The Pickpocket by Mickey Spillane first appeared in Manhunt, December 1954.

I Don’t Fool Around by Lawrence Block first appeared in Trapped Detective Story Magazine, February 1961.

Man with a Shiv by Richard Wormser first appeared in Manhunt, December 1956.

The Floater by Jonathan Craig first appeared in Manhunt, January 1955.

Swamp Search by Harry Whittington first appeared in Murder, July 1957.

Face of Evil by David Alexander first appeared in Manhunt, January 1957.

Take Care of Yourself by William Campbell Gault first appeared in Murder, July 1957.

The Fast Line by Art Crockett first appeared in Manhunt, December 1956.

Crime of Passion by Richard S. Prather first appeared in Manhunt, December 1954.

Lust Song by Stuart Friedman first appeared in Manhunt, December 1956.

Willie came into the bar smiling. He couldn’t understand why he did it, but he did it anyway. Ever since the day he had married Sally and had stopped in for a bottle of beer to bring home for his wedding supper, he had come in smiling. Sally, he thought, three years with Sally, and now there was little Bill and a brother or maybe a sister on the way.

The bartender waved, and Willie said, “Hello, Barney.” A beer came up and he pushed a quarter out, looking at himself in the big mirror behind the wall. He wasn’t very big, and he was far from good-looking. Just an ordinary guy, a little on the small side. He was respectable now. A real law-abiding citizen. Meeting Sally had done that.

He remembered the day three winters ago when he’d tried to lift a wallet from a guy’s pocket. Hunger and cold had made his hand shake and the guy had collared him. He was almost glad to be run into the station house where it was warm. But the guy must have known that, too, and refused to press any charges. So he got kicked out in the cold again. That was where Sally had found him.

He remembered the taxi, and Sally and the driver half-carrying him into her tiny apartment. The smell of the hot soup did more to revive him than anything else. She didn’t ask any questions, but he told her nevertheless. He was a pickpocket. A skinny little mug who had lived by his hands ever since he was a kid. She’d told him, right away, that it didn’t matter.

He had eaten her food and slept on her couch for a week before he got smart. Then he did something he had never done before in his life. He got a job. It wasn’t much at first, just sweeping up in a loft where they made radio parts. Slowly he found out he had hands that could do better things than push a broom. The boss found it out, too, when he discovered Willie assembling sections in half the time that it took a skilled mechanic to do it. They gave the broom to someone else.

Only then did he ask Sally to marry him. She gave up her job at the department store and they settled down to a regular married life. The funny part was that he liked it.

The cops never gave up, though. As regularly as clockwork they came around. A real friendly visit, understand? But they came around. The first of the month Detective Coggins would walk in right after supper, talk a while, looking at him with those cynical, cold blue eyes, then leave. That part worried Willie — not for himself, but for little Bill. It wouldn’t be long now before he’d be in school, and the other kids... they’d take it out on him. Your old man was a crook... a pickpocket... yeah, then why do the coppers come around all the time? Willie drained his beer quickly. Sally was waiting supper for him.

He had almost reached the door when he heard the shots. The black sedan shot past as he stepped outside and for one awful instant he saw a face. Black eyebrows... the sneer... the scar on the cheek. The face of a guy he had known three years ago. And the guy had seen him, too. In his mind, Willie ran. He ran faster than he had ever run in his life — but his legs didn’t run. They carried him homeward as the self-respecting should walk: but his mind ran.

Three years wasn’t so long after all.

As soon as he came in Sally knew something was wrong. She said, “What happened?” Willie couldn’t answer. “Your job...” she said hesitantly. Willie shook his head.

It was the hurt look that made his lips move. “Somebody got shot up the street,” he told her. “I don’t know who it was, but I know who did it.”

“Did anyone else...”

“No, just me. I think I was the only one.”

He could tell Sally was almost afraid to ask the next question. Finally, she said: “Did they see you?”

“Yes. He knows me.”

“Oh, Willie!” Her voice was muffled with despair. They stood in silence, not knowing what to say, not daring to say anything. But both had the same thoughts. Run. Get out of town. Somebody was dead and it wouldn’t hurt to kill a couple more to cover the first.

Sally said: “... The cops. Should we...”

“I don’t dare. They wouldn’t believe me. My word wouldn’t be any good anyway.”

It came then, the sharp rap on the door. Willie leaped to his feet and ran, reaching for the key in the lock. He was a second too late. The door was tried and pushed open. The guy that came in was big. He filled the door from jamb to jamb with the bulk of his body. He grabbed Willie by the shirt and held him tight in his huge hands.

“Hello, shrimp,” he said.

Willie punched him. It was as hard as he could hit, but it didn’t do a bit of good. The guy snarled: “Cut it out before I break your skinny neck!” Behind him he closed the door softly. Sally stood with the back of her hand to her mouth, tense, motionless.

With a rough shove the big guy sent Willie staggering into the table, his thick lips curling into a tight sneer. “Didn’t expect somebody so soon, did you, Willie? Too bad you’re not smart. Marty doesn’t waste any time. Not with dopes that see too much. You know, Marty’s a lucky guy. The only one that spots the shooting turns out to be a punk he can put the finger on right away. Anybody else would be down at headquarters picking out his picture right now.”

His hand went inside his coat and came out with a .45 automatic. “I always said Marty was lucky.”

The big guy didn’t level the gun. He just swung it until it covered Willie’s stomach. Sally drew in her breath to scream quickly, just once, before she died.

But before the scream came Willie gave a little laugh and said: “You won’t shoot me with that gun, Buster.”

Time stood still. Willie laughed again. “I slipped out the magazine when you grabbed me.” The big guy cursed. His finger curled under the butt and felt the empty space there. Willie was very calm now. “And I don’t think you’ve got a shell in the chamber, either.”

The big guy took one step, reaching for Willie, a vicious curse on his lips; then the sugar bowl left Sally’s hand and took him on the forehead. He went down.

Willie didn’t hesitate this time. He picked up the phone and called the station house. He asked for Detective Coggins. In three minutes the cop with the cold blue eyes was there, listening to Willie’s story. The big guy went out with cuffs on. Willie said: “Coggins...”

“Yes?”

“When the trial comes up... you can count on me to testify. They won’t scare me off.”

The detective smiled, and for the first time the ice left those cold blue eyes. “I know you will, Willie.” He paused. “And Willie... about those visits of mine... I’d like to come up and see you. I think we could be good friends. But I’d like to have you ask me first.”

A grin covered Willie’s face. “Sure! Come up... anytime at all! Let’s say next Saturday night. Bring the missus!”

The detective waved and left. As he closed the door Willie could imagine the chant of young voices. They were saying:

“Yeah... and you better not get funny with Bill because his pop is friends with that cop. Sure, they’re all the time playing cards and...”

Willie laughed. “Sometimes,” he said, “I’m almost glad that I had some experience. Finally came in handy!”

Fischer pulled up at a curb and we got out of the car in a hurry, heading for the black Chevy with the people standing around it. The precinct cop made room for us and we went on through. As far as I was concerned, this was just a formality. I knew who was dead and I knew who had killed him. Taking a good long look at the corpse wasn’t going to change that.

The punk slumped over the wheel with holes in his head had lived longer than we had expected. He was a hood named Johnny Blue, a strongarm-weakbrain who crossed some of the wrong people. He’d been due for a hit for weeks, according to the rumbles that filtered through to Manhattan West. Now he’d been hit, and hard.

One slug in the side of the face. Another in the neck. Three more in the back of the head.

“Who is he?” Fischer asked. I told him.

“A messy way to do it,” the kid went on. “Any of those shots would have killed him. Why shoot him up like that?”

My college cop. My new partner, my cross to bear ever since some genius switched Danny Taggert to Vice. My Little Boy Lost, who wanted murder to be a nice clean affair, with one bullet lodged in the heart and, if you please, as little blood as possible.

I said, “The killer didn’t want to take chances.”

“Chances? But—”

I was very tired. “This wasn’t a tavern brawl,” I told him. “This wasn’t one guy hitting another guy over the head with a bar stool. This was a pro killing.”

“It doesn’t look so professional to me. A mess.”

“That’s because you don’t know what to look for.” I turned away, sick of the corpse and the killer, sick of Fischer, sick of West 46th Street at three in the morning. Sick of murder.

“It’s a pro killing,” I said again. “In a car, on a quiet street, in the middle of the night. Five bullets, any one of which would have caused death. That’s a trademark.”

“Why?”

“Because hired killers don’t fool around,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

The coffee was bitter but it was black and it was hot. I sipped it as I read through the file again. I knew everything in the file by heart. I read it automatically, then shoved it over to Fischer.

“Name,” I said, “Frank Calder. First arrest at age 14, 1948, grand theft auto. Suspended. Arrested three months later, GTA again, six months in Elmira. Three years later he was picked up for assault with a deadly weapon. A knife. The victim refused to press charges and we dropped them.”

I sipped some more of the coffee. “That was eight years ago. Since then he’s been picked up fifteen times. Same charge each time. Suspicion of homicide.”

“Innocent?”

“Guilty, of course. Fifteen times that we know about. Probably a dozen more that we don’t know about. Fourteen times we let him go. Once we thought we had a case.”

“What happened?”

“Grand jury disagreed with us. Indictment quashed.”

Fischer nodded. “And you think he may have killed Blue?”

“No.”

“Then why are we—”

“I don’t think he might have killed Blue,” I said. “I know damn well he killed Blue. Calder does most of his work in the Kitchen. A Hell’s Kitchen boy from the start, grew up on 39th Street west of Ninth. Gun used was a.38. Calder always uses a.38. Likes to shoot people in cars.”

“Still, you can’t be sure that—”

“I can be sure,” I cut in. I wished that Vice would send Danny back to me. Fischer was impossible. “Calder works for Nino Popo a lot of the time. Popo had a thing against Blue. Quit sounding like a public defender, will you? This was one of Calder’s. Period.”

“We pick him up now?”

“No.”

“But you just said—”

“I know what I said. I know damn well what I said and I don’t need a parrot to toss it back at me.”

“But—”

“Shut up.” I finished the coffee. “I told you Calder was a pro. You know what that means? You understand what that record says? He’s a hired killer. You pay him and he shoots people. That’s how he makes his living. A good living. He dresses in three-hundred-dollar suits. He wears gold cuff links. He lives in a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The west side of the park — he’s not a millionaire. But he does well in his job.”

I paused for breath. I just wanted to get home and go to bed. I was tired. “I told you about pros,” I said. “They don’t fool around. They don’t leave loopholes. It’s their business and they know it. They don’t crack under pressure. If we pick up Calder he’ll be out in no time at all. No witnesses. A cast-iron alibi. No holes at all.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go home,” I said. “We go home and take hot showers and go to bed. Tomorrow we pick him up.”

I left him there to wonder what I was talking about. I went home and took a hot shower and fell asleep the minute I hit the bed.

Homicide is rugged. There are good things about it — we don’t take bribes, we stay clean. There are also bad things.

Because there are only three types of murder, and of the three there is only one that we solve. There is the amateur killing with a motive, the husband who strangles his wife, the tavern brawl, the grudge murder. There you have your suspect at the start and you look around for the proof. And find it, no matter how clever a job they do of burying it. That is the kind that gets solved.

There is also the silly killing. The bum beaten to death on the Bowery. The hustler with a knife in her belly. The fag killed in his own apartment by a casual conquest. The mugging victim with a crushed skull. These we don’t solve. Not without a break.

And there is the professional murder. And those we never solve.

I met Fischer at five in the afternoon. He was carrying a folded copy of an afternoon tabloid. The headline ran GANGLAND SLAYING IN HELL’S KITCHEN. I could have guessed it word for word. I took the paper from him and gave the story a quick run-through. It was about the same as the morning papers had it.

It didn’t say we had nothing to work with. It didn’t say we had anything to work with. It said that Johnny Blue had been found in a parked car with holes in him, and that he was dead. Then there were a few paragraphs trying to turn the career of a fourth-rater into something notorious, and then there was some nonsense to the effect that the cops were keeping mum.

Mum?

“We’re on Calder,” I told him. “No other assignment until we nail him. Got that?”

“Sure.”

“I wanted it that way. I want to get Calder. I want to get him good.”

“I thought you said it was impossible.”

“It is.”

“Then—”

“You talk too much,” I said. I waited for him to get mad but he didn’t. He was hurt — it showed in his face, in the way he wouldn’t look at me. But he wouldn’t get mad. And this made me like him that much less. He never got mad at anything. He didn’t know how to hate.

I don’t like college cops. I don’t like people who are up to their ears in understanding and sympathy and sweetness and sunshine. I don’t like people who don’t know how to hate.

Maybe it’s just the way a person is. If I were Calder I would hate cops. I’m a cop. I hate Calder. I hate him because he breaks laws and shoots people. I hate him because he gets away with it. I hated Johnny Blue. He used to get away with things too. Now he was dead and Calder had killed him and I hated Calder.

I was going to get him.

“Look it over again,” I said, sliding Calder’s file over to Fischer again. “Skip the record. Look at the picture.”

Dark black hair. A flat face, not too bad-looking. Hard eyes, a long nose, a little scar on the chin. I don’t know how he got the scar. Maybe he cut himself shaving.

“You said we pick him up today. Were you kidding?”

“I don’t kid. I was serious.”

“They found evidence?”

“No.”

He looked at me. He was afraid to open his mouth. Gutless.

“We worry him a little. Don’t bother your head about it. Go get the car and meet me out front. And wear a gun.”

He didn’t say anything, just went off for the car. I checked my gun, then stuck it back in the holster. I picked up Calder’s file, and took a good long look at it. I let the face burn into my brain. I stood there for a minute or two and hated.

Then I went out to the car where Fischer was waiting.

The building was fancy. A uniformed doorman stood at attention out in front. I had to show him my shield before he let us inside. He was there to keep out undesirables. Unless they lived in the penthouse.

The carpet was deep in the lobby. The elevator rose in silence. I stood there and hated Calder.

He had the whole top floor. I got out of the elevator and took my gun out of its holster, wondering whether or not the doorman had called Calder yet. Probably.

I rang the bell.

“Yeah?”

A penthouse overlooking the park didn’t get Hell’s Kitchen out of his speech. Nothing would.

“Police.”

“Whattaya want?”

“Open the door and shut up.”

A few seconds later the door opened. He was short, five-six or five-seven. He was wearing a silk bathrobe and slippers that looked expensive. The apartment was well-furnished but for what he had paid he could have used an interior decorator. There was a shoddiness about the place. Maybe the shoddiness was Calder.

“Come on in,” he said. “You use a drink?”

I ignored him. “You’re under arrest,” I told him.

“What for?”

“Murder.”

“Yeah?” A wide smile. “Somebody got killed?”

“Johnny Blue.”

“I’m covered,” he said. No I’m innocent but I’m covered. “I was playing cards with some fellows.”

“Uh-huh.”

He shrugged heroically. “You want, we can go down to the station. My lawyer’ll have me out right away. I’m clean.”

“You’re never clean,” I said. “You were born filthy.”

The smile widened. But there was uncertainty behind it. I was getting to him.

“You’re cheap and rotten,” I said. “You’re a punk. You spend a fortune on cologne and it still doesn’t cover the smell.”

Now the smile was gone.

“Your sister sleeps with bums,” I said. “Your mother was the cheapest whore on the West Side. She died of syphilis.”

That did it. He was a few feet away — then he lowered his head and charged. I could have clubbed him with the gun. I didn’t.

I shot him.

He gave a yell like a wounded steer and fell to his knees. The bullet had taken him in the right shoulder. I guess it hurt. I hoped so.

“You shot him.” It was Fischer talking.

“Good thinking,” I told him. “You’re on the ball.”

“Now what?”

I shrugged. “We can take him in,” I suggested. “We can book him for resisting arrest and a few other things.”

“Not murder?”

“You heard him,” I said. “He’s clean.”

I looked at Fischer. That was the answer to my college cop, my buddy. Here was a murderer, a murderer with a shoulder wound. Now we would be nice to him. Get him to a hospital quick before he lost too much blood. Maybe drop the resisting arrest charge because, after all, he was a sick man.

I had my gun in my hand. I stepped back a few feet and aimed. I watched the play of expressions on Calder’s face. He didn’t know whether or not to believe it.

I shot him in the face.

I talked to Fischer while I found a gun in a drawer, picked it up in a towel, and wrapped Calder’s fingers around it. It made it look good — he had drawn on me, I shot him in the shoulder, he went on and held onto the gun, and I shot him dead. It would look good enough — there wasn’t going to be any investigation.

“Maybe thirty killings,” I said. “That’s what this animal had to his credit. He made beating the law a business. He didn’t fool around. And there was no way to get him.”

No answer from my partner.

“So this time he lost. He doesn’t fool around. Well, neither do I.”

I knew Fischer wasn’t satisfied. He wouldn’t blab, but it would worry him. He would feel uncomfortable with me. I don’t fit into his moral scheme of things. Maybe he’ll put in for a transfer.

I hope so.

I noticed the blue-gray Caddy on my road, but had no time to watch it twist and bounce the twenty miles through Everglades sawgrass, palmetto and slash pine from the Tamiami trail to my place.

I’d been out all morning in the helicopter hunting for strays and just as I glimpsed the Caddy, I saw one of my Santa Gertrudis heifers caught in a bog. Lose a cow in that ooze, you never see her again. I needed every cow I had, every penny I could earn on my farm. I was in hock, even paying for the ’copter on installments.

I engaged the pedals, the wings rotated slowly and I hovered over the bawling cow. The pinch-rig I’d made was an ice-tong affair of steel and leather I let down on my cable.

“Take it easy, baby,” I told the cow. “You’re too valuable to lose in that goo.”

The cable winched down, I closed the pincher about her belly and started upward. The sucking noise of the ooze and bawling of the cow rose above the revving of my motor.

I let the heifer swing a moment to impress her, then set her down in high grass, cussed her once for luck, reeled in my line and peeled off toward the house where the Caddy was parked in the yard.

She was sitting in the Caddy looking around when I walked toward her. What she saw was bare sand yard without even a slash pine growing in it, brown frame house of four rooms and porch, coal-oil lamps and outhouse. Rugged, but beautiful to me. It had belonged to my folks. They’d died while I was in a Chinese prison camp. It got so this lonely place was what I’d dreamed of coming back to.

“How’d you get this far off the trail?” I said. “My road is hard to find.”

She got out of the car, smiled. Except for her shape she wasn’t terrific; wavy brown hair, deep-set brown eyes and squared chin. “Not as hard to find as your house. I had a ball getting here — the car scraped between the ruts.”

