasn’t doing everything right.

</code>

<code> “Ammonia?”

“Joke. Ammonia kidding, Shell — I’m sorry. I meant drops. Something white to bring my irises back into focus…. I’m sorry again. I rattle on when I’m getting sober.”

“Don’t be sorry. You rattle pretty good. Imagine, after all the time we’ve known each other, I’m finally seeing another side of you. I think I like it.”

She smiled a peculiar smile, turning to face me, sliding both hands up over her hips to her waist. “Is that what you like, Shell? Seeing another side of me?”

“Well, I….” It was a difficult question to answer just right. So I started over, “Well….”

“I’ve got some sides you haven’t guessed about yet. Tell you what, after I wake up my face I’ll slip into something more comforting.”

I wondered if she’d said what she meant to say. I didn’t ask.

“Then,” she went on, “we’ll have a little drink. If you’ll promise not to take advantage of me. Unless I insist.”

“Ah. You — you’ve been drinking, Martinique. I’d hate to think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“If you hate it, quit it. And mix us something. Not a Martini for me — a light gin and tonic. Over there.” She pointed across the room to a built-in bar with a painting behind it of what I guessed might be the Crab Nebula.

“And what for you, Shell? Bourbon? Brandy, maybe. You’ll find a bottle of cognac over there that tastes like smoky ambrosia, goes down like soft lips flambe, puts cold fire and hot ice in your tummy, a real wild drink. Why don’t you try that?”

“O.K., if you think I can handle it. I usually just drink booze — “

“Be right back, Love.”

It looked as if she were going to crash into a bunch of glass, because the wall toward which she moved was composed of rose-tinted mirrors, perhaps two dozen of them, each about two feet wide and three feet high, covering the entire wall.

I didn’t even see the small knob of pink glass until she reached for it and opened the door and started through it, then stopped to glance back over her shoulder and say, “Isn’t this witchy?”

Without waiting for an answer, she went on into the adjoining room. It was a bedroom. I could tell because, although she closed the door, it slowly swung halfway open on its hinges and I could see past it, and what I saw was an enormous bed with what appeared to be a quilted pink satin spread upon it. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed except that the door squeaked a little as it opened. I looked a little longer — that was some bed — then stepped to the bar.

I fixed a light gin and tonic, found the cognac, poured a dollop into a bell-shaped brandy glass, lifted it up to take a sip. And, thus, lifted my eyes. And kept them lifted. And forgot about the psychedelic cognac.

It happened that from where I stood behind the bar, by turning my head just a little, my eyes fell on that mirrored door of Martinique’s bedroom. Which was open about halfway. And in which there was, naturally, a reflection of something inside the bedroom. What was there reflected, however, was not the bed, but that which undoubtedly had made many men think of many beds, which is to say Martinique Monet.

She was standing, wearing a bulbous brassiere and brief bikini-type pants, each the same shade of pale frosty blue, before the open sliding doors of a clothes closet. As I looked, blinking in surprise, she reached inside the closet, took some kind of gauzy garment from a hanger, and draped it over a padded bench next to her.

Then she turned toward the bench — or, in the door-sized mirror, turned her full-length profile toward me — and reached behind her back. Her fingers found the brassiere’s clasp, moved, and the brassiere’s bulbous cups slackened upon her breasts, slid downward, then fell as she arched her shoulders slightly and let the cloth glide down her arms to be caught in one hand, and I knew why the brassiere’s cups were so beauteously bulbous, and I was blinking again, and again in surprise.

Martinique placed her hands at her hips, slid the frosty bit of blueness down, stepped from the cloth and, holding it, picked up the bra. Then she turned, walked four or five feet to a pink-painted wicker basket, lifted its top, and dropped the underthings into it.

She turned, then, completely nude, walked back to the small bench again.

It occurred to me that perhaps this that I was doing was not the absolutely totally correct thing for me to do, that perhaps I should not boldly stare at Martinique’s nakedness, her pale loveliness, her marvelous breasts and hips and thighs, when she was so unconsciously and freely and nudely moving about in what should have been the privacy of her bedroom.

It really did occur to me.

She slipped a filmy floating thing over her head, pulled it down past her thrusting breasts and slightly rounded stomach and the full woman’s hips, smoothed it with her hands. Then she pushed one arm at a time into the sleeves of another gauzy thing, some kind of robe of a cobwebby opaqueness.

She was tying a little string at her throat in a bowknot when I made a little sudden hop — then grabbed both drinks and scooted out from behind the bar. I was seated upon the long low red divan, humming a gay little tune, when Martinique appeared in the doorway.

She looked toward me, silently, then stepped into the room, turned, and pulled the door shut. For a moment she stood there, with her back to me, and gave the small pink knob another pull, a pretty good one, more of a yank, before turning and moving toward me.

At least she was smiling. That helped, I thought. Maybe she’d even known all along that the door was halfway open. That would help a lot, I thought. But, then, if she’d known, why had she given the little knob such a terrible yank? That didn’t help.

I thought a lot of things, but I wound up telling myself the smart thing to do would be play it mum, play it cagey — and let her carry the ball. Just keep the old mouth shut, thus preventing my foot from getting into it, and find out what she had to say. If anything.

Yes, I decided with finality — for Martinique was now only inches away, sinking onto the divan near me, and I could see everything I had seen in the rose-tinted door and it was all even now only veiled, caressed more than concealed, not even half-hidden by filmy sheerness of gown and robe that more than anything else accented and revealed thrust of pointed breast, curve of waist, roundness and smoothness and dull gleam of thigh — that would be the smart thing to do.

And this time, without question. I was right.

She moistened her lips, let her heavy-lidded green eyes rest on my mouth. “Taste your brandy, Love.” Her voice was soft, as if she were saying something else entirely.

I sipped the amber liquor. Its taste was odd, unique, half-remembered, half-forgotten, with a kind of heaviness that became light on the tongue, cool and then burning — and good, very, very good.

“Marvelous,” I said quietly. “It’s everything you said it was. And more.”

“You watched me, didn’t you?” Voice even softer, hushed and warm.

“Yes.”

“In the door, the mirrors. You saw me … all the time.”

“Almost. Almost all the time.”

“Drink your brandy. More, more. I want to taste it on your lips, Love.”

And then it was her lips, the taste of them and the cognac and a bruising sweetness … and soon, very soon, we walked together through the mirrored wall … and everything that was in the brandy was in her mouth and lips and tongue, her breasts, her arms, her thighs … everything … and more.

</code>

<code> But when she said, as I pulled deeply on my cigarette, “Is that you, Love, glowing in the dark?” I didn’t answer her.

She’d been gone quite a while — or, at least, with my mind fully occupied it had seemed quite a while — for I had been letting my mind roam over odds and ends of the day. Trying to grab the tail ends of thoughts that, earlier, had escaped me — trying, and in some cases succeeding.

Maybe it was because I was unwound, loose with the lovely relaxation of love, not really trying very hard to think but just letting the thoughts move along, swirl, flow, that the idea came.

It wasn’t the whole of it, but it was a way — or part of a way. And I held the thought, the several thoughts, put them together before I spoke. Then, once it was in my mind, I knew I had to get started right now, make the thing move and, hopefully, work.

“Well!” Martinique said, with a bit less coo in her voice. “I hope you’re not sulking.”

“Ho-ho, sulking? Me? I’m not even brooding. It’s just…. Dear, I — well, I’ve got to go.”

“Go? You mean … where I went?”

“No, I mean — go. Go home. Not home, but out yonder into the cold cruel — “

“You’ve got to — got to go? Leave?”

I heard her thumping around, then a blinding light flashed on, blinding me. Martinique had done it. Like Delilah did it to Samson. She was standing there with her hands on the switch. And nothing else on anyplace. I hadn’t forgotten, but it was nice anyway.

“Boy,” I said, “you really are the — “

“You aren’t trying to tell me you’re going to leave me, are you?”

“Sure, I am.”

“But — now? Now?”

She probably figured that out because I was standing by the bed putting my pants on.

“My shoes,” I said. “You didn’t hide my shoes, did — “

“Quit mumbling and listen to me, Mr. Scott!”

“What happened to ‘Love’ — “

“You can’t just go off and … go off like this.”

“Well — “

“I won’t let you. I’ll kill you.”

“You wouldn’t have much more to do, dear. But — “

“You really are leaving. Take those pants off!”

“Martinique, how can I make you understand? — hey, let go of me. Let — I’ll sock you. I will. Martinique, I know you’re a woman, boy — “

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why do you want to go? I thought you … liked me.”

“I don’t want to go. I have to go. I’ve got half a dozen things to do, things that would have — and should have — been done already if I’d thought of them sooner. Actually, Martinique, I probably wouldn’t have thought this thing out at all if it hadn’t been for you. You’ve been more help than you know — “

“I don’t want to hear your dumb voice anymore. That’s it — put your dumb shirt on. Go ahead, put your dumb tie on. You’re something, you are. I’ve heard about people who eat and run, but they can’t hold a candle — “

“Martinique, you’re not being fair.” I sighed. “Not that life has led me to expect such a phenomenon.”

“Quit mumbling!”

“Was I doing that again? Just ignore anything I mumbled, O.K.? And if you’ll listen, like the dear sweet girl you are, I’ll try to exp — “

“Men! Dirty dumb men! You’re all like bees with poison stingers — go around killing flowers — buzzing and flapping — “

“Martinique, if you don’t listen, you’ll never — “

“Well! All dressed, I see. Wonderful — so fast! Shall I call you a cab?”

“You’re gonna make me mad — “

“Or is your mommy picking you up?”

That did it. She should talk about poison stingers. Well, I was ready to go. And I was going. But as I stalked past her I had the grace to speak to Martinique one last time.

“Who could have guessed,” I asked her, “that it would end like this?”

</code>

<code> 15

I phoned Sergeant Delcey and caught him at home. Where he was soundly sleeping. Which didn’t put any bubble into his enthusiasm right away.

When, only minutes earlier in Martinique’s bed, the idea had started forming, I immediately thought of calling Delcey. Just as immediately, I remembered Hank’s mentioning Delcey’s phone as among those that were tapped — in fact, it was at that very moment the idea took form and finally made sense.

Since unfriendly ears, or at least one ear, might be privy to whatever I said, the info I could openly convey to the sergeant was limited, and I thus had a little difficulty in persuading him to meet me. Actually, more than a little. At last, however, he grudgingly agreed.

Now we were both in his car again, parked on a dimly lighted street near his home. I hadn’t yet explained my real reason for calling him, and the conversation had been pretty general so far.

Because of the sketchy but helpful info Hank Wainwright had given me and that I’d passed on to Delcey, police were looking for Sam Jelly, for obvious reasons, and also for Ernie Biggers. But only a handful of officers were looking for Little Biggie. Delcey explained why.

“I took your information about the wiretaps, and Biggers, straight to Chief Cantor,” Delcey said. “He agreed with me we should — for now, anyway — give that info only to some of the best men we’ve got, officers we’re absolutely sure of. If the whole department knew we’d learned about the taps, that we know Biggers is the man who helped get it all set up, Grimson would be tipped in ten minutes. Cantor knows we’ve got some foul balls in the department as well as I do.”

“So there’s a chance Grimson doesn’t know we’re aware he’s bugged half the phones in town.”

“I wish you wouldn’t exaggerate so damn much, Scott, it’s just not professional — but, yes. And ‘a chance’ is the right phrase. He may have guessed, but he can’t be certain. We can only guess ourselves what Jim Wade spilled before he died. Maybe everything, maybe nothing. But Grimson can’t know what Hank said to you.” He paused. “If you told it to me exactly the way it was, not even Bannister and Martinique heard what Hank said about the taps and Biggers.”

“That’s right. They didn’t come across the street until just before Hank said he saw the two men, and tried to name them.”

“Yeah, that’s what I got from Bannister, too. Without letting him know what Hank said before then.”

“What’s the matter, don’t you trust Ban?”

“Sure, I trust him. But as long as he and Martinique didn’t hear it, and we don’t tell them, they can’t let it leak even by accident.”

“Makes sense.”

“It’s important to us that we find out what other phones are being monitored, the ones Hank didn’t learn of or have time to mention. It’s important we know what information Grimson’s been picking up for these last six weeks, or more. Once he’s sure we’re onto him he’ll pull all those taps out and we may never get what we’re after. He might even hit Biggers, if he’s the man who’s been monitoring all the calls, to make sure we’d learn nothing from him if we should find Biggie and bring him in — during the half hour, that is, before he’d be sprung. So we’re trying to go along as if we’re still in the dark. If he buys that, he’ll leave the taps on, give us time we need. And I think there’s a damn good chance he’ll buy it. Especially right now, with all the heat, he’ll want every bit of information he can possibly get.”

“Of course, if you could get your hands on Ernie Biggers, he could simply give you a list — phones tapped, names, how long, maybe the info Grimson got from them. There’s even a chance he knows a good deal more than that, right?”

“Sure. But, first, we haven’t been able to find him yet. Second, as I indicated, Scott, we’d be lucky to hold him half an hour. If we did find him and hauled him downtown, that’d probably blow our chances anyhow.”

“Well, what if Biggers wanted to cooperate?”

“What if the sun went out?”

“Delcey, I have a little plan. Want to hear it?”

“Not … especially.”

I plunged ahead. “If Biggers wanted to cooperate, I mean really wanted to, you’d find out, bingo, about all the taps and that jazz. Wrap it up quick, save a lot of man-hours — “

“Quit trying to convince me before I know what you’re getting at.”

“Sure, but — there’s this to consider, too, Delcey. If Biggers has been monitoring all these wiretaps, then he’s got to be the boy who listened in when Mayor Fowler called me last night. Right? More important — and get this, Delcey — he would have overheard the informant’s earlier call to Fowler.”

There was silence again for a while, but it seemed a different kind of silence this time. When the sergeant spoke he said, very quietly for him, “Well, sure. Of course he … That’s so goddamned obvious….” He paused. “Of course, I didn’t even hear about the possibility Fowler’s phone was bugged until nearly eight o’clock. And it was after ten before — “

I broke in, “Hell, it didn’t occur to me, along with some other interesting angles, until I was having a smoke in be — until a little while ago. The thing is, if he heard that call he may know who the caller was. Maybe he recognized the informant’s voice, and at the very least he’d know what was said, possibly some things Fowler didn’t pass on to me.”

“Uh-huh. If we could get our hands on him for just a little while — “

“I think I can get him for you. For as long as you want. And in a most helpful mood. Eager to tell you everything he knows. Maybe even some things he doesn’t know.”

“Sure you can.”

“Well … there is a little problem.”

“I thought so.”

“Rather, the possibility of a problem. There may not be any trouble at all. If Grimson has already found the informant — grabbed him at the mayor’s home around midnight Friday, for example, which has got to be considered very likely now — then we’ll naturally be wasting our time. But if the informant is still alive, if Grimson still does not know his identity, there’s a fifty-fifty chance we can pick up all the marbles. Fifty-fifty, good enough odds, wouldn’t you say?”

“We’re up to our butts in ‘ifs’ again. But go on. You’ve got me interested.”

I told him what I had in mind. We argued about it.

Finally he said, “Scott, you’re in the wrong business. You should be selling igloos in Arabia. You make it sound like you’ve already hooked a whale, and I’ll give odds you don’t even catch a sardine.”

“Well? It’s at least fifty-fifty, Delcey.”

“All right. I’ll be your straight man.” He sighed a long, long sigh. “I’ll go along, Scott.”

So, then, I was stuck with it.

</code>

<code> At the private road I turned right, drove ahead under the darkly overarching branches. I cut my lights, slowed, turned left at the end of the drive, and parked. On my right, the house was dark. It looked empty, dead.

In three minutes I’d picked the lock, let myself into Mayor Fowler’s home. There wasn’t a sound. Even so, carrying a pencil flashlight in my left hand, Colt .38 in my right, I gave the house a quick prowl. Nothing, the place was deserted.

Back in the living room — where I’d been so expertly conned by Hugh Grimson — I walked to the small desk in the far corner upon which was the phone Mr. G. had used the last time I was here. I sat in the chair behind it, went through the drawers quickly to get an idea of what was actually in them — in case somebody else already knew what was there.

Then I placed my flash on the desk top, so I could see the numbers, and dialed the Newton Police Department. Delcey, though not officially on duty, would be somewhere nearby when the phone ran downtown. He knew what to do, what to say.

The phone, ringing at the other end of the line, buzzed in my ear. It buzzed once more, then was answered. I asked for Sergeant Delcey.

“I’m sorry, sir, he’s off duty at this time — one moment, please. I think he just came in.” I heard the voice farther from the phone, fainter. “Sergeant. Sergeant Delcey.”

I snapped off the flashlight, waited in darkness.

Then Delcey was on the phone.

I said, “Sergeant? This is Shell Scott. I hate to bother you — “

“Jesus, you again.”

“It’s important this time, Sergeant. I mean it. Look, I don’t want anybody to hear what I’ve got to say except you, not anybody. O.K.?”

“Depends. I’ll decide that, Scott.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use my name, not out loud — there in the station, anyhow. I already told you, guys are trying to kill me. If anyone besides you finds out where I am, I could wind up dead.”

“O.K. So where are you?”

“I’m at Mayor Fowler’s house, and — “

“You’re where?”

“Hear me out, will you? You’re going to be damn glad I am at Fowler’s — bust me for breaking and entering later. I was here twice talking to that sonofabitch, Grimson, you know. So I came back to prowl around. I don’t know what I hoped to find, some blood, maybe. Like Fowler’s blood, signs of violence or struggle. That was a blank, but what I did find is a lot better.”

“Sure. You found the mayor himself. Or maybe you found the other guy we’ve been looking for, whoever it was called Fowler Friday night, our invisible informant — “

“That’s right.”

Silence. Then, “What?”

“Maybe I have found the informant for you, Delcey,” I lied earnestly. “So could you maybe show a little appreciation instead of — “

“He’s there? Is he dead? Who — “

“Wait a minute. I don’t mean I found a guy here. And I said maybe. All I’ve got is a name, but — well, just listen a minute. First, though, tell me something. You know anything about a man named Biggers? It might be Ernie Biggers.”

“Yeah, he’s one of — of you-know-who’s men. What about him?”

“I’ll get to it. Let me fill you in, give you the picture first.”

I paused, mouth a little dry. I’d wanted to get that name in. If someone was listening to this phony conversation right now, and it was not Ernie Biggers, then it didn’t make any difference. A carful of hoods with heaters would soon, if not already, be speeding to the mayor’s home to cool Shell Scott. Even if Biggers was riding the earie, he might have let out a yell, made a call himself, figuratively pushed the alarm button — unless he’d waited long enough to hear his own name, which event almost surely would have given him pause. Which was the whole idea.

