�Ed McBain: An Interview� and �Honesty,� copyright � 1986 by Evan Hunter; �Busman�s Holiday,� copyright � 1986 by Josh Pachter; �Little Moses/The Society for the Reclamation and Restoration of �E. Auguste Napol�on Bonaparte,� copyright � 1986 by Joyce Carol Oates; �Chee�s Witch,� copyright � 1986 by Tony Hillerman; �The Blue Book of Crime,� copyright � 1986 by Jerome Charyn; �One for the Money,� copyright � 1986 by Peter Heyrman; �The Death of the Tenth Man,� copyright � 1986 by Steve Oren; �Murder, though it has no tongue...� copyright � 1986 by Maurade Glennon; �Capriccio,� copyright � 1986 by Isak Romun; �You Can�t Fire Me for Doing My Job,� copyright � 1986 by Clark Dimond; �Hollywood Detective,� copyright � 1986 by Ron Goulart.

Nineteen eighty-six is a year of celebration for Ed McBain. It is the thirtieth anniversary of the first 87th Precinct novel, the year in which the thirty-ninth novel in the series will be published, and at the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) awards dinner, he will be given the highest honor the MWA bestows � Grand Master � in recognition of a distinguished body of work. In 1959, Anthony Boucher observed in his introduction to an omnibus of the first three 87th Precinct novels that �at exactly the right historical moment [McBain] managed to write, with more striking effect than anyone before him, what readers were hungering for and whetted their appetites.� Since that time, Mr. McBain has shown a remarkable ability to keep on satisfying his audience, adapting his material to the times and attracting a new generation of readers as appreciative as those Boucher described a quarter century ago.

Ed McBain is the pseudonym of Evan Hunter.

The following is an excerpt from Poison, Ed McBain�s forthcoming 87th Precinct novel.

By eight o�clock that night, Willis had talked to all three men on the short list of �friends� Marilyn Hollis had less than graciously provided, and he figured it was time he paid the lady herself another visit.

He did not call first.

Unannounced and uninvited, he drove to 1211 Harborside Lane, and parked his car at the curb adjacent to the small park across the street from her building. It was still bitterly cold. March had come in like a lion and was going out like a lion, so much for the Farmer�s Almanac disciples. The wind tossing his hair, his face raw after only a short walk from his car across the street, he rang the front doorbell and waited.

Her voice over the speaker said, �Mickey?�

�No,� he said, �it�s Detective Willis.�

There was a long silence.

�What do you want?� she said.

�Few questions I�d like to ask you. If you have a minute.�

�I�m sorry, I can�t talk to you just now,� she said. �I�m expecting someone.�

�When can I come back?� he asked.

�How about never?� she said, and he could swear she was smiling.

�How about later tonight?� he said.

�No, I�m sorry.�

�Miss Hollis, this is a homicide...�

�I�m sorry,� she said again.

There was a click. And then silence.

He pressed the doorbell button again.

�Listen,� she said over the speaker, �I�m truly sorry, but...�

�Miss Hollis,� he said, �do I have to get a warrant just to talk to you?�

Silence.

Then: �All right, come in.�

The buzzer sounded. He grabbed for the doorknob and let himself into the entrance foyer. Another buzzer sounded, unlocking the inner door. He opened the door and stepped tentatively into the paneled living room. A fire was going in the fireplace across the room. Incense was burning. Not a sign of her anywhere.

He closed the door behind him.

�Miss Hollis?� he called.

�I�m upstairs. Take off your coat, sit down. I�m on the phone.�

He hung his coat on a rack just inside the door, and then sat close to the door in a chair upholstered in red crushed velvet. Mickey, he thought. Mickey who? He waited. He could hear nothing from the upstairs levels of the house. The fire crackled and spit. He waited. Still no sounds from upstairs.

�Miss Hollis?� he called again.

�Be with you in a minute!� she called back.

He�d been waiting for at least ten minutes when finally she came down the walnut-banistered staircase from above. She was wearing something glacial-blue and clingy, a wide sash at the waist, sapphire earrings, high-heeled pumps to match the dress. Blonde hair pulled back from the pale oval of her face. Blue eye shadow. No lipstick.

�You caught me at a bad time,� she said. �I was dressing.�

�Who�s Mickey?� he asked.

�An acquaintance. I just called to say I�d be running late. I hope this won�t take too long. Would you like a drink?�

The offer surprised him. You didn�t hand a man his hat and offer him a drink in the same breath.

�Or are you still on duty?� she asked.

�Sort of.�

�At eight-fifteen?�

�Long day,� he said.

�Name your poison,� she said, and for a moment he thought she was making a deliberate if somewhat grisly joke, but she was heading obliviously for the bar unit across the room.

�Scotch,� he said.

�Ah, he�s corruptible,� she said, and turned to glance over her shoulder, smiling. �Anything with it?�

�Ice, please.�

He watched her as she dropped ice cubes into two short glasses, poured scotch for him, gin for herself. He watched her as she carried the drink to where he was sitting. Pale horse, pale rider, pale good looks.

�Come sit by the fire,� she said, �it�ll be cozier,� and started across the room toward a sofa upholstered in the same red crushed velvet. He rose, moved toward the sofa, waited for her to sit, and then sat beside her. She crossed her legs. There was a quick glimpse of nylon-sleek knees, the suggestion of a thigh, and then she lowered her skirt as demurely as a nun. In an almost subliminal flash, he wondered why she had chosen a word like �cozier.�

�Mickey who?� he asked.

�Mouse,� she said, and smiled again.

�A male acquaintance then.�

�No, I was making a joke. Mickey�s a girlfriend. We�re going out to dinner.� A look at her watch. �Provided we�re through here before midnight. I said I�d call her back.�

�I won�t be long,� he said.

�So,� she said. �What�s so urgent?�

�Not urgent,� he said.

�Pressing then?�

�Not pressing, either. Just a few things bothering me.�

�Like what?�

�Your friends.�

�Tom, Dick, and Harry?� she asked, and smiled again.

She was making reference to their first, somewhat irritating, meeting, but she was making sport of it now, seeming deliberately trying to put him at ease. He thought at once that he was being conned. And this led to the further thought that she had something to hide.

�I�m talking about the list you gave us,� he said. �The men you consider close friends.�

�Yes, they are,� she said.

�Yes, so they told me.� He paused. �That�s what�s bothering me.�

�What is it, exactly, that�s bothering you, Mr. Willis?� She shifted her weight on the sofa, adjusted her skirt again.

�Nelson Riley,� he said. �Chip Endicott. Basil Hollander.�

�Yes, yes, I know the names.�

Basil Hollander was the man who�d left a message on her answering machine saying he had tickets for the Philharmonic. His comments to Willis were echoes of what Nelson Riley and Chip Endicott had already told him. He considered Marilyn Hollis one of his very best friends. Terrific girl. Great fun to be with. But Hollander (who�d identified himself as �Baz� on Marilyn�s answering machine) was a �Yes-No-Well� respondent, the kind detectives the world over dreaded. Getting him to amplify was like pulling teeth.

�Have you known her a long time?�

�Yes.�

�How long?�

�Well...�

�A year?�

�No.�

�Longer?�

�No�

�Ten months?�

�No�

�Less than ten months?�

�Yes.�

�Five months?�

�No.�

�Less than ten months but more than five months?�

�Yes.�

�Eight months?�

�Yes.�

�How well did you know her?�

�Well...�

�For example, were you sleeping with her?�

�Yes.�

�Regularly?�

�No.�

�Frequently?�

�No�

�Occasionally?�

�Yes.�

�Do you know anyone named Jerry McKennon?�

�No.�

And like that.

The thing that troubled Willis was that the men had sounded identical.

Taking into allowance their different verbal styles (Hollander, for example, had interrupted the questioning with a surprisingly eloquent and exuberant sidebar on a pianist Willis had never heard of), accepting, too, the differences in their life-styles and vocations (Hollander was an accountant, Riley a painter, Endicott a lawyer), and their ages (Endicott was fifty-seven, Riley thirty-eight or � nine, Hollander forty-two), taking all this into account, Willis nonetheless came away with the feeling that he could have tape-recorded his first conversation with Marilyn and saved himself the trouble of talking to the three men on her list.

We�re very good friends, the lady had said.

We sleep together occasionally.

We have a lot of fun.

They do not know Jerry McKennon.

They do not know each other.

Yet three different men who did not know each other had defined their relationship with Marilyn Hollis exactly as she had described it. And each of them had come up with substantial alibis for Sunday night and Monday morning � while McKennon was either killing himself or getting himself killed:

Nelson Riley was with the lady in Vermont on Sunday night � or so he�d said. He was still there on Monday morning, taking a few final runs with her on icy slopes before starting the long drive back to the city.

Chip Endicott was at a Bar Association dinner on Sunday night, and at his desk bright and early Monday morning.

On Sunday night, Hollander had been to a chamber music recital at Randall Forbes Hall in the Springfield Center complex downtown. On Monday morning at eight o�clock, while McKennon was presumably gasping his life out to an answering machine, Hollander was on the subway, commuting to his job at the accounting offices of Kiley, Benson, Marx, and Rudolph.

All present and accounted for.

But Willis could not shake the feeling that he�d seen the same play three different times, with three different people playing the same character and repeating the playwright�s lines in their own individual acting styles.

Had Marilyn Hollis been the playwright?

Had she picked up the phone the moment the detectives left her and told Nelson, Chip, Baz � mustn�t forget old taciturn Baz � that the police were just there, and she�d appreciate it if they said they were dear good buddies who never heard of anyone named Jerry McKennon, thanks a lot, catch you in the sack sometime.

But if so � why?

Her alibi was airtight.

But so were the others.

If only they hadn�t sounded so very much alike.

Well, look, maybe the relationships were identical.

Maybe Marilyn Hollis defined the exact course a �friendship� would take and God help the poor bastard who strayed an inch from that prescribed path.

Maybe.

�Tell me more about them,� he said.

�There�s nothing more to tell,� she said, �they�re good friends.�

And then, suddenly and unexpectedly: �Have you ever killed anyone?�

He looked at her, surprised.

�Why do you ask?�

�Just curious.�

He hesitated a moment, and then said, �Yes.�

�How did it feel?�

�I thought I was asking the questions,� he said.

�Oh, the hell with the questions,� she said. �I�ve already talked to all three of them, I know exactly what you said and exactly what they said, so why go through it all over again? You�re here because they all gave you the same story, isn�t that right?�

This time he blinked.

�Isn�t it?�

�Well... yes,� he said.

�Now you sound like Baz,� she said, and laughed. �I adore him, he�s such a sweetheart,� she said. �I adore them all, they�re such good friends.�

�So they said.�

�Yes, I know what they said. And you think they were lying, that I rehearsed them, whatever. But why would I have done that? And isn�t it entirely possible that we think of each other exactly that way? As very good friends? All of us? Separately?�

�I suppose.�

�Do you have any good friends, Mr. Willis?�

�Yes.�

�Who?�

�Well...�

�Ah, there�s Baz again.�

�I have friends,� he said, and wondered about it for the first time.

�Who? Cops?�

�Yes.�

�Women cops?�

�Some of them.�

�Who are friends?�

�Well... I don�t think any of the women cops I know are... well... what you�d call friends, no.�

�Then what? Lovers?�

�No, none of the women I see are cops.�

�Do you have any women friends at all? Women you could actually call friends?�

�Well...�

�You do a very good Baz imitation, Mr. Willis. Do I have to keep calling you Mr. Willis? What�s your first name?�

�Harold.�

�Is that what your friends call you?�

�They call me Hal.�

�May I call you Hal?�

�Well...�

�Oh, come on, I didn�t for Christ�s sake murder him! Relax, will you? Enjoy your scotch, enjoy the fire, call me Marilyn, relax!�

�Well...�

�Hal?� she said.

�Yes?�

�Relax, Hal.�

�I�m relaxed,� he said.

�No, you�re not relaxed. I know when a man is relaxed, and you�re not relaxed. You�re very tense. Because you think I murdered Jerry and you�re sure that�s why I offered you a drink and the comfort of my fire, isn�t that right?�

�Well...�

�If you want to be my friend, be honest with me, will you please? I hate phonies. Even if they�re cops.�

He was looking at her in open astonishment now. He took a quick swallow of scotch and then � to reassure himself that he was a working cop with some serious questions to ask � immediately said, �Well, you have to admit it was sort of funny, getting the same playback from three different...�

�Not at all,� she said. �None of them would know how to lie, that�s why they�re my friends. That�s what we enjoy with each other, Hal. Relationships that are entirely free of bullshit. Have you ever had such a relationship in your life?�

�Well... no. I guess not.�

�You�re missing something. Would you like another drink?�

�I know you�ve got a date...�

�She can wait,� Marilyn said, and rose from the couch. �Same thing?�

�Please,� Willis said, and handed her his glass.