“It’s been dry or you’d never have made it.”

“I’d have made it.” Something about her voice made me look at her again, closer.

Her gaze touched my helicopter, and didn’t move on. She smiled again. “You Jim Norton?”

I nodded and she said, still watching the ’copter, “I’m Celia Carmic... Mrs. Curt Carmic.”

Carmic. I stared. The whole state had been alerted in a search for Curt Carmic. He had crashed in his private plane on an Everglades hunting trip. After a week of intensive searching, the Coast Guard had abandoned him as dead.

I invited her up on the porch. “I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Carmic.”

“Yes.” She shook her head as though still unable to believe it. She made a wad of her handkerchief. “Curt and I were — very happy, Mr. Norton. He was — well, several years older than I, but he was a vital man, had the world in his hand.” Her head tilted. “I don’t say Curt didn’t have enemies. Every strong man does.”

Her eyes were moist, her voice sounded full of tears. She told me about Carmic. She glossed over the way he got a discharge from the Marines in 1943, but said that from 1945 he’d had great success, headed two companies making parts for the Korean police action, Carmic Defrosters.

“Curt was due in Washington on the Monday following his trip. They were investigating his war profits. Curt was ill at this injustice, his doctor told him to rest. His idea of rest was a weekend hunting trip in the Everglades. But more than anything, Mr. Norton, he wanted to come back and clear his name.” Her chin quivered. “I can’t believe Curt is dead.”

I didn’t know what to say. All I wanted down here was peace, and a chance to make a living my way. I’d been in the world she talked about. I’d had it.

“They searched for Curt for a week. I know they were thorough and didn’t find a trace. I can’t give up. Can you understand that, Mr. Norton? I’ve got to find him. That’s why I came to you.”

I waited, not knowing why I didn’t want to get mixed up in this thing. She said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars — and pay all expenses if you’ll help me search for him.”

I had plenty of use for a thousand dollars. I couldn’t buy the picture she painted of Curt Carmic. Him I never knew, but I knew his Defrosters and there was a good reason for that Senate inquiry. Still, no man would take to the Everglades even to escape a government investigation.

“How long would you want to search?”

“Until we find him.” She paced my porch. “I’ll pay the thousand dollars for anything up to ten days. After that—” she spread her hands, left that unfinished. Tensely she watched me until I nodded. She cried then. She stood rigid and tears ran down her cheeks.

The rest of the day we studied flight plans and maps. She had all the information she could get on the Everglades and the weather.

I tried to shrug off the feeling of wrong that persisted. Any profiteer who’d sell Carmic Defrosters to his country should have been investigated and any woman who’d lived ten years with him should know that. Yet she spoke of him as though he were saintly. I reminded myself it didn’t matter, it was a thousand dollars to me, but the nagging sense of emptiness stayed.

We set up the first flight pattern, figured mileage, weather and gas capacity and set for seven the next morning. When the time was set, Celia Carmic became a different woman.

First she’d been the bereaved wife, then the cold general over map briefing and weather data. At supper she chatted about her life in Washington. She ate delicately — like a she-wolf with a Vassar education. I’d never met anyone like her; I had to smile.

“Why are you laughing at me?”

I fumbled my fork. “I’m not laughing.”

She stopped eating, touched her lips with a paper napkin. “How old are you, Jim?”

I remembered the war years, the prison. “I’ll be a hundred next April.”

“I’d say twenty-three.”

“Say whatever you like.”

She looked around. “No girl to share all this?”

I shook my head. “The kind that would share this I wouldn’t want. And the other kind—” I stopped. I suddenly knew the only kind of woman I’d ever wanted. We just looked at each other... “I can’t afford what I want,” I said.

“What would you do to be able to afford her?”

“Anything.”

“Sure?”

“Anything at all.”

“You might be held to that,” she said. “And soon.”

About five A.M. I heard something stir in the house and jumped out of bed. Sleep-drugged, I staggered across the room. I reached the guest room door before I remembered Celia was there.

I stopped in the doorway, fully awake, realizing I was in my undershorts; it was too hot to sleep in anything more.

She was fully dressed, white shirt, jodhpurs, gleaming boots. She had a handful of maps and weather data. “Sorry I wakened you, Jim. I couldn’t sleep any more. I’m too anxious to get started.”

I mumbled something and backed off. She let her eyes prowl over me and then walked out into the front room leaving me gaping after her. Where was the bereaved wife? Where were those unshed tears?

From that moment there was a sick emptiness in my stomach. But the second the flight started, she was all business.

She sat with the flight pattern mapped on her lap. After I filled all gas tanks at the Lewiston Airport, she watched compass and mileage indicator until we reached the lines marking our first pattern. Coldly serious, she read that country minutely with field glasses.

She never took five, never relaxed. This land was huge bolts of scorched brown, ribboned by black strings of water. Heron took flight, I pointed out a wildcat. Nothing down there but silence and heat waves.

We made our circle, reached the end of the flight pattern. She sat back, dropped the binoculars. Red circles encased her eyes. “We know they’re not in there.”

“We’ll take the second pattern tomorrow.”

She seemed to have lost interest. She was watching me again from the corner of her eyes. I set the ’copter down in the yard.

“Think I could learn to handle a windmill, Jim?”

“It’s not easy. But I could teach you.”

She looked thoughtful.

After supper she wanted a drink to celebrate the end of our first flight. All I had was a few cans of warm beer. We drank that. She laughed and talked, teasing me about being a farmer stuck away from the world. Suddenly for no reason we stopped laughing and we stopped talking.

Crickets and frogs screeched outside the windows. It was so quiet I heard mosquitoes frantic against the screens.

I tried not to stare at her, but I couldn’t keep my gaze off her. I asked if she were sleepy. She said no. We sat for a long time and listened to the crickets. That night I didn’t sleep much...

Next morning I was out of bed and dressed hours ahead of Celia. I fixed breakfast but not even the odors of coffee and eggs wakened her. I let her sleep. I didn’t trust myself in that room. I remembered why she was here — a husband lost in the swamp. I had to keep remembering that.

At a quarter of seven she came out, voice angry. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

I stared at her, knowing how I’d fought to keep out of that room. “Why didn’t you bring an alarm clock?”

We stood tense across the table. Then she smiled and looked very pleased about something...

We’d been flying about three hours and suddenly Celia grabbed my arm. An electric charge went through me at her touch. Maybe you don’t know what it is to want like that. I was sick, wanting just two things: never to find her husband and to have money so I could afford Celia Carmic.

She pointed to something glittering. I engaged the pedals, idled off the engine and we settled in a cleared space six inches above water.

She scrambled out of the plane, ran through muck and saw-grass. I plodded after her. When I reached her, she was swearing, words she shouldn’t even have known.

Somebody had cut open a five gallon oil can, tossed it beside the creek. She followed me back to the ’copter.

We retraced and she was silent, did not even mention learning to handle the ’copter. We set down in the yard about four and she walked silently into the house.

After supper she discovered the old wind-up phonograph in the front room. She played an ancient record. “Sweet — Stay As Sweet As You Are.” She wound it, played it again.

“Reminds me of you,” she said. “Sweet and innocent.”

I remembered her disappointment this afternoon when she thought we’d found a sign of her husband. This was a different woman.

“Come on, Jim, dance with me.”

“I don’t dance.”

“I’ll teach you.” She came over, took my hands. Hers were like ice. I stood up. She came into my arms, moved closer. Her hands slid up my back...

I wanted to sleep through next morning. It was good burying my face in the warm fragrance of her hair. But when I thought about the flight, I thought about her husband. I didn’t like that.

I pulled her closer. She went taut. “No, Jim. We’re going to search.” She pulled away, eyes hard. “We’re going to search all day. Everyday.”

In the plane, I felt her nearness, I could smell her. All day she kept binoculars fixed on that changeless land.

“We’re not staying out long enough,” she said.

My voice was hard. “We’ll look as long as you like. That doesn’t keep me from hoping we — don’t find him.”

Her fingers closed on my arm. “Don’t say that, Jim. Pray we do find him.”

How could she do that, turn her emotions off and on? I could not forget last night; for her it had never happened. She loved her husband. She came to me. It didn’t make my kind of sense. I clammed up.

We reached the end of the pattern. She dropped the glasses, rings deep about her eyes. But when she dropped the binoculars, she dropped the search. Now her brown eyes sought something else. “How long, Jim, before we get home?”

Her voice was breathless. I went empty. Her hand gripped me. “It’s too far. Hurry.”

I tried to hurry but they never built enough speed in a flying windmill for us. I set the ’copter down in the yard, killed the engine. We ran across the yard. That was when I saw the car tire tracks.

I stopped. The tracks came in from the road. “Somebody’s been here.” I sounded like Papa Bear.

Celia frowned, but pulled me toward the house. “Probably some salesman.”

Footprints in the sand led around the house, paused at every window. “Persistent.” I said.

For no reason I could explain, I felt that old sense of wrong mixed with unexplained fear. “I’ll take the ’copter. Maybe I can catch him before he gets back to the Trail.”

“Don’t be a fool.” She pressed against me. “I’ve waited all day. You’re not chasing down some salesman. You’re not going to leave me tonight.”

I didn’t, either...

Next morning I woke up thinking about those tire tracks and footprints. Too many things were unexplained, wrong. I fixed breakfast but didn’t eat anything. Celia ate like a plowman.

I followed the flight pattern but my mind wasn’t on it. Celia never relaxed. We’d not found one encouraging sign, yet she never mentioned quitting. One thing was now certain. She was compelled by something stronger than that love she’d talked about the first day. Did she love Carmic at all? She never discussed him outside the ’copter. She never worried about the hell he endured if he were alive in that swamp country. All she did was glue her gaze to that ground.

When we returned, I searched first for new tire tracks. There was none. I couldn’t say why, but I felt no better.

Celia pretended disinterest, but she looked for them, too.

After supper, she started the phonograph. It blared but only intensified the silence. She toppled into my lap. “It’s too quiet, doll. I’m a big city girl. The Embassy — F Street. Got to have excitement. Where you going to take me?”

I smelled the warm fragrance at the nape of her neck. “I know where I want to take you.”

“There’s a juke joint about a mile down the Tamiami Trail from your road.”

“Twenty miles. Nickel juke. Ten cent beer and mud farmers.”

“That’s where I want to go.”

I looked at her squared chin, didn’t even bother to argue.

She drove recklessly on the twisting roadway, parked beside the Seminole Inn. An anaemic neon glowed fitfully. There were gas pumps out front, motel cottages in the rear. Inside was boot-scarred bar, small dance space, unpainted tables, candles in beer cans, booths. There were half a dozen customers. We sat at a table, ordered beer. She seemed to have forgotten her husband, so I tried to.

A man sat alone at the end of the bar near the juke. I didn’t pay any attention to him at first. I noticed he was pretty-boy handsome, with a golden, sculptured profile, thin mouth.

We’d been there about ten minutes before I realized he was watching every move we made. Every time I looked up, his eyes would go flat and he’d stare beyond me.

“You know that character?” I said to Celia.

“Who?” She said it too carelessly. There weren’t that many people in there. I got that old empty feeling.

“Handsome,” I said. “The blond god over there. He must know you, he’s staring at you.”

Celia looked dutifully. Her eyes met Handsome’s for an instant. I saw something flicker in his flat eyes — something green like jealousy, red like hatred. It flashed and was gone. He looked at his beer.

“I’m sure I never saw him before,” Celia said. “Want to dance?”

What I wanted was to hit somebody or something. If she knew the guy, why didn’t she say so? I had to be sure. I excused myself, went through the door marked “His’n.”

From inside I watched Celia. She got up after a moment, walked over to the juke. Handsome swung around at the bar as I’d known he would.

For a moment I was ill. I pressed my ear against the pine paneling, trying to hear what they said. Celia punched coins into the juke. “Stay away.” Her voice was a sharp whisper.

“I’ve got to see you!”

“You can’t. I told you you couldn’t.”

“You’re crossing me—” The blaring music drowned his words. I washed my face, rinsed out my mouth, staring at my reflection in the dirty window.

I was silent driving home. Celia laughed, teased, called me a baby. She slid over close, laid her head on my shoulder. It was a gray night, strung with stars and full of wrong.

“I wish you’d teach me to run the ’copter, Jim.”

I felt pebbles in my throat. I wanted her to tell me the truth, but by now I knew better. I wouldn’t waste my breath. “You couldn’t take your eyes away from those binoculars long enough to learn.”

She sighed. “That’s right. That’s most important, isn’t it?”

I didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem important at all.

When we got back next afternoon from the fifth flight pattern, I saw the new tracks. “Well, he was back again,” I said.

She took it big. “Somebody is trying to sell you something.”

“That’s God’s truth.”

“—and just can’t believe you’re gone so much!” She met my gaze evenly when she said that and didn’t even blush.

We ate supper silently. Afterwards she marked out the next flight pattern. I didn’t even bother to look at it. I told myself I was going to bed alone. I didn’t. She had me all clobbered, but I wanted her worse than ever.

The next morning we took off as usual. I asked her to explain the prowler.

She said it must be a neighbor of mine, or a salesman.

I shook my head. “Don’t give me that. I have no neighbors. A salesman would travel that road once, maybe; never twice.”

She shrugged. “It’s your country.”

“It’s your boyfriend,” I told her.

“My boyfriend!” She laughed. I let her laugh. She got tired and stopped, cold.

“I heard you two at the juke.” My voice was as tired and empty as I felt.

Her eyes flickered.

“Why not level with me, Celia? What are you looking for? What do you want?”

She stared out at the horizon. She bit her lip and closed her eyes tight, but didn’t speak. My heart hurt against my ribs. I wanted her to be something she wasn’t and never would be.

I wanted her and hated her, and wondered what she was really here for.

We reached the beginning of the flight pattern, the same parched pepper grass, same tufted pines and endless silence. This was the next to the last day. I heard her sigh; she placed the binoculars against her eyes. After a moment, she removed them, wiped her tears. “I love you, Jim.”

“Sure you do.”

“I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even consider it. But — you don’t know what it means to me to find Curt.” She sank her fingers into my arm. “You won’t be sorry, Jim.”

“I’m already sorry. I went nuts when you walked on my place. All I’ve thought about was having you — and I couldn’t afford you, even if I could overlook the rest of it.”

“We’ve got to find him.” She turned back, put glasses to her eyes. “And we will.”

Time slipped away. And miles. I was about to make the circle, but she told me to go on a bit further. Then I heard her catch her breath, but I’d already seen it. You don’t need field glasses to see smoke in that flat wasteland. She dropped the binoculars, looked at me, face rigid.

She touched my arm, then her fingers were clinging to me. “We’ve found him, we’ve found Curt.”

“Sure,” I said. “Didn’t you know we would?”

I set the plane down near the black river. We saw the man standing beside the smudge fire. He was alone. Celia and I got out of the ’copter and went toward him.

He wasn’t dirty, ragged or bearded — his face wasn’t swollen with mosquito poisoning — the way it should be with a man lost in the Everglades. He’d built himself a hut of a parachute, sheltered by rude ribs made of pine limbs. I looked around. There was no sign of the plane.

I congratulated him under my breath. He was a smart guy, all right. He had survived. He had been ready. He’d had a parachute. What had happened to the plane — or what had been made to happen to it — I’d never know. Neither would anyone else. Sixty feet under, in the Gulf, no doubt.

“Well, baby,” he was saying to Celia, “I see you finally made it.” His voice was angry.

She snarled back at him. “I came as soon as I — could.”

“Well thanks.” His gaze raked me and his mouth twisted. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

She said, “I had to wait for the air forces to call off the search. I had to get a pilot.”

His brow tilted. “Yes, I see you got a nice young one. Another in your long list? Is this what delayed you until the last day, Celia?”

“We did the best we could, Curt.” Her breath was sharp. “Did you have sense enough to save the money along with yourself?”

Carmic laughed. “Well, your grief hasn’t changed you, pet. You’ve still got to have money, haven’t you?” He glanced at me. “My wife has some kind of complex — maybe it’s an allergy — she can’t stand poverty. She was born in it and she scratched her way out. God help anybody who stands in her way. My dear little wife. Never wanted anything but old money and new men.”

Celia said, “Your exile didn’t improve your disposition.”

“Nothing will improve my disposition except a long rest in Rio.”

She shrugged. “Where is the money? I’m ready to get out of here.”

Carmic laughed, reached up inside his parachute hut. He pulled down a bulging brief case. I didn’t have to see inside. I knew what was there — what Celia had been looking for — all the cash and negotiable securities he’d managed to get his hands on — his profits from Carmic Detectives.

“Well, baby, it’s finally working. Just the way we planned. I wish you hadn’t brought a ’copter. I’m not sure I can handle it.”

I went cold. The nightmare was complete, I saw all they’d planned. Carmic disappeared, destroyed his plane. Celia searched for him and was lost in the search. That must be Handsome’s part in this — to make sure the authorities wrote her off as well as her husband. Then much later two very rich people would turn up in Rio — and live happily ever after. I wasn’t sure where that left Handsome, how much he was getting out of this.

But I saw where that left me. The river looked cold and black. I wouldn’t be lonely — the alligators would keep me company. What was murder when Carmic faced prison and his wife faced poverty? It had been a well-planned if desperate gamble — but the odds hadn’t been as long as they seemed.

Carmic pawed in the brief case. I saw the gleam of green bills, the black of an automatic. He said, “We’ll take care of your boyfriend and then we’ll get out of here.”

“Curt.” Celia’s voice was deadly.

We both faced her, moving in slow motion.

“Curt,” she said again. “You’re not going anywhere. You were lost in a plane crash. Remember? We couldn’t find you. I’m sorry, Curt. But I’m not sure I’d like Rio. Why should I run? I can go back to Washington — the rich widow of a martyred hero.”

We both stared at the .25 automatic she’d taken from her shirt. A woman’s weapon. She’d had it all the time. She’d saved it for this.

Curt’s mouth dropped. His eyes widened, hurt and sick. Maybe no man can ever believe the woman he trusts will cross him. It was like that with Carmic. He stared at the gun in her hand and still didn’t believe it. He looked in her eyes and saw it all there, and still doubted it. It was clear enough. She wasn’t going to run the rest of her life. She didn’t have to run. She could have his money and a life even better than she’d ever had. In her eyes he saw that had been her secret plan all along, no matter what lies she’d told him.