I leaned to my right, peering through darkness at more darkness outside the big front window. Not that a car, if it should arrive, would pull up with lights on and guys whooping and hollering. Still, I kept looking out there while I talked.

“I went over this whole place, Delcey, nobody in the house, nothing. There’s a phone in the front room here, on a small desk — where I am right now, Probably this is where the mayor sat when he phoned me Friday night — and when he got the call from the man who said he saw Grimson blast Ramirez. You remember, I told you all about that.”

“I remember. All I’ve got is your word for it.”

“That’s all you need, Sergeant. You want to hear this or not?” After a pause I continued. “I just went through the desk. Bunch of junk, diary — nothing for us in it — golf ball, scorecard from the Newton Country Club. Snapshot of Fowler’s daughter, Melinda — that’s a laugh. Beautiful little gal, though, about fourteen years old. Anyhow, there was also a piece of paper in the corner of a drawer, with a lot of circle and doodles on it — you know, the kind of thing a man will unconsciously scribble. Like when he’s talking on the phone.”

“So?”

“So the mayor had to be doodling on this piece of paper when he talked to me. And, more important, earlier the same evening. We know the informant was supposed to visit the mayor here at midnight. It figures that was on the mayor’s mind every minute after he received the call from whoever it was.”

“I suppose so. But what makes you think the mayor was doodling when he talked to you? You weren’t there, you were in L.A.”

“I was getting to that. Along with the doodles, there’s writing, words, at three places on the paper, top, middle, and bottom. I’ll start at the bottom. There’s a number — has to be the time — 10:45. Then there’s scribbled, ‘O.K. Call W., have him here 8 a.m.’ Now, 10:45 is when I called the mayor back to tell him the time I’d be arriving in Newton. It’s my guess the ‘W.’ means Hank Wainwright, and Fowler planned to have Hank here at the house when I arrived. Sort of a one-man welcoming committee.”

Delcey grunted, but didn’t say anything. We hadn’t rehearsed the details of what we’d say, just the outline, and the sergeant had merely said he’d follow my lead, act surprised and such. So far, I thought, he was doing splendidly.

“Just above that,” I went on, “middle of the page, or written earlier that evening, is my phone number in L.A. Fowler probably got it from Information and wrote it down, then dialed me direct. Besides, my name’s written there, ‘Sheldon Scott,’ with a time jotted next to my name, 10:20. Probably when he reached me — it was after 10 p.m., I remember. That’s all, except some doodles.”

“We already know he phoned you, and you called him back. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Delcey’s voice was a little higher, pulled just a bit tighter. It wasn’t part of the act, to make whoever might be listening to our conversation — if anybody was — think the sergeant was getting all excited by the imminence of my promised revelation. No, he was wondering, too, if several hoods might be on their way here.

I kept peering out the big window, at nothing, as I said, “Sure, Sergeant, that’s why I called. There’s another name on the page, up at the top. Biggers.”

“Biggers?”

“Yeah. Biggers. But don’t say it out loud.”

If Biggie was listening, I didn’t want him to miss anything — or pass out, for that matter — so we verbally dawdled just a bit to give him time to recover from what I hoped would be his shock. And possible nausea. And curdled sense of undeserved injury. So he could continue listening with absolute and horrified concentration.

“Let me give you the picture,” I said once more. “Very top of the page, in block letters, is the word, ‘midnight.’ We can assume Fowler jotted that down while he was talking to the informant, shortly before he phoned me in L.A. — it’s higher on the page, thus earlier in time, as before. And Fowler told me his informant was supposed to come calling at midnight.”

Delcey grunted again. “Makes sense. What’s this about Big — the name you mentioned?”

“Well, underneath that ‘midnight’ there’s some letters, mean nothing to me. An ‘R’ and a ‘G’ and a something I can’t make out. Then the name ‘Biggers.’ In longhand, scrawly, like it was written fast. After that — and this is printed — the name ‘Ernie’ with a question mark after it. Looks to me like the mayor either recognized the man’s voice, or for some reason we don’t know about guessed who his caller was. Anyhow, I’ll give ten to one odds the guy who phoned Fowler is named Biggers. And you told me his first name is Ernie. I never heard of the guy myself, but if you fill me in, Sergeant, I’ll get the creep. One way or another.”

“Uh, look … sir. I’d better call you back on this.’

“Don’t want to talk in the station?”

“That’s right. You’ll still be there?”

“Sure,” I tried to say lightly. “I’m probably safer here than anyplace else.” The words, of course, stuck in my throat.

He hung up. I hung up. Then I walked to the front window, stared into the darkness. I didn’t see anything, or hear anything. Not that I necessarily would.

Hell, even if Grimson sent Sam Jelly and five other gorillas out here, I could handle it, somehow, sure, I told myself — and jumped at least three inches off the floor when the phone rang.

It couldn’t have been more than two minutes since we’d hung up. Delcey would be calling from a drugstore pay phone a block from the police station. The good sergeant must have run all the way.

“O.K., Scott,” he said — a little out of breath — “I figure you’ve got something. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the creep we’re after is Ernie Biggers, this Little Biggie. That’s damned good work, Scott. Hell of it is, we can’t do anything about it.”

“Oh? We can’t?”

I did hope Biggie was listening. I hated to think all this might be wasted. Shock hell out of him at first. Then give him hope. Lift him up — smack him down again.

“We can’t. The police. Hell, you don’t call those doodles evidence do you? I believe it, but can you imagine a judge acting on that kind of information?”

“Well, I can do something about it, Delcey. I don’t need a warrant. What can you tell me about this guy Biggers?”

He repeated what I already knew, description, association with Grimson, record of one jolt in prison for burglary. After a little more of that, and again insisting there wasn’t anything the police could do about Biggers with so little evidence, I said, “If nothing else, I can see that this info — this piece of paper here, for that matter — gets to Hugh Grimson.”

“To Grimson? You damn fool, you know what he’d do to Ernie Biggers, don’t you?”

“Sure I do.”

“He’d kill him, that’s what.”

“I figured he would.”

“Why, he’d torture him to death, beat him to a pulp — “

“Boil him in oil! Peel his skin off!”

I did hope Biggie was listening, hoped it with a fervent hope. But even though I couldn’t be sure, we had to wrap it up.

“Break his arms and legs!” Delcey was crooning. “Scott, you can’t do that. You’d hate yourself if you were responsible for Biggie’s cold-blooded murder.”

“I wouldn’t, either.”

“But what if it’s a mistake, what if he’s innocent?”

“Who cares? The more of those bums who knock each other off the less of them there’ll be to kill me. That settles it. I’ll make sure Grimson finds out there’s a stoolie in his gang.”

“But, Scott, if Biggie is the informant, he’s an eyewitness to the Ramirez shooting. We have to get his testimony.”

“It’s no use, Sergeant. My mind is made up. I’ve got to act in self-defense.”

Silence. Then, “We’ll talk about this later, Scott. I’ve some other information for you.”

That wasn’t part of our act. So I assumed Delcey did indeed have some info for me, recently acquired. I glanced out the window again, hoping this didn’t take much longer.

“O.K.,” I said. “What’ve you got?”

“Ballistics checked the two bullets from Wainwright’s body, and the one they found in Wykoff. All three were from the same gun, the S&W .44 automatic that was found near Wykoff’s body.”

“Well. That means — “

“Yeah, and there’s this,” he said, cutting me off — there were, after all, some conclusions we needn’t pass along to anybody who might be listening. “Sam Jelly was picked up on Sixteenth Street about an hour ago.”

That would have been about the time I was meeting Delcey for our earlier conversation, possibly even before we’d met. “On Sixteenth?” I said.

“Yeah. Only a block or so north of the Rigoletto.”

“Why would he go back there?”

“He claimed he had ‘a ungovernable’ hunger for spaghetti and meatballs.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not kidding. About twenty feet from where he was standing when the prowl car stopped to pick him up, the officers found a fully loaded Colt .45 automatic. Jelly was more surprised than anybody else.”

“You tie the gun to him?”

“Not yet. No legible serial number, but I figure it has to be his own gun. And I suppose you do, too.”

This time I refrained from the obvious reply: That the S&W .44 found by Lou Wykoff’s body would be the gun Lou had used on Hank, and also the gun Sam Jelly had used on Lou. So the Colt .45 undoubtedly was Jelly’s own heater, even if nobody ever proved it.

“Jelly’s in the can now?” I asked.

“Not now. How I found out about it, I saw him leaving with his attorney while I was still on the phone to you. I didn’t find out for sure what the score was till I hung up and asked the desk sergeant.”

“Sprung, huh? That was fast.”

“I told you it would be. No change anywhere else,” Delcey said. “No news of the mayor, nothing you’d be interested in. I suppose you have some things to do….”

I sure did. “Right,” I said. “Thanks for the info.”

“In case I come up with anything else, where’ll I get in touch with you, Scott?”

“Well, it’s too late for me to do much tonight — I’ve got to figure how to get in touch with Grimson, anyhow. So I guess I’ll go back to the motel and catch some shut-eye.”

“Where are you staying?”

I sighed, because that was the last question, and answer, on our agenda. “At the Pickwick Motel, on Twelfth Street,” I said. “Room 29.”

And I didn’t sit by the phone any longer, thinking. We hung up. I did my thinking while I moved — and I moved.

There were three possibilities. One, Ernie Biggers himself had, happily — though not so happily for Ernie Biggers — been bending an ear to our conversation. Two, not Biggers, but somebody else had been listening. Or, Three, nobody had been listening, and either the call was being recorded or there was no longer a tap on the line.

If One or Three, no sweat, at least no immediate sweat. If Two, I figured I would by now be dodging bullets or running like an antelope through the walnut trees — but I couldn’t be sure. More, as soon as I told Delcey — and possibly others — where I was staying, the instinct for self-preservation demanded that I get from here to there, in a hurry, certainly before anybody else.

So I got out of there fast. But not quite fast enough.

When I reached the Pickwick, I wheeled in off Twelfth, rolled to the parking slot before room 29, and parked.

I let myself in, shut the door and flipped on the light, and a voice from behind me in the room said, “Don’t go ape or let out a howl or shoot me or nothin’. I’m Biggie.”

</code>

<code> 16

Well, I would probably have been very pleased. Even overjoyed. Perhaps congratulating myself, mentally patting myself on the back, things like that. Except, for a good many tortured seconds, it was touch and go whether or not I would overcome a serious difficulty I was about to have with my bladder.

I stood there, sort of scrunched over, lips peeled back and eyes bugging and hands clenched into fists, and with what must have been an expression blended equally of shock, pain, and several kinds of apprehension on my face, then I straightened up with a sigh and turned, realizing (a) I had already won, perhaps not a great battle, but a wee one, and (b) if the man had intended to shoot, he could have missed four or five times and still got me.

“You all right?” he asked in a high, reedy voice as I turned.

“Yeah, sure, I’m swell,” I replied in a high, reedy voice, as I turned. “So you’re Biggie, huh?”

I was still in such shock that I almost blew the whole bit right there. But I caught it in time and pretended to be very startled, which wasn’t difficult.

“What in the world are you doing here?” I asked him wonderingly. “How did you — nobody is supposed to know where I — you’re really Ernie Biggers?”

I figured that was enough, and maybe I’d even overdone it, so I let it just hang there in the air while I looked at my visitor. He didn’t seem as big as five feet five inches and a hundred and twenty pounds. He had a thin, pale face, only wisps of sand-colored hair on his head, and large sad eyes like a dog who’d been kicked too many times. He was wearing a gray suit, worn a bit thin at the knees, a light pink shirt and blue tie. He was standing, leaning against the wall across the room, and maybe he seemed smaller than I’d expected him to be because he appeared shrunken, as though he had recently undergone a trying ordeal.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m him. I’m the guy you want skinned and boiled in oils, I am the walkin’ dead, I am the guy whose guts you hate. Without even meetin’ me.” He was silent a moment, looking at me from the large sorrowful eyes. “Why?” Then in a plaintive tone that almost made me feel sorry for him, “I didn’t never do nothin’ to you, did I? Did I?”

“Well, ah, not that I know of, but — “

“So why are you gonna get me killed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Biggers.”

“Not much you don’t. I listened while you jawboned with Sergeant Delcey. Yeah, just now. Man, I liked to crapped blue.”

“You — listened?”

“Except for one little dizzy spell. The line’s wired, I heard every word practically. And I made up my mind while I was comin’ here a hundred miles an hour the only way to spill the whole schmeer — only you got to guarantee it to me you don’t say nothin’ about me to Hugh. To Grimson. Nothin’. I got as much right to live as anybody, don’t I?”

I let myself be puzzled briefly, then said, “I see. Well, I might — if you spill everything you know — be persuaded.”

“Does that mean you’ll keep shut up to Grimson about me?”

“It could. Yes, it could definitely mean that. But you’ll have to level with me, Biggers.”

“Don’t worry. I already made up my mind long ago. When I heard you talkin’ about that doodled paper I could of used it. Man, I liked to crapped blue. And then when you said you was going to puke it to Mr. G. — that’s when I had the little dizzy spell. I mean, if he ever finds out I’m the guy rang up the mayor Friday night he won’t just boil me, he’ll fry me in Crisco.”

I’d heard him say it, but I had to run over it in my mind a couple of times before it settled into place. But when it did, all of a sudden several things that had puzzled me before puzzled me no longer.

I managed to keep my voice normal. “Yes, I’m beginning to understand. When Delcey and I talked, we had no way of knowing the line was tapped. Both the sergeant and I are aware, of course — you heard our conversation — that you’re the man Mayor Fowler spoke to me about when he phoned me Friday night. The mayor’s unnamed informant, his midnight caller, the eyewitness to the Ramirez shooting. Isn’t that right?”

“Of course it’s right, why you askin’ me? I heard you tell the sergeant about it.” He shook his thin balding head rapidly. “How you could tell so much from a piece of paper with scribbles on it is a unfathomable misery to me.”

“Well, you don’t think that’s all we had to go on, do you?”

“Don’t make no difference. Just the paper with my name on it’d be enough for Hugh. Even if it just said ‘Ernie.’ He’s up so tight I’ll bet he don’t crap for the next month. He’s already full of suspect about me. You know why?”

“No. Why?”

“Because he suspicions everybody. He knows all about what the mayor said to you — man, I was the guy taped it, I was right there when he listened and his face got purple and bloodshots popped into his eyes — and since then he suspicions everybody he met since World War Two. He don’t need no more’n that paper, or just a word from you. Just a hint and he’ll kill me. Six hints, he kills six guys. That’s how uptight he is.”

“Did he kill Mayor Fowler?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about Fowler. Except I heard he’s missing, of course. I would presume Hugh done something unpleasant to him, it’s only a guess.”

“Don’t hold out on me, Biggers.”

“You’re full of suspect yourself, ain’t you? It’s the truth, I don’t know what the hell happened to Fowler. I ain’t exactly in Hugh’s confidants these days. Nobody ain’t.”

“Incidentally, while Sergeant Delcey and I realize you phoned the mayor Friday, we haven’t been able to learn if you actually went to see him later that night. You could prove your good faith right now by clearing that up for me.”

“Did I go see him? Hell, no, I didn’t. When Hugh was gonna be there to murder me in cold blood — like I heard the sergeant say — if I went?” He gave his head that rapid shaking again. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginnin’.”

“I think that would be wise. By the way, Biggie, how did you get in here?”

He looked disgusted. “I thought you knowed I was a burglar.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.” And then I asked him to sit down, relax, even have a drink if he wanted one. He wanted several. I had a couple myself.

When I handed Biggers his first — stiff — drink, he said, “Here’s how it is. You know there’s a tap on the mayor’s phone. But maybe you don’t know there’s others.”

Because, now, I no longer needed that “piece of paper,” I didn’t have to play the game anymore. So said, “We know there are several, and we know some of the people being bugged. We just don’t know how many, or all the people.”

“There’s fourteen,” he said, taking a large gulp of his bourbon and water. “You want the names?”

“Yeah, but later.”

The shock — and pleasure — I’d felt on hearing Biggers casually admit that he was the informant who’d phoned Mayor Fowler was beginning to wear off. In its place was building a definite apprehension. Because I wanted to be very sure only Biggers had overheard me giving the name of my motel to the sergeant.

But he was going on, and I did nothing for a while to interrupt the flow of words. “Hugh decided several months back he wanted to know more what was goin’ on — the mayor and the D.A. investigator, all that bunch, was hot after him along with others. And this Ramirez was getting his nose in too close. Anyway, he trusted it to me to get the thing set up the way he wanted it. I got some know-how about different kinds of bugging, but for what he was after I needed a real expert, and I got a guy named Jim Wade, works for the phone company, to do the real hard stuff. Which he did.”

I hesitated a moment, then told him, “Yeah, I heard about Wade.”

“You knew that, too, huh?”

“Right. Do you know what happened to him tonight?”

“Something happened to Jim?”

“He got killed. Not an accident, he was beaten to death. Neck was broken. Somebody really beat hell out of him.”

Biggers was pretty pale to begin with, and I hadn’t thought he could get much paler, but he could. And did.

“Man. Oh, man. He was such a nice guy, he really was.”

“I figure Sam Jelly worked him over. Way he was beaten.”

Biggers nodded his head slowly. “Yeah. I dunno, but it sounds like Jelly. Prob’ly was him. Man. And Jim did such a sweet job for Hugh, too. Just the way he wanted it.”

“What about that job, Biggie?”

“Well, it’s set up so all the calls come into one room. You can listen, or just let ‘em go down on tapes from the recorders, or both. And it’s all automo … automized….”

“Automated?”

“Yeah, that’s how Jim said it. Nobody has to do nothing, the machines do it. I’m there most of the time, but I don’t have to be, until lately. Now I’m supposed to be there. Usually, four times a day I check all the tapes — you can tell just by lookin’ if there’s been any calls from or to that particular phone or not — and run the ones that been recorded. Anything Hugh would want to know about I tell him right then, otherwise I just let it go.”

“Grimson must put a lot of trust in you, Biggie. That’s a pretty important job.”

“Well, maybe he did once upon a time. But not lately. Like I used to just erase the junk, but this last week or so — since he gunned Ramirez — he don’t let me erase nothin’. So I don’t … well, two I did.”

“You erased two?” He nodded and I said, “Did you — I hope — erase the call you just listened to between me and Sergeant Delcey?”