He watched her as she moved toward the bar.

�Are you looking at my ass?� she said.

�Well...�

�If you are, then say so.�

�Well, I was. Until you mentioned it.�

She came back to him with the drink. She handed him the glass and sat down beside him. �Tell me about the man you killed,� she said.

�It wasn�t a man,� Willis said.

He hadn�t talked about this in a long long time. Nor did he want to talk about it now.

�A woman then.�

�No.�

�What does that leave?�

�Forget it,� he said. He swallowed most of the scotch in his glass, rose, and then said, �Miss Hollis, I know you�re busy, so maybe it�d be best if I...�

�Scared?� she said.

�No, not particularly.�

�Then sit down.�

�Why?�

�Because I like talking to you. And talking is the way people begin.�

He looked at her.

�What is this?� he said.

�What is it? What is what?�

�I walk in here off the street...�

�Yes...�

�You spit fire the first time we meet...�

�That was the first time.�

�So now...�

�So now sit down and talk to me.�

�Your girlfriend�s expecting you to...�

�Who�d you kill?� Marilyn said.

He kept looking at her.

�Sit down,� she said. �Please.�

He said nothing.

�Let me freshen that,� she said, and took his nearly empty glass. He did not sit. Instead, he watched her again as she went to the bar, and half-filled two water tumblers, one with scotch, the other with gin.

He did not want to talk about who the hell he�d killed or didn�t kill. He looked at her ass instead. He hoped she wouldn�t ask again if he was looking at her ass, and was relieved when she didn�t. She came back to him, handed him the scotch, and then sat again. Nylon-sleek knees again. No tug at the skirt this time. He did not sit beside her.

�Sit,� she said, and patted the sofa. �Who�d you kill, Hal?�

�Why do you want to know?�

�Honesty,� she said, and shrugged.

He hesitated.

�Tell me,� she said.

The fire crackled and spit. A log shifted on the grate.

�Tell me, Hal,� she said.

He took a deep breath.

�A boy,� he said.

�What?�

�He was a boy.�

�How old?�

�Twelve.�

�Jesus,� she said softly.

�With a .357 Magnum in his fist.�

�When was this?�

�Long ago.�

�How long ago?�

�I was a rookie cop.�

�Was he white or black?�

�Black.�

�Which made it worse.�

�Nothing could have made it worse,� he said.

�I meant...�

�I know what you meant. There was that, yes, but... you see, that wasn�t what mattered to me... I mean, what the newspapers were saying, white cop kills innocent black kid... he was coming off a robbery, he�d just killed three people inside a liquor store, but that wasn�t... I had to shoot him, it would�ve been me in the next three seconds. But... he was twelve years old.�

�God,� she said.

Almost a whisper.

�Yeah,� he said. �That was the thing.�

�How awful for you,� she said.

�Yeah,� he said again.

Silence.

He wondered why he was telling her this.

Well, honesty, he thought.

�His mother... his mother came to the police station,� he said, his voice very low now. �And she... she asked the sergeant where she could find Patrolman Willis... they called us patrolmen in those days, now they call the blues police officers... and I was just coming in from downtown where I�d been answering questions at Headquarters all morning, and the sergeant said, �There he is, lady,� not realizing, not knowing she was the boy�s mother, and she came up to me and... and... spit in my face. Didn�t say anything. Just spit in my face and walked out. I stood there... I... there were guys all around... a muster room is a busy place... and I... I guess I... I guess I began crying.�

He shrugged.

And fell silent again.

She was watching his face.

Two shots in the chest, he thought.

Kept coming.

Another shot in the head.

Caught him between the eyes.

Questions afterward. Two big bulls from Homicide. Confusion and noise. Some guy from one of the local television stations trying to get a camera inside the liquor store there, take some pictures of the carnage. The owner and two women lying dead on the floor, smashed whiskey bottles all around them. The kid outside on the sidewalk with his brains blown out.

Ah, shit, he thought.

This city, he thought, this goddamn fucking city.

�Are you all right?� Marilyn asked.

�Yes,� he said.

�You haven�t touched your scotch.�

�I guess I haven�t.�

She lifted her own glass. �Here�s to golden days and purple nights,� she said, and clinked the glass against his.

He nodded, said nothing.

�That was my father�s favorite toast,� she said. �How old are you, Hal?�

�Thirty-four,� he said.

�How old were you when it happened?�

He took a swallow of scotch and then said, �Twenty-two.� He shook his head. �He�d just killed three people inside that liquor store. The owner and two ladies.�

�I would have done just what you did,� Marilyn said.

�Well...� Willis said, and shrugged again. �If only he�d put down the gun...�

�But he didn�t...�

�I told him to put it down, I warned him...� He shook his head again. �He just kept coming at me.�

�So you shot him.�

�Yes.�

�How many times?�

�Three times,� Willis said.

�That�s a lot of times.�

�Yes.�

They both fell silent. Willis sipped at the scotch. Marilyn kept watching him.

�You�re small for a cop,� she said.

�I know. Five-eight.�

�Most cops are bigger. Detectives especially. Not that I ever met a detective before now. I mean in the movies. Most of them are very big.�

�Well, the movies,� Willis said.

�You never killed anybody before that, huh?�

�No.�

�Wow,� she said, and fell silent for several moments. At last, she said, �What time is it?�

He looked at his watch. �Almost nine,� he said.

�I really have to call Mickey,� she said. �I�m sorry, I don�t mean to rush you out.�

�That�s okay,� he said, �I�ve taken enough of your time.�

�Well, finish your drink,� she said. �And if you want my advice, you�ll put the whole thing out of your mind, really. You killed a man, okay, but that�s not such a big deal. Really. Do you understand what I�m saying?�

He nodded and said nothing.

He was thinking: Not a man, a boy.

He drained the scotch. He was feeling warm and a bit light-headed. He put the empty glass down on the coffee table.

�Thanks for the drink,� he said. �Drinks.�

�So where do you go now?� she asked.

�Back to the office, type up the reports.�

�Will I see you again?�

Still sitting, looking up at him, pale eyes studying his. He hesitated.

�I didn�t kill Jerry,� she said.

Eyes fastened to his.

�Call me,� she said.

He said nothing.

�Will you?�

�If you want me to,� he said.

�I want you to.�

�Then I will,� he said, and shrugged.

�Let me get your coat,� she said, and rose, sleek knees flashing.

�I can find my way out,� he said. �I know you�re in a hurry.�

�Don�t be silly,� she said.

She took his coat from the rack and helped him into it. Just before he went out, she said, �Call me, don�t forget.�

�I�ll call,� he said.

The wind hit him the minute he stepped outside, dispelling alcohol and cozy fire, yanking him back to reality. He walked across to where he�d parked the car, struggled with a frozen lock, held a match under the key and finally managed to open the door. He started the car and turned on the heater. He wiped his gloved hand over the frost-rimed windshield.

He did not know why he decided to sit there in the car, watching her building across the street.

Maybe he�d just been a detective for too long a time.

Twenty minutes later, a black 280 SEL Mercedes-Benz pulled up to the curb in front of Marilyn�s building. Willis watched as the door on the curb side opened.

Her girlfriend Mickey, he thought.

Better late than never.

Mickey � if that�s who it was � locked the car door, walked the few steps to Marilyn�s building, took off a glove, and pressed the bell button.

A moment later, Mickey � if that�s who it was � opened the door and went inside.

Mickey � if that�s who it was � was a six-foot-three-inch-tall, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound male white Caucasian wearing a bulky raccoon coat that made him look even bigger than he was.

Honesty, the lady had said.

Bullshit, Willis thought, and jotted down the license-plate number and then drove back to the station house to type up his reports in triplicate.

Josh Pachter, an instructor in the University of Maryland�s European Division in West Germany, is well known to mystery fans for his stories and parodies in various magazines and for his anthology Top Crime (1985).

He writes a column on short stories for Mystery Scene and is currently working on his first novel. Janwillem van de Wetering�s story �There Goes Ravelaar,� nominated for an Edgar in 1968, was translated from Dutch into English by Mr. Pachter.

Friday, early June. Late afternoon. Outside the window of Busman�s ninth-floor Washington office, fleecy clouds punctuate a pale-blue sky. A cheerful songbird hops around on the windowsill making music barely audible through the hum of the air-conditioning.

Busman sits in a leather swivel chair behind his huge oak desk, restless. It�s almost time to pack it in, just finish up a few last items of paperwork and go.

Jackson�s expense account for that damned fiasco in New York. Obviously padded, but what the hell? It�s too nice a day to grouch. Busman scribbles his initials and drops the form in his OUT basket.

Weekly progress report. He reads it through for typos. There aren�t any. Busman chuckles. Leave it to Theresa! He signs at the bottom of the second and final sheet, slips both pages into an Interdepartmental Communication envelope, scrawls the Chief�s name and drops the envelope atop the other papers in his OUT basket.

Purchase orders, disbursements, two interesting new contracts. Initial, sign, and OUT.

Busman glances at his wristwatch. It�s five o�clock. He glances at his desk. He�s all finished.

He smiles, stands, stretches happily. Grabs his hat and coat.

In the outer office, buxom, blue-eyed Theresa is still pecking away diligently at her word processor. Sexy Terry, the secretary. Some joke. Some secretary!

She looks up from her keyboard with a friendly smile and a twinkle in those lovely eyes. �Leaving, Mr. Busman?�

He nods.

�Well, I�ll see you in two weeks, then. You have a great time, now, hear?�

Busman returns her smile. �Thanks, Terry. I will. Don�t let �em work you too hard while I�m gone.�

A crowded elevator deposits him in the lobby, and he swings through the revolving door into the warm summer sunshine. On the sidewalk, Busman stops for a moment and draws in a deep, satisfied breath. Invigorated, he strolls the four blocks crosstown. He enjoys the walk.

With a thin line of perspiration beginning to form on his upper lip, Busman ransoms his car from the underground parking garage where he leaves it every working morning and slaps two quarters into the young attendant�s outstretched palm. A silly convention, tipping, but a guy�s got to make a buck any way he can these days.

Busman slides behind the wheel of his year-old T-Bird, drops it into drive and inches up to the sidewalk. A fat old woman in a flowered housedress waddles past his windshield, bulging shopping bags clutched in her fists. She is muttering angrily, wildly, though there is no one near enough to hear her. When she is gone, Busman shakes his head, looks both ways, and edges out into the rush-hour traffic.

He crawls to the first red light, waits impatiently, then crawls on to the next one. Traffic, traffic, traffic.

Well, hell, what�s the rush? It�s a beautiful day, he�s got two weeks� vacation to look forward to. Take it easy, tiger.

The radio, maybe? Sure, there you go. He leans over and switches it on. No, not that New Wave noise. Something soothing, without the green hair and razor blades. He tunes in a different station. Ah, better. Muted strings. Nice.

The air-conditioning�s been cranky lately, so he cracks open the window. A gentle breeze whispers in, teases the graying hairs at the back of his neck. Very nice.

Finally, Busman crosses out of the District and into Maryland. He works his way through Bethesda, then gets onto I-70 heading northwest. The traffic loosens up; his right foot feeds gas to the T-Bird�s powerful engine; the speedometer needle moves to 60 and stays there for half an hour. When the sign for Frederick comes into view, he hits his blinker and changes over to the right-hand lane. He slows down and leaves the highway, turns right at the head of the exit ramp. Takes the third left, the second right, the second right again.

Ahead, at the end of Wisteria Lane, he spots a long black LeMans in his driveway. Busman frowns, wondering, What am I, early? But no, the dashboard clock reads 6:15 and his wristwatch agrees. Romero must be running behind schedule. Well, thinks Busman, can�t really blame the bastard. He�s probably trying to squeeze two weeks� worth into one last afternoon.

Busman sighs, swings into a three-point turn and heads back in the direction of the highway. He doesn�t get on it, though. He drives straight ahead, under the overpass, to a little shopping plaza a mile down the road. The place is crowded at this hour and he has to park a half-dozen doors down from the luncheonette. Inside, he dawdles over a cup of coffee and a cinnamon Danish, kids around pleasantly with the waitress. A high school kid with a nice shape to her but freckles. Her name tag reads Randye. Pretty girl.