“You think you’ll have her?” he said to me. “You think you’ll be different than the hotel clerks and the band leader and football heroes on Saturday night—” he was almost crying, the poor dope. “But you won’t be different — they’ve got to be new. They’ve—”

The little gun in Celia’s hand made a popping sound in the silence. It popped again. She didn’t miss. He was too big a target and she was too close.

Curt stopped talking and he stopped breathing as he crumpled to the ground where he would stop living. I heeled around suddenly and grabbed Celia’s wrist. I twisted hard. She didn’t fight and she didn’t cry out. She folded a little at the knees, bit her lip. She dropped the gun. I picked it up, thrust it in my pocket.

She stared at me. “I had to kill him, Jim. Don’t you see? He was in the way. I love you and he was in the way. It’s all right. Everybody thought he was dead — and now he really is. There’s a quarter of a million dollars there, Jim. A quarter of a million! It’s all ours. He didn’t steal it — not all at once — nobody can ever claim it. He accumulated it, as steadily and as quickly as he could. There was some suspicion, but nothing they can prove. It’s ours, Jim! Didn’t you say you wanted money enough so you could afford me? We’ve got it now. We’ll be rich. Richer than any dream you every had.”

“You killed him. Murdered him.”

“You don’t know. How he has beaten me, insulted me, hurt and degraded me. He was a beast, Jim. He deserved to die.” She shook, her shoulders sagging and she looked as if she might fall. I steadied her.

Her arms went around me, her trembling mouth found mine. She was sobbing then and I felt her warmth, her animal-like warmth against me. “Let’s get home, Jim,” she cried softly. “Let’s get home.”

I couldn’t forget her husband’s body, but there was nothing I could do for him. Not now, not here.

Celia didn’t speak all the way back. She sat with the satchel of money between her feet.

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything more to say. That little .25 had said it all back there on the black and bottomless river in the unchartered glades, into which the ’gators would have pulled Curt Carmic by now.

I thought about the way I had wanted money enough so I could afford Celia, and there it was — the money and Celia. But would I have come back, would she have let me come back if she could have handled a ’copter? If I had taught her, would I be doing the dead man’s float beside her husband?

I set the plane down in the front yard. Handsome’s car was baking in the sun beside Celia’s Caddy.

I helped her out of the ’copter. I managed to hide what I felt. I tried to remember back to when she’d come here that first day. I couldn’t make it. I was cold. In the blazing sun, it was ten below.

We reached the steps. We went in. The door slammed behind us, hard. Handsome had a gun in his hand. I stared at him. Then at her. I got it. They had what they wanted now.

“Stay right where you are,” he said to me.

“Do I have a choice?” I asked him. “Now take it easy with that thing...”

Celia would be happy with him, him and Curt’s money. They could buy the world. I was all that stood between them and freedom with that quarter million.

Handsome nodded at the satchel in Celia’s hand. His mouth broke into a smile. “You found Curt.” It was a statement. He dampened his lips. “You got the money.”

Celia must have nodded. I wasn’t looking at her. I was watching him, and that gun.

He jerked his head toward the Caddy. “Get Norton’s gun, Ce. Take it and get into the car. I’ll follow in mine, as soon as I’ve taken care of Hayseed here.”

She didn’t look at me. She went around behind me. She held the satchel in one hand — that previous, bloody satchel. With her hand he felt my pockets for the guns, mine and the one she’d used on Curt.

I felt lighter without the guns, and helpless. I sweated, wishing I could sucker Handsome near enough to jump him. I’d give him odds, I’d let him have the first shot. Celia had not moved from behind me.

“All right, Celia,” he said. “Get away from him — get out to the car.”

“No. I’m sorry. We can’t get away with killing him. We’d have to run. Hide. Always. If you’d had the guts or brains to learn how to handle a ’copter, like I wanted, it might have been different. But no. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to run and have to hide forever.”

She stepped away from me. It sounded like a cannon. I swear I felt the burn of it, my ear drum felt as though it were bursting.

The surprise and horror in Handsome’s face were deeper even than Curt’s had been. All the hours he must have spent planning the way it would be... and now he, too, was in her way. She’d knocked him out of her life, because I’d stepped into it.

He looked as though somebody had hit him in the chest and left a dirty brown stain on his shirt. He rocked backward under the impact of the bullet but his knees buckled first and he toppled forward and fell slowly down to the floor.

I didn’t move. I stared at him, knowing he was dead. I didn’t have to touch him. His gun lay on the ground at my feet. I didn’t touch it either.

Celia’s voice seemed to be coming at me from across the widest everglades. I could hardly hear her.

“You’ll say you shot him, Jim. It’ll look better that way. He was prowling and you shot him. He really was prowling, wasn’t he? They won’t even hold you. Then we’ll meet, in Rio — anywhere. But we won’t have to stay, Jim. We can come back, live on the west coast or in the northwest. Anywhere, in fact. Jim, it’ll be like you wanted!”

Like I wanted. I’d told her I’d do anything to have her and she’d dealt me in. Her hand was double-murder and she was making me her partner. I heard her that first night saying You might be held to that. And soon.

I was hearing Curt Carmic asking if I thought I’d have her, if I thought I’d be different than all the other men she’d had. Old men and new money...

I was Number One on her hit parade now. I’d won the jackpot — the quarter million dollars and Celia — because I’d owned a ’copter, and was six-two and rugged and had fallen in love with her. But six months from now, a year? I felt Handsome looking up at me, sightlessly, and was sorry for him.

Who will be next, Celia? What man will you want tomorrow, next week, next year? How will I get it, Celia, when I’m the one who stands in your way?

She was staring at me, lips parted, breathing hard, reading my thoughts, the questions in my eyes. “You don’t love me,” she whispered softly. “You’re like the rest of them. Just talk. I killed for you — and you’re afraid of me. You’ll turn me in, won’t you? You’ll tell them. All this money — and you’d tell them.” Her voice rose, was almost a shriek.

I lunged as the gun came up in her hand. I grabbed her right wrist; the satchel flew out of her left hand. I twisted hard.

She fought at the trigger, and never fought me at all. Her arm went limp and I heard the gun blast between us, rocking the very earth. For a moment she quivered as though in a spasm and then she relaxed all over. I held her to keep her from falling. But it could do no good. She was falling away from me.

I let her down gently. She was no good, a killer. Mad, maybe, for all I knew. But all the same, my eyes blurred as I got into my car to go for the sheriff.

It was noon and the stocky detective with the swarthy face waited in the corridor of the City Hospital. He was a middle-aged man with heavily defined features. His coarse dark hair was salted with gray and a little string of sweat beads glistened on his forehead. His heavy shoulders drooped from fatigue. His eyes were large and dark and there was weary compassion in them as if they had looked upon the thousand faces of human life, neither with despair nor hope, but only with a patient acceptance. The whites of the eyes were filamented with bloody threads. He had not slept the night before. He had stayed on duty because the psychopathic killer the papers called The Butcher was loose again.

The detective’s name was Romano. He was a lieutenant of Homicide, Manhattan West.

A doctor in a white coat came out of a nearby hospital room and closed the door after him. He was accompanied by a nurse. The nurse was dark and young and pretty and Romano thought of his own daughter who was a student at Marymount College. Romano rose slowly from the hard chair in the corridor, sighing with exhaustion. His feet had begun to throb and ache. That was always the first sign that his body was rebelling against the demands he made of it. Soon his nervous stomach would start acting up and he’d feel the painful little twinges of rising blood pressure. He was getting old. He would have to take his pension soon. Years ago he would have been driven and sustained by excitement, when a big squeal was this close to the break. He felt nothing like that now. He was just dead-tired.

The man in the hospital room was the only living person who could identify The Butcher, who had murdered five women and dismembered their bodies in a manner horrible enough to justify the name the papers had awarded him.

Romano lumbered slowly toward the doctor, his big feet slapping heavily on the rubber linoleum of the floor.

“Has he come out of it, Doc?” Romano asked.

The doctor was a thin man with high cheekbones and a small mustache. His slim, white fingers toyed with the stethoscope that dangled around his neck.

“He’s out of coma, if that’s what you mean,” the doctor answered. “But he’s hardly rational. I would say he’s still suffering from shock. He has a heart condition, we’ve determined that. The experience he went through last night — well, it’s a wonder he’s alive under the circumstances. It might be better to wait awhile, Lieutenant.”

Romano said, “It’s pretty urgent, Doc. It’s about as urgent as it can get. Time may mean a lot.”

The doctor hesitated. The pretty nurse looked disapprovingly at Romano. She does look kind of like my daughter Ellie, Romano thought. She doesn’t like me. Maybe she hates me, even, because she thinks I’m callous, that I want to torture a poor, sick man.

The doctor said, “I suppose you can go in for a little while, if you insist. But try to be considerate. Don’t press him too much. You have to realize what he’s been through.”

Romano nodded. “I know,” he said.

It sounded false, perhaps. But he did know. That was the tough part about being a cop. You saw all the violence and sadness and suffering there was and unless you were made of rock it became a part of you and you understood it and shared it. You understood afresh each time you saw the wild anguish in a woman’s face, each time you looked into a man’s dazed eyes and saw his quivering lips.

The doctor drew aside, said, “Just a few minutes, then. A very few minutes, please.”

Romano opened the door and walked into the hospital room. He closed the door behind him.

The man on the bed stared wide-eyed at the ceiling. His name was Lester Ferguson. The Butcher had murdered his wife the night before. Ferguson had found her body on the floor of their bedroom when he returned from choir practice.

Romano stood quietly by the bed for moment. The man did not even look at him.

Romano said, “Do you remember me, Mr. Ferguson?”

With an obvious physical effort, Ferguson turned his head toward the detective. He said, “I–I’m not quite sure.”

“I’m a police officer, Mr. Ferguson. Lieutenant Romano, Homicide. I talked to you a moment last night at your house before you collapsed. You told me you saw his face. You said you could identify the man.”

Ferguson’s voice was a whisper. “The face,” he said.

Romano waited. Ferguson said nothing else. He was off in a world of his own again.

“You told me you saw the murderer’s face, Mr. Ferguson,” Romano persisted. “When I asked you if you could identify it, you answered, ‘Yes, yes, I will remember it forever.’ It was right after that you became ill. Can you describe the face to me, Mr. Ferguson? I hate to do this. I know what you’ve been through. But this man is an insane killer. Your wife was the fifth woman he has killed. The same sadist, the same psychopath committed all the murders, because his method was always the same. He’ll kill again, Mr. Ferguson, unless we find him first. And you’re the only person on earth who can identify him.”

Ferguson had drifted off again. Finally, he said, “The face.”

“Yes, sir,” said Romano eagerly. “The face you saw last night. The face at the window. Can you describe the face, Mr. Ferguson?”

Ferguson’s voice was husky. “It — it was the Face of Evil,” he said.

Romano sighed heavily and seated himself on the edge of a straight chair beside the bed.

“It was an evil face,” he prompted. “Can you tell me a little more, Mr. Ferguson? Was it a young face or an old one? Was it broad or thin? Were there any scars or other distinguishing marks, perhaps?”

Ferguson said, “You cannot describe the Face of Evil in such terms.”

Romano wiped the sweat beads from his face with the edge of his hand. Why were hospitals always such stuffy places? Sick people should have fresh air.

“Please try to help me, Mr. Ferguson,” he pleaded patiently. “We’ll have to have a little more than that to go on.”

“What did you say your name was?” Ferguson asked.

“Romano. Lieutenant Romano. I’m a detective assigned to investigate the murder of your wife.”

“Are you a religious man, Lieutenant?” Ferguson asked.

Romano winced. His wife Rosa and Father Riordan were always needling him about missing Mass. A cop’s hours were so unpredictable. A cop got so damned tired.

“I believe in God, Mr. Ferguson,” he said. “I’m a member of the church.”

“All religious men have looked upon the face of God,” Ferguson declared, his voice suddenly clear, animation coming into his dead-white face. “But how can you describe the face of God? You cannot describe the face of God as old or young or broad or thin or scarred or smooth.”

The effort seemed to have exhausted the man on the bed. He fell back on the pillow, breathing heavily. Romano waited. Finally he said, “It was a human face you saw last night, Mr. Ferguson. You said you saw it staring at you through the window. It was the face of the man who murdered your wife.”

Ferguson seemed exasperated at the detective’s obtuseness. “Who can say if the Face of Evil is a human face?” he asked. “I mean no blasphemy, but it is like the face of God, because it is so many things. It is the face of a wanton woman who waits in shadows. It is the face of a soldier who is killing his enemy. It is the face of a maniac who runs amok with a flaming torch. It is the broad, red face of a lecherous sot who mouths obscenities. And it is the pinched, white face of a narcotics addict. Does that answer you? The Face of Evil is all these things.”

Romano said, “Then it wasn’t the face of a person you saw last night. It wasn’t a real face, after all.”

Ferguson lurched upright in the bed. His voice rose to shrill hysteria and Romano glanced apprehensively toward the closed door. “Of course it was real! It was a murderer’s face. It was the face of the man who killed my wife!”

Romano sighed. He decided to try another tack. The doctor or the nurse would be in any second to tell him that his time was up.

“About the window, Mr. Ferguson,” he said, consulting scribbled notes. “Your apartment is on the first floor. There is a bedroom window that opens on the little garden. It is quite probable the murderer entered and left through the window. It was not locked. But you told us you stood in the bedroom doorway and saw the face in the window directly opposite you. You were mistaken there, weren’t you, Mr. Ferguson? There is no window directly opposite the doorway. The window is some fourteen feet to the right of the door. You would have to walk into the room, past your wife’s body, and turn to the right to see the window. You were a little confused on this point. Under the circumstances, that is understandable.”

“No! No!” Ferguson exclaimed. “I came home from the church. I was feeling ill. I have been having these little spells. It is my heart, they say. I sank down into a chair, exhausted. I tried to call my wife. I wanted the medicine in the bathroom cabinet. She did not answer. I must have dozed off, lost consciousness. When I came to, I called my wife again. She did not answer. I opened my bedroom door. Her body was there at my feet, with the knife beside it. I looked up and there was a window directly above my wife’s body, directly opposite the door, and the naked Face of Evil was staring at me through the window.”

Romano said, “I see.” The door was opening quietly. The nurse had come to summon him. He said, “Thank you, Mr. Ferguson. I hope I haven’t tired you. We’ll talk again when you are feeling better.”

Romano nodded politely to the nurse and left the room. He had learned never to hope too much when a break was in the making. Now he was not too disappointed. He had to work on the theory that Ferguson had actually seen a face, because that was the only possible lead to the madman who had butchered five women. When Ferguson’s mind cleared he might be able to describe the face in recognizable terms. He might be able to go over the mug shots of the hundreds of psychopaths in the I. D. room and pick out one and say, “That is the face.” Romano had to hold to that. The Butcher had killed five times in seven months. He would kill again if they failed to find him.

Romano returned to Manhattan West, the old precinct house on the edge of Hell’s Kitchen that was the clearing house for all the crimes of violence committed west of Fifth Avenue. He mounted a flight of worn stairs and entered the cubbyhole that served him as an office. A green-shaded bulb burned above the desk night and day, for no light came through the small window on an air-shaft. A large, young detective named Grierson, Romano’s assistant, lay sleeping on the cracked leather couch. Grierson was a detective first-grade, which meant he drew lieutenant’s pay, even though he did not have the permanent rank on the Department rolls. And he’s only been a cop for seven years, Romano thought. Grierson was the new type of cop. He had been graduated from City College and on his nights off he studied law at N. Y. U. Romano sank down in the creaking swivel chair and sighed heavily. He reached down and loosened the laces of his shoes. As he had expected, his nervous stomach was acting up. He took a small bottle of soda tablets from a drawer, shook out two. He poured water from a thermos jug on the desk and swallowed the tablets.

Grierson awakened and sat up on the couch, smoothing down his black hair with a big hand. He hadn’t been to bed either, since The Butcher’s latest kill had broken. Grierson yawned and said, “How is it?”

“My feet hurt,” Romano answered.

Grierson said, “Did Ferguson come to? Did he identify The Butcher?”

Romano covered his mouth with his hand and belched. He said, “Ferguson came to. I talked to him a few minutes. He says he saw a face that wasn’t human staring at him through a window that isn’t there.”

“One of those,” said Grierson.

“We’ve got to believe it,” Romano replied. He was trying to convince himself, not Grierson. “We’ve got to believe he saw The Butcher’s face. Later on he may remember and tell us something we can work on. He’s got a heart condition. He had a slight stroke when he got home last night, the medics say. When he came out of it and saw the body, his mind was fogged. He thinks the window was directly opposite the door. It isn’t. But he could have stepped around the body, turned right and seen the face there in the only window. We’ve got to keep on thinking he did.”

“The lab finished with the knife,” said Grierson. “It adds up to nothing. The fingerprints were only smudges.”

Romano nodded glumly. “Like usual,” he said. “I’ve been on the force since you were playing hopscotch. In all that time I’ve seen just one murder solved by fingerprints. The murderer was considerate. He left his prints in a pot of jeweler’s wax.”

Grierson said, “The poop on Ferguson is on your desk. Top folder. I looked it over. He’s a solid citizen. Nobody had a word to say against him. Manages a book store on lower Fifth Avenue that sells Bibles and religious stuff. He’s a pillar of the church. All his neighbors and his clergyman and the shopkeepers he deals with had a good word to say for him. He met his wife at his church. They’ve been married six years. No children.”

“That’s all?” Romano asked.

“Not quite,” said Grierson. “He was a student at a Divinity College when the war broke out. He wanted to be a minister. He could have been deferred from the draft, but he enlisted in a combat unit. He was an infantryman. He was with Clark’s Fifth Army all the way up The Boot. His record was good. Bronze Star decoration. Made staff sergeant. Was wounded slightly and got a Purple Heart. He was hospitalized a long time. It wasn’t the wound. He also suffered battle shock or combat fatigue or whatever it was they called it.”

“That means he’s a nut?” Romano asked. “It means he might see faces in windows that aren’t there?”

Grierson shrugged and yawned again. “Not unless a couple of million other guys who are walking the streets are nuts,” he answered. “There were at least that many cases of combat fatigue during the war, I understand. It’s a temporary breakdown of the nervous system, that’s all.”

“Thanks, Grierson,” Romano said. Sometimes he resented these new cops, the eager-beaver kind who had college degrees and studied law in night school. But they were useful. Romano hated to wade through long reports and Grierson knew it. Grierson could type with all ten fingers. He did most of the clerical poop that was part of a cop’s job. Romano hated to peck at the typewriter with two thick fingers. He always made mistakes. After doing it for more than twenty years, he made mistakes.

