I turn off the Skyway onto the Infracity Expressway doing about ninety and about lose my uppers when I glance at the rearview and see a little blue Porsche right on my tail and after a moment I make out about four people inside it and then the license number which I can’t believe my own eyes is the same as the silver Porsche I totaled not too many hours ago. What the hell is going on around here? Either somebody’s got an angle I don’t know about or I’ve got problems.

“Hop in back,” I say. “Where the hell’s Gilman?”

“Don’t know boss.”

“That door doesn’t work,” I say to Gary who’s near to busting a gut trying to get in the left rear door, “use the other one.”

“What’s all this about boss?” Gary asks.

“Just a little talk with O’Mallollolly, that’s all.”

In a second Gilman hops around the corner and spots the car and climbs in the front seat. I shove her into drive and she coughs and misses a couple of times and off we go and in the rearview I can see the blue Porsche pulling out of a parking space it ducked into when I stopped. I run down Seventh Street and catch the green arrow onto the Infracity on-ramp but just in the nick of time because the Porsche hits it red but runs through anyway. I floor it up the on-ramp with the supercharger on but with the extra load in the car she’s a little sluggish and so I’m only doing sixty when I merge left between two school buses burning up our tax money and it looks like seventy’s about tops as I work my way over to the third lane and decide to keep on that one.

There’s a funny thing about this Kaiser I own which is it behaves fine if it’s just me inside but with anybody else all sorts of things start happening for no goddamn reason at all. Well old Gilman is sitting there in the front seat beside me minding his own business with that sort of freeway glaze over his eyes when bang the glove compartment door pops open and my jar of Micro-Mice rolls out right into his lap. He sort of stares at it like it was a knife in his stomach and then groans a little and picks up the jar and looks inside. “Mice!” he screams and starts rolling down the window. I lean over and grab the jar away and put it back into the glove compartment which causes me to lose control of the car and ends up that I pull the thing so far right that I cross both right lanes and go up on the shoulder and blow into kindling wood one of those No Stopping signs, but by that time I’m back into control and soon get the thing running in a straight line again in the right direction.

Just then Marge calls.

“Hi Marge.”

“Hello dear, say, I’m still being followed.”

“Don’t worry about it Marge, it happens every day. Where are you now?”

“Having lunch at the FAT PHEASANT AND OLD GREYHOUND GRILL AND RESTAURANT overlooking Lake Lobotomples,” she says.

“Jesus Christ do you know what things cost there Marge? About five times what they are anywhere else around there,” I say and I know what I’m talking about since I own the joint.

“I know dear but the chairs are soft and the view nice and the music is relaxing—”

“Look Marge take my advice right this minute and get out of that clip joint and run down the road about a mile to a little place made out of an old trolley and called STEVIE’S SENSATIONAL SANDWICHES where you can really eat well for nothing, pay a dollar and you come out of there absolutely bloated.”

“Bloated? Well dear I don’t think I really want to get bloated, you know, just a bite to eat.”

“Dear. You say this is a business trip,” she says.

“That’s right.”

“Well what am I supposed to get out of it?”

“Hell Marge all I can say is you ought to be grateful since you’re getting a free tour of Mt. Pastiche National Forest and it’s not costing you a damn cent.”

“Well dear that’s all very nice. Mt. Pastiche National Forest is a beautiful place. I love it. I love the trees. I love the mountains. I love—”

“Calm down Marge.”

“Shut up. I love the lakes. That’s why I have come up here about five times a year for the last ten years. And that’s why a free tour of the place is a really new and exciting experience. I expect to throw myself in the lake with joy any moment now.”

“Finished?”

“Yes,” and then she goes and hangs up.

Damn that woman I say to myself, she’ll be calling me up and asking me to send up a Brink’s armored car with sacks of silver dollars next thing. She’ll have us all on the streets pretty soon the way she’s going. I’ll bet she unloads fifteen bucks in the FAT PHEASANT.

We climb out of the car and I recognize the old man who’s dressed in overalls as former Police Commissioner MacWigo, 1955-59, who I got out with the famous Scandal of ’59. Nice that somebody found something for him to do around the old place though I can’t exactly approve of this particular odd job he’s got.

“Your time has come GASCOYNE,” he says.

“My time will come when I decide.”

“They all say that, they all say that.”

“My time will come when I decide.”

Just then the plate glass of the side entrance door goes crash and tinkles to the ground and three submachine-gun barrels stick out and wave around. “Drop boys,” I say and all of us fall down behind the big granite boulders of the Japanese garden God-knows-who decided to put there, damn good idea from our point of view.

“All right GASCOYNE what do you want?” calls out some ignoramus.

“In,” I say.

“What?”

“In!”

“Goddamn speak up GASCOYNE.”

“In! I-N!”

Then I hear whispers inside the entrance saying, “He wants in he said.”

“Why?” another voice calls out.

“None of your goddamn business,” I say.

“You’ve got to tell us why,” somebody else inside says.

Then there are more whispers and I throw one of those little white garden pebbles at Gary and hit him on the head. He gives out a little scream but after awhile turns his head at me.

“Psst!” I say. “In exactly thirty seconds we all open fire on the door.”

“Ok—” he chokes, “okay boss.”

The thirty seconds whip by pretty fast, I guess, since I don’t have a watch and I don’t think anybody else does either, and then me and Gary start pumping lead into the doorway. Gilman joins in but then Albert the ass faints. We keep on blasting away anyway until it looks like they’ve retreated from the entrance completely. I take a chance and stand up and of course nobody shoots at me. I can see over the parking lot and across the street the troopers are all laying down behind their cars.

“Come on boys, charge!” I say and while Gilman picks up Albert and throws him over his back Gary and I move in on the entrance door and find the entrance and hallway and executive elevator completely abandoned by the defenders so we move in and take over. There’s a hell of a racket coming from upstairs however and I’m a little bit afraid of a counteroffensive or a trap or something, especially the way the executive elevator is sitting there, doors wide open and all ready and waiting.

“I suspect this is a trap,” I say. “We’d better take the fire escape up.”

“Anything you say boss.”

We duck Albert’s head under the cold-water fountain and before we leave I reach in the elevator and push fifteen so they’ll think we’re coming up. The door snaps closed and up she goes.

The hike up the stairs is so exhausting we have to stop at the third-floor landing to catch our breath for about five minutes and I’m thinking maybe we ought to try to force open one of the fire escape doors and commandeer a service elevator. I’m not used to this sort of exercise though I’ve been getting a lot of it these last days, still it seems to be harder rather than easier, and at the rate we’re going it’ll take us two hours to get to the fifteenth floor.

We blast away some more and pretty soon the door collapses and I shout “Charge!” and we charge in, and what a mess is there. Desks and filing cabinets are overturned all over the place and cops and secretaries are taking potshots at each other from behind them and all sorts of stuff is flying through the air like lamps and small office machines and bundles of paper. But because the racket’s so bad and we come in at the end of a hallway nobody really notices us and all we’ve got to do is pass through two office doors to get to an elevator. We get down on hands and knees and crawl along the hall a few feet to an office door and pop in there where we find ourselves without much choice confronting a heavily armed group momentarily engaged in lining up metal office chairs with foam rubber seats and setting the seats on fire and rolling them flaming across the hall into an apparently enemy office. I approach the guy I take it is in charge and who I’ve seen before but never met and I’m not sure if he knows who I am, perhaps to my advantage.

“What’s the situation?” I ask.

“Hmm.”

“But even all this is in doubt because we’ve heard rumors about GASCOYNE water reinforcements from the sixth floor.”

“I see. Who controls the elevators?”

“As far as I know at the moment,” he says, “a small independent group from Parking Meters, third floor, that’s gone completely mercenary.”

“Thanks pal,” I say and we work our way through the office to the other cross-corridor and when we get there all we have to do is turn right and go a few steps, must be a truce area because things are pretty calm. I push the Up button and watch the numbers light up as the elevator comes down from the seventh floor. The doors open and the thing’s filled with about five guys with submachine guns looking pretty businesslike.

“Fourteen please,” I say, pulling Gary and Gilman and Albert in behind me. They’re a little timid about this crowd I can tell.

“What’s it worth to you, the fourteenth floor?” the guy at the controls asks as he closes the door.

“Not a damn cent, just get this thing going,” I say.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” the joker asks.

“GASCOYNE,” I say.

We cross over to the door leading to O’Mallollolly’s office and I figure the best thing to do is just walk in, no gunplay unless necessary, and that’s what we do except for Albert who goes and passes out again. O’Mallollolly’s sitting at his desk reading a list into the phone and surrounded by the Goon Squad and when we come in he just keeps on reading.

“… O’Brian, total demotion. Rogers, dismissal without compensation or benefits. Black, dismissal with half pension. Scoville, transfer to State Forestry Service. Jones, Arthur, dismissal with public trial for appropriating municipal property. MacGanymede, demotion from sub-commissioner to third-floor janitor or dismissal, at his option.”

He hangs up the phone and right away starts dialing another number which really pisses me off. Here I am standing here right in front of him with not exactly a birthday party expression on my face, though I’ve never seen him look as hot and bothered as he does now. I decide I might as well pull out the big gun right now.

“All right O’Mallollolly,” I say, “I want your resignation. Three copies, signed and witnessed.”

He clamps the phone between his shoulder and cheek and starts chewing on a fingernail and says, “You’re through GASCOYNE, go away.”

Just then the door opens and O’Mallollolly just about falls off his chair but it’s only some sergeant who comes in and plops a paper down on the desk and runs right out. O’Mallollolly looks at it and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him sweat between the nose and upper lip and I think maybe he’s just suffered a big defeat on the fifth floor.