At 6:40 he pays his bill, leaves a quarter for Randye, and drives back home. The black LeMans is gone from his driveway, and a tight smile crosses his lips as he puts his car in the garage next to Julia�s station wagon.

The front door is unlocked, and Busman finds his wife in the dining room setting the still-beautiful rosewood table they bought on their honeymoon in Montreal, almost twenty years ago. She, too, is still beautiful, and Busman admires how carefully she is dressed, her makeup fresh, not a hair out of place. Interesting, he thinks. Commendable.

A small woman, she stands on tiptoe to touch his cheek with her painted lips. �Hello, darling. You�re a little late.�

�Mmm,� he says. �Stopped for coffee on the way.�

�Oh?� Is that a flicker of relief washing across her face? Maybe. Maybe. �Dinner�ll be ready in a few minutes. Would you like a drink?�

And Busman�s vacation begins. Julia serves Cornish hens with an elaborate salad and a bottle of Bernkasteler Riesling. An Auslese, which goes well with the meal. After coffee, they spend the evening quietly, Busman with the Post and Julia with her knitting. Their conversation is sporadic and harmonious. They go to sleep early in separate beds, an arrangement of long standing. The sexual attraction that first drew them together, during their sophomore year at Georgetown in the early sixties, faded more than a decade ago.

The next morning, Busman sleeps in. He rises at half past nine, showers and shaves slowly, and slips into faded jeans and an �I ♡ DC� T-shirt instead of his usual jacket and tie. He eats a leisurely breakfast of bacon and eggs, a welcome switch from his usual hurried toast and coffee.

All morning, he putters about happily in the garden behind his house. Plant, water, prune, pamper. His snap beans are doing surprisingly well, but he�s a little worried about his tomatoes. Julia stays indoors, busy with laundry and the vacuuming and lunch. They eat on the patio, chicken enchiladas and cold Dos Equis. While Julia clears the dishes from the redwood picnic table, Busman goes back to his garden.

And day melts into night.

After dinner they settle down in the living room, Busman in his favorite armchair with last month�s bestseller, bought then but not opened until now, Julia with her needles and yarn. The television plays softly, but neither of them pays much attention to it. Page 50. Page 100. Page 150. The garment Julia is working on begins to look something like a sweater. Around 10:30, Busman looks up from his book and catches his wife�s eye and smiles.

And night melts back to day...

A week passes. A good, restful week.

Then, late one afternoon, while Busman is trying to decide whether or not his lettuce are far enough apart, the telephone rings. He stands up and brushes dirt from his hands.

�I�ve got it,� calls Julia from inside the house. The ringing is sliced off as she lifts the receiver.

Some office crisis? Busman waits for her shouted �It�s for you, dear!� But a minute goes by and the house is silent. He frowns. He shrugs. He kneels. His hands work into the soft, rich soil, and grass stains work deeper into the knees of his trousers.

On the horizon, the sun is an immense ball of fire, sinking...

Tony Hillerman has written six mystery novels steeped in the culture of the Navajo and Pueblo Indians. He won an Edgar for Dance Hall of the Dead (1973). About �Chee�s Witch,� Mr. Hillerman notes: �In this short story I was seeing if something could be done with two ideas: first, I wanted to use the Navajo belief that witches use the skin that has the �wind marks� on the fingertips, palms, et cetera, to make �corpse powder� and handle it as a way to avoid identification of body; second, I wanted to try the notion of switching a protected witness under the noses of the federals. Readers of my books may notice that one of these ideas later became an important part of The Dark Wind and the other the key to The Ghostway.�

Snow is so important to the Eskimos they have nine nouns to describe its variations. Corporal Jimmy Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police had heard that as an anthropology student at the University of New Mexico. He remembered it now because he was thinking of all the words you need in Navajo to account for the many forms of witchcraft. The word Old Woman Tso had used was �anti�l,� which is the ultimate sort, the absolute worst. And so, in fact, was the deed which seemed to have been done. Murder, apparently. Mutilation, certainly, if Old Woman Tso had her facts right. And then, if one believed all the mythology of witchery told among the fifty clans who comprised The People, there must also be cannibalism, incest, even necrophilia.

On the radio in Chee�s pickup truck, the voice of the young Navajo reading a Gallup used-car commercial was replaced by Willie Nelson singing of trouble and a worried mind. The ballad fit Chee�s mood. He was tired. He was thirsty. He was sticky with sweat. He was worried. His pickup jolted along the ruts in a windless heat, leaving a white fog of dust to mark its winding passage across the Rainbow Plateau. The truck was gray with it. So was Jimmy Chee. Since sunrise he had covered maybe two hundred miles of half-graded gravel and unmarked wagon tracks of the Arizona-Utah-New Mexico border country. Routine at first � a check into a witch story at the Tsossie hogan north of Teec Nos Pos to stop trouble before it started. Routine and logical. A bitter winter, a sand stormspring, a summer of rainless, desiccating heat. Hopes dying, things going wrong, anger growing, and then the witch gossip. The logical. A bitter winter, a sand storm spring, a summer awry. The trouble at the summer hogan of the Tsossies was a sick child and a water well that had turned alkaline � nothing unexpected. But you didn�t expect such a specific witch. The skinwalker, the Tsossies agreed, was The City Navajo, the man who had come to live in one of the government houses at Kayenta. Why the City Navajo? Because everybody knew he was a witch. Where had they heard that, the first time? The People who came to the trading post at Mexican Water said it. And so Chee had driven westward over Tohache Wash, past Red Mesa and Rabbit Ears to Mexican Water. He had spent hours on the shady porch giving those who came to buy, and to fill their water barrels, and to visit, a chance to know who he was until finally they might risk talking about witchcraft to a stranger. They were Mud Clan, and Many Goats People, and Standing Rock Clan � foreign to Chee�s own Slow Talking People � but finally some of them talked a little.

A witch was at work on the Rainbow Plateau. Adeline Etcitty�s mare had foaled a two-headed colt. Hosteen Musket had seen the witch. He�d seen a man walk into a grove of cottonwoods, but when he got there an owl flew away. Rudolph Bisti�s boys lost three rams while driving their flocks up into the Chuska high pastures, and when they found the bodies, the huge tracks of a werewolf were all around them. The daughter of Rosemary Nashibitti had seen a big dog bothering her horses and had shot at it with her .22 and the dog had turned into a man wearing a wolfskin and had fled, half running, half flying. The old man they called Afraid of His Horses had heard the sound of the witch on the roof of his winter hogan, and saw the dirt falling through the smoke hole as the skinwalker tried to throw in his corpse powder. The next morning the old man had followed the tracks of the Navajo Wolf for a mile, hoping to kill him. But the tracks had faded away. There was nothing very unusual in the stories, except their number and the recurring hints that City Navajo was the witch. But then came what Chee hadn�t expected. The witch had killed a man.

The police dispatcher at Window Rock had been interrupting Willie Nelson with an occasional blurted message. Now she spoke directly to Chee. He acknowledged. She asked his location.

�About fifteen miles south of Dennehotso,� Chee said. �Homeward bound for Tuba City. Dirty, thirsty, hungry, and tired.�

�I have a message.�

�Tuba City,� Chee repeated, �which I hope to reach in about two hours, just in time to avoid running up a lot of overtime for which I never get paid.�

�The message is FBI Agent Wells needs to contact you. Can you make a meeting at Kayenta Holiday Inn at eight P.M.?�

�What�s it about?� Chee asked. The dispatcher�s name was Virgie Endecheenie, and she had a very pretty voice and the first time Chee had met her at the Window Rock headquarters of the Navajo Tribal Police he had been instantly smitten. Unfortunately, Virgie was a born-into Salt Cedar Clan, which was the clan of Chee�s father, which put an instant end to that. Even thinking about it would violate the complex incest taboo of the Navajos.

�Nothing on what it�s about,� Virgie said, her voice strictly business. �It just says confirm meeting time and place with Chee or obtain alternate time.�

�Any first name on Wells?� Chee asked. The only FBI Wells he knew was Jake Wells. He hoped it wouldn�t be Jake.

�Negative on the first name,� Virgie said.

�All right,� Chee said. �I�ll be there.�

The road tilted downward now into the vast barrens of erosion which the Navajos call Beautiful Valley. Far to the west, the edge of the sun dipped behind a cloud � one of the line of thunderheads forming in the evening heat over the San Francisco Peaks and the Coconino Rim. The Hopis had been holding their Niman Kachina dances, calling the clouds to come and bless them.

Chee reached Kayenta just a little late. It was early twilight and the clouds had risen black against the sunset. The breeze brought the faint smells that rising humidity carry across desert country � the perfume of sage, creosote brush, and dust. The desk clerk said that Wells was in room 284 and the first name was Jake. Chee no longer cared. Jake Wells was abrasive but he was also smart. He had the best record in the special FBI Academy class Chee had attended, a quick, tough intelligence. Chee could tolerate the man�s personality for a while to learn what Wells could make of his witchcraft puzzle.

�It�s unlocked,� Wells said. �Come on in.� He was propped against the padded headboard of the bed, shirt off, shoes on, glass in hand. He glanced at Chee and then back at the television set. He was as tall as Chee remembered, and the eyes were just as blue. He waved the glass at Chee without looking away from the set. �Mix yourself one,� he said, nodding toward a bottle beside the sink in the dressing alcove.

�How you doing, Jake?� Chee asked.

Now the blue eyes reexamined Chee. The question in them abruptly went away. �Yeah,� Wells said. �You were the one at the Academy.� He eased himself on his left elbow and extended a hand. �Jake Wells,� he said.

Chee shook the hand. �Chee,� he said.

Wells shifted his weight again and handed Chee his glass. �Pour me a little more while you�re at it,� he said, �and turn down the sound.�

Chee turned down the sound.

�About 30 percent booze,� Wells demonstrated the proportion with his hands. �This is your district then. You�re in charge around Kayenta? Window Rock said I should talk to you. They said you were out chasing around in the desert today. What are you working on?�

�Nothing much,� Chee said. He ran a glass of water, drinking it thirstily. His face in the mirror was dirty � the lines around mouth and eyes whitish with dust. The sticker on the glass reminded guests that the laws of the Navajo Tribal Council prohibited possession of alcoholic beverages on the reservation. He refilled his own glass with water and mixed Wells�s drink. �As a matter of fact, I�m working on a witchcraft case.�

�Witchcraft?� Wells laughed. �Really?� He took the drink from Chee and examined it. �How does it work? Spells and like that?�

�Not exactly,� Chee said. �It depends. A few years ago a little girl got sick down near Burnt Water. Her dad killed three people with a shotgun. He said they blew corpse powder on his daughter and made her sick.�

Wells was watching him. �The kind of crime where you have the insanity plea.�

�Sometimes,� Chee said. �Whatever you have, witch talk makes you nervous. It happens more when you have a bad year like this. You hear it and you try to find out what�s starting it before things get worse.�

�So you�re not really expecting to find a witch?�

�Usually not,� Chee said.

�Usually?�

�Judge for yourself,� Chee said. �I�ll tell you what I�ve picked up today. You tell me what to make of it. Have time?�

Wells shrugged. �What I really want to talk about is a guy named Simon Begay.� He looked quizzically at Chee. �You heard the name?�

�Yes,� Chee said.

�Well, shit,� Wells said. �You shouldn�t have. What do you know about him?�

�Showed up maybe three months ago. Moved into one of those U.S. Public Health Service houses over by the Kayenta clinic. Stranger. Keeps to himself. From off the reservation somewhere. I figured you federals put him here to keep him out of sight.�

Wells frowned. �How long you known about him?�

�Quite a while,� Chee said. He�d known about Begay within a week after his arrival.

�He�s a witness,� Wells said. �They broke a cartheft operation in Los Angeles. Big deal. National connections. One of those where they have hired hands picking up expensive models and they drive �em right on the ship and off-load in South America. This Begay is one of the hired hands. Nobody much. Criminal record going all the way back to juvenile, but all nickel-and-dime stuff. I gather he saw some things that help tie some big boys into the crime, so Justice made a deal with him.�

�And they hide him out here until the trial?�

Something apparently showed in the tone of the question. �If you want to hide an apple, you drop it in with the other apples,� Wells said. �What better place?�

Chee had been looking at Wells�s shoes, which were glossy with polish. Now he examined his own boots, which were not. But he was thinking of Justice Department stupidity. The appearance of any new human in a country as empty as the Navajo Reservation provoked instant interest. If the stranger was a Navajo, there were instant questions. What was his clan? Who was his mother? What was his father�s clan? Who were his relatives? The City Navajo had no answers to any of these crucial questions. He was (as Chee had been repeatedly told) unfriendly. It was quickly guessed that he was a �relocation Navajo,� born to one of those hundreds of Navajo families which the federal government had tried to reestablish forty years ago in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other urban centers. He was a stranger. In a year of witches, he would certainly be suspected. Chee sat looking at his boots, wondering if that was the only basis for the charge that City Navajo was a skinwalker. Or had someone seen something? Had someone seen the murder?