The lieutenant began to skim through the report on Ferguson. He didn’t read it carefully. He could depend on Grierson. Suddenly he paused and his thick eyebrows knit together.

“He was in that vet’s place right over on Staten Island,” he said.

Grierson said, “That’s right. Bay Heaven. It’s one of the biggest Army general hospitals in the country.”

“Get your hat,” Romano said. Romano was tying his shoe laces. “Why?” asked Grierson.

“We’re going over to Staten Island,” Romano answered. “There just might be some medic still around who remembers Ferguson.”

Grierson rose and stretched. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s a nice day for a ferry ride.”

They left the police car parked on the lower deck of the ferry and climbed up to the top. They stood by the rail, letting the wind whip their faces, watching the skyline of Manhattan recede into the distance. More than eight million people lived and worked and had their being in this immediate area, Romano thought. One of them was called The Butcher.

“I wish I had some easy job,” the lieutenant said aloud. “Like finding a needle in a haystack.”

It took nearly two hours of questioning and waiting and checking the files at the hospital before they found a doctor named Bowers. He was an elderly man with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. After he had glanced over the files he remembered Lester Ferguson among the thousands of patients who had been under his care during the last dozen years. He remembered him quite clearly.

“A most interesting case,” Bowers said. “His wound was comparatively trivial, a fragment of shell in the leg that required surgery, but did no permanent damage. He didn’t even limp as a result. But he was in shock for an incredible length of time. Weeks, months, even. Sometimes he would lapse into a catatonic state. He would lie there on his cot, his body rigid, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. And he would murmur something in a kind of awed and frightened whisper. ‘The face,’ he’d say, ‘the face.’ He’d murmur that over and over again.

“It was trauma, of course, some shocking experience that had been repressed and had made a lasting impression on him. We couldn’t bring out what it was or when it had occurred. It might have been in his childhood. It might have been anything and it might have happened at any time. I always say a thing like that is a splinter under the skin of the mind. You have to extract it somehow. We tried various techniques. None of them seemed to work. Finally, we hit on sodium pentothal, the stuff the newspapers call truth serum. I doubt we’d use it now we have the new relaxing drugs, but it did the trick. When he was under the influence of the drug we questioned him, and we finally brought it out, removed the splinter, you might say.

“He’d seen a face, or thought he’d seen one, staring at him through a broken window during street fighting while they were mopping up some little town in Italy. He thought it was the Face of Evil, as he called it. It must have been a pretty horrible experience for him. He was wounded right afterward, but the face stayed in his mind. Once we got him to tell us about it, we purged the thing and he was on his way to recovery.”

“You think he saw a real face in the window?” Romano asked. “Or was it just some sort of delusion?”

The doctor shrugged. “It’s hard to say,” he answered. “It could have been a real face. It could have been the face of some enemy sniper trapped there in a ruined building. The street was piled with dead and dying men, probably. Such faces aren’t very pretty. Whatever it was he saw, he thought it was the Face of Evil. He called it that. You have to understand that Ferguson was a very religious man. He’d been studying for the ministry when he went into the Army. Killing is a terrible experience for any man. That was especially true for a man like Ferguson. Most soldiers go through a war never knowing for sure that the shots they fire have killed an enemy. Ferguson knew for sure. Just a few days before he was wounded, a few days before he saw the face, he’d been decorated for wiping out an enemy strongpoint with a grenade. Five machine-gunners were killed by the grenade.”

“And when you brought it out, when you made him tell you about the face — this Face of Evil — he was cured?” Romano asked.

“From the clinical view, he was,” Bowers answered. “He came out of shock. The catatonic periods did not recur. We kept him around awhile for observation. He was perfectly normal when he was discharged.”

“Ferguson saw the face again last night,” Romano said flatly.

Bowers said, “I’m sorry. That is bad, of course, but it happens sometimes, years later. Usually it’s some shattering experience that brings it on.”

“It was a shattering experience,” Romano told the doctor. “Ferguson’s wife was killed by a murderer they call The Butcher.”

The Lieutenant rose and nodded to Grierson. He was ready to leave.

As the police car rolled off the ferry onto Manhattan Island, Grierson said, “It’s nearly five. Do we knock off now and catch some shuteye, or are we starting another tour of duty?”

“Drive to City Hospital,” Romano answered. “I want to try and talk to Ferguson again.”

Inside the hospital, Romano saw the same doctor he had spoken to that morning, the thin man with the high cheekbones and the small mustache.

“I’d like to talk to Ferguson again,” he said. “I won’t be but a little while.”

The doctor said, “Didn’t you get our message, Lieutenant?”

“What message?” Romano asked.

“We called your office and left word. Lester Ferguson died of a cerebral hemorrhage about an hour ago.”

Romano merely nodded, accepting it.

Grierson shook his head angrily. “So the only person who could tell us what The Butcher looked like died without identifying him,” the young detective said.

“Oh, he identified him,” Romano answered softly. “Come on, Grierson. I want to look in on Ferguson’s flat.”

The Fergusons had occupied the ground floor of a house of mellowed brick on a pleasant, tree-lined street in Greenwich Village. Romano got the key of Ferguson’s apartment from the superintendent. Daylight still showed through the windows, but the apartment was shadowy and Romano switched on lights.

He said, “Ferguson must have been sitting in that chair right there when he came back to consciousness after his stroke.” He crossed the room and sat down in a chintz-covered easy chair.

“He came to,” Romano continued. “He was confused. He probably wasn’t too sure where he was, even. He called to his wife, and she didn’t answer.”

Romano got to his feet. “The bedroom door was closed. Ferguson walked toward it.” Romano walked toward the bedroom door and opened it. He switched on another light, stood in the doorway.

“He looked down and saw his wife’s body on the floor, right inside the doorway. Then he looked up and saw the murderer’s face staring at him through a window.”

Romano drew aside, “Come over here, Grierson,” he said. “Stand here in the doorway.”

Grierson obeyed.

“Look straight ahead of you,” Romano said. “You see, Ferguson was right. There is a window.”

Grierson was a good cop and a conscientious one, but sometimes his mind did not work too fast. He turned to Romano, his face blank.

Romano said, “You want me to draw you a picture? Ferguson saw the face of the man who killed his wife in what he called a window, the thing that’s right in front of you. He called it The Face of Evil, but it was The Butcher’s face, the face of the psycho who killed five women in this neighborhood.”

Grierson didn’t see a window.

All he saw was his own face reflected in the mirror on the wall.

I finally caught up to her around eleven o’clock in a bar just off Windward Avenue. Windward Avenue is in Venice and Venice is not what you would call the high-rent district in the Los Angeles area.

A juke box was doling out the nasal complaints of a hillbilly songstress and most of the men at the bar looked like they worked with their hands. At the far end of the bar from the doorway, Angela Ladugo was sitting in front of what appeared to be a double martini.

The Ladugo name is a big one in this county, going way back to the Spanish land grants. Angela seemed to have inherited her looks from mama’s side of the family, which was mostly English.

I paused for a moment in the doorway and she looked up and her gaze met mine and I thought for a moment she smiled. But I could have been wrong; her face was stiff and her eyes were glazed.

The bartender, a big and ugly man, looked at me appraisingly and then his gaze shifted to Miss Ladugo and he frowned. A couple of the workingmen looked over at me and back at their glasses of beer.

There was an empty stool next to Angela; I headed toward it. The bartender watched me every step of the way and when I finally parked, he was standing at our end, studying me carefully.

I met his gaze blandly. “Bourbon and water.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

“New around here, are you?”

“Where’s here — Venice?”

“Right.”

Before I could answer, Angela said, “Don’t hit him yet, Bugsy. Maybe he’s a customer.”

I looked over at her, but she was looking straight ahead. I looked back at the bartender. “I’m not following the plot. Is this a private bar?”

He shook his head. “Are you a private cop?”

I nodded.

He nodded, too, toward the door. “Beat it.”

“Easy now,” I said. “I’m not just any private cop. You could phone Sergeant Nystrom over at the Venice Station. Do you know him?”

“I know him.”

“Ask him about me, about Joe Puma. He’ll give you a good word on me.”

“Beat it,” he said again.

Angela Ladugo sighed heavily. “Relax, Bugsy. Papa would only send another one. At least this one looks — washed.”

The big man looked between us and went over to get my whiskey. I brought out a package of cigarettes and offered her one.

“No, thank you,” she said in the deliberate, carefully enunciated speech of the civilized drunk on the brink of the pit.

“Do you come here for color, Miss Ladugo?” I asked quietly, casually.

She frowned and said distinctly, “No. For sanctuary.”

The bartender brought my bourbon and water. “That’ll be two bucks.”

He was beginning to annoy me. I said, “Kind of steep here, aren’t you?”

“I guess. Two bucks, cash.”

“Drink it yourself,” I told him. “Ready to go, Miss Ladugo?”

“No.” she said. “Bugsy, you’re being difficult. The man’s only doing his job.”

“What kind of men do that kind of job?” he asked contemptuously.

A silence. Briefly, I considered my professional decorum. And then I gave Bugsy my blankest stare and said evenly, “Maybe you’ve got some kind of local reputation as a tough guy, mister, but frankly I never heard of you. And I don’t like your insolence.”

The men along the bar were giving us their attention now. A bleached blonde in one of the booths started to giggle nervously. The juke box gave us Sixteen Tons.

Angela sighed again and said quietly, “I’m ready to go. I’ll see you later, Bugsy. I’ll be back.”

“Don’t go if you don’t want to,” he said.

She put a hand carefully on the bar and even more carefully slid off the stool. “Let’s go, Mr.—”

“Puma,” I supplied. “My arm, Miss Ladugo?”

“Thank you, no. I can manage.”

She was close enough for me to smell her perfume, for me to see that her transparently fair skin and fine hair were flawless. She couldn’t have been on the booze for long.

Outside, the night air was chilly and damp.

“Now, I’ll take your arm,” she said. “Where’s your car?”

“This way. About a block. Are you all right?”

A wino came lurching across the street, narrowly missed being hit by a passing car. From the bar behind us, came the shrill lament of another ridge-running canary.

“I’m all right,” Miss Ladugo said. “I’m — navigable.”

“You’re not going to be sick, are you?”

“Not if you don’t talk about it, I’m not. Where did Papa find you?”

“I was recommended by a mutual acquaintance. Would you like some coffee?”

“If we can go to a place that isn’t too clattery. Isn’t Bugsy wonderful? He’s so loyal.”

“Most merchants are loyal to good accounts, Miss Ladugo. Just another half block, now.”

She stopped walking. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not an alcoholic, Mr. — Panther, or whatever it is.”

“Puma,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sound condescending, but you must admit you’re very drunk.”

“Puma,” she said. “That’s a strange name. What kind of name is that?”

“Italian,” I told her. “Just a little bit, now, just a few steps.”

“You’re simpering, Mr. Puma. Don’t simper.”

I opened the door of my car on the curb side and helped her in. The flivver started with a cough and I swung in a U turn, heading for Santa Monica.

Nothing from her. In a few minutes I smelled tobacco and looked over to see her smoking. I asked, “Zuky’s joint all right?”

“I suppose.” A pause. “No. Take me home. I’ll send someone for my car.”

“Your car—” I said. “I didn’t think about that. I should have left mine and driven yours. I guess I live closer to Venice than you do.”

“In that case, why don’t we go to your house for a cup of coffee?”

“It isn’t a house; it’s an apartment, Miss Ladugo. And my landlord frowns on my bringing beautiful women there.”

“Am I beautiful?”

I thought she moved closer. “You know you are,” I said. “All beautiful women know it.”

Now, I felt her move closer. I said, “And you’re drunk and you don’t want to hate yourself in the morning. So why don’t you open that window on your side and get some cold, fresh air?”

A chuckle and her voice was husky. “You mustn’t give me a rejection complex.” Another pause. “You—”

“Quit it,” I shot back at her.

Her breathing was suddenly harsh. “You bastard. I’m Spanish, understand. Spanish and English. And the Spanish goes back to before this was even a state.”

“I know,” I said. “I just don’t like to be sworn at. Are you sure you don’t want to go to Zuky’s?”

Her voice was soft again. “I’ll go to Zuky’s. I–I didn’t mean what I said. I–In bars like Bugsy’s, a lady can pick up some — some unladylike attitudes.”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the attraction there? Bugsy?”

“It’s a friendly place,” she said slowly. “It’s warm and plain and nobody tries to be anything they aren’t.” She opened the window on her side and threw her cigarette out.

I said, “You try to be something you aren’t when you go there. Those aren’t your kind of people.”

“How do you know? What do you know about me?”

“I know you’re rich and those people weren’t. I can guess you’re educated and I’m sure they aren’t. Have any of them invited you to their homes?”

“Just the single ones,” she said. “Are you lecturing me, Mr. Puma?”

“I’ll quit it. It’s only that I hate to see — oh, I’m sorry.” I stopped for the light at Olympic, and looked over at her.

She was facing my way. “Go on. You hate to see what?”

“I hate to see quality degenerate.”

The chuckle again. “How naive. Are you confusing quality with wealth, Mr. Puma?”

“Maybe.” The light changed and I drove on toward Wilshire.

Two block this side of it, she asked, “Who recommended you to Dad?”

“Anthony Ellers, the attorney. I’ve done some work for him.”

She was silent until I pulled the car into the lot behind Zuky’s. Then she asked, “Don’t you ever drink, Mr. Puma?”

“Frequently. But I don’t have to.”

She sighed. “Oh God, a moralist! Tony Ellers certainly picks them.”

I smiled at her. “My credit rating’s good, too. How about a sandwich with your coffee? It all goes on the expense account.”

She studied me in the dimness of the car and then she smiled, too. “All right, all right. Get around here now and open the door for me like a gentleman.”

Zuky’s was filled with the wonderful smells of fine kosher food. From a booth on the mezzanine, Jean Hartley waved and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. I ignored him.

We took a booth near the counter. Almost all the seats at the counter were taken, as were most of the booths. I said, “This is a warm and plain and friendly place and the food is good. Why not here instead of Bugsy’s?”

Her gaze was candid. “You tell me.”

I shook my head. “Unless you have some compulsion to degrade yourself. Cheap bars are for people who can’t afford good bars. And all bars are for people who haven’t any really interesting places to go. With your kind of money, there must be a million places more fun that Bugsy’s.”

Her smile was cool. “Like?”

“Oh, Switzerland or Sun Valley or Bermuda or the Los Angeles Country Club.”

“I’ve been to all those places,” she said. “They’re no better.”

The waitress came and we ordered corned beef sandwiches and coffee.

Jean Hartley materialized and said, “Joe, Joe old boy, gee it’s great to see you.”

“It’s been nice seeing you, Jean,” I said. “So long.”

My welcome didn’t dim his smile. “Joe boy, you’re being difficult.”

“Go, Jean,” I said. “This isn’t the Palladium.”

He looked from me to Miss Ladugo and back to me. He shook his head. “I don’t blame you,” he said, and went away.

“Handsome man,” Angela said.

I shrugged.

“Tell me,” she asked, “are you really as square as you sound?”

I shrugged again.

“That man wanted to meet me, didn’t he? And he didn’t know I’m rich, either, did he?”

“He probably does,” I said. “He’s worked his way into better fields since he milked the lonely hearts club racket dry.”

“Oh? Is he what’s called a confidence man?”

“No. They work on different principles. Jean trades on people’s loneliness, on widows and spinsters, all the drab and gullible people who want to be told they’re interesting.”

Angela Ladugo smiled. “He seemed very charming. I suppose that’s one of his weapons.”

“I suppose. I never found him very charming.”

“You’re stuffy,” she said. “You’re—”

The waitress came with our orders and Angela stopped. The waitress went away, and I said, “I’m a private investigator. Decorum is part of what I sell.”

She looked around and back at me. “Are you sexless, too?”

“I’ve never been accused of it before. I’ve never taken advantage of a drunken woman, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m not drunk. I was, but I’m not now.”

“Eat,” I said. “Drink your coffee.”

There was no further dialogue of any importance. She ate all of her sandwich and drank two cups of coffee. And then I drove her back to Beverly Hills and up the long, winding driveway that kept the Ladugo mansion out of view from the lower class drivers on Sunset Boulevard.

A day’s work at my usual rates and it never occurred to me to be suspicious of the Buick four-door hardtop that seemed to have followed us from Santa Monica.

I billed Mr. Ladugo for mileage and the sandwiches and coffee and fifty dollars for my labor and got a check almost immediately. I had done what I was trained to do; the girl needed a psychiatrist more than a bodyguard.

I worked half a week on some hotel skips and a day on a character check on a rich girl’s suitor. Friday afternoon, Mr. Ladugo called me.

What kind of man, he wanted to know, was Jean Hartley?

“He’s never been convicted,” I said. “Is it facts you want, sir, or my opinion of the man?”

“Your opinion might be interesting, considering that you introduced him to my daughter.”

“I didn’t introduce him to your daughter, Mr. Ladugo. Whoever told you that, lied.”

“My daughter told me that. Could I have your version of how they happened to meet?”

I told him about Zuky’s and the short conversation I’d had with Jean Hartley. And I asked, “Do you happen to know what kind of car Mr. Hartley drives?”

“It’s red, I know that. Fairly big car. Why?”

I told him about the Buick that had followed us from Santa Monica. That had been a red car.

“I see,” he said, and there was a long silence. Finally, “Are you busy now?”

“I’ll be through with my present assignment at four o’clock. I’ll be free after that.” I was through right then, but I didn’t want the carriage trade to think I might possibly be hungry.

“I’d like you to keep an eye on her,” he said. “Have you enough help to do that around the clock?”

“I can arrange for it. Why don’t I just go to this Jean Hartley and lean on him a little?”

“Are you — qualified to do that?”

“Not legally,” I answered. “But physically, I am.”

“No,” he said, “nothing like that. I can’t — afford anything like that. Angela’s shopping now, but she should be home by five.”

I phoned Barney Allison and he wasn’t busy. I told him it would be the sleep watch for him; I could probably handle the rest of the day.

“It’s your client,” he said. “I figured to get the dirty end of the stick.”

“If you don’t need the business, Barney—”

“I do, I do.” he said. “Command me.”

Then I looked for Jean Hartley in the phone book, but he wasn’t in it. He undoubtedly had an unlisted number. I phoned Sam Heller of the bunko squad, but Sam had no recent address of Jean’s.

At four-thirty, I was parked on Sunset, about a block from the Ladugo driveway. At four-fifty, a Lincoln Continental turned in and it looked like Angela was behind the wheel.