“That was number two. I sure didn’t want nobody hearin’ what you said about me. I was in a hurry so I just run it back and started it going through the erasers, them magnets. I sure didn’t set there and look at it.”

“You couldn’t have,” I said. “You must move like lightning. Or maybe not. How far — where did you have to come from?”

“The Garage. Silvano’s Garage.”

“That’s where you monitor the tapes?”

He nodded. “It’s a little room upstairs, you wouldn’t know it was there didn’t somebody show it to you.” He paused. “I got to get back there pretty quick.”

“Sure. But first let’s get to Friday night, Biggie. I didn’t quite follow what you said earlier about not keeping that midnight appointment with the mayor. Because Grimson was going to be there?”

“Yeah. Oh, man, what a close one that was. Like you said, I seen Hugh gun down Ramirez, and needless to point it out, Hugh don’t know it yet. But that’s when he stops me erasin’ any tapes, and it worries me.”

I interrupted him again. “How did Ramirez get it, Biggie? What exactly was it you saw?”

“Well, that was in the Garage, too. Over a week ago, on Thursday night it was. I was in the room where the taping is done, just awoke up from a nap — I sleep there sometimes, on a cot. Hugh drove in through the main entrance, off of Third, with Sam and Lou. Come in unexpected, and caught Ramirez inside.”

“That’s Sam Jelly and Lou Wykoff?”

Biggie nodded. “I ain’t all the ways sure what Ramirez was after, but what I get is he counted up tires and equipment they got in the Garage, and also he has in his hands some papers showing buys and that — invoice and bills, whatever. See, Silvano’s handles a bunch of the work and supplies most of the supplies for a lot of what the city does. For cars and garbage collecting vehicles and city trucks and that kind of thing. And, for but one example, Ramirez had it down that they sold to the city — mostly on paper, you understand — like six hundred tires and a hundred wheels and eighty transmissions for forty police cars, which isn’t a likely happening.”

“Not very.”

“Especially in five months, it ain’t. Well, it’s undoubted there was more, so they shoot him. That is, Hugh does it himself. Me, I was in the hall outside of the room where I’d been, heading for some coffee, when I hear the car come in down below. So I walked to the top of the ramp which leads up from inside the entrance off Third, and started down it, when I hear Hugh yelling at Ramirez like he’s a sonofabitch and so forth, then blam. I’d just got to where I could see them all standing. It was very healthy they didn’t see me. Ramirez goes down, Hugh pumps another into him, then stands over him and gives him a shot in the head, and that’s it. Within two seconds from then, I have disappeared.”

“You mean you went back up to your room?”

“God Almighty, no. I don’t want Hugh to even suspicion I was within several miles of there when it all happened. I ran like a wild orangdang to my heap and drove it to my rooms, very close to faster than it’s possible for you to get there, and before I have my door open the phone rings. I grab it and like I feared he might do just in case, it is Hugh saying, ‘Biggie, how long since you was at the Garage, old buddy?’ and I reply with the innocents of a infant child, I hoped, ‘Why, several hours if not more, Boss,’ and it’s only because I moved faster than anyone would believe it that Hugh bought what I told him as a huge lie, and which explains why I am still alive as of this date.”

“That was a close shave.”

“I ain’t had no other kind lately. Like I just told you, it was then Hugh stops me erasing anything off of the tapes, and this makes me nervous by itself. But besides, even before then he’d stopped some of the confidants he had with me once, and I catch him lookin’ cold and sorry at me, like you do at funerals when you look down in the casket at the guy there. I catch him doing this several times lately and it scares hell out of me, since even one of them would be too much.”

“What caused his sudden change of heart?”

“He ain’t got no heart to change. And it wasn’t so sudden, it just come along, and I think it’s because I know so much about guys he’s had killed and like that. Then there’s also me listening to so much stuff since the taps been put in, which all of what I hear Hugh knows about, since he hears the good stuff after I do. And, once in a goddamn while, at the same time.” He paused. “Like Friday.”

He paused again, but I just waited for him.

He gave his head one of those rapid wagging shakes and said, “That was close. For reasons you may be understanding, I figure it’s a matter of time till Hugh kills me, and the sooner he does it the quicker he don’t worry no more about all the stuff I know. I figure it’s a matter of time, but whether it’s weeks or days or ten o’clock is the question, and that’s what worries me considerable. So I guess you can figure it out why I decided to spill some of it and protect myself from Hugh, and maybe get enough loot so I can move to Siberia.”

“It makes sense to me, Biggie. Probably you made your play just in time. Obviously something went wrong.”

“Yeah, a little something. Just everything you can think of. Look, I was the only guy could call the mayor without it being taped by them machines, right?”

I nodded, slowly. It was right, indeed.

“I know all the calls to him is recorded, and kept on tapes there in the Garage. Anybody else done what I done, call him Pete, Hugh just listens to it and gives that cold sorry look and blam, down Pete goes. See?”

“I see it. Blam, and one in the conk.”

“Just like he done Ramirez, only sooner. Well, I figure I can call the mayor — who strikes me as the man best able to do most for me, once I convince him I can help him out — and myself make sure it don’t go on the tape. I figure it’s pretty smart. But here’s what happens. I make the call — and as you might figure I take some care it ain’t recorded. How I do this, I call from there, in the room at the Garage. Is that good?”

“Beautiful.”

“Everything is beautiful. I’m set to make a deal with Fowler around midnight. I’m feeling like I’ll get out from under, keep from getting myself murdered, maybe even wind up with a few big ones for lam money. I’m sitting there telling myself what a smart boy am I — like that who it was stuck in his thumb, what a smart boy am I, and you can take it from me, I’m just as goddamn dumb as him — and all of a sudden someone’s using the mayor’s phone. You can guess who, right?”

I shook my head. “Can’t guess.” I couldn’t. Probably should have, but I was all wrapped up in Biggie’s story.

“Who you suppose? It’s Fowler, calling you in L.A.”

“Ah.”

“Now, this is being taped, through the automazing thing, while at the same time I’m listening. I hear him talk about me, and even without my name I know it’s getting recorded simul … simul … at the same time I’m listening. Man, I am dumbfounded. I figure even while I listen I better start getting them erasers goin’ and I reach out my hand and the door opens and, you can guess — “

“Yeah — this time I’ll bet I can — “

“Hugh, that’s who. I swear, this was late at night and he hasn’t come in like that only maybe three, four times in a year. But there he is. Now, when you listen it’s like a speaker, it comes out of a box, all over the room. See? He not only hears it, he can’t miss it unless his ears get petrilized like them million-years-old logs, which is how I’m feeling right then. He stands there and he hears Fowler jawing something about a guy calling him and telling about blam and blam and … Jesus, I liked to crapped — “

“Blue, yeah.”

” — blue. I yank my hand back from them erasers so fast I bet Hugh didn’t even see me movin’, but it don’t make no difference, it’s too late. So I says, serious as I can get, ‘Hugh, I think you’ll be interested in this one.’ Like I just missed runnin’ out to go bring him in. What else could I do?”

“I can’t think of a thing.”

“Well, I don’t like even mentioning about the next half hour or so. Only thing that wasn’t bad luck is Fowler didn’t know for sure who I was or he’d of named my name, and I don’t need to say what Hugh would of done to me before any more time passed at all. When it was finished, Fowler and you talking, Hugh had me run it over. And he sat there, not saying nothin’, very cold he was. Like he’d froze. Only spoke once during it, looked at me like his eyes was hollow and says to me, ‘Who do you think the fink sonofabitch is, Biggie?’”

“Man, what did you say?”

“I looked him right close to the eyes, maybe a couple inches outside from them, and said like I was really worried about it — ha, ha — ‘Beats the hell out of me, boss.’ And he says, “Whoever the fink sonofabitch is, he’s gonna be goddamn surprise when the horn blows at midnight,’ or something in that area. I was not feeling well at all then.” He shook his head. “No, I was not feeling well. To the opposite, I thought sure I was going to puke, and that would have blowed it. So all I remember is, it was no trouble figuring Hugh was going to catch whoever went out to the mayor’s place anywhere around midnight, give or take a couple hours. I decided not to go.”

I took a deep breath, let it sigh between my lips. “That was a close one.”

“Didn’t I tell you? But that ain’t all. When it’s done playing, Hugh asks me in that scary way he’s got how could it be if the fink sonofabitch phoned Fowler at his home — it’s fortunate he asked it that way and put the words in my brains — there wasn’t no recording of it? How come everything else was down on the tape from our wire on Fowler’s phone but not the fink sonofabitch?”

“Wow,” I said. “How the hell did you get around that one?”

“I just got inspirated, is the only way I can explain about it. I put Hugh’s words straight back at him without even thinking once. ‘Hugh,’ I say, pure and sincere, like I am a angel with wings that fall off if it even thinks of a lie, ‘he couldn’t of called Fowler at his home, else otherwise I would of heard it and the words would be on the tape. Boss,’ I said, ‘the lousy fink must of got in touch with the mayor at somewheres else besides his own house, for he sure did not say nothing to him there while I been here and I been here all the time.’”

“Grimson bought it, huh?”

“To some degree. Fowler never come right out and said he got the call at his house, which is fortunate for me. Just as helpful, Hugh figures I can’t be the one told of seeing him hit Ramirez, since he knows I was home when he called me up right after he done it, though he may be wondering considerable about that by then. I figure he mostly suspicions Sam or Lou but can’t prove it, and thinks it could even of been somebody else. Besides, I no sooner finish lying so sincere to him, my mind already convinced Hugh is going to go out and kill this fink, whoever he is, when the mayor’s phone starts goin’ again. It’s you, calling him from L.A.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Mainly I wanted to tell him when I’d get here. I don’t remember if I said anything else important — “

“Ask me. I can tell you. So can Hugh — later, couple hours or more after midnight, he come back here, having told me not to move my butt a inch, and played over the tape maybe a dozen times more.”

I nodded again. That explained Grimson’s wonderful familiarity with what Fowler had said to me. And the way Fowler had said it. And why “Mayor” Grimson had looked so sleepy.

Biggie went on. “After this, Hugh calls you up in L.A. himself, from the room where he was. He gets your number from the Information, but even without that I could of figured it was you from him cussing your name out — when he didn’t get no answer.”

“What time was that, Biggie?”

“I wasn’t concentrating about when it was at that instance, but it must of been past 4 a.m. anyhow, or later. Hugh didn’t come back to the Garage until it was two-thirty, maybe three in the a.m. And it took a long time — month and a half, seemed to me — for playin’ that tape over and over.”

“Uh-huh. Probably wanted to tell me the mayor had changed his mind and didn’t want me to fly up here after all.” I couldn’t help thinking, if Grimson had caught me before I left the Spartan, it would have saved him — not to mention me — a lot of trouble.

Biggie and I talked another five minutes or so, and I started playing with an idea. “Biggie, you know more about those tapes and the setup there in Silvano’s Garage than anyone else. Are the tapes kept there at Silvano’s?”

“In a big safe. Only Hugh and me can get into it.”

“You don’t just automatically erase the recordings once Grimson hears what’s on them, then?”

“Some. But the ones with good stuff he keeps. Part of it’s only like broads cheating on their husband with nine milkmen, things of that nature. Others it’s talk about Hugh himself, what the cops are doing and such. Them he keeps. And, like I said, he told me as of maybe ten days ago, I don’t erase nothin’ till further notice, I keep everything and stick it all in the safe.” He waggled his head. “Look, I got to get back.”

“O.K. But we’ll have to meet later. Because you’ve got to get those tapes for me, Biggie.”

After some time he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d say that again.”

“For a great many reasons, none of which we need to go into at the moment, I’ve got to get my hands on those recordings. While they’re still available, before they’re erased or carted off someplace else. Since it looks like you’re the only man who can do the job, you’ll have to get them for me.”

“I thought I didn’t understand at first. But it’s the same this time, only longer. Why don’t I just kill myself?”

“Now that’s a very negative attitude, Biggie — “

“Look, already when Hugh thinks about me he puts his hat over his chest and bows his head, as you do for the departed. He’s just percastinated bumpin’ me off. That’s why I buzzed the mayor. I thought maybe he could help me. For a minute I even thought you could help me. Man, you’re a lotta help, you are — “

“Biggie, I hate to put it this way, but we must face the facts. You’re already in deep trouble. We don’t know if the mayor’s alive or dead, but either way — if Grimson snatched Fowler Friday night, which seems even more likely after what you’ve told me — uppermost in Mr. G.‘s mind is getting the man who tried to fink to the mayor. Which is to say, you. It’s just a matter of time. He knows it’s got to be somebody pretty close to him. And if Fowler’s alive, Grimson might find out from him that he was at home when the informant phoned.”

“Yeah, I know all that. I’m the one told you.” He sighed. “Ah, hell, what’s the use? Ain’t no way to get out from this. Siberia was just a dream. I been kiddin’ myself.”

“Biggie, all we have to do is put Grimson away for good. You can testify to his killing Ramirez. And once I get those taped recordings, you can take my word for it we’ll have Mr. G. tied up so tight — “

“Maybe you don’t remember it, but I mentioned only Hugh and me can get into the safe where the tapes is at. Say I open the box up and grab them tapes and give them to you, what happens then? Hugh says, The tapes is gone! Then he says, I didn’t do it. Who could of done it? Maybe he is no Einstein, but he don’t even have to add up two and two. He just subtracts one from two, and you can guess who is the one subtracted.”

“Well, there’s got to be a way.”

I’d had the beginnings of an idea a few minutes earlier, and I sat quietly, pushing it around for half a minute. I asked Biggie to describe the Garage, how it was set up inside, where the tape-monitoring room was, everything that would help me get a mental picture of the place.

Then I said, “O.K. I see the whole thing clearly enough. One, I want those recordings and you’ve got to get them for me. Two, if you open the safe and grab them it takes Grimson maybe a whole minute to figure out who heisted them. Three, therefore he kills you. Four — “

“I hope you ain’t plannin’ to count up to ten.”

“Well…. Even if you don’t heist them, he’s going to kill you. And you’ve got to testify that you saw Grimson blast Ramirez, which won’t help your position a whole lot. Biggie, you’re just never going to be safe until you’re dead.”

“Well, that makes me feel better already — “

“Let me finish, Biggie.”

I ran over it quickly in my mind. I had my own selfish motives for what I hoped Biggie and I, together, could accomplish, sure. But in a way, I also wanted to help Biggie. He was such a forlorn, elfish sort of guy, but there was something almost appealing about him, too. And there really was a chance. Biggie would have to stick his neck way out — and so would I — and I’d need a good deal of help, Delcey would have to cooperate enthusiastically and even bend a rule or two. But maybe….

“Biggie,” I said decisively, my mind made up, “there’s one way to get this job done, all of it, get those tapes, wrap Grimson up tight and put him away, and at the same time make sure Grimson, or his guns, don’t murder you. And I think I can pull it off.”

The big, sorrowful eyes opened wider than they had yet been. For the first time I saw on his lips the trace of what, given time, might become a smile.

“No kiddin’?” he asked wonderingly. “How’ll you do that?”

“Later today, right there in Silvano’s Garage — “

“Yeah?” His eyes were getting brighter.

” — with one or two of Grimson’s men close enough to see it, so they know it happened — “

“Yeah?” The big round eyes were almost glowing, his lips were twitching at the corners.

” — I’ll kill you myself.”

The lips stopped twitching, the glow went from his eyes, and he stared dully at me for a while. Then he smiled. He really did smile.

“Man,” he said, “that’s what I call good thinkin’.”

</code>

<code> 17

I was wearing a teal-blue suit, slightly wrinkled — the only other one I’d brought along from L.A. — and it was three o’clock in the afternoon. Sunday afternoon. I felt slightly wrinkled myself.

There had been other times in my life — plenty of them — when I’d crossed my bridge but hadn’t burned it and there was still a chance to retreat, and tension built up until it pulled me in several directions at once. But my nerves had seldom felt stretched more close to the snapping point. And the burning of this particular bridge was still almost an hour away.

Biggie had been back at his post in Silvano’s Garage for hours now. It wasn’t any comfort for me to know that, no matter how nervous or apprehensive I might be about what lay ahead, he was sure to be experiencing my own emotions doubled and redoubled, assuming he had not yet unraveled entirely.

Everything was in readiness — as ready as we could get it. Which, now that it was done, struck me as not ready enough. My first job had been to convince Biggers himself. It took a little doing. But when I’d explained in detail what I had in mind he said, “I dunno…” and to my reply, “Have you got a choice?” Biggie had sadly concluded our discussion with the closest he could get to agreement. “No. But, man, I sure wish I did.”

Sergeant Delcey had proved more difficult, but finally agreed to cooperate, not without huge misgivings.

After Biggers left my motel room, I phoned Delcey, said only, “You mentioned something about a sardine, Sergeant? It turns out we’ve beached Moby Dick,” and asked him to meet me. He was, naturally, interested enough to agree, and we got together in a small cocktail lounge.

I refused to tell him more than a minimum of what I’d learned from Biggers until I had, first, laid before him my plan for Silvano’s Garage in the afternoon.

Then I just shut up, and hoped. The only other customers there at that time of morning were at the bar and we sat in a booth, each with a beer on the table before us. Since I’d finished my explanation, Delcey hadn’t said a word. But on that smooth youngish face of his, which in repose usually looked sort of agingly angelic, was the expression you’d expect if he really was a choirboy whose voice had just cracked on the ia in Ave Maria.

“You’re crazy, you know,” he said at last. “It won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“It can’t. It’s too — crazy.”

“You’ve got a better plan?”

“I could make one up in a couple minutes. Like, why don’t I take some men and a warrant and move into Silvano’s? And, first, put Biggers in protective custody, second, open up that safe.” He paused. “Why’re you so hot to get those tapes, anyhow?”

I had an important — and personal — reason for wanting those recordings. So I explained it to Delcey, and he bought that much, at least.

Then I said, “I told you Biggie spilled a good deal more than I’ve yet passed on. And you don’t grab Biggie, for one reason, because I’ve got him convinced I’m his only hope, and my way’s the only chance he’s got of coming out of this not only alive but with a good chance of staying that way, if he doesn’t get killed during the operation, which he confidently expects.”

“His confidence is not misplaced.”

“Keep up the positive thinking, and we can’t miss. The point is, Biggers simply won’t be in a cooperative mood if you grab him; I’ve a hunch he’ll clam. This, at least, will interest you, Delcey. You don’t move in and blow the safe because if you do you’ll really blow it. What you’ll find inside the box is about a pound of ashes.”

“It’s rigged? All this just for recordings from those wiretaps?”