“I’m not through,” I say, “I’ve just begun and I want all nine subcommissioners out and replaced by MacGanymede who’s going to take your place until the election.”

He doesn’t seem to be listening when I say that and hangs up the phone and dials again and I’m wondering what the hell I have to do to get it through his thick skull that he’s at the end of the line.

“Listen O’Mallollolly—”

“You know who you’re talking to don’t you,” I say pretty mad, “you know who you’re talking to. Me, GASCOYNE.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got better ways to spend my time.”

“You do, do you? Well look O’Mallollolly either you start scribbling out a resignation right this minute or I’m going to throw a scandal at you and Police Tower so big they’ll be talking about it in Medicine Bow Wyoming for ten years. I’ll make it easy for you the first way but—”

“Big deal.”

“You interrupted me,” I say.

“Because I’m busy and it’s my turn. GASCOYNE I want you out of this building in twenty minutes, out of town in twenty-eight hours, out of the state in thirty-one hours. I’ve written it down in case you forget.”

He searches through about five piles of papers on his desk and comes up with a little scrap of envelope and hands it to me with the figures on, I guess, but I can’t read a thing up close without my glasses.

Just then the phone rings and O’Mallollolly picks it up and listens a moment and hangs up and says to Victor behind him, “Start moving the desks over there against the door and throw up a barricade out in the reception office and don’t let anybody in here without a signed pass, got it?”

“Look O’Mallollolly—”

“Hey I’m busy, huh? Scram, before I have to throw you out.”

Well things are going pretty far and I figure the best way to handle this is on my own territory where at least I’ll get the respect I’m entitled to and be able to fix O’Mallollolly’s wagon in a way nobody’ll be able to repair.

“Well I guess we ought to get a start on it,” I say to the boys and we head out around the furniture the Goon Squad’s piling up, sweating and swearing like the devil at the way their white uniforms are getting all smudged up, serves them right. We climb over the pile of sofas and coffee tables in the reception room and walk to the executive elevator which is waiting there ready and open and I push the button.

“Oh GASCOYNE thank you!” he says and rushes away tying the handkerchief around the tip of one of those poles they use for opening transoms and high windows, and he disappears into the smoke chanting a very flattering version of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

All of a sudden there are a couple of shouts close by and somebody yells “Retreat! All is lost!” and a crowd of cops and secretaries emerges out of the fog toward us and a corporal shouts, “GASCOYNE, help! Save us!”

As we walk through the crowd to the car a party of wounded stops to let us pass and I look down at the stretcher to see ex-Subcommissioner MacGanymede lying flat on his back. He looks up at me dimly and as blood oozes from his lips he says, “I tried, GASCOYNE, I tried. I only wish …” But the cold hand of death stops what promised to be memorable last words. Poor MacGanymede, a good man, hate to lose him.

Slowly we work our way through the pressing and staring crowd whose hostility is held back by the awesome spectacle. I see here and there a club raised to strike but always there is another hand that reaches up gently and pulls it down which almost makes me weep. We reach the Kaiser and some brave soul jumps forward to open the front door for me and helps me inside while Gary the ass tries to get in the left back door. “Use the other door for God’s sake,” I say and he runs around to the other side and Gilman gets in the front.

I press the starter button but I’ll be damned if the lousy thing won’t start. Wow-a-wow-a-wow-a goes the starter without a sign of the motor catching, probably the starter pinion’s jammed which happens now and then.

“Say,” I call out the window to the fellow who opened the door, “do you suppose you could give us a little push?”

I turn left onto Tenth Avenue and dump Gilman and Gary off at the corner of Water Boulevard and head on for the Infracity on-ramp pretty tired out by the Police Tower exercise and wanting to stop and take ten winks, but I haven’t got the time the way things are going. What gives me the headache is trying to figure out why O’Mallollolly is going to all the effort to take over Police Tower in his nasty way when he knows he’s cutting his own throat and public life-span down to three months at the most. Against me he hasn’t got a chance and it’s almost as if he actually wants me to wipe him off the face of the map which smells pretty fishy. Well, I decide, I’m the one who chooses the time and place around here so I’m going to wait a little to see if something’s brewing I don’t see and which makes a little more sense. And then there are a hell of a lot of other things to get cleared up.

“Yeah boss. Got a report from Fitz in Police Tower. Sorry.”

“We may have lost a battle Chester, but the war’s just begun. What else is new?”

“We got Grant the butler’s body from the Phoenix Crematorium just in the nick of time. Called Tsvkzov, he’ll meet you at the usual time and wants you to be in seat thirty-eight.”

“Good,” I say.

“Now as for Fernando, he doesn’t need any more financing, he says.”

“Doesn’t need any more?” I say.

“That’s what he said boss.”

“Hell what’s got into him? I’ve always backed him from the very start and he always comes to me before anybody else. Suddenly getting choosey, isn’t he?”

“Don’t know boss. Maybe he’s waiting for the O’Mallollolly thing to blow over.”

“Shit! Chester you call Fernando. If he won’t do business with me now and damn quick he’ll find it so rough he’ll have to go out of town to take a goddamn leak, damn!”

“Now wait a minute boss, I wouldn’t lose your head over—”

“Sorry boss. All I wanted to say—”

“Be quick about it.”

“All I want to say is that maybe Fernando’s been out of town so long he doesn’t know what’s going on,” he says.

“Well he’s going to find out right now. Call him.”

“Now really boss why don’t—”

“Shut your mouth Chester and get on that phone and give him hell, understand?”

The SLEEPY DELL EXECUTIVE GARDEN ESTATES offramp pops up and I merge right and pump the brakes and bring her down the off-ramp and notice just as I’m turning the corner at the bottom that things are getting a little crowded behind because the blue Porsche is back on my tail and behind it what looks like two plainclothes police Thunderbirds. I whip through the orange light at the underpass but the red doesn’t stop them and they all come right on through really messing up the traffic situation. I decide that if the chance comes I’ll throw them off but no rush since where I’m going at the moment is no big secret, no sense pushing it and I’m a little in a hurry right now. O’Mallollolly’s probably just trying to throw his weight around but is too scared to really do anything and I probably know the guys in the T-birds anyway.

I roll down Vieworama Ridge Drive at about forty-five and turn right onto Mirindaranda Road and head for the Widow Roughah’s joint. Just then the phone rings.

“GASCOYNE?” some voice asks.

“Yeah, who else? Who the hell’s this?” I ask.

“Never mind. We’re going to give you a chance to make a deal.”

“Never mind. Are you interested in a deal?”

“For what?”

“To make it easier for both of us. To ease you nice and soft out of the tree you’ve got yourself up,” he says.

“I’m up no tree I know of.”

“We’ll tell you which tree you’re up if you want to make a deal.”

“Look mister,” I say, “you’ve got the funniest ideas of the way things are in this town of anyone I know,” and I hang up. This sort of thing happens often enough, some little frog looks at the pond and decides it’s worth making a splash in, they’ve seen too many westerns. Or probably some crackpot trying to make a little off my tiff with O’Mallollolly.

I go straight at the Mirindaranda split and get to the Roughah main gate and decide to go on in, so I snake the Kaiser up the white gravel drive and nose it into my parking slot and am pretty pissed off to see that some joker has swiped my nameplate, two in one day makes a man feel a little unwanted. I reach out and pull the door open from the outside and climb out and crunch around to the front of the house and give the door a good beating. After a couple of minutes with my feet going numb, the Widow Roughah still dressed in that slinky black gown of hers opens the door and lets me in.

“All right Nade,” I demand, “who swiped my nameplate?”

“Look Nade, you tell me who swiped my nameplate and I’ll call you Nadine.”

She looks at me with those two ramrod eyes of coal black and says, “I swiped it.”

“What did you do a silly thing like that for?”

She sort of goes soft and drops herself down in a big white polarbearskin Morris chair.

“Well?” I ask.

“You ask too many questions, GASCOYNE, I can’t stand it I tell you, I can’t stand it!”

Very casually I pull out my automatic and slip on the silencer and screw off the safety and pick a large expanse of blank wall and start blasting away but since my aim isn’t as good as it used to be the G comes out looking like a C and I can’t seem to get the top on the A and the S is a real mess and I just get started on the C when I run completely out of ammo.

“Just to show you Nade my nameplate is not to be tampered with,” I say as I pour a little water out of a flower vase over the barrel of my gun which is quite hot.

“Shall we move to the sitting room?” she asks, stretching and getting up. “The smoke gets in my eyes here.”

She’s right about that one so we make our way to the sitting room which is a small affair done in red velvet and that sort of stuff with a pitch-black ceiling and a black wall-to-wall carpet. She sits down on a little chair and pulls out a pair of dark glasses and puts them on.

“Well according to my doctor friend the only thing to do is give his old octopus arm an hourly rinse with a strong solution of BONANZA BANQUETTE ALL-PURPOSE MARVELOUS DETERGENT WITH FORMULA SUD 39.”

“Oh,” she says. “I guess I’d better tell him then.”

“All right,” I say and she goes out another door and I think this is as good a chance as I’ll have for awhile to snooze so I plunk myself down on a couch tired as hell and no sooner do I get myself stretched out than there she is back again with Jeremy Armstrong in tow. I sit back up.

“Mr. GASCOYNE how can I thank you?”

Well I don’t know what he has to thank me for because he’s still got his tentacle hanging out and at the moment toying with his button-down collar. In fact I think the thing actually looks a little longer and fatter.

“Well son,” I say, “there are a lot of ways but let’s make sure this soap thing works before we worry about anything else.”

“Yes sir. I’m sure it will.”