I’d brought a couple sandwiches and a vacuum bottle of coffee; at six, I ate. At six-thirty, I was enjoying a cigarette and a disk jockey when a Beverly Hills prowl car pulled up behind my flivver.

The one who came around to my side of the car was young and healthy and looked pugnacious. He asked cheerfully if I was having car trouble.

I told him I wasn’t.

“Noticed you first almost two hours ago,” he went on. “You live in the neighborhood, do you?”

“About seven miles from here.” I pulled out the photostat of my license to show him.

He frowned and looked at the other cop, who was standing on the curb. “Private man.”

The other man said nothing nor did his expression change. It was a bored expression.

“Waiting for someone?” the younger one asked me.

I nodded. “If you’re worried about me, boys, you could go up to the house and talk to Mr. Ladugo. But don’t let his daughter see you. She’s the one I’m waiting for and Mr. Ladugo is paying me to wait.”

“Ladugo,” the young man said. “Oh, yes. Ladugo. Well, good luck, Mr. Puma.”

They went away.

Even in Beverly Hills, that name meant something. Puma, now, there was a name you had to look up, but not Ladugo. Why was that? I gave it some thought while I waited and decided it was because he was older, and therefore richer. But he wasn’t as old as my dad, and my dad had just finished paying the mortgage on a seven thousand dollar home. He’d been paying on it for twenty years. I must learn to save my money, cut down on cigarettes, or something. Or get into another line of work, like Jean Hartley.

At seven-thirty, the Continental came gliding out of the Ladugo driveway, making all the Cadillacs on Sunset look like 1927 Flints. I gave her a couple of blocks and followed in the Continental’s little sister.

There was a guilty knowledge gnawing at me. If we hadn’t gone to Zuky’s, she wouldn’t have met Jean Hartley. And I wouldn’t have been hired to follow her.

At a road leading off to the right, just beyond the UCLA campus, the Continental turned and began climbing into the hills. It was a private road, serving a quartette of estates, and I didn’t follow immediately. If it dead-ended up above, Angela and I would eventually come nose to nose.

I waited on Sunset for five minutes and then turned in the road. The houses were above the road and four mailboxes were set into a field-stone pillar at the first driveway. Atop the pillar were four names cut out of wrought iron and one of the names was Ladugo. Her trip seemed innocent enough; I drove out again to wait on Sunset.

It was dark, now, and the headlights of the heavy traffic heading toward town came barreling around the curve in a steady stream of light. My radio gave me the day’s news and some comments on the news and then a succession of platters.

A little before ten o’clock, the Continental came out on Sunset again and headed west. I gave it a three block lead.

It went through Santa Monica at a speed that invited arrest, but she was lucky, tonight. On Lincoln Avenue, she swung toward Venice.

Not back to Bugsy’s, I thought. Not back to that rendezvous of the literate and the witty, that charming salon of the sophisticated. A block from Windward, she parked. I was parking a half block behind that when she went through the doorway.

I got out and walked across the street before going down that way. When I came abreast of the bar, I could see her sitting next to a man whose back was to me. I walked down another half block and saw the red Buick four-door Riviera. The registration slip on the steering column informed me that this was the car of Jean Hartley. His address was there, too, and I copied it.

Then I went back to wait.

I didn’t have long. In about ten minutes, both of them came out of Bugsy’s. For a few moments, they talked and then separated and headed for their cars.

I followed Angela’s, though the Buick seemed to be going to the same place. Both of them turned right on Wilshire and headed back toward Westwood.

Westwood was the address on Jean Hartley’s steering column. And that’s where they finally stopped, in front of a sixteen unit apartment building of fieldstone and cerise stucco, built around a sixty foot swimming pool.

I waited until they had walked out of sight and then came back to the flood-lighted patio next to the pool. A list of the tenants was on a board here and one of the tenants was Hartley Associates.

Some associates he’d have. With numbers under their pictures. But who could guess that by looking at him? I went sniffing around until I found his door.

There was an el in the hallway at this point, undoubtedly formed by the fireplace in the apartment. It afforded me enough cover.

Hartley Associates. What could that mean? Phoney stock? I heard music and I heard laughter. The music was Chopin’s and the laughter was Angela’s. Even in the better California apartment houses, the walls are thin.

Some boys certainly do make out.

I heard a thud that sounded like a refrigerator door closing.

I wanted to smoke, but smoke would reveal me to others who might pass along the hall. Chopin changed to Debussy and I thought I heard the tinkle of ice in glasses. Light music, cool drinks and a dark night — while I stood in the hall, hating them both.

Time dragged along on its belly.

And then, right after eleven o’clock, I though I heard a whimper. There had been silence for minutes and this whimper was of the complaining type. I was moving toward the door, where I could hear better, when I heard the scream.

I tried the knob and the door was locked. I stepped back and put a foot into the panel next to the knob and the door came open on the second kick.

Light from the hall poured into the dark apartment and I could see Angela Ladugo, up against a wall, the palms of her hands pressed against the wall, her staring eyes frightened.

She was wearing nothing but that almost translucent skin and her fair hair. I took one step into the room and found a light switch next to the door.

When the lights went on, I could see Hartley sitting on a davenport near the fireplace and I headed his way. I never got there.

As unconsciousness poured into my reverberating skull, I remembered that the sign downstairs had warned me he had associates.

I came to on the floor. Hartley sat on the davenport, smoking. There was no sign of Angela Ladugo or anyone else.

I asked, “Where is she?”

“Miss Ladugo? She’s gone home. Why?”

“Why? She screamed, didn’t she? What the hell were you doing to her?”

He frowned. “I didn’t hear any scream. Are you sure it was in this apartment?”

“You know it was. Who hit me?”

Hartley pointed at an ottoman. “Nobody hit you. You stumbled over that.”

I put a hand on the floor and got slowly to my feet. The pain in my skull seemed to pulse with my heartbeat.

Hartley said, “I haven’t called the police — yet. I thought perhaps you had a reason for breaking into my apartment.”

“Call ’em,” I said. “Or I will.”

He pointed toward a hallway. “There’s the phone. You’re free to use it.”

I came over to stand in front of him. “Maybe I ought to work you over first. They might be easier on you than I’d be.”

He looked at me without fear. “Suit yourself. That would add assault to the rap.”

I had nothing and he knew it. I wasn’t about to throw the important name of Angela Ladugo to a scandal-hungry press. I was being paid to protect her, not publicize her. I studied him for seconds, while reason fought the rage in me.

Finally, I asked, “What’s the racket this time, Jean?”

He smiled. “Don’t be that way, Joe. So the girl likes me. That’s a crime? She was a little high and noisy, but you can bet she’s been that way before. Did she hang around? If she’d been in trouble, wouldn’t she have stayed around to see that you were all right?”

“How do I know what happened to her?” I asked.

He looked at his watch. “She should be phoning any minute, from home. I’ll let you talk to her if you want.”

I sat down on the davenport. “I’ll wait.”

He leaned back and studied the end of his cigarette. “What were you doing out there, Joe? Are you working for her father?”

“No. I felt responsible for her meeting you. I’m working for myself.”

He smiled. “I’ll bet. I can just see Joe Puma making this big noble gesture. Don’t kid me.”

I said slowly, “This isn’t the right town to buck anyone named Ladugo, Jean. He could really railroad you.”

“Maybe. I can’t help it if the girl likes me.”

“That girl’s sick,” I said. “She has some compulsion to debase herself. Is that the soft spot you’re working?”

“She likes me,” he said for the third time. “Does there have to be a dollar in it? She’s a beautiful girl.”

“For you,” I said, “there has to be a dollar in it. And I intend to see you don’t ever latch onto it. I’ve got friends in the Department, Jean.”

He sighed. “And all I’ve got is the love of this poor woman.”

The phone rang, and he went over to it. I came right along.

He said, “Hello,” and handed me the phone.

I heard Angela say, “Jean? Is everything all right? There won’t be any trouble, will there?”

“None,” I said. “Are you home?”

“I’m home. Jean — is that you—?”

I gave him the phone and went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The lump on the back of my head was sore, but the rattles were diminishing in my brain.

If she was home, she was now under the eye of Barney Allison. I could use some rest.

I went out without saying any more to Jean, but I didn’t go right home. I drove back to Venice.

The big man behind the bar greeted me with a frown when I came in. I said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

“It’s not mutual.”

“I’d like to talk about Angela Ladugo. I’m being paid to see that she doesn’t get into trouble.”

He looked down at the bar to where a man was nursing a beer. He looked back at me. “Keep your voice low. I don’t want any of these slobs to know her name.”

I nodded. “The man who met her here tonight can do her more harm than any of your customers are likely to. His name is Jean Hartley. Have you ever heard of him?”

“I’ve heard of him.” His eyes were bleak.

I said, “I’ll have a beer if it’s less than two dollars.”

He drew one from the tap. “On the house. What’s Hartley’s pitch?”

“I don’t know. What’s your attraction, Bugsy?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “I knew her mother. Way, way back, when we were both punks. I was just a preliminary boy and her mother danced at the Blue Garter. I guess you’re too young to remember the Blue Garter.”

“Burlesque?”

“Something like that. A cafe. But Angela Walker was no tramp — don’t get that idea. Her folks back in England were solid middle-class people.”

“I see. And that’s where Ladugo met her, at the Blue Garter?

“I don’t know. She was dancing there when she met him.”

“And you kept up the acquaintanceship through the years?”

He colored slightly. “No. Not that she was a snob. But Venice is a hell of a long ways from Beverly Hills.”

“She’s dead now?”

“Almost three years.”

“And Angela has renewed the friendship. Her mother must have talked about you.”

“I guess she did. What’s it to you, Mac?”

“Nothing, I guess. I’m just looking for a pattern.”

“We don’t sell ’em, here. I thought you were watching the girl.”

“She’s home,” I said. “Another man will watch her until I go back to work in the morning. This is pretty good beer.”

“For twenty cents, you can have another one.”

I put two dimes on the counter, and said, “Hartley scares me. He’s tricky and handsome and completely unscrupulous.”

He put a fresh glass of beer in front of me. “I wouldn’t call him handsome.”

“Angela did. She went up to his apartment tonight. I broke in and somebody clobbered me. When I came to, she was gone. But she phoned him from home while I was still there.”

Bugsy looked at me evenly. “Maybe the old man should have hired somebody who knew his business.”

“You might have a point there. I’ll go when I finish the beer.”

He went down to serve the man at the other end of the bar. He came back to say, “I always mixed Angela’s drinks real, real weak. She’s got no tolerance for alcohol.”

I said nothing, nursing the beer.

Bugsy said, “Can’t you muscle this Hartley a little? He didn’t look like much to me.”

“He’s a citizen,” I said, “just like you. And the Department is full of boys who hate private operatives, just like you do.”

“Maybe I resented the old man sending you down here to drag her home. Some of the joints she’s been in, this could be a church.”

“He didn’t send me down here. I wound up here because she did. I don’t think he knows where she goes.”

Bugsy drew himself a small beer. He looked at it as he said, “And maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he just hired you to keep the Ladugo name out of the papers.”

“That could be,” I said, and finished my beer. “Good night, Bugsy.”

He nodded.

At home, I took a warm shower and set the alarm for seven o’clock. I wanted to write my reports of the two days before going over to relieve Barney.

I’d finished them by eight, and a little before nine, I drove up in front of the Ladugo driveway. There was no sign of Barney Allison.

He wouldn’t desert a post; I figured Angela must have already left the house. I drove to the office. If Barney had a chance to leave a message, he would have left it with my phone-answering service.

Barney’s Chev was parked about four doors from the entrance to my office. Angela wasn’t in sight; I went over to the Chev.

Barney said, “She went through that doorway about fifteen minutes ago. Maybe she’s waiting for you.”

“Maybe. Okay, Barney, I’ll take it from here.”

He yawned and nodded and drove away.

Angela Ladugo was waiting in the first floor lobby, sitting on a rattan love seat. Her gaze didn’t quite meet mine as I walked over.

When I was standing in front of her, she looked at the floor. Her voice was very low, “What — happened last night?”

“You tell me. Do you want to go up to the office?”

She shook her head. “It’s quiet enough here.” She looked up. “I — can’t drink very well. You might think that’s absurd, but it’s — I mean, I really don’t know what happened last night. I wasn’t really — conscious.”

“Didn’t you drive home?”

She shook her head. “I’m almost sure I didn’t. I think someone drove me home in my car. Was it Jean?”

“You don’t need to lie to me, Miss Ladugo,” I said gently. “I’m on your side.”

“I’m not lying.”

I said, “You phoned Hartley when you got home. You didn’t sound drunk to me then. You just sounded scared.”

Her eyes were blank. “You were there?”

“That’s right. You’re not going to see Hartley again, are you?”

She shook her head. “Of course not. Are you — still going to follow me?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

She took a deep breath that sounded like relief. “I don’t know. Are you going to tell my dad about — last night?”

“Most of it is in the report I wrote. Most of it. I’m not sure where the line of ethics would be. It isn’t my intention to shock your father or — hurt you.”

She looked at the floor again. “Thank you.”

The downcast eyes bit was right out of the Brontes; I hoped she didn’t think I was falling for her delicate lady routine.

She looked up with a smile. “As long as you’re going to be following me, why don’t we go together?” Charm she had, even though I knew it was premeditated.

“Fine,” I said. “It’ll save gas.”

We went to some shops I had never seen before — on the inside, that is. Like her poorer sisters, she shopped without buying. We went to Roland’s for lunch.

There, under the impulse of a martini, I asked her, “Were you and your mother closer than you are with your father?”

She nodded, her eyes searching my face.

“You don’t — resent your father?”

“I love him. Can’t we talk about something else?”

We tried. We discussed some movies we’d both seen and one book we’d both read. Her thoughts were banal; her opinions adolescent. We ran out of words, with the arrival of the coffee.

Then, as we finished, she said, “Why don’t we go home and talk to my father? I’m sure I don’t need to be watched anymore.”

“Might look bad for me,” I said. “So far as he knows, you’re not aware I’m following you.”

Some of her geniality was gone. “I’ll phone him.”

Which she did, right there at the table. And after a few moments of sweet talk, she handed the phone to me.

Her father said, “Pretend I’m taking you off the job. But keep an eye on her.”

“All right, sir,” I said, and handed the phone back to her.

When she’d finished talking, she smiled at me. “You can put the check on the expense account, I’m sure. Good luck, Mr. Puma.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We both rose and then she paused, to suddenly stare at me. “I haven’t annoyed you, have I? I mean, that report about last night — this doesn’t mean you’ll — make it more complete?”

I shook my head. “And I hope you won’t betray your father’s trust.”

The smile came back. “Of course I won’t.”

I asked, “How do I get back to my car?”

“You can get a cab, I’m sure,” she said. “I’d drop you, but I have so much more shopping to do.”

She had me. I couldn’t follow her in a cab and I couldn’t admit I was going to follow her. I nodded good-bye to her and signaled for the check.

I got a cab in five minutes and was back to my car in ten more. And, on a hunch, I drove right over to Westwood.

I came up Hartley’s street just as the Continental disappeared around the corner. A truck came backing out of a driveway, and, by the time I got started again, she must have made another turn. Because the big black car was nowhere in sight.

I drove back to Hartley’s apartment building. There was an off chance he was home and she had arranged to meet him somewhere. I parked in front.

Ten minutes of waiting, and I went up to his door. I could hear a record player giving out with Brahms. I rang the bell. No answer. I knocked. No answer.

The music stopped and in a few seconds started over again. Hartley could be asleep or out, or maybe he liked the record. I tried the door; it was locked.

Was there another door? Not in the hallway, but perhaps there was one opening on the balconies overlooking the pool.

I found that there was a small sun-deck right off Hartley’s door. The door was locked but I could see into his living room through a window opening onto the sun-deck. I could see Hartley.

He was on the floor, his face and forehead covered with dark blood. I didn’t know if he was dead, but he wasn’t moving.

I went along the balcony to the first neighbor’s door and rang the bell. A Negro woman in a maid’s uniform opened it and I told her, “The tenant in Apartment 22 has been seriously hurt. Would you phone the police and tell them to bring a doctor along? It’s Mr. Hartley and he’s on the floor in his living room. They’ll have to break in, unless the manager’s around.”

“I’ll phone the manager, too,” she said.

I went to the nearest pay phone and called Mr. Ladugo. He wasn’t home. I phoned Barney Allison and told him what had happened.

“And you didn’t wait for the police to arrive? You’re in trouble, Joe.”

“Maybe. What I want you to do is keep phoning Mr. Ladugo. When you get him, tell him what happened. And tell him his daughter was just leaving the place as I drove up.”

“Man, we could both lose our licenses.”

“You couldn’t. Do as I say now.”

“All right. But I’m not identifying myself. And when the law nabs you, you’d better not tell them you told me about this.”

“I won’t. Get going, man!”

From there, I drove to Santa Monica, to one of the modest sections of that snug, smug suburb where one of my older lady friends lived. She was well past seventy, and retired. But for forty years, she had handled the society page for Los Angeles’ biggest newspaper.

She was out in front, pruning her roses. She smiled at me. “Hello, stranger. If it’s money you want, I’m broke. If it’s a drink, you know where the liquor is.”

“Just information, Frances,” I said. “I want to know all you know about the Ladugos.”

“A fascinating story,” she said. “Come on in; I’ll have a drink with you.”

She told me what she knew plus the gossip.

Then I said, “Because Ladugo’s wife was messing around with this other man, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Ladugo wasn’t the child’s father. She and the other man could have been enjoying a perfectly platonic friendship.”

“They might have been. But I don’t think so. And neither did any of their friends at that time. I mean her good friends, not the catty ones. They were frankly scandalized by her behavior.”

“All right,” I said. “Your gossip has usually proven more accurate than some supposedly factual stories. May I use your phone?”

She nodded.

I phoned Barney Allison and he told me I could reach Mr. Ladugo at home. I phoned Mr. Ladugo.

He said, “My daughter’s here now, Mr. Puma. She tells me that she never went into Mr. Hartley’s apartment. She stayed there quite awhile, ringing his bell, because she could hear music inside and she thought he must be home.”

“She told me this morning,” I said, “that she was never going to see him again. She could be lying now, too.”

A pause. “I — don’t think she is. She’s very frightened.” Another pause. “How about Hartley? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. Did Hartley try to blackmail you, Mr. Ladugo?”

“Blackmail me? Why? How?”

“Let me talk to Miss Ladugo, please,” I said.

His voice was harsh. “Is something going on I don’t know about?”