�The thing about apples is they don�t gossip,� Chee said.

�You hear gossip about Begay?� Wells was sitting up now, his feet on the floor.

�Sure,� Chee said. �I hear he�s a witch.�

Wells produced a pro-forma chuckle. �Tell me about it,� he said.

Chee knew exactly how he wanted to tell it. Wells would have to wait a while before he came to the part about Begay. �The Eskimos have nine nouns for snow,� Chee began. He told Wells about the variety of witchcraft on the reservations and its environs: about frenzy witchcraft, used for sexual conquests, of witchery distortions, of curing ceremonials, of the exotic two-heart witchcraft of the Hopi Fog Clan, of the Zuni Sorcery Fraternity, of the Navajo �chindi,� which is more like a ghost than a witch, and finally of the Navajo Wolf, the anti�l witchcraft, the werewolves who pervert every taboo of the Navajo Way and use corpse powder to kill their victims.

Wells rattled the ice in his glass and glanced at his watch.

�To get to the part about your Begay,� Chee said, �about two months ago we started picking up witch gossip. Nothing much, and you expect it during a drought. Lately it got to be more than usual.� He described some of the tales and how uneasiness and dread had spread across the plateau. He described what he had learned today, the Tsossies�s naming City Navajo as the witch, his trip to Mexican Water, of learning there that the witch had killed a man.

�They said it happened in the spring � couple of months ago. They told me the ones who knew about it were the Tso outfit.� The talk of murder, Chee noticed, had revived Wells�s interest. �I went up there,� he continued, �and found the old woman who runs the outfit. Emma Tso. She told me her son-in-law had been out looking for some sheep, and smelled something, and found the body under some chamiso brush in a dry wash. A witch had killed him.�

�How��

Chee cut off the question. �I asked her how he knew it was a witch killing. She said the hands were stretched out like this.� Chee extended his hands, palms up. �They were flayed. The skin was cut off the palms and fingers.�

Wells raised his eyebrows.

�That�s what the witch uses to make corpse powder,� Chee explained. �They take the skin that has the whorls and ridges of the individual personality � the skin from the palms and the finger pads, and the soles of the feet. They take that, and the skin from the glans of the penis, and the small bones where the neck joins the skull, and they dry it, and pulverize it, and use it as poison.�

�You�re going to get to Begay any minute now,� Wells said. �That right?�

�We got to him,� Chee said. �He�s the one they think is the witch. He�s the City Navajo.�

�I thought you were going to say that,� Wells said. He rubbed the back of his hand across one blue eye. �City Navajo. Is it that obvious?�

�Yes,� Chee said. �And then he�s a stranger. People suspect strangers.�

�Were they coming around him? Accusing him? Any threats? Anything like that, you think?�

�It wouldn�t work that way � not unless somebody had someone in their family killed. The way you deal with a witch is hire a singer and hold a special kind of curing ceremony. That turns the witchcraft around and kills the witch.�

Wells made an impatient gesture. �Whatever,� he said. �I think something has made this Begay spooky.� He stared into his glass, communing with the bourbon. �I don�t know.�

�Something unusual about the way he�s acting?�

�Hell of it is I don�t know how he usually acts. This wasn�t my case. The agent who worked him retired or some damn thing, so I got stuck with being the delivery man.� He shifted his eyes from glass to Chee. �But if it was me, and I was holed up here waiting, and the guy came along who was going to take me home again, then I�d be glad to see him. Happy to have it over with. All that.�

�He wasn�t?�

Wells shook his head. �Seemed edgy. Maybe that�s natural, though. He�s going to make trouble for some hard people.�

�I�d be nervous,� Chee said.

�I guess it doesn�t matter much anyway,� Wells said. �He�s small potatoes. The guy who�s handling it now in the U.S. Attorney�s Office said it must have been a toss-up whether to fool with him at all. He said the assistant who handled it decided to hide him out just to be on the safe side.�

�Begay doesn�t know much?�

�I guess not. That, and they�ve got better witnesses.�

�So why worry?�

Wells laughed. �I bring this sucker back and they put him on the witness stand and he answers all the questions with I don�t know and it makes the USDA look like a horse�s ass. When a U.S. Attorney looks like that, he finds an FBI agent to blame it on.� He yawned. �Therefore,� he said through the yawn, �I want to ask you what you think. This is your territory. You are the officer in charge. Is it your opinion that someone got to my witness?�

Chee let the question hang. He spent a fraction of a second reaching the answer, which was they could have if they wanted to try. Then he thought about the real reason Wells had kept him working late without a meal or a shower. Two sentences in Wells�s report. One would note that the possibility the witness had been approached had been checked with local Navajo Police. The next would report whatever Chee said next. Wells would have followed Federal Rule One � Protect Your Ass.

Chee shrugged. �You want to hear the rest of my witchcraft business?�

Wells put his drink on the lamp table and untied his shoe. �Does it bear on this?�

�Who knows? Anyway there�s not much left. I�ll let you decide. The point is we had already picked up this corpse Emma Tso�s son-in-law found. Somebody had reported it weeks ago. It had been collected, and taken in for an autopsy. The word we got on the body was Navajo male in his thirties probably. No identification on him.�

�How was this bird killed?�

�No sign of foul play,� Chee said. �By the time the body was brought in, decay and the scavengers hadn�t left a lot. Mostly bone and gristle, I guess. This was a long time after Emma Tso�s son-in-law saw him.�

�So why do they think Begay killed him?� Wells removed his second shoe and headed for the bathroom.

Chee picked up the telephone and dialed the Kayenta clinic. He got the night supervisor and waited while the supervisor dug out the file. Wells came out of the bathroom with his toothbrush. Chee covered the mouthpiece. �I�m having them read me the autopsy report,� Chee explained. Wilson began brushing his teeth at the sink in the dressing alcove. The voice of the night supervisor droned into Chee�s ear.

�That all?� Chee asked. �Nothing added on? No identity yet? Still no cause?�

�That�s him,� the voice said.

�How about shoes?� Chee asked. �He have shoes on?�

�Just a sec,� the voice said. �Yep. Size 10D. And a hat, and...�

�No mention of the neck or skull, right? I didn�t miss that? No bones missing?�

Silence. �Nothing about neck or skull bones.�

�Ah,� Chee said. �Fine. I thank you.� He felt great. He felt wonderful. Finally things had clicked into place. The witch was exorcised. �Jake,� he said. �Let me tell you a little more about my witch case.�

Wells was rinsing his mouth. He spit out the water and looked at Chee, amused. �I didn�t think of this before,� Wells said, �but you really don�t have a witch problem. If you leave that corpse a death by natural causes, there�s no case to work. If you decide it�s a homicide, you don�t have jurisdiction anyway. Homicide on an Indian reservation, FBI has jurisdiction.� Wells grinned. �We�ll come in and find your witch for you.�

Chee looked at his boots, which were still dusty. His appetite had left him, as it usually did an hour or so after he missed a meal. He still hungered for a bath. He picked up his hat and pushed himself to his feet.

�I�ll go home now,� he said. �The only thing you don�t know about the witch case is what I just got from the autopsy report. The corpse had his shoes on and no bones were missing from the base of the skull.�

Chee opened the door and stood in it, looking back. Wells was taking his pajamas out of his suitcase. �So what advice do you have for me? What can you tell me about my witch case?�

�To tell the absolute truth, Chee, I�m not into witches,� Wells said. �Haven�t been since I was a boy.�

�But we don�t really have a witch case now,� Chee said. He spoke earnestly. �The shoes were still on, so the skin wasn�t taken from the soles of his feet. No bones missing from the neck. You need those to make corpse powder.�

Wells was pulling his undershirt over his head. Chee hurried.

�What we have now is another little puzzle,� Chee said. �If you�re not collecting stuff for corpse powder, why cut the skin off this guy�s hands?�

�I�m going to take a shower,� Wells said. �Got to get my Begay back to LA tomorrow.�

Outside the temperature had dropped. The air moved softly from the west, carrying the smell of rain. Over the Utah border, over the Cococino Rim, over the Rainbow Plateau, lightning flickered and glowed. The storm had formed. The storm was moving. The sky was black with it. Chee stood in the darkness, listening to the mutter of thunder, inhaling the perfume, exulting in it.

He climbed into the truck and started it. How had they set it up, and why? Perhaps the FBI agent who knew Begay had been ready to retire. Perhaps an accident had been arranged. Getting rid of the assistant prosecutor who knew the witness would have been even simpler � a matter of hiring him away from the government job. That left no one who knew this minor witness was not Simon Begay. And who was he? Probably they had other Navajos from the Los Angeles community stealing cars for them. Perhaps that�s what had suggested the scheme. To most white men all Navajos looked pretty much alike, just as in his first years at college all Chee had seen in white men was pink skin, freckles, and light-colored eyes. And what would the impostor say? Chee grinned. He�d say whatever was necessary to cast doubt on the prosecution, to cast the fatal �reasonable doubt,� to make � as Wells had put it � the U.S. District Attorney look like a horse�s ass.

Chee drove into the rain twenty miles west of Kayenta. Huge, cold drops drummed on the pickup roof and turned the highway into a ribbon of water. Tomorrow the backcountry roads would be impassable. As soon as they dried and the washouts had been repaired, he�d go back to the Tsossie hogan, and the Tso place, and to all the other places from which the word would quickly spread. He�d tell the people that the witch was in custody of the FBI and was gone forever from the Rainbow Plateau.

Jerome Charyn has written eighteen novels since 1964 � including the Isaac Sidel police tetralogy: Blue Eyes, Marilyn the Wild, The Education of Patrick Silver, and Secret Isaac. William Plummer, writing in the New York Times Book Review, has identified him as �one of our most consistently daring and interesting writers.� Mr. Charyn�s fiction is distinguished by its innovative narrative techniques and probing wit � which are evident here. �The Blue Book of Crime� is the first of a series of interlocking stories in progress.

Didn�t learn our thieving at the movies. We watched Lawrence Tierney play Dillinger at the RKO, but Talbot and I weren�t really Dillinger people. We had our own ideas about crime, and we happened to like Tierney�s looks. Nineteen forty-six was the year of Lawrence Tierney. His picture invaded all the movie magazines. He was seen with Carole Landis two years before she killed herself. He was seen with Esther Williams and Diana Lynn. There was talk of Tierney playing young Stalin for Cecil B. De Mille, but De Mille must have changed his mind.

There wasn�t much Technicolor in 1946, and it was difficult to speak of Tierney�s eyes. Were they blue like Talbot�s, or brown like mine? Whatever the truth of his eyes, the neighborhood called me young Dillinger. And Talbot was young Dillinger�s friend.

We had a smart cover in Tierney, because no one ever thought of us as thieves. Talbot was the spelling champion at school. He�d started War and Peace. His vocabulary was stupendous for someone in the sixth grade. But vocabulary lists didn�t lead us to crime. We observed the terrain, saw shops fat with merchandise we admired. We weren�t venal. Talbot wouldn�t have considered making a profit from the Tommy Henrich glove he stole from Sheridan�s store. Our families might have bought us gloves if we had cried long enough, but crying wasn�t a strategy we believed in.

Talbot�s dad was a taxi driver. My dad sold paper bags, but he�d removed himself from circulation. He wouldn�t go out and sell. He suffered from melancholy. He�d become an air-raid warden in 1943 and he lost interest in paper bags the moment he donned his warden�s white hat.

He fell into ruin at the end of the war when he had to return the white hat. He sold his paper-bag route to a younger salesman and sat in bed like a man who�d been demobilized and couldn�t adjust to civilian life.

The first act of Young Dillinger & Co. involved a pair of bedroom slippers for Dad. We crawled through a duct in back of Sheridan�s department store at half-past eight and were out by a quarter to nine. We never took more than one or two items on a particular crawl. That way Sheridan couldn�t have discovered the slippage at his store.

I invented phantom jobs for Talbot and me to explain our sudden wealth of merchandise. We still had to sock most of the stuff into an old storage trunk in the basement of Talbot�s apartment building. We didn�t have to worry about thieves in the building. Neighbors wouldn�t have interfered with a trunk that was never locked. Talbot�s genius told him that.