“Yes — and no. It’s rigged, yes. Only Grimson and Biggers know the safe’s combination, and as I recall Biggie’s words, ‘If you don’t do it just right, it sets off magnesia or something and the heat evaporizes everything.” I interpret that to mean the wrong combination, or maybe even wrong timing, sets off something like a magnesium flare inside the box — anyhow, the evidence disappears. But just for recordings, no. There are other items you’ll want in the safe, including as merely one example a second set of books for various Grimson operations.”

“Biggers told you this?”

“Yeah. And he should know. Anyway, that’s why you don’t force the safe or blow it, and why you don’t ask Grimson to open it for you, either, since you can guess how surprised he’d be to discover all those ashes in there. Face it, Ernie Biggers — a willingly cooperative Ernie Biggers — is the only man you want opening Grimson’s safe for you.”

He squinted at me, head turned slightly to one side. “You not only spent some time thinking up this idiotic plan of yours, but used a little more deciding how you were going to lay it on me. Am I right?”

“Well, I felt it was important that you hear everything in the proper sequence. Hell, it’s screwed up enough as it is.”

“You can say that again.”

“All I want is the tapes of every call made from or to Mayor Fowler’s phone, and those only temporarily, the rest is yours — and I imagine there’s more of value to the cops than even Biggie suspects.”

He nodded. “That I’ll go along with. Well….”

He seemed to be weakening, so I pressed a little. “Can you get all of your end set up, and the stuff I want? There isn’t a hell of a lot of time.”

He was silent briefly, scowling. “The transmitter’s no problem. But I don’t know about the bullets.”

“They’d be available in Hollywood, of course. Maybe even San Francisco, and if so that’s not too far from here.”

“I can find out. The rest of it, the officers and police equipment, that’s easy enough — if I sell Chief Cantor, which most likely will be impossible.”

“Well … do you have to mention this to the chief? Can’t we just keep this our little — “

“Come off it, Scott. You know I’ve got to fill Cantor in, and even if I didn’t have to I would. I think he’ll go through the roof, and not come down again till next Wednesday. But there’s just a chance, especially with us still not knowing what the hell’s happened to the mayor, and maybe a shot at busting Grimson for good … we’ll see. If he does go along, you know where that puts you, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if he agrees to this cockeyed plan of yours, which he won’t, he’ll be sticking his own neck out, he’ll be hating himself every minute for doing it, if he does, which he won’t — “

“Will you quit — “

“It means our chief of police will practically be putting his head on the chopping block, and you’ll be the boy in charge of the axe. You screw up and you let the chief down, not to mention me, maybe Fowler himself if he’s still breathing, plus Ernie Biggers, and a dozen men I’ll have to haul off other jobs.”

“You left one out.”

“I did what?”

“You left one out. Me.”

“Oh….”

“Don’t say it like that, Delcey. If I screw up, I’ll be dead, won’t I?”

He nodded. “You’ve got a point there.”

</code>

<code> I don’t know quite how the sergeant managed it, but he later phoned with wonder in his voice to let me know all signals were Go. If the truth be told, it made me a little sick.

So now it was 3 p.m., by the clock on my bedside table. Then 3:06.

I got up off the side of my bed and paced back and forth in the small motel room. I went over the plan again. It’s funny about plans. Sometimes when they burst into your brain like rockets exploding they seem very pretty, delicate, things of beauty and wonder. But as time goes by — now it was three-oh-seven — it occasionally happens that you peek again only to find that what you’ve got are dead rockets falling, and the pretty fires have all fizzled out.

Actually, when I stopped thinking about all the things that could go wrong, I was able to convince myself the operation at Silvano’s might be a breeze. The plan was quite simple. And judging from what Biggers had told me, we probably couldn’t have chosen a better time, since usually only two or three of Grimson’s men were in the Garage on Sunday afternoons, compared to the three dozen or more working there or hanging around on weekdays. That was one of the big factors in our favor; the other was the timing, and with a little luck the tricky or dangerous part would consume no more than a half-minute or so and then, zowie, the cavalry would arrive.

I knew that Silvano’s Garage, plus the parking and work areas behind it where several vehicles in various stages of repair were kept, occupied a full city block near the city limits north of downtown Newton. The main garage building, which I’d seen Saturday morning, faced Third Street, with the yard area extending back to Fourth, and the property was bordered on its right, or north side, by Maple Street, and on the south by Birch Street.

At exactly 3:30 p.m. I would park somewhere on Fourth Street, and by four o’clock, if all went well, everything would be over. The key bit was killing Biggie. Or, rather, shooting him. And making sure one of Grimson’s men — that, really, was the undeniably difficult part — was present to see it happen, and spread the sad word that Biggie was no more.

I would not, of course, pump three or four Super Vel slugs into Little Biggie. What I intended to do was kill him the way they kill bad guys in movies or television. Many years ago, for added realism, technicians in the industry developed “blood”-filled paper or wax bullets that could actually be fired from a handgun, and which would burst upon impact, thus providing for later viewers of the film or videotape a realistic “kill” complete with great gobs of exciting blood for those who prefer that to sexy things on the screen.

Those first “movie bullets” were fashioned merely to satisfy the many TV and movie watchers who, like me, were instantly dispossessed of the so-called “suspension of disbelief” upon seeing the villain shot five times in the chest without even getting a wrinkle in his cowboy shirt. After being improved over the years, today’s nonlethal slugs were a far cry from the crude originals, and could produce a wound gory enough to convince almost anybody that not only blood but — if desired for an impressive gut shot — bits of various internal organs were leaking out of the victim.

I needed nothing so complicated, no pills containing bits of livers and spleens and yesterday’s lunch; plain old blood would do nicely. So that was what Sergeant Delcey was — I hoped — arranging to get for me.

There were a few other odds and ends. The sergeant would also provide me with a wireless transmitter, small enough to fit into my pocket, over which I could at any time communicate with him. Him, and some carloads of cops. Which I intended instantly to do when I wanted the cavalry. As insurance, if for any reason I failed to broadcast a message, such as “HELP!” sooner, Delcey and his men — and a city ambulance complete with attendants, to remove Biggie’s corpse as quickly as possible — would all pour into Silvano’s Garage at 4 p.m. on the dot.

I paced back and forth a couple more times, nodding my head encouragingly. A breeze. A pipe. A piece of cake. Nothing to it. The timing was the big thing, really.

I glanced at the clock by my bed. It was 3:07 p.m. I thought back. Back about five minutes to … 3:07 p.m.

That was a pretty sickening moment, I’ll tell you. I went over to the clock, grabbed it, shook it. It started ticking. The dumb thing had stopped.

That was all. Dumb clocks stop every day, all over the place. It didn’t mean anything. Just a coincidence. Fortunately, I’m not superstitious. So I told myself I’d look at my watch. And if it had stopped … well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

According to my watch, the time was twelve minutes after three. I put it up to my ear. There was always a chance it had ticked along until just a moment ago … but, no, it was still running. That made everything wonderful.

The phone rang.

Good news, I’ll bet, I said to myself. I’m a believer in the idea you’ve got to keep yourself pumped up. Particularly when things are going to hell.

I grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

“Shell, this is Delcey. Figured it’d be O.K. to call, not likely your phone there’s bugged.”

“Not likely. But, Sergeant, I’ve been getting some funny feelings…. What’s up?”

“I thought you said only two or three men would be at Silvano’s this afternoon.”

“That’s right. According to Biggers, the place should be practically empty. Which is one reason it’s such a great day…. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’m naturally having the place watched. Just got a report, three cars have driven into Silvano’s in the last five minutes.”

“Five minutes? Ye Gods, that’s when my clock stopped — “

“What?”

“Nothing, I — I — “

“You got any idea what’s going on?”

“Beats me. Only time will … uh. If it’s something that came up after I talked to Biggers, he couldn’t take a chance on calling to let me know.”

“You sure Biggers was leveling with you, Scott?”

“I think so. Yeah, I’m pretty certain he was.”

“Well, there’s always something, you know that. These things never go off like clockwork.”

“Don’t say clock — “

“So if you want to call it off, we’ll understand.”

I had my chance right then. But I blew it.

“No, we’ve gone too far now, Delcey. Of course, if I can’t get inside at all, we forget it. But if I can, Biggers is supposed to meet me, and he’ll be able to tell me what the score is. I’ll make up my mind then.”

“You’ll see me on Fifth Street in ten minutes?”

“I’ll be there. You get those toy pills?”

“Ye-es.”

He didn’t sound completely certain. “You did get them, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sure,” Delcey said emphatically. “Got ‘em right here. Had a little difficulty — “

“I knew it!”

” — Hollywood was too far away, in the time we had, and it turned out what you wanted wasn’t available in San Francisco. But a very clever officer made three for you. Worked straight through his lunch — “

“Made them? Delcey, did you say some idiot made them?”

“That’s right. But what are you getting so excited about? They don’t look like toys at all. They’re beautiful. He even weighed the powder grains so the blast won’t bust open the bullets in the gun barrel. Good thing he thought of that — “

“Oh, Lord. Who made them, Delcey? Who?”

“Why, it was … an officer in our Special Effects Department.”

“The police don’t have a Special Effects Department. What’s this guy’s name?”

“Now, Scott, just because I don’t at this very moment know who it was doesn’t mean he didn’t do a good job. You can take my word for it, they’re exactly what you asked me for.”

“They are, huh? How did they work when you tried them out?”

“Well, he only had time to make three, Scott — wanted them to be near perfect, of course. And you said you had to have three. So there weren’t any extras to, ah, practice with.”

“You haven’t tried them out? You don’t even know if they’ll work. Why, they might kill Biggie when I shoot him with the bloody — “

He interrupted, undoubtedly simply to shut me up. “Didn’t use real blood in them, Scott. He says he knew just what to put in them, combination of glycerine and milk and Nescafe and food coloring and — “

“Wonderful. Marvelous. I’m going to shoot Biggers with instant coffee.”

“Believe me, Scott, I’m told this will look exactly like blood. Even better than real blood, they tell me.”

“Yeah. Great. There’ll probably be enough real blood around to fool anybody.”

“Transmitter’s here for you, too. I guess that does it.”

“I guess that does it. Yeah. Uh, you’ve got a watch on, I suppose.”

“Of course.”

“It is now … three-sixteen, right?”

“On the nose.”

“O.K.” I took a deep breath. “I’m on my way.”

</code>

<code> Delcey gave me what he’d referred to as the ‘toy’ bullets, three of them. Actually, they did look pretty good. The fake bullets, fitting neatly into the ends of .38 Special cartridge cases, were made of what appeared to be a very thin plastic, or maybe hard wax, inside which I could see red gunk. They did not, of course, resemble real slugs very much, but nobody was supposed to see them until after they hit their victim. I simply hoped they stayed together while flying through the air; if they squashed in the Colt’s barrel when the powder banged off, I would appear to be plugging Biggers with an exploding ketchup bottle, which wouldn’t make his instant demise wonderfully convincing.

The battery-powered transmitter was no larger than a pack of cigarettes, and as Delcey handed it to me he said, “Just push the red button and speak into the circle there. It’s putting out a steady high-frequency tone right now, so we can get a fix on it and tell if you’re moving around a lot.”

I smiled. “Or if I’m not?”

He smiled, too. Thinly. About like I had. “Well, you never can tell, Scott. You might light out of there and into your car, go racing off. We’ve got to have some way of keeping track of you if that should become necessary.”

“Suits me. Well, here goes nothing.”

We talked a few seconds longer, and that was all of it. Except for three words. He said, “Good luck,” and I said, “Thanks.”

</code>

<code> As I drove past I looked inside. In the gloom I could see that cement ramp slanting upward, nothing else. At Maple Street I took a right, drove a block to Fourth, and took a right again. Nothing had happened yet, but I had a hunch my pulse was nearing 120.

I reached under my coat, rubbed the checked grip of my Colt Special snug in its clamshell holster. I had already removed three of the cartridges and replaced them with the “movie” bullets. I could fire six times if need be, first the three toys and then the three Super Vels, which are about as far from toys as you can get. They’re 110-grain hollow-points, and when they hit and dig in they break up. Like little bombs. Three toys would be enough for Biggie, if they worked at all; and I figured three Super Vel pills would be enough for me. If three of each weren’t enough, three hundred wouldn’t be, either.

I parked the Ford near Birch, got out. Driving by I hadn’t seen any sign of life, no movement in the big yard, just a lot of cars and trucks. I walked back, along the chain-link fence. If Biggie had done what he was supposed to do, the wide gate would be unlocked. It was.

So I opened it, shut it behind me, burning my bridge, and walked toward the rear of Silvano’s Garage. This was no time for me to be dawdling, even though I hadn’t seen a living soul yet, but parked in a shed at the near end of the lot with its massive front toward me was a big diesel truck, and I had so recently seen one just like it barreling down on me that I had to make sure.

It took only thirty seconds. I moved behind a row of beat-up cars and pickups and stopped in front of the monster. It was a White Freightliner cab-over-engine diesel rig, towering over me, top of the driver’s seat level with my eyes. With its attached trailer, it would weigh out at about forty tons. Its thick, lethal-looking bumper was a good foot and a half wide and at least nine feet long.

At the bumper’s left edge were some dents and scratches that had been rubbed with something dark like grease or graphite. There was nothing noticeably banged up about the left front fender. So they’d changed the fender, maybe patched up a few other spots. No matter; this was the one.

And as I stood there with my heart beating too fast, muscles pulled too tight, that now-familiar knot between my shoulder blades, I felt myself letting go a little, loosening, unwinding. Oddly, as I looked at the big sonofabitch that had come so close to creaming me, the tension, instead of increasing, lessened. Not entirely, but enough.

From where I stood I walked straight ahead to the back wall of Silvano’s, then right along the wall to the rear door Biggers had told me I should come to. It was also unlocked. I closed it behind me, walked up a metal stairway to the end of a dimly illumined hallway, and there he was. Ernie Biggers. Not three guys with guns or clubs, just Little Biggie. As planned. I started feeling almost jolly. For a change.

Still wearing the gray suit, pink shirt, and blue tie, he stepped back, motioning for me to follow him, opened a door ten feet down the hallway. I followed him into a small room filled with stale air, a scarred wooden desk, chair, overflowing wastebasket, cigar butt on the floor.

“There’s been some things happening,” he said softly, looking up at me from way down there, with the big mournful eyes staring, like a man on his knees in a bankrupt church. “For one thing, there’s more guys here than I told you about.”

“I know. How many?”

“Well, not so many, only seven I didn’t count on, but that’s too many. Plus the usual two, Hot Sauce Charlie and Crazy Mike. Them seven, it’s some kind of meetin’ with Jelly.”

“Sam Jelly? He’s here?”

“Yeah. He’s been here all day. I forgot to mention about that.”

“How could you forget — ” I chopped it off. “So that’s ten of them, then. Where are they? Does that screw us up?”

“Don’t have to. They’re all upstairs — the eight of ‘em, Sam and them seven — in what they call a conference room, clear over at the Maple Street end. If they just keep conferencing, maybe I’m dead and you’re outa here before they can come really kill us.” He paused. “You get them whatyoucallits, like flying cackle bladders?”

A cackle bladder is the little rubber bag filled with chicken blood, on which the con-man bites when his partner shoots him with a blank. It has helped the boys take marks for millions.

“Yeah,” I said. “All set. Should have brought a cackle bladder, too, maybe.”

“I’d probably swaller it. It’s enough you come. I didn’t think you was goin’ to.”

“I wasn’t too sure myself. You bring the suitcase to carry the stuff in?”

He nodded. “Now, look, like I said it to you this morning, I don’t know how much time it’ll take me, I got my head in the box, or I’m pilin’ all that junk in the suitcase. So I got to pick my time. Also, when I come out from there and down the hall then downstairs here to where you’re at, I got to make sure Hot Sauce Charlie is sittin’ where he does usual, at the top of the stairs, not off in the can or somewheres, so he sees me get kilt. So just wait for me, huh?”

“Biggie, I have no plans to go anywhere. I promise to wait for you, and plug you at least twice.”

“Try to get me in the chest. I don’t want you to knock a eye out.” He closed the big orbs about halfway. “Is it gonna hurt much?”

I really didn’t have the faintest idea, but I said confidently, “Of course not. Oh, it might sting a little, but it couldn’t hurt nearly as much as getting fried in Crisco.”

“You got me convinced.” He paused. “I told you the bad news, the seven more guys who’s here. But to balance it up there’s some other news you’ll be pleased to know about. I think. The way I got it, I’m not absolute, but I’m pretty sure it was him.”

“It was who?”

“Fowler.”

“What about Fowler?”

“He’s alive.”

</code>

<code> 18

“How do you know? You didn’t see Fowler, did you?”

“Nothin’ like that, it was just Jelly on the phone. I notice Jelly’s lookin’ at his watch every couple minutes, upstairs. This is a little before 2 p.m. Then just before two he goes into his office up there and shuts the door, and I walk over and hear the phone ring. I remember you told me not to do it noticeable, but keep my eyes and ears opened up.”

I nodded in approval.

“Obvious he was expectin’ the call, and who would it be besides from Hugh? Besides, I hear him say ‘Boss’ while I’m listening, and then there isn’t much till I hear Jelly ask, ‘And how’s our dear mayor doin’?” I think that was it. Then he says, ‘Still sleepin’ like a babe, hey?’ or words to that meaning. I heard him say ‘sleepin’ for sure.”

“That’s great, Biggie. Nice going.”

He looked pleased.

“And you’re sure Jelly said the mayor. No name or anything, just that?”

“No name. And it sounded like that almost exactly. It was either ‘mayor’ or ‘mare,’ and I don’t think he’d be askin’ about a horse.”

“Well, it all fits. We knew Fowler was either snatched and alive, or snatched and dead. And if he’s alive it makes a big difference. To a lot of people.”

I reached into the left pocket of my coat, took out the transmitter.

Biggie said, “What’s that?”

“Miniature transmitter. Sergeant Delcey gave it to me.”

“Cute little thing, ain’t it? You’re gonna talk on it to him?”

“Yeah. If I don’t do it now, I might not get another chance — “

We both heard the scrape of shoe leather in the hall, heavy footsteps coming this way. Not just this way, but here, to the room we were in. There was a rattle as somebody grabbed the doorknob; it started turning and I took two quick steps to the wall behind the door, shoving the transmitter back into my pocket, yanking out my Colt.

I was looking at the .38, silently swearing, then shoving it back into the clamshell holster and balling my right hand into a fist as the door opened and a man with a deep slow voice said, “It’s you, huh? I thought I heard somep’n. What you doin’ here, Biggie?”

“I came down to take a crap.”