“Now don’t get your hopes up too high.”

“Oh no,” he says just as the old tentacle gets tired of the button and starts swinging around so much it goes splat right against the wall making Armstrong stagger a little. “It’s just that when you come back from the wars,” he goes on with some difficulty, “people never seem to understand.”

Just then the tentacle goes into its feeding position and Armstrong gives it a half-peanut with jerky little movements.

“Yes I know,” he says. “I mean it’s not my fault. But I shouldn’t talk about it like this. Well fine weather we’ve had today and say Mr. GASCOYNE Nadine’s told me a lot about you but I’m afraid I never did catch your profession. What—”

Well at this moment the tentacle chooses to curl up and go to sleep leaving Armstrong high and dry, and his eyes roll up and his knees go soft and he crumples down on the floor. Nadine runs over to the door and shouts for somebody and in a second a real bitchy-looking nurse marches in and grabs Armstrong by the foot and drags him out. Good riddance because I can’t spend any more time worrying about the poor bastard, I’ve got enough problems of my own.

Nadine goes and sits back down on her little chair.

“All right,” she says, “I’m going to talk.”

“About what?”

“Talk, sing, spill the beans, let the cat out of the bag, ’fess up.”

“You don’t say,” I say.

“Yes,” she says.

“Why at this particular moment?” I ask.

“Well GASCOYNE I’ve got to do it sooner or later.”

“That’s true.”

“I can tell you anything but that,” she says going stiff and hysterical. “But let me confess now.”

“Well wait a minute Nade, let’s not be in such a big hurry. We’ve got to be sensible about this sort of thing.”

“I guess you’re right GASCOYNE but sometimes it’s so hard.”

“You’ve got to try.”

“I know,” she says softly.

She pulls out a handkerchief but doesn’t do anything with it and then she gets up and starts pacing back and forth on the pitch-black carpet.

“I was born—” she moans but I put a stop to that.

“Oh stop it Nade, you can’t do it like that and you know it.”

“But I can’t help it.”

“Just answer my questions.”

“But the trouble is GASCOYNE when you do it that way you ask all the important ones first and those are the ones I don’t want to answer until last.”

“Damn, all right,” I say, “but I’m in a hurry, I’ve got an appointment. Where were you born?”

“Damn you cruel beast,” she says bursting into tears and stomping her feet, “all you want to do is dig out dirty underwear and wave it around, monster!”

“That’s right Nade, I’m just a good old-fashioned villain who straps helpless girls to the railroad tracks.”

She grabs a Chinese vase and heaves it at my head but I duck and it goes through a mirror. Then I get up and give her a couple of slaps across the face and twist her arm and throw her down on the couch where she whines deep behind her cat’s teeth and tries to bite and kick me.

“Sit still or I’ll start breaking things,” I say.

She lets out with a sort of convulsion and then goes limp, sweating.

“All right that’s better. Where were you born?”

“In America.”

She spits in my eye. I soften her up with a few more slaps.

“Where in America?”

“I can’t tell.”

I twist her arm.

“Ohio!” she gasps.

“Where in Ohio?” I ask with more twisting.

“San—”

“Yes?”

“Eee! Sandusky.”

I relax the pressure.

“Jesus you’re good GASCOYNE,” she sighs.

“Not so bad yourself Nade.”

“Mmm. That feels good.”

“We must get on. What was O’Mallollolly doing here the afternoon of the murder before the murder or during it as the case may be?”

I give her a tap on the stomach.

“Pou-ak!” she explodes. “How dare you touch me there you dirty old man!”

She gets her teeth in my hand and chomps down real hard. With no little pain I free my hand and look at the row of fresh tooth marks with the feeling that I’ve seen somewhere else an identical row of fresh tooth marks on someone else’s hand very recently but I can’t remember who or where.

I slap her a couple of times and her nose starts bleeding.

“Talk goddamn you or I’ll ring your neck!”

“All right,” she says with a swallow, her eyes gone glassy. “Would you mind repeating the question?”

“Ah, something about O’Mallollolly being here the afternoon of the murder.”

“Yes of course he was, I told you that.”

“Yes, but why?”

She sobs. “To conceal evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“The murder weapon.”

“Yes, go on, try to speak in complete sentences if you possibly can.”

“The murder weapon. He gave it to me to hide.”

“Where did you hide it?”

“Well,” she says, “now that’s a little personal.”

“In that desk drawer.”

“That one?” I say, pointing at a desk in the corner.

She bites her lip and says, “Yes!”

I spring up and go over to the desk and pull open the drawer and sure enough there’s the murder weapon but sure enough too there’s something traveling fast toward the back of my head and I duck just in time to miss a genuine meat cleaver, wherever she pulled that one from, which sinks three inches into the wall back of where my head was.

“Did you throw that?” I ask.

But she’s about ready to launch a magazine stand at me so I pick up the desk chair and knock her out cold. Then I pick her up and toss her back down on the couch and pat her cheeks to make her come to.

“Oh where am I?”

“Right where you started from, only now with a little sense knocked into you.”

“Crummy bastard you’d strike your own mother.”

“Have already on more than one occasion.”

She starts screaming and whimpering so I have to put my hand over her mouth and she tries to bite my fingers so I’ve got to soften her up a little more.

“All right, I’ll talk!” she gasps, tears springing from her eyes.

“What was the question?”

“I haven’t asked it yet.”

“Perverted sadist for beating me up for nothing.”

“All wrong. Hand over that insurance policy!”

“Is that a request?”

She slips a long-fingernailed hand free and jabs me right there which has the effect of causing much pain and throwing me off balance and off the couch and down on the floor flat on my back. She stands up on the couch and jumps off with her three-inch spikes aimed squarely at my exposed belly.

“Die you nasty old fart!” she shrieks as she plummets downward.

Fortunately I make an agile twist away and upwards only an instant before her spikes would have speared me and she hits the floor with a tremendous crash and her spikes sink into the carpet and into the floor and she stands there uncertainly with her arms waving when all of a sudden the floor under her gives way and the carpet rips and she vanishes from sight, leaving only her rumpled black slinky gown behind, peeled off by the narrowness of the aperture.

Gingerly I test the floor and edge my way toward the hole and look down in, dark as hell it is.

“Hey Nade!” I call down. “You all right?”

No answer.

“Psst!” I call again. “Come on Nade cut out the horseplay. I’m in a hurry damn it.”

I pussyfoot it back to the hole and call down, “Hey Nade, I’ve got to go, really.” No sound. “Well I’ll see you later Nade. Give Chester a ring if you need anything.”

I work my way back from the hole and then go out the door and notice as I pass through the living room I’m already ten minutes late according to the clock there and this could end up with a real mess.

Tired as I am from all that exertion I can’t afford to slow down so I hotfoot it out the front door and into the Kaiser which fortunately starts right off though there’s a knock in the engine at first I’ve never heard before and I wonder if maybe this one’s had it. A new or reconditioned engine lasts me on the average of two months and sometimes three and I’m going on the third month now and the odometer’s hitting the high ninety thousands, so at least from now on I’m getting my money’s worth.

About then Marge calls.

“Hi Marge. Get up to Condor’s Crag yet?”

“No,” she says pretty coldly.

“Well where are you then?”

“Just sitting,” she says.

“Well where dear?”

“Oh I’m still at the FAT PHEASANT AND OLD GREYHOUNDE.”

“What?”

“I said I’m still at the FAT PHEASANT AND OLD—”

“I heard you,” I say, “and I just want to know what the hell you’re still doing there and how much this is costing me.”

“Well I’m still here because eating takes time, I mean we’re not all like you dear. I mean sometimes we have to stop and eat and sometimes that takes a couple of hours and sometimes we have to sleep and that cuts out a whole eight hours of each day, really awfully inefficient I admit dear, but that’s the way the rest of us are made.”

“And I suppose—” she says and sort of chokes.

“What?”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me I ought to eat two chocolate bars a day and cut my sleep down to a half hour and then what do you want me to do stay up all night—”

“Calm down Marge. Look at Chester now, he’s been up for three nights in a row now and he’s doing just fine, even a little better than usual.”

“How nice—”

“Stop screaming Marge.”

“I’m not screaming, I’m raving,” she says and boy she’s doing both for my money. “I mean there are just so many wonderful exciting things I could do if I stayed up all night on two chocolate bars. I just love to knit. Knit! Just think with all that time on my hands I could knit you a car cover or me a wall-to-wall knitted carpet or a circus tent. Do you suppose I could buy a chocolate bar at the FAT PHEASANT?”

“NO. STEVIE’S SENSATIONAL SANDWICHES has them.”

“Whoopie!”

“Marge there’s something wrong with your attitude and I wish you’d stop it.”

“All right. Now what the hell did you call for?”

She doesn’t say a damn thing but she hasn’t hung up yet either, I’m getting pretty pissed off.

“Come off it Marge, what did you call for?”

“Oh,” she says, “oh just to chew the fat. Not much else to do around all this scenery except chew the fat.”

“Hell you’re supposed to be on your way to Condor’s Crag. What the hell’s got into you woman?”

“Look mister I called to tell you that as I was walking out to that stupid car some man comes up to me and asks me to call you and ask you if you’re interested in a deal of I don’t know what sort but he wouldn’t say anything else so I called you and what do I get but a lecture on how to live life for a dollar a day, gas and automobile repairs not included.”

Then the bitch hangs up just like that.

Well I’ve got my own problems to worry about and one of them is the Tollroad Tollgate which is coming into view and I check the rearview again and see that nothing’s changed back there with my following friends so just to give them a little jolt I snap on the supercharger and whiz her up to eighty-five and then dial the tollgate central phone.