His one bit of caution was to read The Blue Book of Crime, a primer put out by the FBI. The Blue Book wasn�t moralistic. It mentioned Dillinger�s demise at the hand of FBI agents, but The Blue Book wouldn�t gloat. �Perhaps we shall never understand the criminal mind. It�s as variable as the seven seas. It makes its home among the poor, the middling, and the very rich. It has no occupational boundary. It can be perverse, dull, or mathematically precise. If we forget this, criminal justice shall always remain a bumbling stepchild to crime.�

That stepchild appeared to us in the form of Bob, a Bronx policeman who was in love with Talbot�s big sister, Girlie. Bob seemed gentle for a cop. He was six-two and had dark cherry-colored eyes. He�d come down to the basement looking for us.

�How�s young Dillinger?�

Talbot would invite him to sit on the trunk. I smiled, thinking of the booty under Bob. He told us about the one arrest he�d made that week, a man from Stebbins Avenue who�d hurled his sister-in-law down the stairs. Bob liked to mock The Blue Book of Crime.

�Those FBIs think they�re Sherlock Holmes. They do a lot of dusting for prints and they have an enormous crime lab. Edgar Hoover scratches on his violin and solves all the big cases. Bull. It�s legwork and the number of canaries you keep.�

�What kind of canaries?� I asked.

�Squealers,� Talbot said. �Bob is talking about canaries that sing on their friends.�

�Not only friends,� Talbot said. �A good stoolie is worth a dozen street detectives.�

�How many canaries do you have, Bob?�

�One or two.�

It diminished Bob in my eyes, keeping canaries. But he lent us a certain authority. Even the roughest boys left us alone. We never paid a dime of tribute. That was because of Girlie as much as Bob.

I can�t describe Girlie without going to Hollywood. She was a tall Carole Landis, a blonde Linda Darnell, covered with a veneer of flesh. The float of her hips was as mysterious as The Blue Book of Crime.

We�d grown up around Girlie and suffered because of that. She fed us sandwiches with her chest in my face. Talbot�s mother worked, and so did mine. Girlie raised us. She was seven years older than Talbot. She�d finished high school in 1944, and though she planned to be an actress, Girlie sat at home. Bob would visit at irregular hours, hanging his policeman�s hat on a hook behind the door. We envied him, of course, but we were careful of Bob�s privacy. We intruded only once. We�d come back from softball in the park and hadn�t seen Bob�s hat on the door. He was lying on the living room sofa with Girlie�s ankles around his neck. Her eyelids fluttered. She breathed like a swimmer, with great gulps of air.

I wondered when she�d elope with Bob. But Bob had a rival in Rosenquist, an assemblyman who was a power in the Bronx Democratic machine. Rosenquist had white hair and seemed ancient at thirty-five. His Lincoln Continental took up most of the block. He would court Girlie with yellow roses and a clean white shirt. He promised her Hollywood if she�d marry him. But Girlie was devoted to Bob. No assemblyman could have made Girlie gulp for air.

Bob would mope with us in the basement when Girlie was out in the Lincoln. We were dying to include him in our corporation. Talbot realized how valuable it would have been to have Young Dillinger & Co. under the kingdom of a cop�s hat. We liked Bob and wanted him to woo Girlie with department-store gifts.

Still, I don�t think Talbot should have opened the trunk. I would have hinted to Bob first what the corporation was about. But Talbot was relying on his genius and his genius failed. Bob looked at the display of merchandise and waltzed us to his precinct with the trunk on his back. Our mothers weren�t home and our dads must have gone to a Yankee game with tickets from the Bronx machine. It was Girlie who released us. Bob rocked on his heels, trying to explain the circumstances.

�Girlie, I couldn�t let them steal.�

Girlie walked past him and out the precinct with Talbot, me, and Rosenquist. I could feel small explosions in her legs, and I knew that Girlie wasn�t finished. She slapped at us with her hips. We hurtled down the block, drunk on perfume that wafted at us from behind Girlie�s ear. It was like getting shoved by a gorgeous witch.

�Damn you,� she said, soon as we were far enough from the police. �That locket you guys gave me, should I thank Mr. Sheridan for it? Bums, I washed your hair and went out in the middle of a storm, so you�d have mustard on your sandwiches.�

�Leave them to me,� Rosenquist said. �I�ll make amends.�

We arrived at Children�s Court in Rosenquist�s Lincoln Continental. He shook hands with court attendants, said hello to the judge. The courthouse was like a candy store where Rosenquist could pull ice cream sodas from the wall. Sheridan came with his department-store clerks. He was wearing a silver coat like some furrier out of Prague. None of his clerks would claim the goods from our trunk.

�That�s nice,� said the judge, who owed his livelihood to the Bronx machine. �Enough slippers and baseball mittens to field a team. Now where does that little treasure come from?�

Rosenquist stood up. �From the Quincy Adams Democratic Club, your honor. The boys did some work for us and the club showed its gratitude.�

�Do you have affidavits to that effect?�

�Naturally,� said Rosenquist, producing a sheaf of papers.

The judge frowned at Bob, who sat alone in his winter uniform.

�Silly business,� said the judge. �Somebody�s been wasting the court�s precious time.�

We had sponge cake at the Quincy Adams Club on Longfellow Avenue. The judge was there. Without his robe, he could have been a shoe salesman at Sheridan�s store. Girlie was in a cocktail dress. Not one of the Democrats could take his eyes off her. Girlie�s hair was swept back, and her neck looked carved from cantaloupe. She drank schnapps with the judge, her skin burning in the dark of the club.

Talbot didn�t have to worry about spelling bees. He came down with a severe asthma attack and was sent to a school in Arizona. His people followed him there after six months. Rosenquist abandoned the Bronx machine to go with Girlie. He married her in Tucson.

Bob was transferred to City Island. His captain couldn�t forgive him for involving the precinct in �a war with Quincy Adams.� And so I was left with my mom and dad. Talbot wrote once or twice and then gave himself to Arizona. Girlie mailed her wedding picture to the Bronx. She wore another cocktail dress.

I became a sly character without Young Dillinger & Co. Went to the City College and NYU Law, but I couldn�t get that ideal of Girlie out of my head. I needed a blonde Linda Darnell.

Served my apprenticeship in that immense gulag of the Bronx District Attorney�s office. And now I�m on permanent retainer to the Petrarch Brothers, Vincente and Charles, who have their own kingdom of call girls in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The Brothers pay me a fortune to look after their interests. I have bondsmen at my disposal and young lawyers to slug it out in court. Our cribs are hardly ever raided by the police. I don�t have to spread money around. I play softball with the District Attorney�s men. I instruct indigent clients for the Bronx machine. I can enter a judge�s chamber without drawing an unkind stare. I�m the Brothers� gentleman attorney, the mob lawyer who memorized the whole of Talbot�s vocabulary list.

I live with my dad near the Bronx Botanical Garden. My mother left us long ago for another man. My father still laments the loss of his billet as an air-raid warden. It�s been years and years. Sometimes I entertain the notion of having him killed. I�d have to go to the Petrarchs, and I�m sure they�d consider patricide a bad risk. Suppose it got around that their lawyer had his own dad eliminated? The cops might get suspicious. Judges would scorn a Petrarch girl.

I�d have moved to Manhattan, set up housekeeping with Dad on Central Park West, but the Petrarchs like to have me in the neighborhood. We consummate our best deals inside the Botanical Garden, where every bush can�t house a cop�s microphone. Vincente calls me maestro, because I can spring a girl on all sorts of technicalities and skewer witnesses on the stand. I have a silver tongue, according to Charles.

He asked me to use that tongue in behalf of Marianne, a favorite of his. She�s a madame on the Grand Concourse, tall and robust as Linda Darnell would have been if she hadn�t died in a fire. I didn�t have to jump into court for Marianne. Could have sent one of the lackeys from my office. But Marianne always made me think of Girlie. Her arrest had nothing to do with the Petrarchs. She wasn�t on company business. She got into a fracas with a traffic cop and bit the cop�s hand.

I gathered witnesses on the ride down to court, intending to use the old sexual gambit. I had a pair of widows and a pensioner to swear that the cop had tried to molest Marianne.

Ortiz was on the bench, a Quincy Adams man. He wouldn�t protect a dumb traffic cop. �Children,� I told my witnesses, �we have it made.�

I whispered to Marianne about having dinner that night. The cop strolled in and paused at our table.

�Lawrence Tierney, is that you?�

My heart squeezed at the mention of Tierney. It was Bob, who�d been knocking around in a policeman�s bag since 1946. Marianne watched us with crazed eyes. I asked Bob if he�d ever been married.

�No,� he said.

And I knew. We�d both orphaned ourselves to Girlie. She existed as a lifelong ache.

�I�m sorry, kid,� he said.

�Sorry about what?�

�That I got you into trouble.�

�I�ve survived, Bob. Look at me. It was Talbot who had the asthma attack.�

�Don�t believe it.�

�But he went to Arizona,� I said.

�It was a scam. That assemblyman paid him to show me your treasure chest. He wanted Girlie and that was the only way to get her.�

�You�re bitter, Bob. Talbot would have mentioned something... we had a corporation to protect. He wouldn�t have risked it for Rosenquist. Where did you learn that story?�

�From some Quincy Adams people. Ages ago. The assemblyman skipped to Arizona with a piece of the club�s pie. The club couldn�t tell you. People thought you were the canary Rosenquist left behind.�

Ortiz knocked once with his hammer, assuming I had a bellyache. I didn�t examine Bob on the stand. I didn�t call our witnesses and Marianne got six months probation for biting Bob�s hand.

She was furious. She begged Charles�s permission to throw acid at his lawyer. I had ruined her reputation on account of a cop who was running traffic from his grave. Charles warned her. �Marianne, leave the maestro alone.�

I sank into a melancholy during Marianne�s probation period. Talbot had studied The Blue Book and swindled me. He was always the genius. I could imagine what The Blue Book said on the subject of friendship. �The most diabolic criminal minds have no room for friends. Their devotion is to pure technique.�

I remembered Bob on the stand. In his late fifties now. With worn shoes. His face full of bloated handsomeness. Girlie�s lover until the end.

I showed up at Marianne�s crib with a bandolier of yellow roses. Marianne threw bottles of men�s cologne at me and then laughed. �I can�t hate you when you look so sad.�

Charles called. �Maestro, I�m worried about you. Bringing flowers to a whore.�

I spent six nights with Marianne and returned to my dad and the Bronx Botanical Garden. Two melancholics. Dad without his warden�s hat and me without an ambience. I�m still Lawrence Tierney stealing from Sheridan�s store. Merchandise had never been my strongest point. I was interested in the brotherhood of crawling on my belly with Talbot through a duct. If I fell down after Talbot and Girlie disappeared, I�m glad of that fall. I came into power thinking of her ankles around Bob�s neck. I�d find Girlie�s face in all the movies I ever saw. Where would I have been without the RKO? Carole Landis. Girlie. Linda Darnell.

Peter Heyrman wrote �One for the Money� based on stories he overheard in Key West bars. He disavows the influence of Ernest Hemingway�s To Have and Have Not, which he did not read until after the first draft of �One for the Money� was written, and expresses some annoyance at being compared to Hemingway by editors, those at NBM not included. Mr. Heyrman has written two novels, one science fiction and the other a mystery, which are unpublished. He is thirty-two.

Shadows mixed with smoke in the palm fronds as the blades of the ceiling fan creaked. I sat and sweated at one end of the bar, as I admired the barmaid�s figure. She was a fast-talking, funny girl named Nancy, but she wasn�t talking too quickly that night. The July heat had sapped the energy out of everyone. The object of her attention was a gay waiter whose eyeshade was starting to melt. Nancy smiled provocatively at him, but he didn�t notice. He was busy running a wet tongue over his lips as he watched for pretty boys passing by on the street. When she tired of the lost cause she came down to where I was sitting. I lit a cigarette and gave her one. Smoke hung limp in the air between us.

�Any business lately?� she asked.