“Crap? Here? Crap? Aw….”

“I always do my yogi meditates here, Crazy. Same time every day.”

“Naw….”

“I’m writin’ a book. Don’t tell anybody and I’ll put you in it.”

“Aw … Biggie, you’re always pulling my laigs. One of these times, I’ll knock your head off of you.”

“It’s only because I like you, Crazy. Don’t you know that?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. But the door closed.

I heard the footsteps move away, not far, only a few feet up the hallway, then there was the sound of another door opening and closing.

I stepped nearer Biggie and he whispered, “That was Crazy Mike. Hold it down, he’s in the next room. He finds out you’re here, he’ll wreck the joint.” I nodded, having reached all the same conclusions myself. “He’s strong as a bull, but dumber,” Biggie whispered. “Answer him enough times fast enough and he forgets the question.”

“What the hell now?” I whispered back. “We’ve got to get started.”

“He’ll conk out in there. Sleeps a lot. Something wrong with his endychrome — endocrime — his glands are shot.” Biggie gave his head one of those rapid waggles, scratched the wisps of sandy hair on his scalp. “One thing,” he whispered seriously. “One thing, if something should go wrong — even if I don’t get them tapes — you got to shoot me anyways.”

“Sure,” I said softly, adding with perhaps the falsest confidence of my life, “but what could go wrong?”

He let his lids droop slightly over the big dog-kicked eyes, and regarded me sadly. “You mean you don’t know?” When I didn’t answer that, he said, “O.K. We can go now, but eeeasy.”

He didn’t have to tell me. Biggie opened the door slowly, looked out, pulled the door wide, and stepped into the hallway. By the time I silently pulled the door shut behind me he was halfway up the hallway, moving on tiptoe. I followed the same way, joined him at the hall’s end.

There was a lot more light here, and from where we stood a much wider hallway — actually more like a cement street bordered by cement walls — extended for perhaps fifty yards to our right. Turning to look straight down it, I could see, at floor level beyond an opening in the wall commencing ten yards away on my left, the upper end of the ramp I’d noticed when driving past on Third Street, tire marks curving away from us up here and extending on into a gloomy and cluttered area.

From what Biggie had told me this morning, and a few whispered phrases now, I got oriented. Below the floor on which we stood was one huge open space enclosed only by the building’s outer walls, in which were work areas, pits and racks, storage for tires, wheels, engine parts, all the miscellaneous items for repair of everything from sports cars to the big diesel rigs. Here on this level, except for half a dozen rooms like the one Biggie and I had been in, most of the area was devoted to parking space and additional storage. The floor above was given over to offices, including a swank three-room President’s Suite and the Conference Room Biggie had mentioned.

And, of course, the room “you wouldn’t know it was there didn’t somebody show it to you” where those fourteen wiretaps were monitored and recorded. And where soon — very damned soon, I hoped — Biggers would be opening Hugh Grimson’s big safe.

About midway between where we stood and the near end of that ramp, but on the opposite side, or to our right, a stairway led upward to the top floor.

Biggie was rubbing both thumbs over the knuckles of his fingers, rapidly, probably unconsciously. He was nervous. Worse than nervous. When he looked at me a muscle twitched at the corner of his left eye, wiggling the brow erratically. His lips were moving oddly, as if he’d developed several tics in each of them. It didn’t add to my peace of mind.

“O.K.?” he asked, speaking the first letter aloud and then remembering to whisper. “Look like I told you it was?”

I glanced over the wide cement deck ahead of me, at the wall on my left and the top of the ramp that came up from the floor below — or, reached from here to the floor below us — at gloominess straight ahead, stained-wood stairs fifteen feet away on my right. Then I moved back a step and peered along the narrow hallway toward the room we’d just come from.

“Well … close enough,” I said.

I started to tell him I almost wished we’d planned the shooting for down below, in that open area, where police cars and lots of help could move in with a minimum of delay. But there was no point in mentioning it now. Besides, that would probably have been too far away anyhow, since we were counting on Hot Sauce Charlie, nearby at the top of the stairs, to be our witness. Witness, singular. One, we felt, would be enough.

I said very softly, “Biggie.”

He jumped. When he looked at me his eyes wobbled a little.

“Take your time, huh?” I went on. “If I don’t transmit anything to Delcey sooner, he and the rest will pour in here at 4 p.m. sharp. And I think we’d better wait till nearly that time before we start making noise and raising hell. I’ve got a feeling — “

“Don’t worry. I’ll lock the door before I open the box. I’ll get all the stuff I can in.”

He hadn’t heard me. He hadn’t heard a word I said.

“O.K.,” he said. “O.K. You’ll be right here? Like we figured it?”

“Well, I didn’t know Crazy Mike was going to be down there.” I jerked a thumb. “That’s my way out.”

“O.K.,” he said. “That’s good. O.K.”

Right then I knew. Something was going to go wrong.

From above, nearby, there was the sound of a cough. A deep, phlegm-rattling cough, then a noisy air-flapping honk.

I said softly, “Hot Sauce Charlie’s waiting for us up there, blowing his goddamn nose. Go ahead, Biggie. Do the best you can.”

He stood there, nodding. I had to give him an easy shove, then he turned, walked to the stairs, and moved up them out of sight.

I looked at my watch. Twenty-two minutes till four. I walked to the stairs. They reversed direction halfway up, ending almost directly above my head. I couldn’t see anyone up there, but I heard the hoarse voice: “Where’d you go, Biggie?”

And the reply, “Where else?” Maybe he was pulling himself together.

I thought again about Crazy Mike. I hadn’t seen him when he’d spoken to Biggie, but his voice had sounded as if it was coming from just under the roof. I moved on ahead as quickly and silently as I could, glancing at the down-curving ramp as I passed it, then taking a fast look into the shadowy far end of the floor. At three or four dozen cars parked in even rows, several pickup trucks, a small office with no light showing behind its windows, a dead forest of square white concrete columns. Then, back to where I’d started from.

Now, I wished I’d told Biggers I would be standing, not here where we’d agreed I would be, but near the ramp, next to the break in the wall there — the wall behind which I could duck if the need arose, the need which I feared would surely arise. But he probably wouldn’t have heard that, either. Even if he had, it might have confused him more, and more could be enough for calamity. Besides, if it should happen, as now it could happen, that eight or nine irritable hoods pounded down those stairs, it might be easier to run back the way I’d come — since only Crazy Mike would be in my way on that route. Also, out that way was where my car was….

I made myself stop thinking about it. Told myself, from now on we do it. That’s all. Just do it, take it as it comes, let it happen, hope it’s a lucky day.

I took the transmitter from my pocket, held it in my left hand, slipped the Colt Special from its holster. In a few more minutes Biggie would come down the stairs, wait — till I’d pressed that red button and told Delcey to move — then yell bloody murder while I shot him three times. Not forgetting to fling the small suitcase he’d brought with him. Fling it, needless to say, toward me, so I could without undue delay grab it and run.

From above me, in the hoarse, gravelly voice: “Where you goin’ now?”

What the hell? Only four minutes had passed; it was eighteen minutes till four.

No answer to the question.

Then the same voice again: “What the hell you doin’ with that suitcase?”

“What suitcase?”

I groaned. It had been Biggie’s voice, which was high and reedy to begin with, but now so thin and faint I barely heard it, like a trickle of breeze sighing past my ear, w-h-a-a-t s-uit-caa-se….

Then, “Leggo!” That was Biggie, louder.

“What the — HEY! Sam — Powpow — HEY!”

I guessed Powpow was another of the boys. Probably nicknamed because of his predilection for shooting guys, pow — pow! I know a lot about how hoods get their monickers. Unfortunately such information is useless.

I didn’t see it coming. I just heard it land on the steps, bounce and clatter. And then there it was, Biggie’s suitcase, coming to rest on the bottom step of the stairs, stopping at an angle.

So there it was. Only without Biggie.

For a moment — maybe a second or two, maybe less or more — I didn’t know what to do, couldn’t get a thought started. But I knew if I grabbed that suitcase and ran I could get away, make it; but Biggie couldn’t get away, Biggie wouldn’t make it.

Then there was a hoarse, sharp yell, more of a bark, from up above. Immediately it was followed by the clatter of feet, clackety-clack like a stick on a picket fence, and Ernie Biggers appeared, moving swiftly.

He must have taken off from at least three or four steps up because when he came into view I had to lift my eyes to see him. He sailed through the air from my right to left, in a swiftly down-curving arc, so that his feet hit the concrete floor just before the rest of him hit the concrete wall.

“Gah-HAAH!” came out of him. His knees buckled. But he didn’t go down. Not all the way, only halfway down, then up, but up much slower than he’d gone down.

Overhead, faint, then distressingly loud, the slap of feet. Many feet. No, not slap — thunder. A titanic rumbling and pounding — to my petrilized ears, at least — as of buffalo hordes stampeding o’er the plains. And that hoarse voice, now with as much pain as phlegm in it: “He hit me in the nuts! The little bastard busted my nuts!”

Then more clatter of feet on the nearby stairs, but much slower than Biggie’s clatter had been, and only one pair of feet. I hoped it was Hot Sauce Charlie, taking it pretty easy.

Biggie, erect now, turned toward me. He looked straight at me, his eyes like teacups. “HALP!” he yelled. “It’s Shell Scott! He’s gonna shoot me!”

I was mumbling aloud, I knew it, but I couldn’t stop it. I lifted the Colt, aimed carefully. I thought I was moving pretty fast, but I guess it wasn’t fast enough for Biggie.

“Yes, he’s gonna shoot me! Shoot me! GODDAMMIT, SHOOT ME.”

The Colt was cocked, and I squeezed the shot off. Bouncing from concrete, the blast sounded more like a souped-up .45 than a .38, but as my eardrums bent inward I was vastly relieved to see a splash of red appear on Biggie’s white shirt at about the third button down, dead center.

“Gaah … damn!” Biggie shrieked. “That hurts!”

Then he collected his wits, or about half of them, and yelled, “Aaahk, he got me! He finally got me!”

I hurt him again, taking great pleasure in doing it this time, squeezing off the second shot, and even though I was not thinking with unprecedented clarity, I was pleased to note the second red splash was right next to the first one.

I started to pump the third slug into — or onto — him, but a big head was poked past the wall’s edge, just this side of those stairs, and there was a great BANG I knew couldn’t have come out of the guy’s mouth, and the bullet whipped past me and went smack-zing-smack as it bounced from one concrete wall into another, and then I saw the gun a foot below the guy’s chin.

I ducked, flipping my Colt toward him, but he moved, too, jerking back out of sight.

Out of sight, but not out of mind. And while I was wondering if I could make it past him before all those thundering hooves above started down the stairs I became aware of what sounded like a large two-legged animal galloping nearer along the hallway behind me. Galloping and bellowing, “WHUDDUHELL? WHUDDUHELL?”

Crazy Mike. Yeah. Either him, or the front half of a dying unicorn, I wasn’t sure of anything at that moment, and at least part of the reason was Ernie Biggers. Dumb damn idiot-child Ernie Biggers.

He wasn’t dead yet.

True, probably only three or four seconds had elapsed since my last shot at him, but there weren’t one hell of a lot of seconds to play around with, and the idiot was just spinning around, clunking against the wall, letting out a high blood-curdling yammer. He was dying like ambitious extras in those Western movies — you know, they fall down, get up, run in one place for a while, knock over a table, wave, kick, groan, and then crawl twenty-five yards, getting stronger all the time. At least that is how it then impressed me.

Clearly, it was time for me to make a speedy decision.

Biggie was still sliding down the wall.

I made up my mind.

Or perhaps it should be said that I moved, though perhaps my mind was not exactly made up. As the sound above grew to fearful proportions and the thumping in the hall behind me got even nearer, I went into action.

I jammed the Colt back in its holster and leaped forward, bent over and made one more jump, reached for the handle of the suitcase and grabbed it, straightened up, and bounded literally yards through the air, landed with my legs driving, eyes fixed on the ramp, because once I got there the cement wall at its edge would stop the bullets sure to be flying soon —

Correction. Flying.

That wall would stop the flying bullets — flying from Hot Sauce Charlie, I dimly perceived, though I was not looking at him. But there was much other noise, thumpings and clatterings and such, at the top of the stairs and apparently farther down, along with a lot of dirty words and yelling, but the shots were so spaced that they could be coming only from a single gun —

Correction. Two guns.

I perceived — even more dimly at this point, still one huge bound from the ramp — that Crazy Mike must have pitched in with Hot Sauce Charlie, because the bullets from the new gun did not smack-zing as they bounced from the side wall but merely made a distant splutt far down at the end of the long hallway, and therefore they were being fired straight at me; or, rather, almost straight at me, from where Crazy must be, rather than at an angle from Hot Sauce; not that it made a great deal of difference, though even achieving this simple deduction under such stress would have made me proud if I’d realized that’s what I was doing.

Then I was skidding, turning, suddenly going down the curving ramp with those concrete blocks between the guns and me, at least temporarily between the guns and me, and probably permanently because I was moving at what I estimated to be forty, maybe forty-five, miles an hour.

I roared down the ramp, thinking if it was built on a slant like the Indianapolis Speedway it was possible I could crank up to fifty or more easy, and thus it was that, filled with my sudden and tremendously speedy feeling of invincibility, when I reached the bottom of the ramp and bounded over the level floor into a great pool of oil and my feet went every which way and I fell down and skidded with my head bumping at fairly regular intervals against the concrete floor, I couldn’t believe it.

It wasn’t that I refused to accept what had happened, I was simply incapable of comprehending the possibility. Had I not been flying along at a speed never before achieved by a human being? Had I not miraculously escaped unscathed from eight, nine, maybe ten hoods? Apparently, I had not done either of those things.

I was slowed down to possibly half a mile an hour before I stopped making huge bounds with my feet, and admitted to myself, honestly, that I wasn’t getting anyplace. And that there was no point in kidding myself about it.

And then, BLAM. A slug zinged off the floor near me.

It was instinct that had made me cling to both the little transmitter and the suitcase. It was another shot of the same instinct that got me to my feet and sent me staggering and sliding this way and that way and finally onto unoily concrete and toward the gaping door ahead.

I don’t really know what happened then. I assume that my numerous pursuers, racing pell-mell after me, must also have hit that slick oil and suffered the same humiliation as had I. All I know is that though there were a few more shots I wasn’t hit, and sun glared against my eyes as I went through the door of Silvano’s Garage, and there ahead of me was Third Street again, maybe not freedom yet, but a road leading to it.

I started to veer left, in my mind at least part of the thought that I might be able to run the half-block to Birch Street and from there it was only a block and a bit to my car parked around the corner on Fourth. But my left hip and knee were starting to give me hell and my head was pounding with almost audible noises, and I wasn’t sure I could outdistance the men behind me if they kept after me, and I knew they would keep after me.

Then I changed my mind, changed my thought.

A car was approaching on my right, coming this way on Third, close enough now so that I was able to reach it simply by veering a little right instead of left. It was a sedan, with both the front and back windows down on the driver’s side, and when I was close enough I simply shoved the suitcase through the rear window, banged against the car, bounced away, and managed to stumble alongside it reaching for some place to grab on.

I wouldn’t have made it except that she — yes, she — had started to slow down, possibly astonished by the oily individual apparently determined to collide with her. But she had slowed enough, and when I managed to wrap both arms around the post between front and back doors, yelling, “Go! Go! Those guys are gonna kill me — GO!” she hit the gas so hard the jerk nearly pulled my arms free and left me behind in the street.

So speed was what I got, but speed was what I wanted, and I yelled, “That’s it, wonderful, go, lady, go!”

And I heard her cry, “Yes — yes!”

It was difficult to concentrate, with my arms wrapped around a hunk of metal biting into muscle and possibly even bone, and with keen awareness of the asphalt flowing past beneath my pulled-up feet, but the sound of that voice struck me in a most peculiar way.

It was, of course, a woman’s voice, since the driver of my getaway car was a woman. But it had, I thought, a familiar sound.

How could that possibly be? It wasn’t the least bit logical, and I am a firm believer in the logic of events, a man instantly and determinedly suspicious of the stupendously fortuitous coincidence.

I damn near flew off the car again as the driver made a sort of quick S-turn which was mostly right, into Birch Street. I tightened my arm-grip, tried to squeeze up closer to the car.

“Great,” I called to the driver, “keep it going. Only warn me next time you turn like that.”

“Yes — yes!”

There it was again. And it struck me, again, in a most peculiar way. It couldn’t be, could it?

But now that we were zooming away from hoods and danger, toward safety and freedom, there was time for me to crank my head around, bend my neck, and take a look.

It could be, after all. Yes, it could.

How about that?

</code>

<code> 19

“Martinique!” I whooped. “Baby, I don’t know how it happened, but I’m glad it happened. You living doll, you!”

She didn’t say anything. She was staring ahead with her mouth open. Well, actually, she was sort of shrieking very quietly, but not saying anything that could be considered intelligent communication.

Inevitably, this on top of everything else — waiting for Biggie, gunshots and running, near capture and miraculous last-minute escape — had charged me up to just about the maximum voltage I’m capable of achieving without being plugged into a socket. So even while I clung to the side of Martinique’s car my brain was probably as active as it can get, and in only moments, in the time it took us to reach Second Street, perhaps a hundred separate thoughts zigzagged inside my skull — Fowler, Grimson, Kitty-Melinda, Hank, Lou Wykoff and Sam Jelly, and more — and a few of them lingered.

And I began thinking, or at least half-thinking, that there was someone I’d taken at face value, hadn’t really questioned, someone who could have been screwing me up almost since I arrived here in Newton.

David Bannister.

Obviously Hugh Grimson had learned about me from Mayor Fowler’s initial phone call. But, after first meeting and conning me — and then, as was now obvious looking back on it, leaving Fowler’s house for somewhere else — how had he known I would be at the mayor’s home again? How had he even learned I was then still in Newton?

Only three people knew not only that I was in Newton but that I was going to pay a second call upon the “mayor.” Hank Wainwright for one. Not him; automatically out, even if he hadn’t remained with me for a while after the luncheon in the Sherwood. Which left? Martinique — and Bannister.

I almost sailed through the air again, caught off guard as Martinique whipped right once more. Let’s see, that would put us on Second Street, parallel to Third where we’d been a few seconds ago. I would have preferred to go zooming straight ahead, but it was O.K. Martinique knew what she was doing. She’d saved me, hadn’t she?