“It’s GASCOYNE here and I’m coming through number one as per usual.”

“Hold on,” some wise one answers, “you’ve got to stop and pay a toll like anybody else now GASCOYNE.”

“Sorry buster too late.”

“Hi Chester, what’s up?”

“Nothing boss.”

“Well what the hell did you call for?”

“I just called to tell you I’m going to go take a crap.”

“Take a what?”

“A crap.”

“Well for Christsake go take a crap, you don’t have to ask me every time you go take a crap,” and I hang up wondering what the hell’s got into Chester all of a sudden.

I slow down real slow and bounce into the TAHITI-DELICE driveway ramp and cruise through like I didn’t have a care in the world and as I turn the corner at the parking spaces I notice the Porsche has stopped out on the street and that leaves me free to go on past the parking spaces and hit the driveway of another place I own backing it and in ten seconds I’m out on Hemingway Way and I can just see the Porsche boys running into the TAHITI-DELICE pushing doorbells and wondering where I’ve gone to.

All this puts me about five minutes late so I hurry past the crackerbox houses to Saint Thomas of Aquinas Avenue and into the bright-light Aquinas commercial strip, a good part of which is my territory. Pretty quick the EMPEROR’S FEAST DRIVE-IN HAMBURGER LOUNGE pops into sight and I slow down and swing right into the parking lot and pull her into the G slot. Before I get out I open up the glove compartment and pull out the jar of Micro-Mice and see that the population has increased by leaps and bounds so I give them a squirt of depopulation virus and also a few grains to eat and shove the works back into the glove compartment.

“Okay sweetie,” I say, “move it off the stool, it’s my seat.”

She turns around and looks at me with a pair of sunglasses so dark it’s a wonder she knows which way to look and takes a piece of unchewed hamburger out of her mouth with her fingers and drops it right on my left shoe, the juvenile delinquent.

“Huh?” she says.

“I say you’re on my stool.”

“Look grampa nobody’s sitting in the other fifty stools that I can see,” she says so I guess she can see.

“That may be sweetie but I own this place and I always sit on stool thirty-eight.”

“You own this place?” she says sort of wiggling her wrist.

“That’s what I said.”

“Oh. Well maybe you can do something about these hamburgers. They taste like dead cat.”

After a minute one of the guys behind the counter dressed up as a court dandy comes up and takes my order which is a BOURGEOISBURGER with lots of onions, and he runs off and gets one and brings it right back. I get a glass of water with that and now all I’m missing is Tsvkzov and wonder why he’s late. Three teen-age couples come in the door and wobble over to one of the tables and it’s pretty clear what they’re here for, we’ve got that too.

Just then Tsvkzov whips in the side door and trots across the hamburger pattern carpet and plunks himself down on the stool next to mine.

“Hi Tsvkzov, I’ve got some hot stuff for you.”

“How hot?”

“Damn hot. Sweating hot,” I say.

“Too hot?”

“Not if you play it cool.”

“All right GASCOYNE, what is this hot stuff?”

“Ha,” I say, “I won’t let you within ten miles of the stuff until I get an idea of what it’s worth. I’d say add ten percent to the red-hot stuff classification and see what sort of rise you get from me.”

“That hot, is it?” he asks.

“Damn right.”

“All right supposing we offer red-hot stuff plus ten, what do you say?”

“Reimbursement procedures?” I ask.

“Bank draft as usual.”

“But how can I be sure?”

“How can we?” he asks.

“Oh you’ll be sure all right.”

“Well?”

“Can’t say I have,” he says.

“You haven’t?”

“No,” he says. “What the hell are they good for?”

“Eating grain.”

“What grain?”

“Your grain, Tsvkzov, Mother Russia’s Breadbasket.”

“Well now wait a minute,” he says. “If these Micro-Mice are three times smaller than regular house mice that means they eat three times less grain, right?”

“Hmm. Well that’s one way to look at it but I’m sure not the right way.”

“Okay, what other hot stuff have you got GASCOYNE?”

“Well now wait a minute these Micro-Mice—”

“Come on quit pulling my leg,” he says.

“I’m not kidding Tsvkzov, these Mice—”

“Ha ha,” he says, “why don’t you send them to the moon? They say there’s a lot of cheese up there.”

Well I just about give him one in the dental zone for that but don’t because I’m pretty sure he’s not the kind to go for the hard sell.

“I may have some news on the Z-bomb next week,” I say and it’s all pure bull.

“That’s more like it. What’s the Z-bomb?”

“Not worth the bother.”

“Look I tell you they’re great, fantastic.”

“I just can’t see it, GASCOYNE.”

“Cats can’t catch them.”

“Why not?” he asks.

“Guess.”

“Because they don’t want to?”

“No,” I say, “guess again.”

“Because … well, I don’t know.”

“Oh come on guess.”

“GASCOYNE you play too many games with me! Tell me why cats can’t catch them, I insist!”

“Calm down Tsvkzov, I’ll tell you. Their paws are too big.”

“Whose paws?”

“The cats’.”

“So. Hmm.”

“You see?”

“What exactly do you mean, their paws are too big?”

“Well,” I say, “I suppose I mean actually that their claws are too far apart and that the Micro-Mice slip through them.”

“Yes I see. And how is this important?”

“Sometimes I think you’re dense Tsvkzov, can’t you see that if cats can’t catch them that pretty soon you’ll have Micro-Mice up the ass and eating up the Breadbasket of Mother Russia?”

“Disastrous.”

“But,” he says, “I don’t understand why you want to sell us some Micro-Mice. I mean we’re not going to turn them loose in our own Breadbasket.”

“Of course not but with them you will be able to create a Micro-Mouse counterforce rodent deterrent, don’t you see?”

“Well there is that point,” he says. “What do you want for these animals?”

“Two million for four pair.”

“A million and a half.”

“Sold,” I say.

“How’s business?”

“Not so good. How’s the wife?”

“Complains about the cold.”

“Too bad. Well Tsvkzov how do I get these Mice to you?”

“Oh hell just give them to me.”

“Sure,” I say wondering why he’s getting so sloppy all of a sudden and not liking this attitude but what can I do about it? “They’re in the glove compartment of the Kaiser.”

“Fine.”

He whips out his billfold and takes out a blank bank draft on a Swiss bank and fills in my name and the date and the amount and hands it over to me.

I hit the parking lot about the time Tsvkzov drives off in his red Moskvich, a tin can if ever there was one, and I climb into the Kaiser and have to work up a little sweat getting the thing started because the battery’s gone low for some reason though it seems to charge all right as soon as I get the engine running. Could be she got a little too hot on the last run and started to tighten up as soon as I stopped.

I back her up and then throw her in drive and bounce onto the avenue right and fiddle with the rearview to check the scenery out back and damn if there isn’t a little red Porsche right smack on my tail and I slow down to catch the license number and about lose my uppers when I see that it’s got the same number as the blue Porsche and the silver one before that. All I can think is that somebody who can have three cars under the same license number has got a hell of a lot of pull somewhere, and it sure isn’t one of O’Mallollolly’s crew because I know just how much pull he has and exactly where he has it and it doesn’t go so far as three sets of identical license plates by a long shot. About this point I get real interested and wonder where in the hell these visiting firemen are coming from, nowhere I know about.

*

“Chester what’s the—”

“Aaah-choua!” he interrupts. “Excuse me boss, got a cold.”

“Well the best thing’s to take an aspirin and just go on like nothing’s the matter with you.”

“Sure boss,” he says.

“Now Chester I want you to cable Tsvkzov’s bank as usual and see that he’s got the funds to cover his latest check for a million and a half. Next, what did you ever find out about that Porsche’s license number I gave you?”

“Not a damn thing more boss. Reggie in State Automobile Registration says there’s no record of it up there except what he sent us and that’s just three items, the make, the year and license number. No motor number or anything.”

“Wow. Somebody’s messing around up there. I’ll have to take care of that next week. What else’s new?”

“Nothing good,” he says. “The fifth floor of Police Tower has surrendered and from what little I can find out O’Mallollolly’s running the whole place now.”

“I was afraid of that. Well we’ll get by.”

“And the feds caught Flash Fingers.”

“What?”

“Seems that instead of putting all the cash he got out of the WESTBINDER vault back into the mail for us he kept some for himself and the feds traced it in about five hours.”

“But hell all the bank records burned up,” I say.

“Damn, well I guess all we can do is get him a lawyer. Now Chester before I forget it again I want you to check up completely on the Apotheosis Life Insurance Company and I want to know everything about why they issued Policy Number 9354728 to Rufus Roughah in spite of the heavy risk. Seems to me I’ve heard of this company somewhere but I can’t remember where. But wait a minute, before you get into that, give Nuddard a call and tell him to have the whole front page cleared off and ready for when I give him the material which I’ve still got to think about some. Don’t suppose there’s any chance left of getting Roughah’s body out of Cold Storage.”

“No boss, to tell you the truth with the shuffling around that’s going on at Police Tower I don’t have any idea what numbers to dial anymore.”

“Well we’ll just have to do without Roughah then.”

I zip under the Turnpike Tollroad underpass but of course I’m not going to take the tollroad because I absolutely refuse to pay another cent to officials I’m subsidizing strongly in other ways, so I keep on Clyde Hopkins Bird Sanctuary Road which angles back toward the center of town. I’m wondering all the time in the back of my mind who to put in O’Mallollolly’s place when I pry him out and the trouble is MacGanymede’s dead and there’s nobody else I really trust in the Tower and somebody from outside would be all right up until they got corrupted, which happens pretty fast. No trouble getting them in, all I do is give the Mayor the name to appoint which will make him happy because it’ll show the electorate his paralytic stroke hasn’t affected his mind yet. Poor bastard all he can do is wiggle his ears and the only thing that keeps him alive is the thought of being reelected maybe for the pleasure of being carried in and out of his office every day. I could always have him appoint himself Police Commissioner but the trouble is I don’t have the time to pull all the strings in this damn town, I’ve got too much going on right now to keep track of.