�Not much. I�ll lay you out a line in the bathroom if you want.�

�Okay. I need some energy.�

Back in the bathroom I spread out cocaine on the top of the toilet tank, then chopped it to fine powder with my pocket knife. I made two lines, the larger one for her, then took my own. It rushed through my head, then spread over me like pins and needles. There was a knock at the door. I heard her laugh. As I opened it Nancy slipped past me. Once she�d snorted hers I grabbed her and kissed her. Her hands rubbed my back. When she let go she said,

�You�ve got business out there, lover.�

�What kind of business?�

�The kind I worry about. Her name�s Deborah.�

�Why are you worried? Is she all right?�

�I guess so. Rick sent her. He called just now. Don�t listen to me. She�s waiting for you out there.�

�You know her?�

�Uh-huh, and once you see her you won�t be making so many passes at me.�

I walked through drooping palm fronds to the dark bar. The woman was in the seat next to mine. She wore a white dress that stood out against the shadows. She didn�t look hot. She didn�t even look mildly uncomfortable. As I sat down she slipped a cigarette into her mouth. I put my lighter up to it to get a better look at her face. It was something to see.

�I�m Mark Kane,� I said.

�I�m Deborah.�

�Nancy said you wanted to talk to me.�

�Yes. Rick Gannet told me about you. He said you have a boat.�

�I�ve got a thirty-one footer. She�s not in the water now, but she will be in a week or so when I get the money to fix her.�

�What�s the trouble?�

�Just a couple of kinks in the engine. She could go in the water now, but she couldn�t make a long haul.�

Nancy approached us. �Would you like a drink, Miss Usher?�

Deborah Usher nodded, ordered, then turned back to me. �Could your boat get into the water any faster?�

�With money she could. I could go to Miami, get parts and have her ready by Friday. What�s the rush?�

�There�s a job if you�d like to take it.�

�I�d need money right away.�

�How much?�

�A thousand for parts, labor, all that. Expense money for an overnight stay in Miami.�

�While we�re up there we could stay at my apartment. I�ll pay for your meals. Any other expenses we can take care of as we go.�

I hadn�t thought about her coming along, but I didn�t mind the idea. I figured I could handle her. �That�ll be fine.�

�You have a car?�

�Sure.�

�We�ll go up tomorrow, get the parts, and be back by Wednesday morning. Then could you be ready by Friday?�

�I don�t see why not. What�s the deal?�

�From what Rick told me you�ll take it.�

�Rick doesn�t speak for me. I want to know what it is.�

�Cocaine.�

�I usually only deal in grass.�

�But you�ve brought in cocaine.�

�A couple of times. Never much of it.�

�Can your boat go to Andros Island?�

�It can. It would take three days, maybe less.�

�Three days is fine. I have a man who�ll be going with you.�

�I�ve got my own mate.�

�That�s all right, but my man will be with you. He knows the men you�re meeting. You may know him. Keith is his name.�

�Tall and bald?�

�Yes. He shaves his head.�

�What�s in it for me?�

�Forty pounds of cocaine.�

My hand shook. I calculated quickly. Coke was going for twenty thousand a pound. �I�m interested. How much will I be carrying?�

�Five hundred pounds.�

�I�d want three thousand bucks in advance in case anything goes wrong.�

�That�s fine. I�m staying at the Santa Maria, room 41. Will you pick me up tomorrow at two o�clock, and be ready to go to Miami?�

�All right.�

She finished her drink, then faded into the dark.

Nancy appeared in front of me. �Another drink?�

�Yeah.�

�You working for her?�

�I�m thinking about it.�

�I wish you wouldn�t.�

I mulled that over for a while.

Steve Oren was born in New York and lives in Chicago. After an academic career as a political scientist, he joined the civil service. �The Death of the Tenth Man,� is his first published fiction. Kaddish has over the centuries evolved into, among other things, a memorial prayer. A few recites it in the eleven months following the death of either parent, and on the anniversary of the death. Even Jews who ignore many other customs observe this. Kaddish, a public prayer, may only be recited if a minyan (ten Jewish males over the age of 13) is present. As we see here, getting a minyan together is not always easy.

You have to pay to belong to a family. I�m paying. It�s 8:10 A.M. Sunday morning. And I�m in synagogue. Dale (but remember to call him Dovid to his face) called on Thursday.

�You know, Sunday is the anniversary of Dad�s death.�

�Yeah. I also know the word yahrzeit. But Sunday is a work day for me. This refugee thing...�

�Look, you do nothing else Jewish. You�re still Dad�s son.� Did I hear or imagine the words �even if you married that shiksa?�

�Besides, they�ve been having trouble getting a minyan. See you in shul Sunday morning.� So that�s why he was so polite. I only imagined the words.

Well. Dale � Dovid � had been right enough. He glares from the front of the shul, where he�s leading the prayers. Either of us could have, but I�m not interested. We�re up to �Omer Rebbe Yishmael.� The first kaddish in memory of Dad should be a minute away. There are only nine men.

�Say, Mr. Greenberg, did you call your son?�

�Now, Dovid, he promised me he�d be here. Besides, Ann is ill and I don�t like to disturb her with calls. Look, keep on davening until �Yishtabakh.� If Joe isn�t here by eight-fifteen or so, I�ll call.�

Aside from Dovid, no one seems concerned. At this shul, no longer able to afford a rabbi, in an area that has lost most of its Jews � in which many of my clients lived � lacking a tenth man must be fairly commonplace. But Moe and Hymie have turned backward to look at the outside door. Roger sleeps. Five years ago, the first time Dale dragged me back here (after Pao-Chu and I split), Roger was sleeping. Of course, he knows no Hebrew, doesn�t pray, and comes only as a favor to Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Abrams also seems to be sleeping. Huddled in his big brown coat, the hood over his head, he is almost invisible. Last year, he hadn�t slept. He cursed the cold, especially in the toilets, and the kidney condition that made him visit them constantly. Is he wearing tefillin? Can�t tell with that coat over his head. Last year, Dale had hocked him. �Don�t wear tefillin if you�re going to wet your pants every five minutes.�

�Barukh Sheomar,� calls Dovid. I face forward and pick up a siddur. I�m here, might as well look at the old prayerbook. After a few minutes, my attention wanders.

Brown in the corner of my eye must be Mr. Abrams. I half-turn to watch the coat, reaching to the ankles, walk up the aisle. Moe and Hymie have also turned. ��Bye, Jake.� No answer. We exchange greetings for a minute or two. Then, as Dovid continues to drone on, I turn forward and they again face the rear.

Funny how someone you knew when you were a kid, especially someone you disliked when you were a kid and he an adult, you can�t think of him by a first name. Moe and Hymie Bernstein are as old as Mr. Abrams and Mr. Greenberg. Dale and I are the only men here under seventy. But when I was a kid, Moe and Hymie Bernstein went to Anshe Emunah two blocks away.

Eventually, Mr. Greenberg stands up. He shuffles slowly toward the office.

�Good morning, Mrs. Abrams, how are you? I�ve got to call Ann about Joe.�

This would be a long morning. Joe lives, or lived last year, in Northtown, thirty minutes� drive away. I do have an office to run. At �Yishtabakh� there was still no minyan. Mr. Greenberg announces that Joe had overslept but would be here shortly. Roger sleeps. The other men talk. Dovid again glares, since talking is really not proper.

I like talking � that�s how anthropologists make a living. But I see these men maybe once a year and have little to say. And why make Dale mad? He belongs in this shul as little as I do. The other men pray in an Orthodox shul out of cultural familiarity. He is Orthodox by conviction. They are retired shopkeepers with little Jewish knowledge, and most of that is wrong. He is a computer programmer and an ordained rabbi. In East Simonson Heights, among other religious professionals, he can relax a bit. Here he is on guard, the champion of Jewish law. And I�m here: the twin who went in the opposite direction. He would not eat in the house of any man here. None of them would have eaten in mine while Pao-Chu was there.

Five minutes, ten minutes. I find a Bible on the shelf and start translating the Hebrew to myself. Moe and Hymie continue to look toward the rear, facing the door. There are footsteps on the outside stairs. The door opens. �Hi, Joe� comes a chorus. Joe comes in the door, takes off his coat and hat, puts a yarmulke on his head, and walks from the corridor into the shul. He�s balding � just as I am starting to. But he�s still very tall. He was on our yeshiva high school basketball team. Dovid starts to lead the service.

�Roger, wake up, it�s time for �Borokhu.� Wait, Dovid, there�s still no minyan. Where�s Abrams?�

I�m tired of sitting in one place. �I�ll get him,� I say and walk out. To my left, I see Mrs. Abrams in the office, a ball in a coat. She�s far more religious than her husband, at least she was twenty years ago. But going into the women�s section of the shul to pray is something she does only on Saturday morning. If she has to drive her husband here on Sunday, she avoids the comparatively warm shul and stays in the office reading last week�s Yiddish newspaper. But she doesn�t count for the minyan. I�m supposed to get her husband.

I turn right toward the stairway that goes to the basement. From my right eye, I see Dovid pointing to the boxes on his left arm and head, reminding me not to wear my tefillin into the toilet. Down the stairs to the first landing. The side door is heavily bolted. I reach the basement and put out my hand to turn on the light. As it goes on, I see Mr. Abrams on the floor. There�s a knife in his chest. Dovid will be disappointed.

But he wasn�t. When we called, the detectives came pretty promptly. One of them was Bernie Gold. After some discussion about the propriety of praying with Mr. Abrams�s body in the building, we had our minyan after all. The paramedics sedated Mrs. Abrams and led her out of the office. It became a police headquarters. After the police spoke to me and the others, Mr. Greenberg came over.

�This is terrible, Mike, just terrible.�

�Yes, Mr. Greenberg.� I�m twelve years old again.

�Mr. Abrams was such a fine man.� I�m silent. �Came to shul every day. You know, he knew your dad well. Such a shame. Your father was always so proud of this shul and the neighborhood. Now, it�s changed. Lots of shwartzes.� He means Indians and Latinos as well as blacks. There are few blacks around here. Mr. Greenberg�s prejudices are simple. The world contains Jews, goyim, and shwartzes. Jews can do no wrong except by acting like goyim. Goyim you mumble about. Shwartzes are bad. �Must have been one of them.�

�How? No one was in the basement. The police have looked. And the only door was bolted from the inside.�

�He must have sneaked out through the main door. These schwartz kids are sneaky, a bunch of shkotzim.�

�Moe and Hymie were watching the back door the whole time.� He is obviously not listening to me. Bernie Gold is heading toward me. He waves me to a side.

�Thanks, Bernie.�

�Been a long time, Mike. Looks like Mr. Greenberg hasn�t changed. You, me, and your brother � the silvers and the gold.�

�Sure has. How did a sixties radical become a policeman?�

�Long story. It�s hard to remember. Maybe I was never that much of a radical.�

I bet. You were just radical enough that you went to Canada. Stayed there, I suspect, until the Carter amnesty. Dovid was just religious enough to study in a yeshiva after high school. But in his case it stuck. You�re a cop. He�s a computer programmer. And I went to Vietnam. A Vietnam combat veteran who has just been next to a murder. I can guess the next question, especially as Bernie gets his friendly smile together.

�Did you have any reason to kill Jake Abrams?�

�Sure. Twenty-five years ago. So did you and every other kid in this shul.�

�That I remember.� He�s lost his smile as he recalls the slaps Mr. Abrams gave to any kid who talked near him during prayer. Our fathers didn�t hit us like that. But when we complained they reminded us that we shouldn�t be talking.

I fill Bernie in on the years since 1968. I�m very careful to stress my graduate degree in anthropology � Jews are suckers for intellectuals � and the fact that I�m teaching part-time at the university. I also mention my refugee-relief job. As a Vietnam vet, I�m a success. Bernie hears the defensive tone.

�Look, Mike, I�m not reading you your rights or anything. But we�ve talked to everyone except Mrs. Abrams, who�s a wreck. Someone killed Jake Abrams after he left this room. No one is in the basement. The only way to get into or out of it is to go through the corridor, which the Bernstein boys, and the rest of you from time to time, were watching to see if anyone would come to make your minyan.� Bernie is still traditional. Moe and Hymie Bernstein never married. Seventy-five years old they may be, but boys they remain. �Then Joe walked directly in. And then you went down those stairs.�

�Fingerprints?� I know the answer but ask anyway.

�Yeah, you and the lab. It�s the shul�s knife. There are fifty years of fingerprints and shmutz on it.�

�Okay. But I didn�t kill him. If you don�t mind, it�s noon and I�ve got work to do. When can I get out of here?�

�The boss says all of you can go. Just don�t go too far. Anyway, I�m sure Dale wants a minyan here for minkha this afternoon. See you at five.�

�Thanks, Bernie.� But no thanks. I spent lots of time thinking up an excuse for minkha. And if I show up, Dale will invite me to supper. Will he be more unhappy if I accept or if I decline? Last year there was a near riot when I let slip in front of his kids the news that Dad, their venerable grandfather, the fount of orthodoxy, had worked every Saturday in his store.