For a moment I allowed myself the pleasure of dwelling upon the thought that first Canada Southern — ah, luscious, lovely Canada Southern — had saved me. Well, in a way; at least she’d hauled me back to town after my wreck on Mulberry Drive. And now, saved again! By gorgeous, surprisingly wanton, Martinique Monet, by hot ice and cold fire and cool lips flambe and all that good stuff, and more. What would I do, I wondered, where would I be — without women?

Then, back to the serious thinking.

I had wondered before about Hank’s death, and my subsequent race to the Newtonia Hotel. It was, in view of the events and their timing, probable that Sam Jelly had seen, or heard, me parking Bannister’s Lincoln at the curb, or running toward the hotel’s entrance, and had then hit the clerk, busied himself behind the desk. But Wykoff was already dead by then. Shot, undeniably, by Sam Jelly, before he could have seen me.

It appeared to be one of those “stupendously fortuitous coincidences.” Fortuitous for Sam Jelly. Because Hank, dying, had told me he’d been shot by two men, Lou Wykoff and — that was all. No second name. But by the time I caught up with them the named man had been killed by the unnamed man. Which meant I couldn’t question Lou Wykoff, and perhaps from him learn who the unnamed man was.

So, no coincidence after all. A single explanation made sense, explained everything, including the motive for Wykoff’s murder: Sam Jelly knew when he shot Wykoff that Hank Wainwright had named his partner; and the only way he could have learned that was if someone, very quickly after the shooting, had phoned and informed him. Two people were aware that I was on my way to get Hank’s killers, and that I thought I knew where to find at least one of them. The same two people who’d stood behind me when Hank said, “Lou Wykoff, and — “

Martinique, and — Bannister again.

I grabbed onto the space between front and back windows and squeezed enormously, because this time I saw Martinique just as she started to bend the wheel. It was a good thing I grabbed tight, because she’d barreled around the corner to her right — more accurately, our right — and was now picking up speed on Maple. It was the wrong direction. Didn’t the dumb broad realize there was now no way to avoid crossing Third Street? And it was Third Street we’d just escaped from? It was Third Street where she’d saved me?

“Hey,” I yelled. “You’re going the wrong way. I know you don’t want to go back there, so go straight ahead next time. Or if you’ve simply got to turn, turn left. Got it? Left?”

She just kept screeching “Yes — yes!” as if it was the answer to everything. That was O.K., just so she either went straight ahead, or turned….

“HEY!”

Right again. A hard skidding right.

This time I didn’t even worry about the feeling that my arms were going to come out of their sockets or the possibility that I would fly through the air and leave my head on the curbing.

Because I was beginning to have doubts about Martinique. Serious doubts.

“Hey,” I said again, adding, “You aren’t still mad at me about last night, are you, Love?”

“Yes — yes!”

Of course, by now I knew that didn’t mean anything. It was just talk.

We were zipping up Third Street, nearly halfway between Maple and Birch Street dead ahead, the mottled white face of “Silvano Enterprises, Inc.” flying by on my left and the gaping dark entrance rushing speedily toward us.

And I realized either Martinique was, in her unbelievable stupidity, going to go tearing right past the goddamn garage entrance — in which I could see some hulking figures, or at least several figures that appeared to be hulking — or else she was….

I squeezed my eyes shut — just for a moment — and peeled back my lips and clamped my teeth together and waggled my head like Ernie Biggers, and when I opened my eyes Martinique was cranking the steering wheel again. She was doing what I’d told her to do. She was turning left at last.

This time I was pressed against the side of the car instead of being flung away from it. There was a little bump as we went up and through the gaping dark entrance, then a horrible sensation as Martinique slammed on the brakes with, I must assume, all her strength. I would so assume because the horrible sensation was what it’s like to go flying through the air as though propelled from a circus cannon aimed at a stone wall.

When you’re in the air, flying along like that, you can’t skid or slow down or even veer. You just go. You go ahead toward wherever you’re pointed. I flew over the left fender, giving it just a little bump hardly worth mentioning, and then on. On and down with a gooey hissing sound into that same oil slick. Then skidding, starting gratingly up the very left edge of the ramp which wasn’t oiled at all, and then off even it, turning sideways and slowly onto my back like an unmanned glider preparing to crash into the Portland Cement Company. My shoulder hit something, possibly dislocating my shoulder, and turning me face down to the floor again, and that was my position when my head went bowk against one of those concrete columns which were everywhere about.

I wasn’t moving very fast, fortunately, when I hit the column of concrete. But, afterward, I wasn’t moving at all. I just stayed like that for a spell, with my nose pushing against the cement, while a strange realization staggered through my mind.

Nearly every time before this, when I’d been about to get killed, my sense of time, if anything happened to it at all, slowed. Slowed down and stretched out. So that I saw with unusual clarity while seconds dragged by like minutes. So that whatever grisly catastrophe was occurring seemed to occupy half of forever.

But not this time. This time it was the opposite, everything speeded up into a blur, just Martinique turning left and then — zoop-bump-ssss-scckkk-bowk and here I was, all in about one one-thousandth of a second.

I was conscious, though. And time was back to normal. Because I could hear normal voices — to stretch a point and refer to those banshee whoops and gibberish howlings as normal — producing things like: “Attagirl, Martinique!” and “Baby, you duh nuts, you — yeah!” and Martinique, doll, hon, you done it, I knowed you wooden lettuce down,” or so it struck me.

There were scraping sounds near me, big feet stopping, hands on my arms. I didn’t really need help to get onto my feet — my head wasn’t a thing of beauty, or anything I wanted to dwell on a lot, but I was thinking clearly enough. Certainly more clearly than during my ride around the block.

So, on my feet, with a ferocious looking character on each side of me, I said to them, “Let go,” waited while they kept holding on, and added, “Let go, or so help me I’ll club you. Maybe I’ll get shot, but I’ll club the hell — “

One of the guys dropped his hand and said, “Give’m his last wish, like they give guys dinners.”

And the other one said, “Yuh, he’s not goan noplace.”

This was a marvelous group. I wondered who kept the books. I wondered how some of them could find their noses if they wanted to pick them. I wondered if they were any smarter than I was.

I walked, of my own accord — the man was right that I wasn’t goan noplace, not with seven individuals, most of them quite large, four of them with large guns in hand, in my immediate vicinity — over to the car in which still sat Martinique.

Martinique Monet. Whom I well remembered. Whom, to say it true, I would never completely forget.

I smiled at her. Wearily, yes. With some inner tumult, and even a kind of sickness, yes. And with something like a thin keen blade of sadness in my gut.

“You’re good, Love,” I said. “Very good.”

She started to speak, didn’t.

“Just tell me one thing, Martinique. You kept me — you know where.”

I’m not sure why I didn’t want to yak about her bedroom, her bed, her lovemaking, with these guys listening. I sure didn’t owe Martinique a thing.

But I left it there and went on: “Till you could make a call on the phone in your front room — no phone where we were, I remember. Probably a call to Grimson. Could, I suppose, have been to Sam. And you tried to keep me there with you. But not for the reason I supposed. Just tell me.”

Still no reply. She wasn’t even looking at me any longer.

“Look,” I said. “What’s the difference now? Sam Jelly was picked up last night a block from the Rigoletto. With a loaded gun very close by. A block or more north of the Rigoletto, or to say it the way it really was, on Sixteenth Street, less than a block from the Lasker Towers. Wherein is your apartment. That gun was for me, right, Love?”

She spoke finally. Not much. Just, “I’m sorry.”

I’d like to think she meant it.

</code>

<code> I guess he was the boss, in Grimson’s absence at least. He acted like the boss. No surprise, no congratulations, all business.

“Who got his heat?” he asked.

Appraising the blank looks and shaking heads he swore mildly, reaching under my coat, and yanked out the .38 Special.

And right then Martinique blurted, as if she’d just thought of it, “Sam, he threw something into the back of the car.”

Sam didn’t move to do the manual labor. He jerked his big square head and another man moved to the car, opened the back door, leaned in, and brought out the suitcase.

“Say, that’s what I seen Little Biggie carrying out!” This in the gravelly voice of Hot Sauce Charlie, a short round man with an enormous belly and wattles of fat wiggling under his chin.

Naturally the suitcase was open in about ten seconds. Jelly swore some more, not quite so mildly this time, closed the bag, and held it gripped in his big left fist.

He looked at Martinique, moved next to the car. He spoke softly, but I was able to make out most of the words. I don’t think he really cared if I overheard, under the circumstances.

“Couldn’t … boss on the phone. You … see him?”

“Right away. As soon as I leave.”

“Tell … call me. Make it fast, huh?”

She nodded, started the car, backed out to the street. Jelly pointed to the ramp. I shrugged, walked toward it. So it was back up there again. Really going around in circles; or maybe this was more like carefully winding something up and watching it unwind.

Only then did I wonder how Biggie was doing.

Even more amazing, only then did I wonder how — and what — Sergeant Delcey was doing. And I remembered the transmitter, felt for it in all my pockets. Nothing. It was gone. I’d lost it.

I managed a glance at my watch. Must have stopped, I thought. It said nine minutes of four. But it was still ticking. Could it have been only nine minutes since that suitcase came tumbling down the stairs? Sure. Of course. I’d merely run a little way, faster than the eye can see, then been centrifuged around the block, and spent a few more minutes playing around with the old gang here. Nine minutes. One would have been a happier number. But — nine didn’t have to be sad. A lot could happen in nine.

I thought the very same thing again a minute or so later — alone with Sam Jelly and mountainous-bellied Hot Sauce Charlie, in a room on the top floor of Silvano’s Garage near the back of the building — when Jelly placed the recovered suitcase at the side of a large walnut desk, then opened one of its drawers and took from it a bulky, odd-looking glove.

I wondered what it was, and what it was for, until he slipped it onto his big left hand.

Then I knew very well not only what it was for, but another fact of much greater importance: this thick-bodied square-headed sonofabitch would have to kill me before he pounded on me even once. Or, as the phrase goes, before he could lay a glove on me.

I was not going to stand here like a dummy while he thudded that leather-and-buckshot hammer against me and softened me up before hauling my mush into the woods to put a bullet or two into what was left. No way. Not under any conceivable circumstances, but especially not now.

I knew Jelly carried a Colt .45 automatic — or had carried one. The police were now holding the heat he’d disposed of last night on Sixteenth Street. Could be he’d picked up another gun since then, perhaps not. But in the right-hand pocket of his coat was the .38 Special he’d taken from me.

Before even lifting his hand to get the fun started he was going to have to blast me, shoot me and kill me.

Which gave me a chance.

Maybe he’d do it with my gun.

</code>

<code> 20

I assumed we were in Sam Jelly’s top-floor office, because he’d gotten his special glove from the expensive-looking walnut desk in here. Atop the desk was a phone, large ashtray, square flat basket overflowing with papers. A high-backed leather chair was behind the desk, a couple of wooden chairs on this side of it.

On our way up here I had walked within a yard of something under a blanket on the cement floor. It was at the base of the wall down which I’d last seen Ernie Biggers sliding, and sliding, so I assumed it might well be the living, breathing mass of jelly that must now be Ernie Biggers. If, that is, he was as I’d left him, with two gobs of dark red blood on his light pink shirt. For all I knew, there could be another gob or two there by now, or his heart might have stopped long ago — what, at least, seemed long ago.

Jelly had left one man on ground level, to keep an eye open at the Garage entrance, and told another man to “glom around” and see if he could find my car.

“He’s been driving Bannister’s limo,” Jelly had said.

“Make sure there’s nobody else was with him.” Then he told the rest to just hang around upstairs here till he heard from the boss, and with Hot Sauce Charlie to help keep an eye on me he brought me into his office.

Jelly got the glove snug on his hamlike left hand, curled it into a fist the size of a California grapefruit, and smacked it — gently — into his right palm. Then he started to step out from behind his desk.

I wanted that desk between him and me, so I waited no longer. I didn’t really hurry. At least it didn’t seem to me I was hurrying.

I grabbed the nearest chair in front of the desk, swung it up from the floor as I turned — not toward Jelly but toward Hot Sauce Charlie who was standing on my left and about a yard behind me.

He let out a hoarse coughing honk at the same moment Jelly yelled, “Watch it!” but I shoved my left foot forward to move me nearer Charlie, still swinging, and the wooden edge of the chair seat cracked him solidly on his left ear.

He let out a howl of pain and anger, staggered back toward the wall. I swung around, hanging onto the chair but off balance from its weight and my movement. I suppose if Jelly had been closer to me he would have rushed me and clobbered me with his personal conk-crusher, but with the big desk between us he’d done the natural thing and shoved his right hand into his coat pocket.

But he hadn’t got the Colt — I hoped to God it was my Colt — out yet, and I managed to regain my balance, tighten my grip on the chair, get ready to leap toward him.

I was ready. But Jelly was still groping around in that pocket, yanking and yanking to no avail. He must have got the hammer caught on something. I couldn’t just stand here, all ready, so I raised the chair over my head and lunged a step forward — as he finally yanked the gun clear and flipped it toward me.

I knew it was my own Colt Special the moment it came glittering into view and a kind of panicky exhilaration leaped up in me, and then leaped right back down again. Because as my foot slammed against the carpet next to that big desk I was remembering how splendidly those two “bullet holes” and the two impressive bloodstains had blossomed on Biggie’s chest, but because of all the excitement, and the undeniable strain I’d been under for some time, I experienced a moment of confusion about a question of speedily growing concern to me, and found myself involuntarily asking myself.

“Two?”

Was it two slugs I’d popped at Biggie? It was very clear in my mind that I’d put three toy pills into my Colt, and then three superdeadly Super Vels. But had I shot Biggie twice, or thrice? Twice, I was pretty sure. Two times. Two. Wonderful But….

There’d been that head — Hot Sauce Charlie’s head — poking itself past the wall and shooting at me. I remembered flipping up my revolver, but….

Had I let one go at him? If I had, one at him plus two at Biggie, why, that added up to —

I was thinking like lightning. Let’s admit that. But even thinking like lightning, I wasn’t through yet. I had some more thinking to go. It was important to know if Jelly was going to shoot me with a harmless toy, or with a harmful Super Vel. So, still speedily wrestling with the problem, when my right foot slammed like lightning against the carpet it stuck there. I did lean forward, yelling or snarling menacingly, shoving my head toward Jelly and working my jaws and all, but I had only got up to:

“Three?”

And then Sam Jelly pulled the trigger, fired, and got me.

Boy, I mean, he got me.

I guess I’d made it easy for him, sticking my head out like that, but even so something else must have been working for me because I got exactly what I wanted. Well, not exactly. Put it this way: I couldn’t have asked for more. Because it had to be either a miracle or pure dumb luck that caused the toy pill to smack me on the forehead precisely at the hairline above my left eye. It should look, I thought — from outside there — very lethal. Bloody. Gory. Awesome. Wonderful.

There is no doubt that I thought all these things in a mere fraction of an instant after the pill smacked me, because the last word in my mind trailed off into something like “werflndll” as I became aware of a sensation I can only compare to getting drilled by a flaming arrow invented by an Indian genius to scalp palefaces without leaving the teepee. Probably had a string on it, and he’d just lie there smoking while his squaw reeled my hair in. What a werflndll weapon, even if the guy lived he’d be bald.

All that, too, required only another mere fraction of an instant, for even as I reached up to pluck the arrow from the front of my head there was a little bop on top of it, and I dimly — oh, so dimly — realized it must have been the chair falling down and bouncing off me, but it was of negligible importance just then.

Of more interest was my realization that there must have been four lights on in the room, because three of them went out. One odd thing did happen, though. A lot of fog rolled in, undoubtedly from San Francisco, making everything blurry and muffling all sounds. I was barely able to hear someone yelling, “Gaah damn!”

Then something slammed against my rear end, smacked the back of my skull. It was crazy the way my head cleared. No fog. No burned-out lights. Just realization that I’d fallen against the wall. That and the faint echo in my ears of the now-identified yell. Immediately I knew what had happened; what was happening; what would happen next; what would happen next week; I was in control of the situation again.

And then of course I remembered the ridiculous performance little Ernie Biggers had put on. None of that idiot-boy stuff for me. I wasn’t going to stagger around….

Shouldn’t even be standing up, I realized.

No, not with a flaming slug in my head, way in there if I was any judge. So, to think is to act: I dropped like a stone. Then I wiggled just a little, to get into a more comfortable position, because I’d flopped down and got my leg twisted under my butt somehow and it was killing me.

Then I lay still, staring blankly from eyes I hoped looked glazed. I could dimly see Hot Sauce on my right, Sam Jelly looming over me. They stared down at my body, no joy on their faces. And suddenly I wanted to blink.

Correction. I didn’t want to, I had to.

Well, nuts, I thought, a guy can’t think of everything. Too late to close ‘em now, just have to stick it out somehow. Immediately my eyeballs felt sprained. Didn’t take any time at all. And it got worse, it became an intensely localized pain of exquisite dimensions, then started creeping into my sinus cavities.

“He was a tough one, warn’t he?” Hot Sauce remarked casually, like a man saying, “He used to live in Newark, didn’t he?”

“Not so tough,” Jelly said. “Now why’d the sonofabitch do that? I didn’t want to shoot him. Keerist, the boss is gonna have my hide for this. You tell him what happened, see?” Silence for a second, then, “He won’t believe just me. He may not believe even both of us.”

“Hell, he was meant to be chilled anyways. Just saves doing it some other time, don’t it?”

“You’re a comfort, Hot Sauce. But the boss ain’t gonna like it. He don’t like us taking independent action on our own hook.” He paused.

I could still see him, up there on my left, but maybe not for much longer. That gooey gunk splattered over my forehead was about to trickle into my left eye.

Jelly said, “It perplexes me, it completely perplexes the hell out of me. Before I got the heat up and plugged him I thought he was comin’ over the desk and chew me to death. He must’ve at least had it in mind to bite hell outa me. But then was the happening I won’t know why about if I live a thousand years. I’d swear — maybe I could of imagined it — but I’d swear he got paralyzed. Got stuck right there at that very instance. Just plain damn stopped, froze. Like he hit a indivisible wall.”

“You must of imagined anything like that, Sam.”

“Didn’t you see it?”

“I was lookin’ for my ears. Jesus, he bopped — “

“No, I didn’t imagine it. I’m looking back at it now — something grabbed onto him. There he was, bitin’, but not movin’ anywheres else. Like he was asking for it. You ever hear of anything like that, Hot Sauce?”

“It beats all, Sam.”

The phone rang. I jerked a little. Couldn’t help it. It was only a little jerk, hardly noticeable. Hardly.

As Jelly turned and stepped toward the phone, Hot Sauce said wonderingly, “Sam.”

Jelly picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Sam.”

“Yeah, boss. Right. Well, we had a little trouble.”