“Could be. But I don’t know about it either. Could I speak with Miss Ladugo?”

Another pause and then, “Just a moment.”

The soft and humble voice of Angela Ladugo, “What is it you want, Mr. Puma?”

“The truth, if it’s in you. Was Hartley blackmailing you? What was it, pictures?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Puma.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m supposed to be working for your father. But I’m not going to lose my license over a job. I’m going to the police now.”

Silence for a few seconds, and then, “That would be stupid. That would be extremely poor business. Wait, here’s Father.”

After an interval Mr. Ladugo got on the wire. His voice was almost a whisper. “Will you come over here, first, Mr. Puma? And would you bring your reports along?”

“I’ll be there in less than an hour,” I said.

As I hung up, Frances said, “Scandal, eh? And do I get let in on it? No, no. I tell you all and you tell me nothing.”

“Honey,” I said, “you’re a reporter. Telling all is your business. But privacy is what I sell.”

“I’m not a reporter any more, Wop. I’m a lonely old woman looking for gossip to warm my heart over. Don’t hurry back, you slob.”

“I love you, Frances,” I said. “I love you all the ways there are. And I’ll be back with the gossip.”

I didn’t stop for the reports. I went over to the office for that purpose, but I saw the Department car in front and kept going. Sergeant Sam Heller would remember that I was asking about Jean Hartley the other day and that’s why the law was waiting in front of my office. This would indicate that Hartley was either dead or unconscious, or the law would be parked somewhere else.

In the Ladugo home, Papa was waiting for me with Angela in his library. He sat in a leather chair behind his desk; Angela stood near the sliding glass doors that led to the pool and patio.

I said, “I couldn’t get the reports. The police were waiting for me at my office, so I keep moving.”

He nodded. “Somebody must have recognized you.”

“I guess.”

He looked at his daughter’s back and again at me. “Why did you mention blackmail?”

“You tell me,” I said. “Has it happened before?”

He colored. Angela turned. Her voice was ice. “What kind of remark was that, Mr. Puma?”

I looked at her coolly. “Blackmail could be a good way to milk your dad. Especially, if you worked with Hartley.”

“And why should I cheat my own father? I’m his only child, Mr. Puma.”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “you get everything you want — except money. I don’t know, of course, but that’s one thought.”

Ladugo said, “Aren’t you being insolent, Mr. Puma?”

“I guess I am,” I said. “Your daughter brings out the worst in me, sir.” I took a deep breath and looked at him quietly.

He was rolling a pencil on this desk with the flat of his hand. “When you finally talk to the police, it wouldn’t be necessary to tell them why you were at Hartley’s apartment, would it.”

“I’m afraid it would. If he’s dead, I’m sure it would.”

He continued to roll the pencil and now he was looking at it, absorbed in the wonder of his moving hand. “You’d have to tell them the truth? I mean, there could be other reasons why you were over there, couldn’t there?”

I smiled. “For how much?”

He looked up hopefully. “For — a thousand dollars?”

I shook my head. “Not even for a million.”

He was beet red and there was hate in his eyes. “Then why did you mention money?”

“Because I wanted you to come right out with a bribe offer. I don’t like pussy-footing.”

I looked over at his daughter and thought I saw a smile on that sly face. I looked back at Mr. Ladugo and was ashamed of myself. He was thoroughly humiliated. His hands were on top of the desk now and he was staring at them.

I said, “I’m sorry. Now that the damage is done, I’m sorry. But there has been such a mess of deception in this business, I was getting sick. Believe me, Mr. Ladugo, if I’m not forced to mention your name, I won’t. Tell me honestly, though, have you been blackmailed before?”

He looked at his daughter and back at the desk. He nodded.

Rudy Ferris didn’t have any trouble smashing my door open because he’s a real big guy. He stood facing me, his black automatic pointed straight at my throat.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened. Ella had told him — everything. That little fool!

I spread my hands helplessly. “Now, look, Rudy. Let me—”

“Shut up, Chuck!” The guy’s massive chest was heaving like a ground swell. “I don’t want no talk. That’s all we got since you blew in.”

I shut up. Nothing I could say would wipe his brain clean. He was too far gone. Mad. Killing mad. So I shut up and watched his small eyes as they snapped to both sides of my room and then back to me. “You alone here?”

I nodded, wishing I wasn’t. Rudy closed the door, its lock dangling, as if a closed door would muffle the blast of that cannon he held. That door was the only way out, unless I chose to leap out the window, which was two stories up, and kill myself that way.

Maybe I had it coming. In Rudy’s eyes I guess I was a heel. But the big, overgrown jerk was stone blind and had been ever since Ella had decided he was her boyfriend, long before I had shown up in Leadsville. Otherwise he’d have known she was the type who got a charge out of anybody who could put some kicks into her miserable life.

Ella Barnes was fresh out of a haystack, like all the dames in Leadsville. But with her there was a difference. There was a restlessness in her that kept her on edge every minute, a restlessness that kept her dissatisfied with herself even though she’d snared the biggest, best-looking hayseed in town.

And there was something else about Ella. I found this out during the night I spent with her in her old man’s barn.

We were in the loft. Her eyes lit up as she said, “Chuck, I’d like to stir up this town before I leave. I mean really stir it up. I’m so sick and tired and bored with everything in it that I’d like to give them a jolt they’d never get over.”

Those were approximately her words. I’d only half listened. I’d already had what I’d come for so I wasn’t much interested in her babbling. But now her words were coming back to me, or at least the gist of what she had been trying to say.

But I couldn’t dwell on it. Rudy Ferris was coming forward, the .45 steady in his hand. “I’m gonna blast your brains out,” he was saying. “You got it comin’ to you.”

He was so close I could smell the stench of his sweating body and the cheap whiskey on his breath.

I swallowed hard. “Ella tell you about it?” It was a stupid question, but I had to say something for a stall.

“I saw you an’ her sneakin’ outa the barn. After you left, I grabbed Ella an’ made her tell me what you did.”

He raised his gun to my head.

“Hold it, Rudy!” My voice was scratchy and cracked, because I was scared. My only defense was to keep talking. “Let me have my say, Rudy. What harm can it do? I can’t get out of here, can I? Just let me tell you...”

He brought the gun up close to my temple and clicked off the safety.

“All right, Rudy. Go ahead and shoot!” I was practically screaming at him. “I wasn’t Ella’s first. She’s already pregnant by somebody else.”

The words had flowed smoothly out of my mouth. It was all a big lie. But I had to shock him with something. For the time being, it appeared to have done the trick.

I’d stunned him. His gun hand relaxed a little. I kept talking so he wouldn’t have a chance to think about me. “Ella played you for a fool, Rudy. Can’t you see that? All she wants is kicks. She told me so. She told me she was bored stiff with everybody in this dead town, including you.”

All the things Ella had told me up in the hay loft were coming out now. I kept talking because I didn’t want to stop and give him a chance to do his own thinking. He was listening all right. And that was what I wanted. His mouth hung open goonishly now and his gun hand was down at his side.

“I didn’t force Ella to do anything she didn’t want to do. Lord knows how many others she’s had. She’s sick, Rudy. Sick for the want of thrills. She’d do anything to stir up a rumpus.”

A real out was hitting me now. It made me a little sick to think of it, but it was all I had. After all, it was my life that depended on it.

“That’s why she told you about what happened in the barn. She knew you’d come here to kill me. And after you’re finished with me she’ll tell you about the other guy, the one who made her pregnant.”

Sweat rolled down my face and some of it went into my mouth. Rudy’s head was swaying with disbelief, but my words were reaching him, digging into him cruelly.

“Want to know something else, Rudy? I’ll bet you anything that Ella is outside right now waiting to see what happens.”

I backed toward the window. “Bet she’s out there, Rudy. Take a look! She’s waiting for you to kill me, then the other guy. You know why? So all the dames in this burg will look at her as the gal Rudy Ferris knocked off two guys for. She’ll have what she wants. Recognition. Excitement. Plenty of it. And the other hayseeders around here will think she really has something because two men died for her. So they’ll make love to her, Rudy, while you’re sweating your brains out waiting for your turn in the electric chair.”

“No! It ain’t like that! You’re just trying to lie your way out of a bullet.”

“I am not. All you have to do is look outside. Go ahead, Rudy. Put the lights out and take a look.”

He motioned to me with his gun. “Get over by the window. Stand there so I can see you.”

I did as I was told, feeling sick to my stomach because of what I was doing. Rudy snapped off the wall switch and moved toward the window. He pushed the curtain aside just a crack. I took a look myself, and let out a sigh of relief.

In the lighted doorway of a store across the street, a bare leg swung back and forth. It was a woman’s leg. Ella’s. She was sitting on a stool just inside the door.

“What’d I tell you, Rudy?” I whispered. “She’s waiting to hear your gun go off. She sent you on the errand and now she wants to see that you carry it out.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Pack your bag and get outa here!”

“Yeah, sure, Rudy.” It took me no more’n three minutes to shut my suitcase on a full load.

“So long, Rudy.”

He didn’t answer, nor turn his head away from the window. I squeezed hurriedly out of the door and then took the back stairs on the double down to the alley that circled the hotel. I wanted to get away from there, fast.

I was in the alley when I heard the shots. I counted six. I felt like throwing up. All the way to the bus station I kept trying to rid my brain of the promise I’d made Ella up in the loft. I’d promised to take her away from Leadsville that very night.

I told her to wait for me across the street from the hotel.

There must have been twenty cars in the drive when I got to the address in Malibu. I parked my Cad behind a new Lincoln convertible and walked to the front door of a two-story, hundred-thousand-dollar house as modern as now. A small fortune in rubber plants, ferns, bananas, hibiscus fronted the house and bordered the drive. From the sea’s edge fifty yards or so away I could hear the boom of surf, and the tangy bracing scent of the ocean was exhilarating in my nostrils.

This was a warm Sunday afternoon; Sheldon Scott, Investigations — my downtown L.A. office — was closed, and I was invited to a party. A Hawaiian party at that: luau, roast pig, the works. From behind the house somewhere I heard a happy squeal. A happy feminine squeal. Sounded like a good wild party. There was a lot of hellish yelling and whooping. At the top of six cement steps I found a buzzer on the right of the massive door, poked it as chimes went off to the tune of How Dry I Am.

I could hear somebody running toward the door. Sounded like somebody barefooted. “Oh, Johnny!” a gal yelled, “Here I come, Johnny!” There was the slap-slap of bare feet and then the door swung wide and a beautiful blonde babe holding a highball glass in her hand stood there framed in the doorway beaming at me.

She cried, “Where you been, Johnny?” and then she began staring at me curiously.

Well, that was nothing to what I was doing to her. Very softly, so softly that I am amazed she heard me, I said, “I’m not Johnny, I’m only Shell Scott, but don’t let that—”

Wham, the door slammed in my face. Feet went slap-slap back the way they’d come. What the hell, I leaned on the buzzer some more. Christ knew what I’d get next time. I was even thinking maybe I should yell, “Hey, Johnny’s here!” and stand back.

There weren’t any footsteps this time. The door opened and a guy about five feet, eight inches tall came outside and glared up at me. The guy was about thirty-five, wearing vivid swim trunks and carrying a highball glass. He was six inches shorter than I, but only about ten pounds under my 205. He was built like a .45 automatic, and he was loaded. “Johnny, huh?” he said thickly, then he dropped his highball glass onto the cement with a crash, and socked me on the chin with his right hand.

I was caught completely by surprise — to tell the truth, I’d been trying to peek around him and get another glimpse of that blonde — so I didn’t even have time to jerk my chin. He got me solidly and knocked me clear down those six steps onto the driveway. “The hell with you, Johnny,” he said.

The door slammed again. Behind him.

I started to get up, then changed my mind. Maybe it was time for a few cool thoughts. Everything was going around and around. That short guy packed a powerful punch, and though he hadn’t knocked me out, he’d made the afternoon a couple shades darker. I fumbled in my coat for cigarettes and my lighter, got a weed lit, and propped an elbow under me while I dragged smoke into my lungs.

The numbers above the massive door danced a little as I stared at them, but they were the right numbers. This was the right house. I shook my head and the ringing went away, everything stopped going around, settled down. It had been less than an hour ago that Dolly had phoned me from here and told me to fly out and bring my trunks, that there was one hell of a party going on. She had said, “Come on, Scotty boy, you come on out here ri’ now. Bes’ li’l ol’ party you ever did see. You got my pers’nal invitation.” And so on. Naturally I had dropped everything and headed for Malibu. She’d convinced me that I’d be welcome. Dolly had said she’d save me a drink and a kiss if I wanted them, and I wanted them. But maybe, I thought, Dolly had been out of her mind. Some welcome.

A girl’s voice near me said, “Boy! I thought I was drunk. Whoo. You better go home.”

“I just got here.” I glanced up and was surprised to find that the gal had walked clear up to within a foot of me. She was wearing a brief bathing suit and from this angle she didn’t look half bad. I decided that from any angle she wouldn’t look half bad. I couldn’t tell how tall she was, but she looked wonderful, and had long red hair and blue eyes.

“What are you doing down there on the ground?” she asked me.

“I’m resting, stupid.” I felt ugly.

She squatted on her heels and looked bleary-eyed at me. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Betty.”

“Hi, Betty. Your bikini has slipped.”

“Has not. That’s the way I wear it.”

She was a gorgeous babe, but obviously no great shakes for brains. I had another drag of my cigarette, then got to my feet, went up the steps and rang the bell. Nothing happened. I banged on the door and the babe standing down there in the driveway said, “Why’nt you turn the doorknob?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. Talk about stupid babes. I turned the doorknob. The door opened. I laughed sourly and went inside.

There was a hall, rooms opening off it, a couple of which I examined without getting a glimpse of that daredevil who had clipped me. A long hall led toward the rear of the house and out in back there I could hear the whooping and yelling.

I headed that way. Mainly I wanted to find the guy who had socked me, but I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit there was hope that I’d see the blonde babe again. And after the way she’d trotted to the front door, maybe there’d be a whole flock of wonderful and beautiful people gadding about out there in back. I quickened my pace, found a door and went through it.

There weren’t any beautiful people, but there were about a dozen guys and gals standing around drinking and yakking. Most of them had highballs and one had a bottle. This seemed to be only a fragment of the crowd apparently here, because I could hear a lot of noise and music coming from somewhere closer to the ocean. A path led through the trees and shrubbery toward the sounds, but I couldn’t see very far because the grounds were so lushly planted and overgrown.

In this small group here, however, one of the guys was the short, bad-tempered egg who had made the mistake of clobbering me. His back was to me. I walked up close to him, tapped him on the shoulder with my index finger, and when he turned I tapped him on the chin with my right fist. He got all loose and his eyes rolled a bit and he fell down.

Everybody stared at me. Several of the people seemed shocked, a few merely interested, but the only rise out of anybody was one guy’s remark, to nobody in particular: “Some party, huh?” They were all horribly drunk. Another guy, a tall, gangling fellow with sandy hair and a wire-stiff mustache stepped toward me. “Oh, I say,” he said mushily. “That was a rotten thing to do!”

He was British, and sounded as if he were gargling Schweppes Quinine Water. “That’s not quite the way to treat our host, what?” he said cheerfully.

“What?”

“Yes, what. What indeed.”

“Oh, shut up. I mean, what? He’s the host?”

“Yes, host, old man. Well, toodleoo.” He wandered off, down the shrub-lined pathway toward all the noise and commotion.

I looked at the guy on the ground. This might ruin the party for me, but I wasn’t sorry I’d clobbered him. A big ruby ring on his finger had left a lump on my chin larger than the ruby. Somebody behind me said, “Well, well.”

I turned. A gal had just stepped out of the same door I’d come through a few seconds ago. I recognized her. It was the blonde who’d been looking for Johnny. Saying she wore clothes would be, perhaps, an overstatement, since she was bare-foot and wore a red and black and green sarong that hugged her waist and hips the way I’d have liked to. The blonde hair was shoulder-length, her eyes were huge and brown, and she looked very good to me. Again.

She walked toward me smiling. She took hold of my arm, nodded at the guy on the ground and said, “Did you do that?”

“Yeah.”

“He had it coming to him.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

This had gone far enough. I turned her around, held both her arms gently and marched her back into the house. “Lady,” I said, “since I rang the bell here things have occurred with revolting rapidity. What’s going on here?”

It took her only about a minute to bring sanity into what had seemed madness. This was just one of the rather wild parties that L. Franklin Brevoort — now unconscious — held every weekend here at his Malibu home. He’d been tossing the parties for about a year, and this was a big one — authentic Hawaiian luau, complete with whole roast pig, poi, dancing girls, Hawaiian music.

She interrupted me, “I can’t stand him, though. Who can? Oh, you can’t blame L. Franklin — everybody calls him L. Franklin — considering that old mace he’s got for a wife.”

“That old what?”

“Mace. A kind of battle-ax. That’s what everybody calls her. She’s pretty gruesome. Anyway, L. Franklin’s about the loneliest man in Malibu—”

“Ha. You forget, I am in Malibu. And you forget, too, that I saw you in that doorway—”

“Anyway, when the bell rang I figured that was a good excuse to get away from L. Franklin. And I did think it was Johnny. My, I was surprised. Wonder where Johnny is?”

She went on to tell me that you had to be very careful not to let L. Franklin get you alone, because he was a regular old rip. “I’m surprised somebody hasn’t shot him,” she said, “the way he’s always going around reaching for everybody’s women. He’s sure a rip. Boy, was he mad when the bell rang and I took off.”

“I know. He came outside and knocked me down.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m going back to the party. You coming?”

I thought about it while she walked to the door. This seemed like a dandy party, and I hadn’t even seen Dolly yet, but I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome here after what had happened. Then Elaine turned and said, “You’re kind of nice, you know? I like you a lot already. Guess I surprised you when I opened the door.”

“Frankly, you hit me harder than L. Franklin did.”

She laughed. “I looked pretty good, huh?”

“Well... why, yes.”

Elaine grinned. “I’ll save you a dance,” she said, turned and left the house.

Well, if everybody here was crazy, this was no time for me to be sane. I was staying at this here party. If L. Franklin didn’t like it, I’d sock him again. I started after Elaine. Outside, somebody was pouring water on L. Franklin. Among other things Elaine had told me that the crux of the party was closer to the beach, about twenty or thirty yards back of the house. She was out of sight, so I headed toward the ocean, following the path. All you had to do was follow the noise. Mixed in with the whooping was music, Hawaiian music. In a minute I came out into a big clearing filled with plenty of movement.