“Chester is that you?”

“No this is Frank.”

“Damn where’s Chester?”

“He wasn’t feeling well and said something about going out for some more pills for his shooting pains.”

“Holy shit! Tell him to call me the moment he gets back.”

“Who’s this?”

“GASCOYNE, you asshole.”

“Yes sir! Excuse me!”

Miserable incompetents, what a time for shooting pains. How can you get shooting pains sitting at a desk and telephone all day?

“… only when you give me my house back,” Nancy’s saying, almost screaming.

“It’s in little pieces, you idiot, and you’ll never get it back,” he says.

“Well build me a new one.”

“We’re broke, flat broke, understand? Can’t you see that if you just tell us what you know we may be able to find it and then we can build you a whole housing tract of houses.”

“If only I could trust you Dmitri,” she says.

“You don’t need to trust me. You don’t even need to tell me. Tell some other member of the corporation.”

“What corporation?”

“Maybe that’s what I want,” she says.

“You little bitch!”

There’s a slap and a crash and a little scream and I think it’s best to make my presence known so I put my hearing aid back and turn it down to normal and whip out my automatic and unscrew the safety and fling open the door and dash through. I find Dmitri about to give Nancy another slap and he has his gun out and is unfortunately facing square at me. He sees me and says, “All right drop your gun GASCOYNE.”

Which is really my line he’s stealing but then I suddenly remember that I emptied my gun into the Widow Roughah’s living room wall and sure as hell forgot to reload it so I don’t really need it. But what possesses me to drop it on my toe with the corn on it is beyond me, and I’ve dropped quite a few guns in my life but never has this happened before. I double up with pain and Dmitri puts a hole in the wall where I was. I never did like the guy.

“All right GASCOYNE, on your feet and don’t try anything else funny because I’ve got a short temper at the moment.”

“So I noticed.”

“It’s very convenient you’re here now GASCOYNE, since you’re the man I wanted to talk to and so suppose you start talking fast.”

“About what?”

“Roughah’s treasure trove.”

“First time I’ve heard of it,” I say.

“Cut the comedy.”

“Look I’m not kidding.”

“We’ll see,” he says.

He goes to a closet and pulls out a big black bullwhip. Nancy gives a little screaming gasp and frankly I’m about ready to pee in my pants. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s people using force against me. Really pisses me off.

“Now wait a minute,” I say, “you just be careful with that thing, you never know quite how it’s going to land.”

“I know exactly,” he says, uncoiling it.

“That’s what I was afraid of. Don’t I get one too?”

“No, sorry, there aren’t enough to go around.”

He starts warming the thing up with snakelike movements.

“Okay Dmitri you know damn well Roughah had no treasure trove. His estate’s almost bankrupt as it is.”

“Yeah, that’s something else I wanted to know. Why?”

“Beats me.”

“Sure it does.”

“Okay,” he says, “an ear or a nose?”

“Well now let’s not get excited,” I say. “What was your question?”

“Where did all Roughah’s money go?”

“He didn’t have a hell of a lot to begin with, about half a million more or less liquid,” I say, “and this was managed by FLEESON AND BAIGHT, a combined investment and accounting firm.”

“And?”

“Well I suspect they managed it badly, Roughah didn’t have a head for anything besides rackets, or else they siphoned it off for their own use and fabricated monthly statements to keep Roughah happy which wasn’t hard because he’s one of those people who expect to lose money if a deal looks at all honest.”

“Come on GASCOYNE, that sounds nice but a little fuzzy. This FLEESON AND BAIGHT firm, who are they?”

“What do you mean, who are they?”

“Who’s back of them?” he asks.

“Why should anybody be back of them?”

“Ah cut it out GASCOYNE.” He gives the whip a nasty wiggle.

“All right Dmitri, I’m FLEESON AND BAIGHT.”

“Okay that makes sense at last. So it’s you that’s been siphoning off Roughah’s fortune for the last fifteen years, that does make sense. How much you make GASCOYNE?”

“You get it all?”

“No,” I say, “I think we only got about a third. I think he stashed the rest away. Gold or diamonds, I’d say,” I say.

“Or a Swiss bank account.”

The trouble is I’ve got the lousy gold coin right there in my pocket.

“No,” I say, “I think he distrusted banks, even Swiss ones.

Dmitri fondles the bullwhip.

“About twelve million, you think GASCOYNE?”

“I’d say.”

“That’s what I figured too about the time I decided the real wheel was Roughah and not you GASCOYNE and that there was real money backing him. You’re made out of paper GASCOYNE. You look big but you’re really not, and so when I thought about this I saw that the truth was that you were a convenient front for Roughah to hide behind. And then knowing Roughah I knew he would do something stupid with his money, like bury it where any idiot could get at it. All right GASCOYNE—”

But then he’s interrupted by some character down on the street below bellowing like hell and saying, “Hey up there next time you throw ashtrays out the window give us a little warning, huh?”

“Oh go shove it!” Dmitri yells. “Okay now GASCOYNE I know you’ve got the bank account number, now let’s have it.”

Well that’s that and it leaves me alone with Nancy who I’ve been wanting to talk to for a good while.

“Okay Nancy—” I start to say but she gives me a slap across the eater that’s far from pleasant. “What’s that for?” I ask.

“For stealing Rufus’s money, crummy bastard.”

“That’s ancient history. Come on Nancy you know a couple of things I’d like to know so let’s hear them.”

“Just like that?”

“Why not?” I ask.

“You mean you’re not even going to offer me anything?”

“Hell no. I never pay money for information in advance. If I get it and it’s any good I pay after.”

“How much?” she asks.

“I decide that too. Anywhere from ninety-nine cents to nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”

“It doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m not going to tell you a thing,” she says.

“Because I just can’t stand your guts, CASCOYNE.”

Then she turns on her heels and marches out of the place in a way I find pretty irritating because I want to know what she knows and she’s going to find it damn tough in the future if she doesn’t start cooperating now. I pick up my automatic and run down the stairs after her but she’s already in the car leaving rubber hotly on the pavement and the Kaiser’s way in the alley across the street. Still I think it worth a try so I run across the street on the double and jump in the Kaiser and start her up but the gear linkage gets stuck as it often does and I can’t throw her in reverse to back up, which means Nancy gets away this time.

As soon as I catch my breath, and I ought to keep that running down if not cut it out altogether, I give Chester a ring.

“Chester?”

“Yeah boss.”

“What the hell do you mean by leaving the phone again like that at a time like this?”

“I had to get some more pills boss. These shooting pains are awful.”

“It’s all in your goddamn head and if you leave that phone once more you’re finished, understand?”

“But boss I tried to call but the line was busy.”

“Hell it was busy!”

“All right you can take a rest. How about Saturday?” I ask.

“Jesus boss that’s two days away. I don’t know even whether I can make it through tonight.”

“Sure you can Chester.”

“No boss, I’ve just got to take a rest. I’ll try to hang on till six this evening but not any longer.”

“Now Chester nobody gives me an ultimatum in this town, you know damn well.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second.

“Hell boss I don’t give a plugged nickel whether anybody does or not, I’m stopping at six this evening and that’s that. I’ve been up fifty-three hours straight and I’ve had it and I’m not taking any more of it.”

“Well now think about it Chester, I wouldn’t do anything rash. Just think about it a little bit and you’ll change your mind, I’m sure.”

He stays quiet again.

“Okay Chester what’s new?”

More silence there is.

“Come on cut the crap, what’s new?” I say getting a little more than peeved.

“What about Louis?”

“They nabbed him with two and a half million in heroin and word has it he might start telling stories. Spread the rap-around, as they say, to get a little time off for himself.”

“You’re kidding aren’t you Chester?”

“Nope I’m telling the honest truth.”

“Hmm. Things aren’t looking up are they?”

“No boss can’t say they are.”

“Well we’ve got work to do anyway. First off I want you to send the Body Snatching Flying Squad from the GREEN FERN AND LILY BLOSSOM PARLOR OF FINAL REPOSE over to pick up Dmitri’s body, he got it in the head, and have them do it up fancy and send the bills to the Widow Roughah and any next of kin.

“Sure boss. Recorder’s on all the time.”

“All right, tell Nuddard to clean that up whatever way he wants it for the editorial, just so long as he keeps the basic ideas. Now I want the complete words of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ put in a little box under the editorial and tell Nuddard to use all of the first and second pages for the scandal story. From what I’ve just given him he can make up all the details he wants. He’s free to use his imagination and have him call me direct if he has any questions. You can give him my number Chester.”

“No kidding.”

“A little something extra for him. I want the Scandal of ’65 to be a real humdinger.”

The Red Flash Herald ought to hit the streets about six or seven this evening which will make the regular evening edition a little late but they’ll sure get their money’s worth. I think a follow-up in the morning Sunshine Special Times and then the regular morning Times will keep the fire hot and the fireworks themselves ought to start about noon tomorrow with riots and picketing and other demonstrations, working in somewhere the old unbeatable angle, police brutality, compromising photos all over the place. Just then Marge calls.

“Hi Marge. Well how’s Condor’s Crag?”

“I haven’t got there yet.”

“What? Jesus Christ Marge let’s get off the dime. At the rate you’re going the place’ll be in ruins by the time you get there.”