“Oh, Sam.”

“No, everything’s under control now. No sweat. It was pretty hairy for a few minutes. What’s that?”

“Sam. This stiff here. He give a little jiggle. Could he be stiffening up like dead guys do? Already? I always just shoot ‘em and leave ‘em. Never stood around and watched any to see how they took it. Sam?”

Hot Sauce squatted on his haunches next to me, gazed at me fondly. “Maybe it’ll do it again,” he said.

Jelly was saying, “Yeah, we was expecting you at 4 p.m. for the meeting. Sure, with all the heat and all, you done the smart thing, sending Martinique in place of you. Boss, this I got to tell you. Scott jumps onto her car at the same instance she’s about to drive inside here — you already know, huh?”

He listened for a few seconds. Then, “Well, I’m refreshed to hear you say that boss. Since … well how it is, I already done it. No, it was a accident. It was the damndest — he made me do it. Yeah, jumped me. Plain asked for it. Yeah, blood’s leakin’ out from his brains right now. I really feel bad about it, boss, but what could I do? Sure, soon’s it’s dark.”

Hot Sauce was talking to me. Not really, of course, but that’s how it struck me. He knew Jelly wasn’t listening to him, so he was just talking to himself, but he was looking at me while he did so.

“Just ain’t my day,” he was saying, barely moving his lips. “Caught pneumonia or some kind of crud. Biggie ruint my balls, which is precious to me. This stiff cracks me on my good ear, my good ear. Just ain’t my day. Hope nothin’ else happens. You don’t suppose nothin’ else could, could….”

He stopped, because the stuff I’d feared might ooze into my left eye did it right then and I had to blink. I’d got it so set in my mind that, come what may, I would not blink that I half succeeded. There was no way I could control the reflex of that left eyelid, and it closed. But I was able to keep the right lid stretched open, right eyeball still bugging.

“Sam.”

I had been breathing very slowly. But I had been breathing. When you look at a stiff, it is not natural to check his rate of respiration. But once one becomes suspicious — and there was one becoming suspicious right next to me now — that’s among the very first things you think of.

Hot Sauce reached out with his index finger extended and gave me a poke in the gut, as if he was trying to ring my belly button and find out if anyone was home.

So this, too, was over.

I’d squeezed all the mileage out of this gambit that I could have hoped for, and it had to be damned close to 4 p.m. by now, so I got mentally set for action. Only mentally — because Hot Sauce was still puzzling over the phenomenon of this stiff which stiffened in strangely disturbing ways — but only seconds from physical movement and action and come what the hell may.

I’d been breathing so shallowly I was virtually out of oxygen and I was soon going to need every bit I could get, so I sucked in all the air I could pull into my lungs — slowly, of course, knowing the movement and unmistakable expansion of my chest could not possibly be missed by Hot Sauce Charlie, but not caring much. Any second now I planned to kick him in his nearby chin — well, he’d asked me if anything else could happen to him, hadn’t he? — and that maneuver could best be accomplished while Jelly was still on the phone.

So as my lungs filled with air I tensed my muscles to yank my legs up and Hot Sauce said, “Sam, I wish you’d c’mere a minute. I swear, this guy’s bled to death but if I ain’t mistook he ain’t got no hole in his head to bleed out of,” and right then Jelly said, “Right, see you later, boss,” and hung up the phone.

Chunnnck.

It was a dull, sudden, flat sound — my leather heels thudding into Charlie’s chin — and backward he went off his haunches, arms and legs flying. But his arms and legs weren’t moving any faster than mine were as I flipped over, pushed with hands and shoved with feet, and came up off the floor turning toward Sam Jelly who was still standing at the desk with right hand on the phone and glove-encased left hand dangling at his side, eyes wide in his big red face as he stared at me.

I moved as fast as I could, jumped past the desk, knowing if Jelly shot me even once with my Colt now I’d had it, or if he clubbed me with that dandy left of his it could be lethal, or if he got a hand on me the strength in those monstrous muscles alone might be enough, and I landed with my feet spread and legs bent and my left hand already cocked, body turned to the left. Then I uncoiled, uncocked, let it go with everything I had and then some, and though I have hit men hard before I never hit one harder.

It felt as if I’d busted my hand, elbow, and shoulder, and sprained my neck, but it was enough. Even for big Sam Jelly, it was enough. And it was only after I hit him, after he toppled backward like a falling Alp, thudded to and lay unmoving on the floor, that I realized the only thing he’d moved while I jumped toward him and wound up and socked him was his head.

When I hit him his right hand was on the phone, left still heavily dangling. Only his head and the shiny red face had turned toward me, as though pulled by an irresistible magnet, and I got the strange impression that in his eyes was a look of calm acceptance as I thundered my fists into his chops.

Maybe that — the look of calm acceptance — was merely my imagination at work. Maybe; but I was not imagining that it was Sam Jelly’s expression now.

</code>

<code> My Colt .38 rested atop the desk, where Jelly had placed it when he answered the phone. I picked the Special up, enjoying the feel of it, looking at the blued steel, the knurled hammer, the stubby two-inch barrel with something like real affection. That gun had gotten me out of more tight spots than I like to think of, a hunk of metal, no more, but a friend that had certainly been a lot of help to me in its time, and mine. But never more help than just now when it hadn’t even been in my hand.

And as I looked at my Colt I realized, except for Ernie Biggers, I hadn’t shot a soul. I hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t even pulled the trigger in anger. I was glad of it. Things like that may pass so quickly as to be barely noticed, but they leave their special kind of mark in their special place. And, in time, that inner bruise grows, fills more of that place where it rests. Yeah, I was glad I hadn’t killed anybody — yet.

Then the door opened and I flipped the Special up as someone stepped inside, and my finger tightened on the trigger, and I came very close to shooting, and killing, that first man.

Sergeant Oren Delcey.

He had a long-barreled police revolver in his fist, but he lowered it slowly, saying, “You can relax now, Scott, so watch what you’re doing with that little — good God Almighty, what happened to you?”

“Well, it may take a little time to … oh, this?” I wiped some of the “blood” off on one finger. “Nothing, really,” I said. “Got plugged in the noggin, but I’m tough. I can handle it. Do dread the operation, though — “

“Why, you miserable clown — that’s from one of those fake things, right? How come you…”

He looked down at Hot Sauce, then on to what he could see of Jelly’s head and shoulders behind the desk, and finally to me again.

“Sergeant,” I said, “before I commence, and continue for some time, or possibly time-and-a-half, are all those gorillas in cages? May I assume that nobody’s going to bust in here and blast away — “

“All rounded up. All who were in the Garage, except these two.” He indicated the two lying down in here. “We’ll take them in, have to release some. But we can keep four who were carrying guns illegally.”

“A few shot some guns illegally, too. And you can hold these boys on my charges and testimony. Well, I’m glad to see you. What time is it? I’ve been afraid to look.”

“It’s about three minutes past four.”

“Three minutes past?” I said. “My, how time flies.”

</code>

<code> 21

The rest of it, from there on in, is a series of separate scenes, or vignettes, bits of color and talk and movement, as I look back on it from here and now.

For example, the denouement of the Ernie Biggers bit.

Delcey had seen the blanket down there at the foot of the stairs, as had I. But he and his men had been understandably too busy to get all excited over a blanket on the floor.

So after some talk, info for me from Delcey, and a few high points of my afternoon for him, I told him of the Little Biggie operation, and that even now I was not sure if the operation had been a success.

So together we walked along the hall, and down the stairs, and stood for a few seconds looking at the blanket. It wasn’t moving. There was no sign of inbreathing or outbreathing, for I did check the blanket’s rate of respiration, which was zero.

I looked at Delcey. “Wouldn’t it be funny if it’s just a blanket — “

“Will you — “

I reached for the end of the blanket, at what might have been Biggie’s head, or might have been his feet, there was really no way to tell yet, and pulled it back and down.

What first came into view was Biggie’s thin head. Which seemed to have lost some weight. His face was waxy and pale. Eyes staring. Bugging. He looked dead to me.

But there were only two red stains on his chest. Didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.

“Hey,” I said to him. “If you’re alive, you can shake a leg now, Biggie. Nobody’s watching but me and the sergeant here.”

Nothing.

Unless, maybe, the huge eyes wobbled a little.

“Ah,” I said. “Sure. You’ve been under a little strain, right? Hell, pretty much the same thing happened to me, pal. Nothing to it. I know how you feel though, you can bet I do. But you’re safe now.”

Yeah, he wasn’t dead. How I know, he let out his breath suddenly in a long pploopppffpphh, then opened his mouth and let his tongue hang out, then breathed in again and moved his head a little and stared at me like the grayed stone face, and said, “Jesus, my eyes is ruint,” then the orbs rolled up, and up, and he got very loose, and fainted dead away.

</code>

<code> So a bit later, after Biggie came to and I’d talked to him for a while, and all had been arranged by Delcey I stood with the sergeant down below in the street level area of the Garage, near that oil slick, about fifteen feet from the gentlemen opposite us and facing us.

The gentlemen facing us were Sam Jelly, Hot Sauce Charlie, Crazy Mike, Powpow West, and half a dozen other dispirited-looking fellows. They knew they were all going to jail, at least for a while, and some of them for more than that, and there were among them some mutterings in the nature of, “What’re we waitin’ for?”

Then what they were waiting for, though they knew it not, appeared coming down the ramp. It was a stretcher, on which lay the rigid — and staring — corpse of Ernie Biggers. White-uniformed ambulance attendants, one at each end of the stretcher, carried the departed toward us, moving left to skirt the oil slick, which by design brought them close to Delcey and me but farther from Biggers’ erstwhile companions, and by and on they went, with a slow and measured tread, until they popped Biggie into the back of a white ambulance like chefs baking a cookie.

So, gone was Biggie, gone and to be seen no more — not, at least, by his erstwhile companions.

</code>

<code> Delcey had never seen the setup before either, of course, but he knew more about the equipment than I did. Some of it was so new that he’d had a police department communications expert in briefly, for a few minutes of his expertise. Now, however, we were alone.

I had found in the suitcase Jelly had lugged from the back of Martinique’s car to his office, and that we’d brought here with us, the reel of magnetic tape I wanted, had it in place on a recorder and ready to roll. I poked the “Play” button and sat down next to Delcey again, saying, “You’ll recognize Grimson’s voice, but it can be positively identified by a Voiceprint — as you know. You’ll hear Mr. G. ordering my murder, which makes this for me a moment of peculiar fascination. Maybe for you, too.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

Tic-tic-tic sound of dialing. The clicks were fast, but I jotted down an approximation of the dialed numbers. I wrote it on one side of a piece of paper folded in the middle, on the other side of which I had written the number of Sam Jelly’s phone, the one in the room where I’d been with him and Hot Sauce.

Then, without peeking at the other side, I handed the paper to Delcey. He unfolded it. “Second number is an eight, not a six,” he said. “And the last number should be five instead of four. But … not too bad.”

“Wait’ll you dig Mayor Hugh Grimson getting severe with the cops.”

Then from the speaker:

“Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“Powpow. That you, boss?”

“Officer West, is it? Has Samuels returned to the police station?”

“Po-lice station. What the — Samuels? We don’t got no Samuels, except maybe … Boss, you in some kind of screw-up? Where you can’t talk normal?”

“Of course. Sargent. Sargent Samuels.”

“Ss … ah, sure. Sargent. You mean Sam, boss? Sam Jelly?”

“Yes.”

“Damn near forgot he was named Sargent, ain’t even heard it for a month. Lucky I figgered it out, ain’t it, boss — “

“This is the mayor.”

“Huh? Huh? I suppose Sam’ll know what that means?”

“Yes. Please have the sergeant come to the phone.”

“He was here a while ago. I’ll see if I can get him.”

Half a minute of silent tape unrolling, then, “Sam, boss. Powpow tipped me something’s up, and said you mentioned it’s the mayor. You still at Fowler’s?”

“Sergeant? Yes, Sergeant Samuels, this is Mayor Fowler…” and on with more of the one-sided conversation I’d heard on my second visit to the mayor’s — and his daughter’s — home. A conversation doubly intriguing to me because, though I’d guessed what must have been said, this was the first time I’d actually heard the other half of the dialogue.

Delcey leaned forward slightly, listening closely when, after it was clear that Jelly knew Shell Scott was not only still in Newton but sitting with Grimson in the mayor’s front room, Grimson’s voice concluded a sentence with, “…his movements are not to be interfered with in any way.”

And Jelly’s voice, coming on strong, “Which must mean the opposite, make his movements stop altogether. I got it right, boss? You want me and Lou to take care of him?”

“Yes.”

“He still driving that same Cad?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t guess you can speak it out while he’s setting there. He must’ve rented another heap — is it another Caddie?”

“That’s right.”

“Good enough. We’ll make him. Just say yes or no to this so I’m clear on how you want it handled. Should we get this guy careful, or get him as soon as we can — hell, you can’t answer it put like that. Is fast most important?”

“That’s right.”

“O.K. That’s the case, I’ll … Got it. I’ll drive the big goddamn White Freightliner rig we got here in the yard, Lou up in the cab alongside me with spyglasses — so he can make sure it’s Scott. Wouldn’t want to mash up a old lady, ha-ha. When he leaves there, he’s got to go one way or the other on Mulberry, so we’ll get him either comin’ or goin’. That sound O.K.?”

“Excellent, excellent,” plus a bit of verbal wool for my eyes, or more accurately my ears.

The last thing Sam Jelly said was, “It’ll take me five minutes to get the rig ready and move out of here, then I got to roll to Mulberry. So hold him there a little if you can, boss. And don’t worry, we’ll massacre the bastard.”

“See that you do, Sargent. And thank you.”

With which ended the mayor’s helpful call to the Newton Police Station.

Delcey was nodding. “That’ll sure help,” he said.

I was inclined to agree with the sergeant. Of course, first we had to get our hands on Mayor Grimson.

Not to mention Mayor Fowler.

</code>

<code> “Are you sure they — wait. Wait a minute.”

I’d given him a sketchy — very sketchy — report about my piggyback ride on Martinique’s car. Now I added, “When I jumped aboard, I threw the suitcase into the back. But I was — I think I was — still carrying the transmitter in my left hand.”

I patted my left coat pocket, all my pockets. “Sure don’t have it now. And I know I was holding it when I started running toward the car.”

“Then that’s what happened. Got to be,” Delcey said.

“Still there. In the back of Martinique’s car. Which means — “

Delcey was smiling, his round cherubic face wearing an almost angelic expression.

“Let’s go get ‘em,” he said.

So that’s what we did.

</code>

<code> Two miles past the airport a one-lane paved road led right through another walnut grove, then on a mile and a half to where oak and spruce grew, and a quarter mile up a rutted dirt road leading left from the paved one-laner was a small cabin, two rooms plus rustic kitchen and inside john.

Also, plus Hugh Grimson and Martinique Monet.

It was — as so often happens when the hue and cry and races and chases are over — a simple thing from then on. Like tying up a Christmas package once all the shopping and paying and wrapping are done.

We just peeked through a window into the large main room of the cabin, and there they were, drinking a couple highballs, and doing another thing or two from time to time. Which is to say, Martinique had on a dark skirt, but nothing of any shade except the shade of Martinique from the waist up, and she sure had a thing or two. It did bring back fondle memories, no sense denying it.

Delcey graciously allowed me the privilege of kicking the front door in, and went around to the back. I stepped to the front door, tried the knob, and it turned. The damned door wasn’t locked. I’d really wanted to crash in with a great clatter and yell, “Hold it right there!”

It wasn’t like that at all.

I opened the door and walked in, gun in hand.

Martinique saw me first, stared, chin slipping down an inch. “Hugh,” she said softly. “It’s … him … I think.”

He glanced at her, followed her gaze, saw me and stared visibly, then recovered. All he said was one word, but it was a short pithy word full of meaning, and probably summed up his feelings as well as one word can.

I frisked him for heat, but he wasn’t armed. I thought about frisking Martinique, but refrained, though thoughts about heaters began dancing like sugar plums —

Delcey said, “Maybe you better keep one eye on Grimson, Scott.”

“Oh, ah, the back door was unlocked too, huh?”

“Yeah. And the mayor’s sleeping like a babe in the next room.”

Naturally, after that — both of those — everything else was an anticlimax.

</code>

<code> 22

Correction.

Not everything.

“Canada, my sweet,” I said, “would you be good enough to serve me another pint of this sauce? You know, like a — well, as if I were a favored customer, and you were waiting on me? Hmm?”

“Yes, Master.”

She still didn’t get it.

She looked great, sure — how could luscious Canada Southern do anything but? — in a ribbed white turtleneck sweater, wide red belt, brief white skirt, high-heeled red-and-white shoes — but that very attractive outfit wasn’t precisely what I had in mind.

We were in my suite — ah, yes, I had been paid and bonused magnificently by David Bannister, and had said good-bye to my motel room, hello to a swanky spread in the Sherwood — drinking a curious concoction Canada herself had concocted, of rum and some kind of liqueur and various fruity juices. This would be our third drink, and I’d commenced hinting delicately even before she handed me the first one.

I was wearing the last of the clothes I’d brought with me from L.A., a pair of vividly-gorgeous yellow slacks with a jazzy white-knit cardigan, white shoes and socks and belt. It was all the clothing I had left, since both suits from my two-suiter were in the trash can now, one ripped and somewhat bloody, the other very oily and stained with specks of glycerine, milk, food coloring, and Nescafe. Nescafe, who would have thought it?

But I had at least got all the oil off me, though it took considerable time in a hot shower, and three-fourths of a bar of laundry soap. I may have felt a bit raw in spots, but I was cleaner than I had been for some time.

Canada came back from the bar, which was out of sight in the adjacent room, carrying two large glasses with dying plant life sticking up from their tops, handed me mine and sat on the off-white divan next to me.

“Why,” I said, looking at her closely, “the divan is almost exactly the same shade as your clothing. It just sort of blends in, almost as if you weren’t really wearing a th — “

“What happened then?”

I’d been giving her some of the story, a little bit at a time to keep her in some suspense — which was fair, since that’s what she was doing to me — and I had just told her of how you can, with two receivers, when a transmitter off somewhere is putting out a steady signal, get a couple fixes on the signal and triangulate it or quadlateralize it — she didn’t know what the hell, anyway. And that you could thus locate the transmitter, which is how we found Martinique’s car.

“What happened then? Well, I crashed in the door and yelled — ah, strike that. I expected to be in great danger, you understand?”