About fifty people were flitting in and out among the trees and shrubs, many of them dancing. Four brown-skinned guys in sarongs were playing on stringed things and drums, and the place was a mass of color. A fifth brown-skinned guy was swinging a wicked-looking sword around and jumping over it while the other men played pulsating Hawaiian music that sounded as if it had a little mambo in it.

This place of Brevoort’s was practically a jungle, with all kinds of trees, including palms and eucalyptus, a dozen different kinds of shrubs and tropical plants surrounding the clearing. There were bananas, philodendron, elephant ears, more hibiscus and lilies and orchids, and plenty of ferns. There were a lot of potted plants standing around, and practically all of the guests were potted, too. Almost everybody here was wearing trunks or swimsuits, most of the gals in bikinis or similarly abbreviated jobs, and a man simply couldn’t have asked for a more interesting get-together.

On my right was a zoo-pound block of ice, its middle hollowed out and filled with a red punch, two white gardenias and a purple orchid floated on the liquor’s surface. Several halves of coconut shells rested on the ice and as I watched a redheaded tomato filled one of the coconut cups, drank the punch, and then let out a yip, shaking her head. It was Betty, the redheaded tomato I’d met in front of the house.

I walked up beside her, had a cup of the punch and almost let out a yip myself. It was so strong they probably had to change the flowers every fifteen minutes. Then I said, “Hi.”

She didn’t say anything, just smiled and wrapped her arms around me and we started dancing. Then she stopped. “You scratch,” she said, looking up at me. “Haven’t you got a suit?”

“Sure. In the car.”

“Get it. And hurry. We’ll have a dance, and a swim. I’m Betty.”

I went flying off down the path, changed in the car, and was back in two minutes. Betty, I was pleased to see, was waiting for me. We had a couple dances, and it was really much better without scratching. Then she said, “Come on,” and ran toward the beach. I followed her down the path and caught up with her at the sand’s edge.

On our right flames leaped from a pit dug in the sand. “What’s the bonfire for?” I asked Betty.

“That’s where they’ll cook the pig pretty quick,” she said. “Big luau. Really doing it right, huh? The pig’s for the big dinner later — along with poi and raw fish and I don’t know what all. Come on.” She raced into the water.

When we got back to the clearing, the music and dancing was getting even wilder. It was almost dark, and somebody grabbed Betty and whirled her away. I didn’t try to stop her; there were dozens more around, including the blonde Elaine, who was dancing at the moment. This was marvelous. Nothing was going to get me to leave this party. I went over to the punch bowl and had another drink as a woman older than most here, a gal about forty, came up beside me and dipped half a coconut into the punch, gulped the drink down, and then had another immediately after it. I shuddered. She weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, was maybe five-eight, and had a flat, rather unpleasant face.

She looked at me and said, “Dance with me. I’m Mrs. Brevoort. I’m the hostess, so you have to dance with me.”

She was soused to the eardrums. I said, “Sure,” and latched onto her. We took about four steps and she stopped. “I don’t want to dance,” she said. “Go wiggle with those naked women.”

I swung around eagerly, looking for the naked women, then realized she’d referred to the gals in bikinis. Mrs. Brevoort was dressed in skirt and blouse, and I guessed she’d been trying to have a good time, but not succeeding. It suddenly occurred to me, as I looked at all those lovely, startlingly shaped dolls gyrating near us, that this might well be the first dance Mrs. Brevoort had had — and she’d asked me for it.

I started to make small talk, so small it was almost invisible, but she waved her hand at me and said, “Go away. Go wiggle wi’ nake’ w’mn.” Her eyes were getting glassy. Those two fast punches must have been suddenly catching up with her. I left her at the hollowed-out cake of ice.

It was dark now, and the glow from the fire down on the beach was warm and red; a few Japanese lanterns had been lighted here in the clearing, and a half dozen Hawaiian torches were lighted. I wondered where L. Franklin, the host, was. But then I forgot about him; I was having too much fun to wonder about the host or hostess — it was a typical party. I never did see Dolly.

A couple hours, maybe more, passed in a kind of delightfully Hawaiian delirium. And it seemed that the music got more sensual, the dances wilder, the women lovelier. From somewhere came three gals in hula skirts and the music took on a headier beat and the three gals started shaking like maracas. Right in front of me I saw a beautiful blonde gal doing a hula, especially for me it appeared, and it was my blonde; it was Elaine.

“Well, hello,” I said.

She kept doing her unique hula, unique because it must have been the kind popular before the missionaries came, and she said, “Like?”

“Lovely, lovely.” The three gals in hula skirts were stirring up a storm, and somebody yelled that we were all to join in when the spirit moved us. One guy grabbed a little doll and they leaped into the middle of the clearing with the other three gals and started improvising. The music got wilder, more frantic and pulse-stirring. Another guy and gal started jumping around, and soon this seemed less like Malibu than a strip of Hawaiian beach of a hundred years ago.

More guys and gals got up and leaped around, and it seemed there were more bouncing, quivering, jiggling and jangling bodies than I’d ever before seen quivering practically in unison. There were squeals and yips and howls among the hulas, and with half the people here already gyrating — the spirit moved me.

I let out a whoop with a lot of vowels in it so it would sound Hawaiian, and I jumped into the middle of the people letting out oofs and uuffs and huuhs and similar Hawaiian-like sounds, while shaking all over like a plucked banjo string. Elaine came toward me at what seemed a hundred miles an hour, but making little forward progress. The drums kept thudding, throbbing, and suddenly there was nobody at all standing on the sidelines. The last guy, a tall Texan I’d met earlier, let out a “Yahoo” and came twirling around the edge of the crowd hanging onto the hand of a black-haired tomato who was throwing everything at him but the palm trees, while he continued to let out yips like he was calling all the little dogies in Texas. Elaine sort of rammed herself up against me so close that she might have grown there, and in a few moments we were on the edge of the crowd, next to the path leading to the beach.

She spun around and raced down the path away from me. I ran after her.

At the sand’s edge she stumbled and I almost caught her, but she regained her balance and ran toward the booming breakers. I followed her past the pit where huge hot coals now glowed, and I saw something from the corner of my eyes that jarred me oddly, but I kept on running. I ran clear past the pit where the pig was now being roasted for the luau dinner later, then I slowed and stopped.

I went back and looked down into the pit dug in the sand, heat bouncing against my face. It did look like a pig at first, not much like a man. It was a man, though. I heard Elaine laughing.

I got down on my hands and knees, moved as close as I could. The guy was face down, but even face up he’d have been unrecognizable, so horribly was he burned. Still sticking out of his throat was the sharp metal spit that would have been used for holding the pig. One arm was outflung, the hand in a somewhat more protected spot than the rest of him, and I could see the big ruby ring on his finger. Mine host.

“Come on! What’s the matter with you?” It was Elaine calling me. I could barely see the dim white blur of her body outlined against the darkness of the sea. Behind her a comber broke and frothed in toward us. I stood up and walked toward Elaine.

Five minutes later we were both in the house; I hadn’t told Elaine a thing and she was a little angry with me. She pointed out the phone and I told her to wait in the next room, then phoned local Homicide. After that I found Elaine. “Where’s the kitchen?” I asked her.

“The what? Don’t tell me you brought me here because you’re hungry!”

I shuddered. “No, but I’ve got to sober up. I’ll explain all of this later.” She led me to the kitchen where I drank half a quart of milk while water boiled for some instant coffee. Elaine stared at me as if I were crazy while I found meat in the icebox, some roast beef, and made a thick, sloppy sandwich with an inch of meat between two slices of french bread. I gulped coffee, grabbed a frying pan and big spoon, then took Elaine’s arm and led her back to the clearing where people were still squealing and dancing. “Are you crazy?” Elaine asked me in exasperation.

“Maybe. Hold the frying pan for me, will you?” She shook her head, grabbed the pan. I hit it vigorously with the spoon and yelled, “Chow time, everybody. Chow’s on.” Not many people paid attention to me; I hadn’t expected many to. I walked around the clearing, munching on my sloppy sandwich and saying “Chow, anybody?” to everybody. It didn’t happen till I was almost at the punch bowl. Mrs. Brevoort’s unpleasant face loomed beside me.

I said, “Hi. Wanna dance?” I blinked drunkenly at her, and nibbled at the beef. She eyed the sandwich, fascinated.

I said, “I’m sorry, but I got so starved I couldn’t wait for everybody else. Hope you don’t mind, but I carved a little meat off that pig down there in the pit.”

“You... what?” she said, and her face was already starting to get green.

I said, “I was hungry. There’s plenty more, though. You hungry, Mrs. Brevoort?”

Her mouth dropped open, her lips twitched, and her eyes rolled up in her head. Then she fainted. People around us kept dancing and going, “Uuh!” and making Hawaiian chants.

Half an hour later the police had come and gone. I’d told them on the phone to arrive without sirens, and in the meantime to check on me with the Los Angeles and Hollywood police. As a result, they handled everything quietly and took Mrs. Brevoort away with almost no commotion at all — and let me stay. She spilled everything in the first five minutes: that she knew her husband had just married her for her money and that it was her money he used for these weekly parties at which he ignored her, and everybody else ignored her, and she’d caught him on the beach tonight with a babe, waited until the girl went back alone to the clearing, then swatted L. Franklin over the head with the spit and stuck it through his throat. She’d dragged him ten feet through the sand and rolled him in onto the coals.

Elaine said to me, “I still don’t know why she fainted when you stuck that ghastly sandwich in her face.”

“She thought I was eating her hubby. She’d tossed him into the pig pit.”

“I don’t get it. Why into the pit?”

“She was all excited. People get excited when they kill people. She thought she could hide him there until she figured out what to do. And she wasn’t acting very logically anyway, it was a crime of passion. She hated parties.”

We were standing beside the melting punch bowl. Both of us had a small drink. A lot of people were still dancing — not around the pit, though. Right after Mrs. Brevoort had fainted I’d sent Elaine scooting down to the beach to make sure nobody did reach the pit; nobody had. I said, “I didn’t have the faintest idea who, of these fifty people, might have run the buzzard through. Only the person who’d killed him, though, would have known what was cooking. Well, at least it was better than having the cops haul everybody down to the station — I was damned if anybody was going to break up this fine party.”

Elaine said, “I still don’t get it all. You mean both the host and hostess are gone?”

“Yeah. They took L. Franklin away, too. So there’s nobody to call off the party. You know, this thing may last for weeks.”

“How long will you last?”

I grinned at her. She laughed softly, whirled and ran toward the beach. I waited about one second, and then turned.

I ran after her.

Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha,“ her chirpy voice sang. The melodious sound penetrated the closed windows. ”Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha.“

In the dim old bedroom, Barton stood listening behind lowered blinds. Tall and gray in workshirt and overalls, his sinewy old body was bent forward and motionless like a taut bow and his mouth was open slightly like a crater in the dry crust of the seamy skin of his face. His big, knuckly hands were clenched and still as weights. “Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha.” He straightened up, moistened his lips, drew a long breath and shook his head. His hands opened. He turned and started for the door, but some counter-will in him made him veer to the bureau. He opened a drawer and took out the binoculars.

He went to the window, inched it up and raised the blind two inches from the sill, squinting briefly against the glare stripe of sunlight. He went to the chair at the end of the room, where light wouldn’t catch on the lenses, and put the binoculars to his eyes, his heart beginning to thump against his ribs. Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha, he whispered as the sound of her came again, louder, richer through the opening. His thick fingers became tremulous on the delicate adjustment wheel as he found her and brought her into focus, her red hair in the wind glowing like embers in a forge.

Deena May, his hired hand’s wife... the “child bride” as Barton thought of her... was hanging clothes in her yard and dancing to her own foolish, delicious music. She wore a loose, carelessly buttoned, pink house dress... and probably nothing else... and she came toward him from the clothes basket to the line, lifting her knees in quick, prancy steps. She was a pretty little thing, as lively and mindless as a bird, with a tiny waist and dainty legs. She wasn’t fully fleshed out yet and her lines were clean as stems and from the front or back or side views, the roundings of her femaleness showed clearly when the wind pressed the thin dress to her flesh.

She moved back to the clothes basket, not in a straight line, but in a prancing, dancing half circle to the beat of the “Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha...” On the “tiyata” part her thin voice rose high as a cat’s, then swiftly dipped with an oddly stroking sound that was nakedly voluptuous in quality. She accompanied the sound with a tantalizing motion: a fluid roll, tilt and swish of her hips. She came back to the line with another garment... a pair of her husband’s underwear shorts... and as she pinned them up her knees flashed higher than ever, showing the smooth pale nakedness of her inner thighs. Pain stabbed at Barton’s eyeballs and he shut his eyes, resting the binoculars on his knees. Warm, warm her young body would be, warm as new milk... or cool in the fresh breeze, cool as silk. Warm, cool, whichever, whatever, it didn’t matter.

He pulled her to him again with the binoculars. She had a saucy round face with round blue eyes and a round dimple in her chin. Down in the mule country, where she came from, the dimple meant the devil was in her, Deena May said. Ignorant superstition. But Barton supposed it had been drilled into her child mind till she believed it. With her showing her flesh and singing and stepping high to the devil’s beat, anyone could believe it.

He saw she kept turning her head to her shoulder and he was so enrapt with the brilliant image of her red hair, like a wanton brand of flame on her cheek, that he didn’t realize she was looking back at the house. Then the screen door flew open and her husband Hugh charged out. Barton realized then that Hugh had been watching from inside and Deena May had been putting on the show to work him up. She whooped and shrieked and took off across the yard. He caught her by the hair in a dozen long-legged strides and dumped her. She kicked her bare legs in the air and rolled onto her knees and tackled his lanky legs and in a moment he was on the ground with her, scowling and mussing her up. She got away and he chased her out of sight around the front of the house. In awhile he came marching her in front of him, twisting her arm. She stopped every few steps and bumped her bottom back against him, a look of high glee on her excited face. She boasted how she could get him excited any time, morning, noon and night, and could wear him down to a frazzle even if she was only fourteen and he thought he was a man because he was twenty-one. Hugh pushed her inside the house with a loud spank and the screen door whacked shut. Barton lowered the binoculars, his mouth clamped in a straight line.

Barton thought of Hugh with a bitter scorn. For all his big talk about being man enough to handle her, all she had to do was swish her tail to bring him down on all fours and use him up. He went to the bureau, dropped the binoculars in the bureau drawer and kneed it shut with an air of finality. That’s all there was these days, animals yielding to their pleasures, no discipline, no pride in strength, only in weakness. Barton caught sight of himself in the bureau mirror, which was flaking and yellowed, decaying like everything else in this dying house. Light from the peephole opening of the window shone on one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow, and an uneven line ran down the center as if a jagged axe blade had tried to split his head — and struck granite, he told himself. He had lived his life on his hind legs, and nothing, nothing short of God could bring him low at the end... no, not even the devil.

He left the bedroom and went along the hall, past the shut doors of the long-empty bedrooms, where the rugs and curtains and chairs and made-beds remained, unused, and giving off the silent musty breath of slow decay. He went down the gloomy central stairs and looked in at the big, glassed-in porch that had served as a play room and sewing room and second parlor, where the girls could entertain their beaux, and in the final years Melly, his wife, had made it her afternoon headquarters, for reading or sewing or just contenting herself looking out at the side lawn and her flowers and their fields. Often she would have her nap there after the midday meal and he’d come down from his own nap and they’d have coffee together before he went out to work. Sometimes he thought a belief in ghosts would be a help, so he could imagine her there smiling and asking if he’d had a good nap... though he was inclined to wake grumpy and had usually been aggravated by the question. On an impulse he went over and started to raise the blinds; a little clean light in this room of Melly’s might give the whole dreary house a better feel.

He glanced around to look at the furnishings when the first blind was up. Slowly, he lowered the blind again. The furnishings were shabby and graceless and heavy, nothing anybody would want today. It had been mighty pretty once. He shrugged. Better to leave it with the dead past.

He went to the kitchen and set coffee warming while he tidied up the mess from his dinner, his mouth down at the corners, a sourness in his stomach and at the base of his tongue. He took some baking soda and belched, looking with distaste at the leftovers in pans and skillet. He still ate the same old greasy food, and too much of it, just as if he still worked from “sun to sun.” He drank his coffee standing up; then marched out like a man going to work, but he wasn’t going to do anything but putter... maybe fix up that board in the corn crib, or maybe mend harness. He shook his head; damnfoolishness mending harness for a team of horses that never did anything but pasture and once in awhile some light hauling. The tractor did their work better and cheaper, and there wasn’t really enough land left to require a tractor. He had sold off all but the sixty acres he and Melly had started out with. He’d saved his three boys and two girls the trouble of waiting for him to die by giving them their patrimony shortly after Melly passed on. He had a few thousand and this place and he wouldn’t have to crowd any of his grandchildren out of their rooms, which was probably luckier than an old man had right to be.

He dawdled around in the barn, feeling that there wasn’t any point in doing anything in particular. He went and stood in the barn door and looked out over the green expanse of growing corn and beyond it in the south field to the vast great yellow square of young wheat. It would grow and ripen and then be cut down and there’d be another winter and maybe another spring...

He spat! God damn a self-pitying man. Whining at his age, worse than a whelp. He heard the tractor start up and located it out in the field with Hugh on the seat, riding young and high and mighty. Then his gaze slid toward the little house, the one he and Melly had started out in. Deena May would be up and chippying around at her chores... or maybe sprawled in the bed, sleeping and renewing that radiant, lustrous, sweet vital young body. The mere sight of that little house roused his belly to life.

He walked up the lane, toward the houses, toward the old barn, thinking of his Bible and the times of greatness when the old men were kings and Solomon lay cold on his bed and they brought to his bed the choicest virgins and... The land swirled in the bright heat and Barton stopped and lighted a cigarette... and there had been King David who had looked upon the flesh of Bathsheba... the smoke dry-tickled his throat and he coughed violently... and the great king had sent the young husband off to his death... in the Bible, yes, in the good Book, and it had been recorded, the living truth... wicked though it might be, it was the nature and the Fate of Man... and when a man grew cold with age he could not help himself if he went to the life-saving fire... it was his own life he saved, even if it came to King David’s way... Scraped down to the raw an animal had to choose to save his own life...

An animal, yes, an animal killed or was killed... but not a man, not a human standing on his hind legs. NO! He didn’t wipe out the pride of all his achievements at his life’s end...