“Well please dear I can’t help it if that stupid car you gave me broke down again. I’m not a master mechanic you know, if you want—”

“Now calm down Marge you know damn well that car’s breaking down because you’re not driving it properly like they told you at the garage.”

“Calm down Marge. Where are you now?”

“I’m at a little gas station on the north end of Lake Lobotomples with a frozen generator bearing. The little man at the garage tells me they haven’t even started to make the part yet in England.”

“Now calm down Marge, how does he know?”

“Quit telling me to calm down dammit!”

“Well you should be able to get the car all the way home without the generator if you don’t use the lights.”

“That’s what Tom says,” she says.

“Who’s Tom? You’re not alone?”

“You think I’d travel alone in this country with a car like this?”

“Well who’s this Tom?”

“He’s the bartender at the FAT PHEASANT AND OLD GREYHOUNDE, a very nice boy who’s off the rest of today and so I invited him along for the ride.”

“Really Marge you shouldn’t pick up strange men like that,” I say even though he’s an employee of mine. You never know about people who work for you.

“He’s not a strange man, he’s not even a man. He’s only twenty-two, a mere child.”

“Well I don’t know about that Marge.”

“What did you mean by that?”

“Just what I said, that’s what I mean.”

“Whatever you meant, I wouldn’t say things like that if I were you,” I say.

“You’re not.”

“Now wait a minute Marge there’s a note of hostility there and I want to know what you mean by it”

“Not a thing,” she says.

“What do you mean, not a thing? What are you trying to say?” I ask.

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“Now Marge stop that and let’s talk this over like two reasonable human beings.”

“No. I don’t want to talk.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“I just don’t want to talk, that’s all. Goodbye,” she says.

“Wait a minute.”

“Goodbye.”

“Just a minute!” I say. “Are you still there?”

“Goodbye.”

“Now look when you calm down again all I want you to do is to go up to Condor’s Crag—”

“I can’t. Goodbye.”

“Wait! Why not?” I ask.

“I can’t. Goodbye.”

Then it’s quiet but she hasn’t hung up and then there’s a clanking around the phone and that seashell sound when somebody puts their hand over the receiver and finally a man’s voice.

“Hallo Mr. GASCOYNE, this here’s Tom Rasper.”

“Yes Mr. Rasper?”

“Well Mr. GASCOYNE Miss Margie wants me to tell you there that she cain’t go up to that Condor’s Craig place on account of there’s been a lanslaad all over the road from barrow pit to barrow pit.”

“I see. Well now wait a minute Mr. Rasper you just tell her she can walk. Where is this landslide?”

“Right at the bottom there where you turn off the main road to go up to the Condor place.”

“Of course she can walk. It’s only two miles. You tell her that.”

“Well I’ll try and ask her Mr. GASCOYNE. Hold on there a sec and I’ll be right back.”

He slaps his hand over the receiver for one hell of a long time and then he comes back.

“Mr. GASCOYNE well Miss Margie says she’ll do that haike all right if she can stay another naight in the Wolverine on the way back.”

“On the way back? I see. Well Mr. Rasper I don’t know about that.”

“Well all right then, but she can stay only if she takes the cheap room downstairs.”

“Oh now Mr. GASCOYNE I wouldn’t put my mother-in-law’s maiden aunt in that room, honestly. It ain’t fit for a dawg.”

“Well it couldn’t be as bad as all that,” I say.

“All right Mr. GASCOYNE I’ll ask Miss Margie here if she wants to stay in that filthy dark little room.”

“Thanks.”

Then there’s a short silence.

“Mr. GASCOYNE I’m afraid Miss Margie here has got the aidea that she’d laike to stay in the bridal suite tonight.”

“Bridal suite? Now Mr. Rasper you just tell her—”

“Please accept my pardon for interrupting you laike this sir, but since I reluctantly faind myself in the middle between the two of you, I can see that nobody at all is going to be happy here unless you give poor little Miss Margie here what she has her heart set on. I mean man to man, Mr. GASCOYNE, Miss Margie’s an awfully naice woman but she’s got this streak in her and unless you give her what she wants she’ll never stop asking for what she cain’t have.”

“All right Mr. Rasper. She can have the bridal suite.”

“Thank you ever so kaindly Mr. GASCOYNE, I, oh just a sec now.”

A little silence there is.

“I see. Well thank you for your help Mr. Rasper.”

“Pleasure’s mine to be sure.”

Crumble Canyon Drive starts getting pretty steep so I drop her in low and run past all the fancy houses, sitting ducks for landslides and mudslides and brush fires but that’s the kind of thing these people really eat up, and then I notice the Kaiser’s getting hot in a nasty way so I slow her down to about fifteen and give the rearview a jiggle. Right behind me I see I’ve got a string of Cadillacs and Continentals and Imperials all waiting for a straight stretch to pass me on but I don’t give a damn because half of them are probably leased from me anyway and the other half financed by the CRUMBLE CANYON SAVINGS AND LOAN, but what does get me is that little red Porsche behind all them which I’ve forgotten all about, getting careless in my old age. Well there isn’t much I can do about it and I’ll just let this one stay on because I’ve got the unpleasant feeling that if I shake him off another one’ll pop out from behind the next bush which is a state of affairs I can’t do much about until I find out who the joker is behind it all, like it or not.

The houses finally run out and then I roll past a bunch of land I haven’t cleared the brush off yet and come to Bigview Park and decide to pull into the Bigview Park Panoramic View Spot Parking Lot which gives a lovely view of the whole shooting match and what’s more important there’s a faucet and a hose there. I lease these thirty acres to the city, which put up the park and keeps it maintained because they think I’m going to give it to them in ten years or something but they’re all wrong because I’m waiting for people to move in next to the park and then when the area is a nice jammed-up suburb all around Bigview Park I’ll clear out all the damn bushes and throw up one of my BONANZA-BANQUETTE shopping centers which’ll probably start making money even before it opens.

I hoof it around to the trunk and unlock it and pull out my tool box and throw off the lid and pull out a roll of friction tape which I take back to the radiator and wind around the split hose. Won’t last forever but I keep a full jeep can of water in the back and if I take it easy it shouldn’t leak too much. I take the tape back and while I’m messing around in the trunk I open up a can of BIG DADDY SUPER SWELL KOLA with that magic ingredient that makes the kids really lap it up can after can and tank myself up and throw the can under an oleander bush for the squirrels to eat. Finally I close the whole works up and get back in the car and feel a little drowsy, so time to retire as they say and I push back the seat and slouch down and hit the hay.

“What’s up Chester?”

“I got the information on the Apotheosis Insurance Company and the Roughah policy. Sure you want to hear it boss?” he says in the sort of tone of voice that makes me worry.

“Go ahead shoot,” I say.

“Well it seems—” he says but gets interrupted by a wheeze and a gasp and a little choking sound.

“You all right Chester?” I ask, it sounds like an act to me.

“Sure boss, just one of my shooting pains. Well anyway this company was set up especially to insure Roughah, not legal of course, which means the idea was to squeeze fat premiums out of Roughah without intending to pay up if Roughah kicked the bucket. The gimmick was that Apotheosis said it would be the middle man and reinsure Roughah with a lot of other companies with small policies but it never did this, just kept the premiums.”

“Well fine and dandy, but the character,” he says gasping and coughing again, “but the fellow who set the company up put some bright-eyed college graduate to run the thing and this kid gets the idea to go straight and make the whole operation legal, especially because the wheel behind it all keeps out of the way as long as Roughah’s payments are pushed on to him.”

“Yes.”

“Well the kid changes the name of the company and starts making a little honest money when all of a sudden Roughah goes and gets himself killed.”

“Yes.”

“And this means that if it’s proven that Roughah was murdered and didn’t commit suicide the Apotheosis Life Insurance Company owes Nadine Roughah a cool million which it doesn’t have and that means the whole swindle comes out in the bankruptcy proceedings.”

“I get the picture Chester. What was the original name of—”

“THE RESURRECTION ASSURANCE COMPANY which is in our files boss and we’re checking it up now.”

“That’s enough Chester.”

Well so much for the Roughah case, I guess I’ll just have to write that one off. Bad days happen. Nothing to do but keep on going and wait for the next good one. Somehow tomorrow looks good. O’Mallollolly will be out by then and I’ll go back and see the Widow Roughah and we’ll have a little talk about the little gold coin. I begin to think Dmitri’s last words—John Doe—could be the name under which the Swiss bank account is held, even though that it’s a bank account number isn’t proven yet, and I’ll see if she’s interested in buying a little information. But still it’s hard to get over having wasted two whole days on the Roughah thing.

Well there’s only one thing to do when things get like this and that’s go home and take a snooze and have a bite to eat, not that I really need it but it might cheer me up some. I haven’t seen my old fourteen-foot HOLLY ROLLER MOBILE HOME, custom made, for about three weeks now and a cold shower might just do the trick even if I can’t sleep. I usually just lie on the couch and listen to the jets coming in and taking off, nice racket they make.

At least the engine’s still running so I climb out and limp around the car to see what the damage is. A lot of paint’s gone but there wasn’t much left anyway and the left headlight got poked out and I lost a good part of the left rear fender which was pretty rusted out anyway, damn dogs always peeing back there. But the tires are okay, that’s what counts, so I hop back in and put her in drive and head for Bigview Ridge Road and when I hit that I have to wait a hell of a long time to turn left because the rush hour’s on full blast now.

I get her going finally and right off pick up the red Porsche which was hiding behind a pepper tree or something, well I just don’t give a damn. Then I think I hear the phone ringing but am not sure so I turn back up my hearing aid and it is. I pick up the receiver and it’s Chester but I can’t understand a damn thing with all the racket so I pull over to the side of the road and shut off the engine.