“Of course.” She was smiling ever so slightly, those soft flame-colored lips curving sweetly, deliciously. “It must have been a terribly brave thing, your crashing in there like — “

“Well, that’s what I was getting at. The door was unlocked.” I stopped. That sounded terrible.

“Well, it was,” I barked.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s right, you didn’t. I won’t deny it. Well, I just walked in, that’s what. And that’s all. I know it must sound dull…”

“It was still brave.”

“Maybe a little. Look, Grimson might have had a gun, and could have shot it at me, right? Right. And for that matter, Martinique might have distracted me, like by throwing a jug — Jesus.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. It’s jug — just that I’ve been having trouble lately keeping my mind — keeping it from careening around. It’s merely that I’ve, uhh, had a lot on it. My mind, I mean.”

I paused. “The truth is, when I popped in on Martinique and Mr. G. I had just finished sliding through an acre of crankcase drainings twice, once on my back and then on my front, so I was simply all over oil, and I still had some food coloring and coffee on my — well, I hadn’t had time to freshen up, and I wasn’t a pretty sight. You might say my sudden appearance caught them off guard, yes, you might, and Martinique couldn’t quite decide if I was Shell Scott or a witch doctor from the La Brea Tar Pits. Anyway, she quickly admitted she’d been phoning Grimson, not the mayor, from the Sherwood Hotel while I was there yesterday, and that she herself sent Kitty Wilson out to Fowler’s house with instructions to keep me there, one way or another, until Martinique could contact Mr. G. and send him along to size up the situation himself.”

“Kitty Wilson? But how could a girl — “

“There we go — that’s one of those things — just part of the job. Anyway, she’s helping the police a lot, and I put in a good word for her, and she isn’t going to jail or anything, like a criminal. The important thing is, Martinique and Grimson offered no resistance when I crashed in. Besides, there were a dozen cops along with me.”

“Did you say you slid in oil twice? How did you happen to do that?”

“You would ask, wouldn’t you? Well, that’s another part I’m not going to tell you about. It was just … part of the job.”

“It must be difficult doing the job you do, Shell. I mean, always problems, problems. And a detective has to make quick decisions and all — “

“Yeah, and just one wrong one can put you in the soup. Well, maybe more than just one. Maybe even — but you do have to keep that old gray matter bubbling up there, if I do say so myself. Ah, why should I try to kid — “

“Ready for another drink?”

“Sure. Of course, I’ve still got three-fourths of this one. But why don’t we save it? Sure, we’ll save this and you can serve me another. Ah, too bad about the Club Rogue, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But I’ll bet it opens up again soon. Just because Mr. Grimson is out of everything doesn’t mean it has to stay closed.”

“I hope not. If it does open, I suppose you’ll be working there again?”

“If they want me.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“It’s a lovely club, and I really enjoyed working there, even for just one night.”

“Be hell if they don’t open right away, huh? And you get out of practice?”

That same smile again. But bigger, warmer. “I’ll mix our drinks,” she said, and walked into the next room and out of sight. I waited, expectantly, optimistically listening to little clinking sounds. Delicious sounds of warm liquors and cold ice….

That made me think again, briefly, of Martinique Monet.

As just about everybody who was interested knew by now, she had become possessed by the uncontrollable hots for Hugh Grimson. Not only had his hard and abrasive manliness appealed to something primitive and theretofore unawakened slumbering inside her, and not only had he molested her thoroughly and expertly even unto unprecedented fruition, but one night when she’d become somewhat snippety with him Hugh Grimson hauled off and knocked her on her versatile can.

“He loves me!” she had — presumably — cried. Somewhere deep in a purely feminine soft spot in her brain the clunk of fist on chops had met and mated with female logic and as though from a short-circuited computer had spewed sudden Truth perceptible only to babes who have been clunked on their chops and knocked on their cans: “He hit me! He beats me! He must love me!”

So, naturally, from then on, up to and including my own blessed meeting with her, Martinique had been madly in love with, and willing to do anything for, Hugh Grimson; here, at last, was a man who knew how to treat a woman: with respect.

The tinkling had stopped. I could hear Canada stepping nearer, nearer. I was smiling at her before she stepped into view, carrying two fresh drinks. Wearing white turtleneck sweater, red belt, white skirt, even the red-and-white shoes.

She advanced toward me, smiling broadly.

“What would you think of a guy,” I asked her, “who socked you in the chops?”

“Wha-at?”

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant was … Why, two more drinks I see. Splendid.”

“You do like them?”

“Yeah. Splendid. They get a little sweet, maybe, after the third or fourth … yeck.”

“We’ll have something else after this.”

“That’ll be fun. Splendid. How about bourbon and maple syrup?”

The smile turned into a bubble of soft laughter. “You’re so transparent,” she said, laughing.

“Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, huh? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I know what you mean, Shell Scott. You’re as subtle as an avalanche.”

“Ah, you make me sound — “

“But, Shell, if I were dressed like the Club Rogue waitresses, you wouldn’t have told me all those fascinating things.”

“What fascinating things? I don’t remember any — “

“Everything that happened to you today. And you still haven’t told me what happened to the mayor.”

“You’ve got to know, huh? You’ve just got to know, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, like I said, Delcey found him in the next room, in bed snoozing. Drugged, of course, heavily sedated — had been for more than forty hours. Friday night when Mr. G. charged out to catch an informer, he looked into the mayor’s bedroom — much as, at the end, I peeked in at him and Martinique — and saw the mayor taking the little nap he’d mentioned on the phone to me.”

“So he sneaked in and poked a big needle into his arm — “

Canada’s tiger-stripe eyes were bright and her lips were parted. She really did seem interested in all this junk.

So I said, gently, “Not quite then, dear — a bit later though. What Grimson did was more in character for the slob. He sneaked in while the mayor was sleeping, all right, but instead of a hypodermic he used the hood’s anesthesia, which is to say he bludgeoned His Honor on the conk. Oh, not with a club or gun butt, he used a professional spring-loaded sap which he had somehow happened to pick up in his travels.”

“He really hit him on the conk — that’s his head?”

“It sure is. Well — this is the distressing part, really. To people like you and me, I mean. Eventually Hugh called his family doctor — a guy who’d removed slugs and ice picks and such from some of Hugh’s close friends — and had him start pumping sedatives into Fowler’s arm. Repeated the process every few hours, in fact, so that not even for a minute did Fowler awaken from his snooze.”

“That’s the distressing part?”

“No, I hadn’t got to it yet. Before Grimson’s doc was available around the clock, Fowler started coming to. Grimson waited around so long for the informant — who, as you know, never did show up — that Hugh, in order to keep the mayor in the dark, so to speak, had to smack His Honor a good one again. Now, isn’t that distressing?”

“It certainly is. Did he hit him in the same place both times?”

“Beats the hell — how did you happen to think of that? He hit him on the head again, but whether — I can’t answer that.”

“What else happened that was fun?”

I looked at her. “Huh. Well, I got hit by the great enormous truck. How’s that?”

She cracked up. Maybe all babes have a little bit of the dumb broad in them. Though, even in my immediate mood, I had to admit that Canada, if she had some or much, kept it well hidden. She was good at hiding things.

“No, I didn’t mean violence. That’s not fun.” She muffled a chuckle and went on. “Like, well, didn’t Mr. Grimson know the mayor would tell everybody he’d hit him — conked him — and all that?”

“No, and there’s the beauty of the affair, the part for which I have to, reluctantly, give Grimson pretty high marks.” I had a big glug of my drink, smacked my lips. “Splendid,” I said. “Look, Grimson knew one of his men was prepared to give Fowler info that would put Mr. G. away for a long time, if not forever. He had to stop the informant, when and if he could identify and grab him. Which he set instantly out to do. When the informant failed to show, Grimson hauled the mayor off and kept him knocked out, while trying to get to Biggers — though he still didn’t know it was Little Biggie.”

“Trying to kill you, too,” Canada said.

“I’ll say. But if his original play had worked, and it almost did, I’d have gone back to L.A. and half this problem would have been eliminated. Then if he caught up with the informant he was home free, and then he could let the mayor go. His idea was to lug the mayor back home, put him on his bed, and let him wake up.”

“But surely the mayor would have known he’d been somewhere for … what was it, over forty hours?”

“Yeah. But, no, not exactly — it’s not quite that simple. A lot of people would have told Fowler many unnerving things, but the mayor himself would never have had anything but a large blank. No suspicions, nothing. I really do think Grimson might have come up with a rose in his teeth. He doesn’t care what people think about him, or say about him — as long as they can’t prove it.”

“Is that what Mayor Fowler said? I mean, that it was all just — blank?”

“He didn’t say much while I was around. But it was enough. I’d wondered myself if Grimson’s scheme would have worked, and I guessed it was what the mayor said that convinced me it could have.”

“You did talk to him, then?”

“A little. After getting him checked at the hospital — still out — the doctor suggested it would be best to let him wake up naturally. He’d been given so much gunk to keep him out, the doc felt it wouldn’t be wise to give him more gunk, like a stimulant drug. And Fowler was starting to come around anyway. Well, they decided to take him home, since there wasn’t really anything wrong with him. They put him on the bed, still dressed in the clothes he’d napped in, and about twenty minutes after that he woke up.”

“That’s all? He just woke up?”

“Just about. I was one of the people there, and he looked around with a good deal of bewilderment, which was somewhat multiplied when he saw me. I’d cleaned myself up a little by then. The mayor hadn’t seen me before, but he’d been given a good description. And of me, a description doesn’t have to be too good — Martinique, for example, recognized me immediately at the Sherwood, from Grimson’s description.”

“That’s because you’re unique.”

“Aren’t we all? Anyway, he said to me almost exactly what the fake mayor, Mr. G., said to me when he met me at Fowler’s door. The real one sat up on his bed and said, ‘Why, you look like — of course, you must be Sheldon Scott.’”

“Go on, go on.” She was really enjoying this, or else she wanted to make me feel good. Which I guess she was doing.

“I told him, ‘That’s who I am, all right, Mr. Mayor. I’m the guy you said wouldn’t be in any personal jeopardy up here in this Sodom and Gomorrah,” and he looked around again and said very quietly, ‘What are you people doing in my bedroom?’ And when he got around to me again he stared at me for a while and shook his head and said, in quite a strong voice, ‘How in hell did you get here so soon?’”

“Well!” she said.

“So … I kind of think it would have worked,” I said.

“What else? What else can you tell me?”

I shook my head wearily. Then I let my jaw hang down, reached up and grabbed it, waggled it about. “That’s it. I’m done for.”

“There really isn’t anything else important?”

“Nope. Some hoods in jail, a few sprung, Biggie safe in protective custody for a while, then maybe his own volcano in Siberia, they picked up Yoogy Dibler on a houseboat in Sausalito, odds and ends. But nothing important. Really.”

“Then let me freshen your drink for you, Shell.”

“Sure, go pour some sugar in it.”

She walked out again.

I sighed, leaned back, tired but relaxed. And whatever it was Canada had been fixing, though a mite syrupy perhaps, did put a nice warmness and gentle zip in the midsection and thereabouts. And it was delightful being alone with Canada Southern, even if she couldn’t — or wouldn’t — take a subtle hint.

“Would you like them in here again?” she asked.

I glanced around. And my breath automatically gushed from my mouth in a long soft whispering sigh. It was the Club Rogue again, but my private club, just Canada and me.

She held the drinks before her, one in each hand, about waist high. She’d had a gauzy red kerchief tied at her throat earlier, but had taken it off. Now she’d bunched it up and fixed it atop her hair somehow. Like those feathery red things the Cocktail Hostesses had worn that night — only last night, it was — at the Club Rogue.

Red puff atop gleaming beige-gold hair; And red-and-white shoes on her feet. That was all. And, once again, she took my breath away. She was more desirable, more astonishingly curved, more beautiful each time I saw her.

“Cat got your tongue, Shell?”

“No, no. I forgot your question.”

Merry laughter bubbled past the flamethrower lips again. “I made these less sweet, just for you. Shall we have them in here again? Or in there, at the bar?” She tossed her head back. “Or — what’s the other room?”

“The bedroom.”

“Or in the — other room?”

“Let’s have them in there,” I said, sort of leaving it up to her.

“All right. I’ll wait for you in there, then.”

She turned, walked back into the next room, and my eyes seemed to sort of melt as I watched the strong clean glide of leg, gleam of firm thigh, undulant sway and swing of marvelous hips, watched her walk into the next room, through it. Sound of door opening. No sound of it closing.

I took another deep breath, let it out, went into the next room. The bar was on my left. Upon one of its two stools were the ribbed white turtleneck, white skirt, belt a splash of red atop them.

That, I said to myself, was — is — a splendid idea. And there was room for my garb on the other bar stool. In hardly a jiffy my shirt and cardigan were on the stool and I’d kicked off my shoes, pulled off my socks. As I unbuckled my belt I heard a pingping.

I looked down at my belt. Never did that before.

And somehow — I don’t quite know why — right then pictures and thoughts and earlier apprehensions zipped hither and thither in my brain.

Here I was, barefooted, an instant from flinging off my trousers, and I remembered.

There’d been Kitty Wilson, a wondrous sight to see, especially with her pants off — but no sooner did my own pants get started, not even clear off but just started, calamitous dangers had begun sneaking up at me. Damn near got me killed right after that.

Pingping.

Then, Martinique. If I’d not had to leave, early in the a.m., why, Sam Jelly might have got me, totally ruined me. And, here I was again — Canada Southern magnificently bare in the bedroom, waiting, waiting — and me down to my pants. Pants, and shorts. But, still…

Pingping.

Now I knew what the sound was. It was the door pings, or chimes, or bell. I hadn’t heard it before, which explained why I’d not recognized it. But that’s what it was, for sure. Clad as I was, I naturally wasn’t wearing my gun harness. Or my gun. I fumbled around, found the Colt, then strode to the door and opened it a crack, gun held at the ready.

Then, slowly, I pulled the door wide, as my eyes opened wide like doors. It was a girl, a woman, again. And lovely, again. Maybe it was something about the town, or the season, or rays from stars and planets, but my eyes had in these few days gazed upon more lusciousness and beauty than even those optimistic orbs could have hoped for.

This one was taller than most, but I still had to look down two or three inches to gaze at her eyes. I’d have looked a lot farther than that, as far as Istanbul, say, or Singapore, Thailand, the Vale of Kashmir, for she seemed to have some of all those exotic places in her shockingly black eyes.

She was smiling, brilliantly, smiling a most friendly smile, as she asked, “Are you Mr. Scott … what in the world?”

Yeah. I was standing there in my pants, holding a gun on her. I jammed the gun into my holster — sure. Finally I put it behind my back, pushed the door half closed, and looked around it.

“Yes, I’m Shell Scott.”

“I really just came here to thank you. I’m so very, very grateful for what you’ve done.”

She sounded like it, too. “That’s great,” I said. “Swell. Grateful for what?”

“Why, for what you’ve done. I’m just sure if it hadn’t been for you, Daddy would be dead.”

“Daddy? I wish you wouldn’t say — I’ve got a funny thing about — I don’t much like the sound of … Daddy?”

“Oh, of course. I didn’t tell you.” She laughed, a lilting rippling sound that warmed the ears like a hot shower. “I’m Melinda Fowler.”

“You’re — just hold it a minute, lady. I’ll bet you are. I’ve been running into a lot of people this trip, a lot of people, who aren’t who I think they are and who … Well, every time, it’s gotten me into a lot of trouble, a lot of trouble. Now, in Mayor Fowler’s desk I saw a picture of his daughter, and she couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old, so who are you?”

“That picture — was I standing next to a swing? Holding some flowers in my hand?”

“Well … yeah. Whoever it was — “

“That’s me. It’s one of Daddy’s favorites. But the picture was taken nine years ago.”

“Hmm.”

“Would it be all right if I came in for a little? Just a little.” She smiled. “Daddy’s sleeping again. He doesn’t even know I’ve left the house.”

“Hmm. He doesn’t, huh? By the way, would you mind referring to your father as your father? Or as Mr. Fowler? Or — Daddy has come to have a sinister sound…”

I let it trail off. There was, of course, no way I could let this fetching tomato come inside. Certainly not this minute. But I wasn’t callous enough to just throw her away like an old shoe, either.

“Is there some kind of problem?” she asked.

“Well, yeah, some. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”

Problem — that was the word Canada had used. And she was on the button. That’s the trouble with being a private detective, all right. Always problems, problems. And those decisions all the time. Got to keep that old gray matter bubbling up there. Sure, there was a way, somehow, to fix it so — “

“Canada?” she asked.

“Did I mumble that? Well, uhh, you’ve heard of it, of course? Big place north of here.”

“She-ell What happened to you-ou?”

I yanked my head around. But fortunately she wasn’t in sight.

“Right here,” I yelled. “Hold everything. Be there in a minute, Canada — oop.”

When I pulled my face back to look around the door again, Melinda was giving me a very slanty look, kind of slanty and steamy. She didn’t look furious, or all put out, though. It seemed very unlikely that she was one of those stuffy babes.

Very unlikely, indeed. Because she was smiling oddly, lips parted and even white teeth touching, and she leaned toward me, put her head close to the door, and very close to mine.

“Of course I know where it is,” she said. “I’ve been there.”

Then she let her eyes kind of heat up. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. Yes, she did, and you’ll just have to take my word for it.

“I’ll come back another time, Mr. Scott. If that’s all right with you.”

“Yeah. Sure, you bet. I was going to suggest — “

“You’ll be in town for a few days, won’t you?”

“Yeah. Sure, I was just going to say — “

“Then I’ll give you a ring.”

“Good idea — “

“I’ve already got your number.”

“Guess you do, at that.”

“‘Bye, Mr. Scott.”

She turned to walk away.

I closed the door, then pulled it open.

“Hey.”

She turned again, looked back at me.

“Mr. Scott sounds too formal. Almost like Da — call me Shell?”

She didn’t reply, or even nod. She just blew me a kiss. It wasn’t a whole Broadway production, just a casual, soft, carefree little pucker and puff of her lips. But it gave me a hunch she could heat those up, too. Then she was gone.

Handled that pretty well, I thought. I closed, and locked, the door. I noticed, when I turned, I was humming. So, humming, I walked toward the other room.

Later, much later, Canada asked me sleepily, “What kept you so long out there earlier, Shell?”

“Oh … ah, just, uh, thinking about the job,” I said. “And making those — decisions.”

“That’s nice,” she said. And sort of purred. And just before dawn we said goodnight.

As I closed my eyes and felt myself sinking into the soft dark I wondered, very briefly, what might be waiting out there, because even though we were both falling asleep the sun was climbing the sky and it was, after all, the start of another day.

</code>