Barton turned into the old barn, got into his car and drove to town. Maybe there would be a few cronies around the grain elevator or the feed store. He parked on Main Street. He sat, debating. He didn’t have many cronies left. And all they could do together would be to carp about the way things were and down in all their bellies was nothing but the cold fear of death and the fear of life and the aching, hopeless wish to be men again. He didn’t want the smell of them. He went over to the bank and cashed a check and drove on into the city. He parked and roamed the bright, busy streets, looking sharply in at the women’s shops, tempted and afraid to go in and buy some pretties for her. Panties and stockings and shoes and perfumes and dresses. He felt flushed and excited and he stopped at a travel agency window with its pictures of gay, carefree foreign places and girls in bathing suits and without exactly knowing what he was doing he got the car again and drove to the airport. He watched the great, shiny planes, landing and taking off; he mingled with the moving, lively crowds waiting to go or going and he longed to have Deena May there to see it and feel it and catch the fire and enthusiasm. He could take her and give her the sparkling brightness and the go go go that she craved. What did it come to, all his hard work and sober virtue? It came to dullness and death.

Hugh was at the milking when Barton got back and Barton, remembering all the hostile thoughts he had had toward the boy, took pains to praise him.

“Sorry to leave you with all the work. Had some business in town. But I’ll grant that you’re handling things fine, just fine.”

Hugh took it with clear pleasure. And after some easy talk about farm matters he said: “I hope she never bothered you, woke you up from your nap. Did she?”

Barton laughed. “Why no. Why? Was she cutting up?”

Hugh shook his head, looking comically earnest. “She was singing around in the yard and carrying on. The thing with Deena May, Mr. Barton, is she is a good-hearted little thing, only she’s childish. She was the young’un of a big family and they catered to her something awful. But I’ve got real confidence that right down in her heart she ain’t really spoiled, but will turn out a first-class woman.” He sighed. “I do have a time with her, she’s that childish. She’s enough to wear out your patience sometimes. But I won’t leave her get on your nerves.”

“Don’t you let it worry you. You just keep up your good work... and keep on reading those Agricultural pamphlets and the papers and learning, the way you have been, and improving yourself. I like the both of you. Fine, just fine.”

“Would you like to come down to supper?”

“Not tonight. Young folks should be alone, and I take Sunday dinners with you... that’s plenty... not that she’s not a grand little cook. She is.”

“Thanks. She’ll be tickled to hear you said that.”

“Didn’t I ever tell her?”

“Well...” Hugh began uncomfortably. “No. And... well, I always was a little scared you don’t like her much...” He waited and Barton assured him. “I sure am relieved. I kind of thought you sometimes look at her... well, stern-like.”

“That’s mainly how old men do look, you know.”

Hugh chuckled. “Funny thing, but Deena May says she ain’t fooled the way you look stern because you like her.”

Barton felt a quick uneasiness. “I do, indeed I do.”

“And she sure likes you. Wants to come up and live in the big house. Says it’s a pure shame you got to cook yourself and stay around that big old empty place alone. I said to her: ‘Deena May, it would just aggravate him out of his wits to have to put up with your childishness right in the same house.’ ”

“But not at all... why, that’s a splendid idea... I mean, Hugh... if you’d want to... the pair of you would give the old place life, and the stove’s a good one and there’s that fine refrigerator and a nearly new bathroom...”

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Barton, it’s only her idea.” He shook his head. “You see, even if you could stand her childishness... well, you understand, I got my hands full already to make a woman out of her... and if you both like each other why you’d cater to her like she had it back home with old... older people... No offense, but, well, that little house is just nice. Sure you wouldn’t take supper with us, though?”

Barton hesitated; he dreaded cooking his own meal and eating alone in that oversized coffin of a house. Talking with Hugh, face to face, Barton liked him and shared with him, from Hugh’s viewpoint, his problems with the “child bride.” But Deena May in the flesh was something else. In his presence, they both became kids and meals with them were full of bickerings, and each would turn to Barton for support. He had always found it amusing, but inevitably he had had to side with Hugh. Still he didn’t want to go over there and be forced to sit like a gray sage passing down moral pronouncements. He didn’t want to say a word against her, nor uphold a set of principles that smelled of must and decay.

“No, thank you just the same,” he said. “See you tomorrow, Hugh.”

Barton sat in the parlor with the evening paper, rereading grain market quotes without absorbing them. He didn’t give a damn. There was something else, like a small, pleasant glow in his belly, holding his mind. Hugh had said she wasn’t fooled by the look of sternness; she knew with the sure female animal instinct that the sight of her stirred the still-living male in him. And she wanted to take over the big house, where he’d cater to her.

He turned off the parlor light and went up to the bedroom and turned the bedroom light on for a few minutes, as though he had come up to bed. He didn’t undress. Presently, he turned off the light and waited, listening near the open window. It would be awhile. She’d peer over to make sure the big house was dark and that he slept.

She was looking out her window. She vanished, and her front screen clapped shut and the hound, put out, whimpered for his mistress like an exiled lover till she shrieked at him. Then the lights went out. Barton tensed and rubbed his thick, calloused fingers against his dry palms. The beat of his heart quickened in anticipation and he could feel the juice of life rising in him, even his mouth salivated and his lips were warm and wet.

He began to fear that Hugh had, in a sense, won, that he was lying there cold beside her fire, sober and resolved to hoard his strength, and sleep like the goddamned fool he was... Then it came. A squall and a moan. Barton blinked, brightening. Hugh handled her roughly, but with no genuine air of mastery. Instead, his roughness seemed against the grain, something he did because she willed it. But one Saturday night they had gone to a dance, and, from the gossip Barton heard, Deena May had slipped out to the parking lot and serviced a squad of young bucks before Hugh caught her. He’d bloodied some noses and got a whaling himself and the sounds coming from the little house that night had been pure hell. But tonight, as usual, Barton heard her song of lust, a primitive sound of combat and terror and wild joy that set a serpent crawling in his belly.

In the long wake of silence, Barton found himself shivering and disgusted with himself. What had he come to? Turning his eyes and ears and mind into sneaking, slimy things that degraded everything he had ever been. The most shameful, the most intolerable part of it was that he was reduced to this cowardly caricature of manhood, as if he was a eunuch. He slept fitfully, waking repeatedly till almost dawn, when he dropped into a deep sleep.

He woke to the sound of her “Cha cha cha-tiyata...”

Light flooded the room and he knew from the slant of the sun that it was very late. Past ten. My God, he hadn’t overslept this way in years. He sat up and got heavily out of bed. He heard the tractor in the field. Everything was going on without him.

“Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha to cha...”

He shut the window and the blind, but her chirpy, teasy little voice penetrated the dim bedroom with an insistent, irresistible rhythm. It stroked his waking senses and thrummed through his tired body like another pulse. He had to see her, he had to see her. He got the binoculars. His trembling thick fingers fumbled at the blind. It got away with a startling zip and hiss and flapped around the roller at the top. He found himself standing flatfooted and exposed at the window in his old nightshirt. He jumped aside, and had to stand gripping the bedpost for balance until his heart quit slamming and the dizziness passed. He edged back into the room and in the mirror caught sight of his scarecrow old body, in the old fashioned nightshirt, and turned his face.

He couldn’t eat. He went out to the car in his best suit. He drove into the city and made some purchases.

He was back at two, the funereal old Sunday suit behind him, splashed out now in brown and white shoes, light tan suit, coconut weave straw hat with a band matching his turquoise sport shirt. He carried packages of vivid socks, underpants, pajamas, and straw shoes in two pieces of airplane luggage.

He put the binoculars, which he’d used at the State Fair races, into their case. He hung them by the strap across his shoulder and gave himself a sporty grin. For awhile he just walked around acquainting himself with his new clothes and personality.

He stopped in the middle of the kitchen, frowning. He should have saved the old suit. He’d have to go to the bank and tell them to put the place up for sale, because the new life would be impossible in this community where he had a set meaning and where, if he changed the meaning, they’d think he was crazy. They’d snicker and wag their heads if they saw him in these clothes, and figure him insane because he didn’t just sit and wait to die.

He shuddered. Most of the acres were gone, most of the rooms closed... the dimensions were narrowing, narrowing... the old dark house had the feel of a coffin.

He wanted to hear the sunlight sound of her “Cha cha cha...” He kept listening vaguely, wondering where she was. The tractor was out in the field; he could hear it. Hugh was accounted for, but where was Deena May? In the little house... alone... on the bed...

“Andrew...”

He turned without thinking and went toward the sound of the voice and opened the door to the glassed-in porch. He was about to say: “What is it, Melly?” before he caught himself.

You’re crazy! he thought, frightened. Hearing voices. He stood, silent, wondering. Maybe there was some something, some communication somehow... not voices, but a feel, a presence. There was no feel of her here; she was dead.

He had to get out of this coffin house. He walked out into the front yard and let the sunlight soak into him and the warm air fill his lungs. From miles away he heard the bark of a dog, then a second nearer barking, and the sounds came down the line of farms like a string of firecrackers till Deena May’s hound took it up. The hair stiffened on the back of his neck as he heard her sharp little voice silence the dog. She was in the back yard of the big house... near the grape arbor, he judged.

Barton went around the side of the house, his step cautious on the grass, his whole body caught up in a helpless, trembling anticipation.

The arbor enclosed a rectangle of space and through the wall of vines he saw her lying on the grass within. She was propped on one elbow, her other arm lifted in a slim bare curve as her little fist crushed slowly into a succulent bunch of grapes above her upturned face. The juice streamed into her wide-open red mouth and he could see the rolling sliding motion of her arched throat as she swallowed greedily. Some of the juice ran over her chin and down her throat and ran in purple rivulets across the smooth white skin between her breasts. He could see the soft-rising slope of the side of one breast, in the blue shadow, where an upper button of her cotton dress was open. She was barefoot and barelegged. One knee was raised a few inches and a tantalizing bit of her thigh showed. She dropped the grape husks and reached her hand to the hound who licked her fingers, then licked the juice from her throat and from between her breasts. She pushed the dog away and slid her vivid blue eyes to their corners. She saw Barton and grinned slowly at him.

“Y’all dressed up sharp, Mr. Barton.” She wagged her knee lazily from side to side and watched him from the corners of her eyes.

He had scarcely been aware that he’d moved, but here he was within the enclosure. It was airless behind the thick vines and the sweet tart smell of the crushed grapes hung over her in the motionless heat and his throat was trembling so much he couldn’t speak.

She sat up, pivoted around on one hip to face him, both knees up and apart for an instant so he could see she wore nothing under the thin dress. She folded her feet under her and covered her legs with her skirt, her expression exaggeratedly demure. “Y’ scowling fierce. I do something to make you mad at me, Mr. Barton?” she said, her tone mocking and knowing. She indicated two heaped baskets. “You said I could just come and take all of the grapes I wanted to take. Can’t I?” She gave him a pouty look. “Or must I go on away. Y’ want me to go on away, Mr. Barton? H’m?”

“Deena May. Never go away...” He began hoarsely. His face was hot and he needed to sweat and he couldn’t. He was feverish. He blurted. “I want you. I want you to come away with me...”

She shook her mass of fiery hair back and opened those round blue eyes wide at him. “Where to? C’mon down where I can hear you sweet talk.” He got awkwardly down on his knees. “C’mon, clear down,” she urged. “Where y’ gonna take me, big old Daddy Lover?”

He sat almost touching her, his eyes fixed trance-like on her, his mouth twitchy at the corners. “New York. California. Mexico, foreign places, races, nightclubs, beaches... Deena May, come with me. Fly. You ever fly in an airplane?”

“No, I never. When? Buy me purties?” She thrust her leg out from under the skirt, fit the curve of her arched foot warmly against the bony round of his knee, stroking him. She wriggled her toes. “Purty high-heel shoes... stockings,” she touched her leg, then her hip and giggled, lowering her eyes, “and all? I’d leave you put them on me, even...” In a sudden burst of enthusiasm she came upright, standing on her knees before him. She hunched her shoulders and ran her hands slinkily across her chest. “Naked looking green dresses and blue and skin color ones and my hair piled zoop, up like this...” She pushed the flaming mass of her hair in a high wad and turned to show her ears and the lovely line of her neck. “And loop earrings and pearls wound in my hair. Whoo-eee...” She shook her shoulders and hips, standing there on her spread knees, and sang, grinning straight and dazzlingly close into his face. “Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha.” She pitched forward, winding her strong wiry little arms around his neck. She pushed her wet red mouth against his, hot and open and tasting like sugar. He toppled over onto his side on the grass, panting, his hands starting over her maddening body.

She rolled away out of reach. He pawed for her, scrambling, his eyes glazed and senseless. “Naughty big old Daddy Lover...” She got to her feet, kicked his hand from her ankle and danced away. She came within reach, teased him with her toe, jumped clear again. “Want it bad?”

“Please...”

She touched the dimple in her chin. “Devil’s in me. I set out for you, old man. My maw always said if an old man scowl at a purty young girl it ain’t natural; he’s fightin’ off young-man ideas and bound to lose and watch out. I been watchin’ the fierce way you look at me. Promise you’d cater to me, old man?”

“Anything. I–I promise. Come here.”

“No, no. You cool off and chicken on me, that’s what you’d end up. You chicken?”

Her eyes were blinking and dancing. He got himself to a sitting position and stared at her, sensing her meaning.

“What d’ya mean.”

“Hugh. He’d prevent us. And he’s got it comin’ to him, the way he won’t cater to me. I got it all set, but if you chicken out, y’can’t never get no closer’n them spy glasses you look at me through. I seen you once, don’t think I never...” She giggled, strutted and sang tauntingly, shaking her behind at him. “Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha-ta-cha... Well...?”

It was dark. Heat prickled at his scalp as he sat in the crotch of the tree by the turn in the creek, a shotgun on his knees. He knew he was there to ambush and kill a young man in cold blood, and yet he wasn’t. It wasn’t really him, Andrew Barton, but something else in him compelled to do it, to do what he had to do to hold onto the brightness of life against... He couldn’t think it through; he needn’t try... the past was dead, only the future was living...

“You can drop your shotgun now, Mr. Barton.”

Barton froze. That cold, strange voice wasn’t real; it was just fear and guilt working at his ears and mind...

“Drop it!” Hugh’s voice chopped at him. “I got a rifle at your back.”

Barton threw the shotgun down. “Shoot me,” he said. “Go ahead and shoot me.”

“I just want my pay so I can head out. Now, climb down. I found her hiding up in your house, hound led me straight to her. I scared the truth out of her. I never thought you could lie to me, Mr. Barton. Tell me she was hustling down to meet a feller so’s I could come and you could shoot me.” His voice cracked. “I never would of believed it, except I seen it’s so. Now, march!”

Barton moved along ahead of him, looking down. “Hugh, boy,” he mumbled. “I wouldn’t have gone through with it. Believe me.”

“Mr. Barton, you don’t know if you would of or not.”

Deena May stood scowling in a corner of the kitchen. Hugh ignored her. “I want my pay plus pay for the use of my wife.”

“I swear nothing’s happened.”

“If you’re the one who ain’t had her, no charge. Otherwise, kindly add twenty-five.” He spun, red-faced and furious and shouted at her, “Cents!” He turned, wiped at the sudden tears in his eyes. “Now will you please pay me my money so I can get the hell away from here?”

Deena May and Barton stood in the same room, not looking at each other. They listened after Hugh had gone and finally the old car coughed and started and went sputtering down the lane. They watched its lights turn onto the road. Then it was out of sight.

“Good riddance of bad rubbish,” Deena May sniffed. She slid a glance at him and frowned. “What’re you moping around about?”

He turned up his hands.

“You ain’t going to try kissing me off, too, are you?”

“I— I—” He couldn’t look at her.

“Lookit, big old Daddy Lover... Cha cha cha-tiyata... cha ta cha...” She sang and danced, shaking herself, and Barton couldn’t keep himself from watching. “That’s better,” she cried. “C’mon. There’s nothing to bother us none now. C’mon!”

She went up the stairs. After a moment, he lowered his head and followed.

It was past midnight. Light from the setting moon lay like winter frost over his old body as he looked out the bedroom window at Deena May and her hound coming back across the field. She’d sneaked down there again to slut with those hoodlums she ran with. Maybe when all the negotiations on the sale of the farm were completed in a few more days and they could get away from this old coffin of a house, she would be different. He shook his head wearily. No, wherever she went she would attract the scum of creation to her.

She reached the yard, moved out of sight at the arbor. She would be coming in shortly, he realized with a vague dread, and he wanted to get to bed and feign sleep. But he was dull and slow with fatigue and she was already in the house and coming noisily up the stairs before he could break his inertia and crawl under the covers. In two weeks she had lived up ninety percent of his remaining life, he thought hopelessly. He kept his eyes shut as she flung open the door and snapped on the light.

“I been taking that ole hound dog for a run,” she lied stupidly. She sounded half-drunk. He didn’t bother to answer. She flaunted off to the bedroom she had taken over, calling back: “Quick’s I take me a bath I’ll be back, and don’t you go try and beg off like last night and this morning, you big old Daddy Lover, you—”

She was burning him out like dry old tinder, and he knew what hell was like. It was fire, fire; it burned unquenchable and insatiable in her. He couldn’t stand it... he couldn’t... He moaned softly, a bone-deep ache of tiredness in him. If she would just let him alone, let him rest in peace...

Then she was back in a filmy nylon shorty nightgown that left her luscious, dancing legs naked to the hips; her eyes teased and her lips taunted: “Get up, big old Daddy Lover... Lookit!” She began to prance, tilting her hips and shaking her breasts and rolling her bottom as she sang: “Cha cha cha-tiyata — cha ta cha...”

He crammed the pillow over his head, and writhed. “Please let me sleep!” His voice rose to a bellow of anguish.

She laughed. “C’mon,” she taunted, and pulled the pillow away, and moved her body tantalizingly, and his cold hands reached toward her. “Cha cha cha...” she teased, backstepping daintily. “C’mon, you get up and dance that cute way you do, big old Daddy Lover.”

He sat up and got up and began to lift his knees and wag his rump and he heard his voice croaking, “Cha cha cha-tiyata — cha ta cha—” And then he caught sight of himself in the old bureau mirror, like a grotesque, mindless performing animal. He stopped and stared at that beautiful fire burning him to death and he knew he had to put out that fire to save himself.

At last he lay quietly, an old man in his bed. But his bony fingers still ached from the unaccustomed tension and violence they had just endured. His heartbeat had finally calmed. His hand moved over and rested on her briefly. It were as though she were sleeping beside him. Already, her flesh was beginning to lose its heat, just as her throat had forever lost its song of lust. He sighed and shut his eyes, his body yielding to the deepest craving in it, the craving for an old man’s rest.