“Boss are you there?”

“Yeah Chester. The muffler went out. That’s what—”

“Nuddard won’t print the editorial or anything.”

“Won’t what?”

“He won’t do it boss.”

“He’s fired!”

“I think he’s already resigned.”

“I can’t boss.”

“You can’t?”

“I’ve tried boss. Stevens on the TV stations won’t touch it and has resigned and so has what’s-his-name on the radio stations. There’s nobody boss.”

“You do it Chester!”

“Boss the whole damn newspaper staff has walked out.”

“Shit!”

“And that’s not all—”

“What?” I ask.

“O’Mallollolly’s got the CENTER surrounded with God knows how many cops. This has been going on for a half hour but nobody up here knew about it until just—”

“He can’t do that either! Call the Mayor and have him fire O’Mallollolly, my orders.”

“The Mayor’s been kidnapped.”

This is awful. Just awful. I calm myself down and nibble on a Ritz cracker.

“Yeah. One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Tsvkzov’s closed out his bank account. That check he gave you is worthless.”

“The prick!”

I hang up and just sit there by the side of the road with cars rushing by every which way and me wondering how the hell this is happening to me and how I can stop it from keeping on happening. I get the awful feeling that something’s been going on behind my back for a longer time than I care to think about and all this is happening according to somebody’s plan, and I’d say O’Mallollolly’s the one and that he’s bought up the town but I happen to know that he hasn’t even paid for his own house and in fact he even missed last month’s payment. Somebody really big must be back of him but nobody in town I know of is that big and nobody in the whole damn state either. It doesn’t make sense and it makes me sick. Here I had things running smoothly and everybody happy and now everything goes haywire for no good reason at all. Makes you lose your faith in human nature.

I pull back over to the side of the road and turn off the motor and give Chester a ring.

“Yeah?” somebody says.

“Who’s this?”

“William.”

“William who?” I ask.

“Bowman.”

“Oh. Where the hell’s Chester?”

“You mean that guy that was here at the phone a minute ago?”

“Yes.”

“Funny thing happened.”

“What?”

“A minute ago he just keeled over. Dead as a doornail.”

“Oh no!”

“Yep! Heart attack or something. They’re laying him out in the next office.”

I turn right at Flashflood Gulch Lane and head down the long twisting hill toward town as fast as the old Kaiser can take it, tires howling and bouncing on the curves and the thing backfiring like mad because I think something went out of tune when it heated up. Well the old buggy’s got a lot of miles on her and I’m so generally pissed off I’d do something really extravagant and call what’s-his-name —can’t even remember that now—at the agency and have him get out a new Imperial and ready for me except that little matter of not having his phone number handy, and I don’t think he knows my voice anyway. Scares me a little. Never seen me either.

“… made his influence first felt with the unexpected construction of GASCOYNE CENTER in nineteen forty-nine. Yet now fifteen years later perhaps only as few as a hundred people in the city can be certain they have ever seen his face, and still fewer have spoken with him. Who is GASCOYNE? What does he look like? Where does he hide? Does he even exist? Many of us think we see him every day—a paper-thin old man driving an old car which in its day was just a little too flashy—but no one is ever certain. We will not have long to wait, however, it—One moment please. Excuse us ladies and gentlemen, Police Commissioner O’Mallollolly is here in the studio and would like to speak a few words.”

“Thank you ladies and gentlemen. First I’d like to tell all you people out there how much we appreciate—” and then there’s a sort of twittering zip sound and then complete silence and so it sounds to me like the whole thing was on tape and somebody took it off in a damn hurry, well at least nobody has to listen to O’Mallollolly’s Gettysburg Address, though I’m beginning to wonder what is going on in that place.

I toss the mirror on the seat and begin to wonder if O’Mallollolly is making this fuss to get me to walk right into his hands with a big public arrest and all that with lots of pictures. A chance I’ve got to take, just can’t sit around and watch the place go up in smoke.

I slow down a couple of blocks from GASCOYNE CENTER and from what I can see the place is surrounded by cop cars and God knows how many cops but I really have to laugh at the piddling crowd he’s collected to watch the show. It’s damn clear nobody gives a used fart what O’Mallollolly’s doing and he’s made a complete failure out of his attempt to capture the public imagination if it’s got any.

But I’m getting too damn close so I pull the Kaiser into the GASCOYNE CENTER ANNEX TWO PARKING RAMP LOT and park the car in the space reserved for me in front of the alley fire exit and as I climb out damn if the six patrol cars don’t come waddling in the place followed by the red tin can. “Charge ’em double,” I shout to the attendant and duck down the basement stairwell.

The rest of the place makes me want to close my eyes and count sheep but it’s hardly the atmosphere for that. About two hundred filing cabinets are open and have been emptied onto the floor which is solid with papers and photographs and negatives and movie film and recording tape and over in the corner about twenty jokers are having a party. My employees. This sort of thing really makes an employer feel good.

I scramble through the mess over to File X which is a walk-in safe that hangs over the street in such a way it can’t be broken into from the outside. It’s been emptied but the contents are all outside the door spilling all over a large handcart with Municipal Police, A. O’Mallollolly, Police Commissioner, stenciled on it—and it’s pretty clear they’re intending to haul the stuff away as evidence and boy I hate to think what they’ll do with it. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it the way the incinerator’s jammed up and I really doubt that any of my loyal employees would be willing to lift a finger at this particular moment. I’m damn tempted to light a match and run but the trouble is it’s my barn too.

I walk into Chester’s office and the phone jacks of his little switchboard are all pulled out hanging limp and this creep is going through his desk.

“What the hell you think you’re doing?” I ask.

“What does it look like?”

“Looting,” I say.

“That’s it.”

I pull my head back in and go up the stairway to the roof and it looks like maybe good news time is starting up again because there’s my little Hughes chopper sitting right there on the landing pad, Chester the dimwit forgot to tell me they’d fixed it and brought it back, well so there’s a way out of this mess though I’ve never done a takeoff or landing solo.

That cheers me up enough that I decide to go back down and see what else can be salvaged and I slip down the stairs through my office and go back into Chester’s to see if he left any handy phone lists around. The looting creep’s gone and I start shuffling through the papers in Chester’s desk but the trouble is I’m pretty badly farsighted and left my glasses somewhere and anyway it’s been so long since I’ve read anything but signs and things like that that I’ve pretty well forgotten how to read, haven’t even looked at the Herald or Times for thirty years, but that’s the sort of thing I pay all these people for.

“No,” I say thinking it best to keep my identity secret under these conditions, “I’m just a friend of Chester’s.”

“Yeah, too bad about him,” he says pointing to the stiff.

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“Who’s that? I thought you said you were a friend.”

“That’s not Chester,” I say.

He looks at me a minute and says, “We got the right Chester, don’t we? I’m talking about Chester Jones,” and he points a pretty firm finger at that colored corpse.

Well it hits me with both barrels then and really burns me right up, Chester colored all these years and nobody ever told me, boy what kind of friends do I have? Worst piece of news I’ve had in years. Turns out I’ve been depending on a goddamn Negro. Explains a lot and a hell of a lot, just when I’ve been about to blame myself for all this mess. And nobody ever told me, that’s what really pisses me off, really does. Well I get the point loud and clear and as soon as I get things back running right the first thing I’m going to do is find my glasses and go through every lousy employee photograph and fire the whole lot of them, just can’t depend on them.

*

I walk down the hall and look in on a couple of the radio-TV studios but the joint’s such a screaming mess jammed with my employees and cops all soaked up in liquor that if they let the city zoo loose here the place’d seem like a tea party by comparison, and all I hope is that all this sin is being broadcast all over the city.

The Herald-Times editorial offices on floor thirteen are a shambles like somebody’s about to start a bonfire and everything there’s out of hand so I catch a service elevator finally and speed her down to the second floor where the auditorium is because if anybody’s in charge here it’ll be there and I can present the bastard with a few questions, namely on what the hell he thinks he’s doing on and with my premises.

I pop out of the elevator and shove my way through a bunch of cops standing around some cases of beer making slurping noises and squeeze through the door of the CELESTE GASCOYNE MATERNAL MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM and find the place sardine-packed with cops and former employees of mine drinking beer and stuff out of paper cups and all jabbering away like they were being paid for it.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asks.

“It’s me, GASCOYNE,” I say in such a way the microphone picks it up and broadcasts it all over the auditorium. Things suddenly go quiet down below and people turn around and look up.

“Prove it,” says junior.

I whip out my driver’s license before he can come out with some wisecrack I’m sure he’s got buzzing around in his pea-brained pinhead. He looks at it and then at me and gives it back and looks at me a second and says, “Okay,” and walks off the stage waving to some broad with a tight blouse down below.

First of all I clear my throat to let them all know I have a few words to say.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that because about then somebody shakes up a beer bottle and shoots it at the ceiling which gets a lot of people pretty damp and makes them noisy, but I decide to go on anyway.

“As you know our city is being screwed up at the moment by somebody who shouldn’t be allowed to go on with it and you know I’m talking about none other than Police Commissioner O’Mallollolly.”

Well at the mention of his name I expect to get some sort of rise and am ready to put up with it but there’s not a damned sound besides the general racket down there that’s getting worse and worse. As a public speaker I know damn well I’m not a Jesus Christ but I know also I’ve heard worse so I figure the problem is that these people have all gone and stupefied their minds with liquor and not in a few cases with sex. This pretty well leaves me flapping my flippers high and dry but I can’t stop there.