I take my coat from the rack, it�s next to the big brown one, and put it on. Dale is talking to Bernie. �Autopsy,� �sense of Jewish obligation� come through the air. Bernie looks unhappy. The other men are watching me. As soon as I leave, I will be the topic of conversation. I�m out the door, walking through sodden fall leaves to my car.

The office is officially closed on Sundays. But you don�t run an office catering to fifty-seven types of refugees and five sources of funds without getting behind in paperwork. Maybe I can make a dent in the next four hours.

Maryam Yusuf (Mary to her face) is standing by the door. Forget paperwork.

�I�ve been waiting for hours.�

�Sorry.� I open the door. She goes in and sits down, carefully, and starts talking. I half listen. When I saw the black eye, I knew the story. Fourteen years old, adapting easily to Mann High School, turning from scared Iraqi-Assyrian refugee to American teenager, wears jeans/smokes/has a boyfriend/mouths off once too often. Her father, even a good guy like Sargon Yusuf, beats her up.

I�m sympathetic but not too much. She�s bright and pretty but I don�t sleep with my clients, especially the young ones. All these girls seem to know I�m divorced. And too many Maryams � Vietnamese, Khmer, Latino, Russian-Jewish, Assyrian, Haitian � have found in America the freedom to be addicts, whores, or criminals. Mary rambles on. When she mentions getting a knife for the future, I start shouting. Jake Abrams, in his worn gray suit with a knife in his shirt, overrides my cool.

That was the afternoon. No point in calling the social service agencies as I�m supposed to. Child-abuse paperwork is forever. And in crisis Sargon Yusuf forgets his English. I�d still have to translate.

I reach Sargon at the grocery store. It�s Dad�s yahrzeit, and Dad once owned that store. He cries about his wonderful daughter who left and yells at his disobedient daughter at the same time, stopping only to take care of customers as they walk in. I understand about half his Aramaic � I guess learning Talmud was worthwhile. He slowly winds down. Maryam would be safe enough at home but tonight she�ll stay at a friend�s. Make sure the name is J-E-A-N and not G-E-N-E. Tomorrow, she and her parents will come in to talk. I know the speech I�ll make by heart.

Four-fifty P.M., I�m late for shul. As I walk up the outside stairs, I hear a conversation. When I walk in, it suddenly stops. I guess I know the subject, especially as Dale looks flushed and angry. Dale makes a production of pointing toward Mr. Greenberg to indicate that I should be asked to lead minkha. It�s a nice vote of confidence but I decline in Dale�s favor. Bernie sits alone to a side, looking at his nine suspects. After a while, Joe Greenberg goes over to him. The words that reach me indicate that the two men belong to the same bowling league. None of the other detectives are here.

The minkha service is short, about ten minutes. As Dale repeats the standing prayer, I realize how much I need votes of confidence. Bernie is right. I am the logical suspect. Neither at the university nor at the League for Refugees do I have tenure. It�s fall, but I�d better get this over before spring.

As Dale and I finish saying kaddish, the door to the building opens. Mrs. Abrams, looking composed, walks in and stands in the corridor. She hesitates, goes to the door of the shul and looks. All her life, she�s been waiting for men in shul.

�Mike, why don�t you say the mishnayos in honor of Dad?� I�m too tired to argue with Dale. Besides, he�s on my side. No one else in the shul really wants to hear mishnayos, especially not with me as the speaker, but they slowly assemble.

Bernie, however, is walking out. At first, I think he�s just trying to avoid sitting through a boring interlude. But it�s not that. Mrs. Abrams has caught his eye. She is pointing toward the coat rack. Of course, she�s a first-generation immigrant woman who saves everything. She wants to take the coat back home.

My interest in an eighteen-hundred-year-old law code has suddenly vanished. I remember why I�m here. Jake Abrams, the knife, Maryam, the coat, Mrs. Abrams. I almost bump into Bernie.

�Excuse me, Bernie.� But I don�t get out of the way.

�Yeah. Now let me through. Mrs. Abrams wants to talk to me. I�ll be back for the kaddish at the end of the mishnayos.�

�No. You need to talk to me first. I know who the killer is.�

Bernie sighs but is silent. Mrs. Abrams continues to wait. Dale and the others are assembling together for the mishnayos at the shul�s other side.

�When was Mr. Abrams killed? It couldn�t have been after he left here. There was no one in the basement.�

�Except you. And few corpses walk out of a room and down a flight of steps.�

�But did he? All I saw, all that anyone saw was a coat with a hood. You couldn�t see the head, you couldn�t see the feet of the person wearing it.�

�Mike, we�re ready to start.� Bernie waves them to silence. To me, he says, �It was his coat.�

�Exactly. He wore it in shul because he was always so cold. He walks out to take a piss, from the almost warm shul to the cold toilet, and he takes it off. And he doesn�t leave it on a seat; it�s neatly hung up on a coat rack.�

�What was her motive?� Bernie hadn�t been dumb in the old days, either. He�s looking intently at the figure in the corridor as he whispers.

�Twenty-five years ago, Jake Abrams slapped us around. He stopped doing so. We got to be too big for him. Did he change? Did he stop being so free with his hands?�

�No, he didn�t change.� I talk too loudly. I�m more stunned by Mrs. Abrams walking into the men�s area of the shul than by anything else that she has done. She still looks composed.

�Forty years of it. He hit me again last night. He could no longer drive; he went to the bathroom every ten minutes; but he could still hit. I drove him here this morning. He went downstairs to the bathroom. I went downstairs to find last week�s paper. He said something. I saw the knife...�

�Mrs. Abrams, I have to warn you that anything you say...�

Bernie could have saved his speech. Mrs. Abrams went on talking through it.

�Then I didn�t know what to do. Until the body was found, I would be safe. I took the coat off him and went upstairs. It hid me. Only then... I realized that there was going to be an exact minyan. If I could have been one of nine or of eleven, I could have done it. But not one of ten.�

She shakes her head and walks out. Bernie follows her. Dale and seven others are waiting for me.

Maurade Glennon�s first short story, �From Dublin�s Fair City,� won first prize in the 1964 Mademoiselle magazine short-story contest; her second story received honorable mention in Best American Short Stories. Her first novel, No More Septembers (1968), was an alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club; her second, The Waiting Time (1972), won the Texas Writers Roundup novel award. She was born in Ireland and educated there and in the United States.

Did somebody whisper in his ear, I�m going to kill you, or was he waking from a nightmare? He thought if he could concentrate he might identify the voice, but he was unable to make the effort.

He opened his eyes. He was alone in an unfamiliar white room that smelled of cleansers and disinfectants. He tried to call out, Where am I? How did I get here? But no words came.

Panic took hold of him, mounted as he groped for a clue to his surroundings and almost went out of control when he had to ask himself, Who am I?

He was trying to calm himself when he heard an amplified announcement in a foreign language. His first thought was, I�ve got to get out of here. But when he tried to sit up a new horror gripped him: he could not move. Without having to think, he knew the right side of his body was the good one. The left side had been crippled ten years ago in a head-on collision that killed Bob, his only child.

So, he was not an entire blank. He had three memories: a collision, an impaired left side, a dead son.

He would think about all that later. Now he must explore his right side. He concentrated, straining with effort, until finger by finger, and toe by toe, he discovered he was locked up in a paralyzed body.

Though not completely. He could blink. He could swallow. He did both repeatedly while he was awake. And before he fell asleep he started trying to construct his past from two facts: he�d had a son; ten years ago he�d totaled a car.

He was wakened by a man�s voice calling, �Se�or! Can you hear me, Se�or Simpson?�

Simpson. His relief was so great it took a few minutes to realize he knew the voice. Simpson, he thought, I am Jay Simpson. Before the accident I used to play the piano. I teach music appreciation. I live in... Where do I live? Austin! Austin, Texas. I spend part of every summer in Mexico City. The last thing I remember is the splash of the fountain on Se�ora Valdez�s patio outside my bedroom window. I am in Mexico City.

Jay opened his eyes. Dr. Alvarez, a near neighbor of Se�ora Valdez and one of her many cousins, was standing at the foot of his bed.

�If you understand me, se�or, shut your eyes,� the doctor said. �Entiende?�

Jay shut his eyes and didn�t open them again till the doctor told him to do so.

�Bueno, bueno,� Dr. Alvarez said, and a tiny nurse, who had come to stand beside him, smiled with a great flash of white teeth. �You had a stroke...�

A stroke. But, Jay wanted to say, I always take my blood-pressure capsules and my diuretics. I exercise; I follow my diet; I avoid salt faithfully.

�The right side of your body is affected...�

I know, Jay thought, the good side.

�You are improving,� the doctor assured him. �You have improved. And, of course, you are not alone. The se�ora, your wife, comes here every morning after she coaches her English-language students. She is already in the hospital. She will be with you soon.�

The se�ora, his wife. Jay couldn�t bring a wife to mind until she entered the room, asking, in English, �Is he conscious this morning, Doctor? Can he hear us?�

I can hear, Jay thought, swallow, see, remember. He was relishing those abilities with intense swamping gratitude when his wife walked into his line of vision. A pink, scrawny woman wearing an unflattering, scoop-necked blouse and a red gathered skirt.

He knew, he remembered that this was the type of attire she always wore in Mexico and now referred to as �ethnic.� Before that, the word had been �peasant,� before that, �native.� Her name, too, had gone through an evolution: Johanna to Joanne, to Joan, to Joni. A response, Jay supposed, to the fads of high school students to whom she had been teaching Spanish for fifteen years.

Joni walked to Jay�s side, stripping teeth and gums in a wide grin, bent and put her lips against his ear and whispered, �I�m goin� to kill you, and that�s a promise. But, sugar, keep rememberin� it�s our secret.�

Jay felt his heart skip a beat and pound two or three times. He raised his eyes in mute appeal to the doctor and the nurse, but both were casting indulgent glances at the touching embrace of husband and wife.

When Joni asked, �When can I take him out of hospital?� Jay again felt an uncomfortable action around his heart, and when the doctor shook his head, and the nurse frowned, he experienced an emotion close to love for both of them.

�It�s too soon to talk about that, se�ora. Certainly not while we are dealing with enemas and a catheter.�

Oh, blessed enemas, and twice-blessed catheter, protectors from promised murder!

Dr. Alvarez came around the bed to take Jay�s blood pressure, and it was during that procedure that Jay thought of testing the fingers of his left hand. Had Joni told the doctor that though the accident had ruined his thumb and left him with an unbending wrist, he had never lost the use of his four fingers?

He waited till the doctor lifted his hand, and then, against the doctor�s arm, he raised and lowered each finger.

Dr. Alvarez smiled. �Bueno, se�or. Muy bueno.� He moved each of Jay�s fingers separately, and asked, �What would you do with a pencil, I wonder?�

�Nothing,� Joni said. �The knuckles won�t bend. There�s no strength between the fingers.�

�Claro, I see. Now, amigo, remember what they do in the movies? Blink once for �yes� and twice for �no.� Tell me, do you miss your music? Si? I thought so.�

Dr. Alvarez spoke to the nurse in rapid Spanish, and she left the room. Jay could not make the effort to understand what was said, but Joni assured the doctor he was �muy simpdtico.�

When the nurse came back carrying a cassette player, Dr. Alvarez said, �You are in luck, amigo. My wife listens every night to this tape of our son, but yesterday when she left to visit her mother in Guadalajara, the �rewind� control was stuck. By some miracle it was repaired in one day, so you�ll have music, my son Jorge�s music, till my wife returns.�

Placing the cassette player under Jay�s extended fingers, the doctor said, �Now, amigo, your first lesson. You will not, please, touch over here by the small finger. First, here is �erase� control, which you will never touch. Beside it, here, is �record� control. You will not use it, please. If you press the �record� control, it will erase Jorge�s music and record the voices in the room. Now, under your index finger, is �play.� Press. Hard. More hard.�

Jay tried, and pressed again and again, till finally the notes of a xylophone tinkled in the room.

�Bueno, muy bueno. Now, under your middle finger is �stop,� and beside it, �rewind.� That�s all you need to know. Try to stop the music, se�or.�

Jay tried, pressing till his finger trembled while the boy�s thin voice sang, �...en la primavera... son los pajaritos...� It seemed to take minutes, but finally Jay depressed the �stop� control on the first syllable of the word �muchos� and the cowlike moo made the doctor, the nurse, and even Joni laugh.