“Now if this O’Mallollolly is not stopped dead in his tracks, folks, hey folks, you’ll find pretty soon that if you just only want to take even a drink or go to bed with your wife you’ll have to ask him permission or pay a tax.”

That catches a few but not very many. Sometimes you wonder what they do want.

About this point I don’t think anybody can hear a damn thing because everybody’s blabbing to his neighbor like it’s the last chance they’ll ever have. And then there’s some tables at the side with beer cases on them and for some reason underneath them’s become a popular place to be and all you can see is a jumble of uniforms and ladies’ garments. Well I don’t know what I’m doing up on the stage frankly except the view’s better, but that’s not what I want at the moment so I sort of amble off to the stage door and am rather pissed off that not one person seems to notice that I’m leaving, me who’s been paying their salaries all these years.

This gives me a moment to think and what really gets me is not having to pull out of GASCOYNE CENTER because after all whatever they do I still own the damn thing, but why they’re letting me run around like this with nobody chasing me and nobody really giving a damn about anything. I’d be a damn fool if I didn’t say, Okay O’Mallollolly you’ve won this round, but the idiot doesn’t seem to know it or how to take advantage of it and it’s pretty clear he’s messing things up so badly he couldn’t get elected as City Birdbath Superintendent. Maybe nobody’s in charge here, but that’d be just too good to be true and it doesn’t figure at all. But something’s the matter somewhere and I’d sure like to know where.

This is a fine kettle of fish to be in but all I can do is push open the side cockpit door and look down and it seems we’ve somehow got attached to the tower about seventy feet up, very firmly I hope but damned if I’m going to sit inside with a stopwatch to see how long the thing holds.

Good thing I do because without the slightest warning the thing begins to fall like somebody just let go. I clasp my hands together and try to think of something besides flying and then there’s this big clang and everything’s dead quiet and I can hardly believe it but the thing’s landed square on its feet. I unfasten my seat belt and pull myself up out of the seat which has collapsed to the floor and push myself out of the bubble and take a look at the wreck, and that’s about all it can be called anymore. Another twenty-five grand down the drain, as they say, damn expensive day this one. But besides having a sore ass I’m all right which is the thing that counts.

I limp over to the stairs and down to the service elevator and hop in that and get her down to the basement as fast as she’ll go and then I duck into the tunnel locking it behind where it occurs to me what with my pocketful of Ritz crackers I could stay down here a hell of a long time, but the trouble is that’d be a little boring and I think what I really need is to get out of town and take a little vacation.

I slip her in the fast lane and run her up to sixty and hope some damn fool won’t decide to make a left turn in front of me. About now I figure O’Mallollolly’s got himself into some deep trouble and maybe somebody else’s taken over Police Tower but I won’t know about that until I find somebody to replace that sneak Chester and next time I’m going to have things a little more decentralized. For my vacation what I ought to do is go north to the capital and brief one of the boys there and send him down here to take over and straighten things out and get them ready for when I can come back and run things like they were. Just then Marge calls so I know at least the phone company hasn’t cut off my private long-distance circuit, things aren’t so bad after all.

“Hi Marge what’s new?”

“Well dear I’m up in Condor’s Crag now and I don’t like the looks of the place.”

“Are you alone?” I ask.

“Well yes I hope so,” she says. “I left Tom Rasper down in the bar.”

I’m glad about that and I’m glad she’s talking again.

“There’s something creepy about this place,” she says, “and you know, somebody’s living here now.”

“You’re kidding. How do you know?”

“Hmm. Yes it does look like somebody’s living there doesn’t it?”

“Well what do I do dear if he comes in?”

“Make up a story, that’s all Marge.”

“Well what really bothers me is I have the feeling he’s around here watching me now. You know how thick the forest is right up to the house and how the wind blows all the time, it’s impossible to be sure you’re alone. Well really dear I’ve seen the place and it’s in very good condition and now I think I really ought to get back down to the main road before it gets too dark.”

“Okay Marge.”

Then she sort of gasps.

“What’s the matter Marge?”

“The closet door’s opening!” she whispers.

“Just a mouse probably,” I say.

“No! Ah!” she says.

“What?”

“A body!”

“What?”

“A body just fell out of the closet!”

“Well don’t just stand there, go see whose it is,” I say.

“Good God,” she says, “it’s O’Mallollolly!”

“What?”

“Yes! Dead!”

“How?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Hmm,” I say and that one doesn’t seem to make any sense at all and then I remember the last time I saw him was in the battle for Police Tower almost eight hours ago and when I heard him on the radio his voice was recorded, so there was time for him to go up to Condor’s Crag or be carried up there, well that takes care of him.

“Dear I’ve simply got to get out of here, I don’t like this at all.”

“Of course Marge, but first could you look around for a few clues?”

“Ohmygod!”

“What now?” I ask.

“I’m looking out the big picture window and the sun’s just going down way up here and there’s something like a horrible creature standing by the telephone pole, how ghastly it is! What should I do?”

“Keep calm and don’t move. Tell me what it looks like Marge.”

Of course, it’s the giant tree sloth I think.

“And,” she goes on, “the thing is holding a pair of wire cutters in its claws.”

“Don’t worry Marge it’s only some Harvard man dressed up as a giant tree sloth.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of dear. I think I’m going to scream.”

“Don’t do anything rash Marge, keep calm.”

“It’s climbing the telephone pole! It left its claws behind.”

“Well don’t worry Marge a man dressed up like a giant tree sloth probably feels like acting like one now and then.”

“He’s near the top of the pole now, near the wires. Dear I think he’s going to cut the wires. Ohmygod!”

“What?”

“There’s a man crouching about thirty feet away with a high-powered rifle with a telescope on it pointed right at the thing on the pole!”

“Yes, yes?”

“The creature’s reaching for the wires. No, he’s put the cutters into one hand and with the other he’s taking off his head.”

“Oh?”

“There it comes,” she says. “Ohmygod! It can’t be! It’s Rufus Roughah!”

Then suddenly things go wham-bang and fit together and I see what’s been going on for the last couple of days and why O’Mallollolly was at the Mirindaranda Road Roughah place the afternoon of the murder which I see now was a phony put-up job meant to throw me off the real scent which boils down to O’Mallollolly and Roughah getting together secretly using Nancy and Nadine but probably not Dmitri to get me out of the way and fix my wagon by taking over all of Police Tower and City Hall and subverting my own employees at GASCOYNE CENTER and generally messing up the works to get me out of the picture. But something went wrong and O’Mallollolly got kidnapped and bumped off and now probably Roughah too which still leaves me and somebody else I don’t know anything else about.

I catch the Mirindaranda Road signal green and bounce the dip and turn left with the tires squealing and just as I get the thing straightened out six black unmarked Ford sedans shoot out of a side street and I hold up the rearview to take a better gander and see first the little blue Porsche coning next and after that the little red one and last of all a long black limousine which I can’t tell the make of at that distance.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello,” says a woman’s voice I don’t recognize, “is this Bernie?”

“Hell no, it’s me GASCOYNE.”

“Who?”

“GASCOYNE!”

“Oh,” she says. “Well you must work with Bernie then—”

I say no but the gasbag doesn’t hear me.

“—and I wonder if you could come over and fix my television set because I don’t seem to be able to get anything on it on any station and I have to stay home tonight because Charles—”

Well I hang up on that one just as I roll up to the BIG DADDY STATION and bounce over the curb and stop her in front of the gas pumps and climb out. Well it’s real smoke pouring out of the hood cracks now and I lean back in to pull the hood latch handle and the damn thing comes off in my hand and the hood stays closed and the paint’s turning black with bubbles and blisters. A couple of attendants run up and turn a hose on the thing but it just makes a lot of steam on top and doesn’t get inside at all.

I stand there watching the show and wonder what the hell is going on and a bunch of cops get behind the Kaiser and push it into the center of Mirindaranda Road where it finally bursts into flames and lights up the whole place like a Boy Scout jamboree. Then they come back heading toward me who’s just standing there minding my own business and nibbling on a Ritz cracker and they all surround me, hundreds of them there are, and one of them yells, “Don’t kick him in the balls because he hasn’t got any,” which is sure as hell not true but it does save me a lot of pain I will say.

So I’m just being nice and quiet until the time comes I can go back into town and give a piece of my mind to my so-called friends and I just sent my man George off on the Greyhound bus to town to take a little look-see at the scenery there, he’s the one who went back in last week and rescued the ’52 Hudson convertible I’ve got now and also my house trailer, and I told him to find out just one thing and that’s who’s running the shooting match now because I can’t make any big plans until I know that little item, and next week I’ll send him up north to the capital to see what’s going on, haven’t heard a peep out of anybody up there.

I still get a lot of driving in out here, it’s the best way to keep cool, though the Hudson starts knocking and getting hot under the floorboards over forty-five, and right now I’m running past the DESERT JEWEL BEAUTIFUL ESTATES TRACT which has got the streets all laid out and a few fake phone poles on this dry lake bed but no houses because we haven’t found anybody yet with the proper frontier spirit to put down a thousand bucks to get the boom rolling. Rome wasn’t built in a day and it sure wasn’t built by people who asked silly questions about electricity and water and sewers first. I think this country’s getting too damn soft.

I run her up to about forty and let a couple of semis pass and settle back in the seat and hold her on that long white line, thinking that what I really ought to do is pull back over to the side and take a little snooze until the heat goes down some more, and so that’s just what I do. I shut off the motor but since the Hudson’s seat won’t go back, probably some chewing gum in the works, I stretch out sideways and prop my head against the door and watch the cars go by, wondering which ones are going to have the good sense to stop at the SAVAGE DESERT REPTILE FARM and plunk down a buck-fifty a head, every little bit helps.…