�Now try �rewind,� there, to the left, next finger. Ah, more quick that time. Your fingers and the machine are working. Play, se�or, but do not erase.�

Jay could not resist testing the power of his index finger, and Dr. Alvarez guided him in locating and managing volume control through the previously interrupted line, �...de muchos colores me gustan a mi.�

While the music played, Joni dug an avocado out of her Mexican straw bag and said, �I heeded your warnings about my candy and cookie lunches, Doctor.�

�I am glad to hear it, se�ora. But shall we find you some lemon for your avocado? Or chili?�

�Nada, thank you. I even got used to salt-free food when Jay had to do it. It spoils the taste for me now.�

�All the better for you, se�ora,� the doctor assured her before he left

Through the afternoon Jay tried to cut out Joni�s chatter with the xylophone. But he couldn�t. She talked, and he felt compelled to listen for the word �murder.� He tried not to, but he was unable to stop himself.

The days that followed took on the same pattern: bed-bath, enema, doctor�s visit, a new tape for the day�s music, his nine pills, the physical therapist, the afternoon rain that told him it was four-thirty, Joni�s daily promise of death. Never more than one promise a day; never at the same time of day.

There was no way he could keep himself from waiting for that promise from the moment she walked into the room every morning. After she spoke his eyes would plead with her and he would try to form his lips into the word, Why? But if she understood she ignored the question.

With practice Jay learned to deal with the cassette player like a touch typist with a typewriter, and though he never used them, he was able to locate the �erase� and �record� controls as easily as the �play� and �stop� controls that he pushed many times a day.

In time the catheter was removed. His pills were cut to six. His outlook began to improve and he almost knew contentment. But the irony that better health meant a speedier exit from the hospital to his death was never far from his mind.

One morning he heard Dr. Alvarez, in the doorway, telling Joni, �It would be against my wishes, se�ora,� and he relaxed. But the next day, when Joni followed the doctor out of the room, and returned to tell Jay that in two days an ambulance would take him to Se�ora Valdez�s, he knew fear again, and, as he was lifted into the ambulance, despair.

But the warm plump face of Se�ora Valdez soothed him, her tearful welcome cushioned his fears. Tired from the ambulance ride, he slept, and after he awakened, Se�ora Valdez brought him a black Oaxacan pot of red geraniums. He lay picturing the fountain on the old brick patio outside his room, listening to it splashing water into its circle of blue floral tile.

In this cool, bright familiar room, the days became stretches of music punctuated by Joni�s commands to her ten students on the patio: �Repeat! Again!� And their voices, speaking of �jellow birds� and �beeg appleys� brought to Jay�s mind, not yellow birds and big apples, but mangoes sculpted into flower shapes, purple bougainvillea trailing over adobe walls, the red ribbon Se�ora Valdez had tied to her struggling avocado tree to guarantee it seven years of life.

He became accustomed to the se�ora cooing to her finches as she aired them daily behind a patch of begonias. But he could not become accustomed to the woman who promised him death administering enemas, washing his body, spoon-feeding him salted, pureed food to speed his death.

Her own food was unsalted, not as she had told Dr. Alvarez, because she didn�t like salt, but because she didn�t notice whether food was cold, greasy, spiced, bland. The woman had no palate, and often devoured limp tacos and cold tamales while she was reminding Jay to think about her reason for murder. He always blinked twice to show he didn�t know, but wanted to know the reason. She never seemed to notice.

Then, one afternoon while she was assembling lunch leftovers on a tray, she said, �You do realize I�ll have to do it mid-July at the latest. No, make that a week earlier to give me time for the funeral and all that and get me back in Austin early enough to prepare my classes.�

You�re insane, Jay thought, but even the insane have their reason, so tell me why. She continued to talk, describing plans for her fall courses, and Jay turned up the music volume. Without haste or anger she pressed the �stop� control, and that, like the promise of murder, became a daily lunchtime habit.

Some evenings, when Dr. Alvarez dropped in on his way home, Joni spoke of taking Jay back to Austin, and when the physical therapist was present she asked him for tips to ensure her husband�s comfort during the plane ride.

The doctor never forgot to exchange one tape for another and was apologetic when Jay had heard the last of his supply and had to start a repetition. Jay didn�t mind. When he got tired of Mexican music, he�d press the �stop� control and let Vivaldi, or Ravel, or, if he was agitated, Mozart or Bach run through his mind.

And lately he often lay in silence because he was suffering from blinding headaches and blurred vision.

He diagnosed a climb in his blood pressure and hoped the doctor would order him back to hospital. What the doctor did was change his medicine and increase his own visits to every other day.

The afternoon Joni picked up his new capsules she said, �You might as well see what I�ve been doing since, oh, for a long time now.� Looking up at him, she added, �You surely didn�t think I�d let you get away with killing my son, did you?�

So that was it; revenge for Bob�s death.

�I�m real good at this,� she explained, taking the capsule apart, emptying the powder into the bag from the farmacia, putting the capsule back together filled with salt. �I do believe I broke one. Hardly ever do that anymore, not after all the practice I�ve had. It doesn�t matter now. You won�t be around to finish this batch. See, I�ll save all this powder and put it in your food one time. Or use what I�ve saved from other prescriptions.� She took two old glass aspirin bottles out of her straw bag, showed him their powdered contents, then dropped them in the farmacia bag on top of the loose contents of his new capsules. Watching her empty more capsules into the bag, rather than into a bottle, Jay thought she was getting careless and inefficient, and he took some comfort from that thought.

�The time is perfect,� Joni said. �Your friend, Dr. Alvarez, won�t suspect a thing. Now, open your mouth.�

To the best of his ability Jay clamped his mouth shut. She forced his lips apart, pushed the capsule between his teeth and jaws, and kept his mouth shut till he gagged on salt. �Now, see? It can be nasty like that, or you can take it nice and easy. Or don�t take it. It won�t matter; you�re still not getting your medicine. And I can put as much salt as I like in your food.�

That evening he opened his mouth for the capsule and bit down as hard as he could on her finger. He meant it to be no more than a statement of his ability to fight back, but it angered her. She raised her hand to slap him, but arrested the movement, saying, �I must remind myself not to mark you up. You broke the skin, you maniac.�

That evening the doctor noticed the band-aid on her finger, and she surprised Jay by saying �He bit me. When I was giving him his capsule.�

Dr. Alvarez leaned over Jay and asked, �Mr. Simpson, are you refusing to take your medicine?�

Jay blinked once.

�Is it difficult to swallow?�

Two blinks.

�Then I wonder why.� He took Jay�s hand and said, �Amigo, I believe you are trying to tell us something. Am I correct?�

One blink, and the strongest pressure of fingers he could manage against the doctor�s hand. Was he conveying anything? How much was Joni picking up?

Dr. Alvarez went to wash his hands in the tiny bathroom off their bedroom. �I will give him his medicine. It is here, is it not?� he called. �Don�t bother,� he added as Joni started toward him, then added, �What is this, se�ora? Salt?�

�Yes, for me. The se�ora cooks salt-free for Jay, so I add my own.�

Did Jay imagine a pause during which he hoped Dr. Alvarez was recalling Joni�s declining salt for her avocado at the hospital? Or was the doctor�s �Claro,� delayed simply because he was selecting the right medication from the assortment in the bathroom?

When the doctor went to Jay�s bedside, Joni poured a glass of water from the bottle on the nightstand and handed it to him. The doctor asked, �Will you take this from me, amigo?�

Jay blinked twice and made frantic finger motions.

Saying �Those fingers... I still wonder...� the doctor dropped the capsule into his breast pocket while he was taking out his pen. It might have been an unconscious act. Be suspicious, Alvarez, Jay willed, think!

�Now, Mr. Simpson. Try to hold this pen between your fingers. Only hold. No more.�

Jay saw the tension drop out of Joni as the pen dropped from his fingers.

�Relax, amigo. Maybe your therapist can work to make that back-and-forth movement as strong as the up and down.�

�If that could be done, surely it would have been done before? In Austin?�

�Perhaps it did not seem as essential while your esposo had the use of his other hand. We will give him some good therapy at the hospital. And who knows, Se�or Simpson? Maybe soon you will be writing us messages.�

Joni�s �No� was too loud, her �No hospital!� too sharp.

�Se�ora, Se�ora, do not agitate yourself. I must go to your country in one week. To San Francisco. It will only be a short while. Six days.�

�I can take care of him while you�re gone. Haven�t I been doing that?�

�But now he will not take his medicine for you, se�ora. And even if I were staying, I would still put him back in hospital. We must do some tests. His blood pressure, se�ora. Entiende?�

The doctor took the capsules back to the bathroom, and while he was in there, Jay listened for and heard the rustle of paper. Maybe the doctor had opened the farmacia bag and seen its contents; maybe he had only moved the bag.

When Dr. Alvarez changed the tape in the cassette player, he said, �My son�s tape again, se�or. Guard it well!�

As soon as the doctor left, Joni said, �Well now, your amigo sure did speed up your death, didn�t he? I couldn�t risk another doctor, never mind tests, or you learning to write. Alvarez, I can fool; he�d never think of an autopsy. But I can�t let you get to the hospital. Not at this stage. So that gives us a week. One week. And let me tell you, sugar, I do believe your fingers were strong enough to hold that pen.�

Jay closed his eyes for fear they might reveal the truth of her suspicion, and kept them closed while she added, �I don�t trust you one bit, not one little bit.�

It encouraged him that she thought him formidable enough not to trust. And the one-week limit on his life sharpened his concentration; he searched desperately for some means of communicating with Dr. Alvarez. But what could he do? He had only his eyes, his teeth, the four fingers of his left hand; she had cunning, years of planning. Hatred. Salt. Poison.

During the night, in a flash of excitement, the answer came to him. Impatience kept him awake till daybreak, and after Joni woke up he kept closing his eyes for fear the light of hope might be shining out of them and visible to her.

When she left to join her students on the patio he was listening to Jorge singing �De colores, de colores...� And four hours later, carrying their lunch tray, she opened the door to the words, �...se visten los campos...�

While she was shutting the door with her foot, the tray rattled, and as it did, Jay pushed the volume control up fully. The sudden boom of the words, �...los pajaritos que vienen de fuera...� and the abrupt silence that followed threw Joni so off balance that the tray crashed to the floor.

�You maniac!� she screamed. �I�ll destroy that tape!� She ran at him, mole sauce and guacamole salad streaming down her skirt. �I could strangle you!� she yelled, fingers clenched, arms extended. Abruptly she straightened up, gave a short laugh, and said, �That�s why you did it. You know I�m going to kill you. You know you can�t escape. You wanted to make me pay for your death. Well, let me tell you, I�ve put in too much time waiting for this chance to put in any more in a Mexican prison.�

She left his side, and he heard her picking up broken pottery, dropping fragments on a metal tray. �I�ll get that cassette player taken away from you,� she muttered. �And let me tell you, the only reason I didn�t destroy that tape was because it was made by that boy.� She straightened up and said, �I believe I�ll give you enough to kill you right now. And you can bite all you want; you can gag; you can choke on it for all I care. I�ll have killed you one way or another. And you can�t trick me into serving one day in prison.�

She showered, dressed, forced three capsules down his throat, announced she was going out to get a complete list of flights to Austin. �For me,� she explained. �You�ll be buried in Mexico, to avoid complications.� Before she left she said, �Now think of Bobbie when the pain starts.�

Throughout the afternoon, anticipating pain, expecting death, Jay concluded his wife was now certifiably insane, but even allowing for that, could she ever have believed he had managed to rid himself of the wrenching guilt of having been the driver of the car that killed his son?

When she returned she said, �I lied. The capsules were empty. You didn�t think I�d let you die without watching your pain, did you? I owe Bobbie more than that.� She looked at her watch and said, �It�s too close to the doctor�s visit now, so you�ll get a chance to live for the afternoon. I guess I�ll do it soon after he leaves. Or maybe in the morning. We�ll see.�

Dr. Alvarez came later than usual, or so it seemed to Jay. �No music?� he asked. �You are tired of my son�s xylophone? Truth to tell, amigo, I get a little tired of it myself, day after day. But you know mothers and their sons.�

�Does he ever,� Joni remarked, and Jay thought her control was slipping just a little.

She was standing beside his bed while she spoke, and Jay waited till she moved away to make room for the doctor before he pressed the �play� control on the cassette player. The tinkling of the xylophone made Joni look around in surprise, and Jay met her eyes, and kept his gaze locked into hers while young Jorge Alvarez sang, �...de colores se visten...� Joni looked at the doctor, then brought puzzled eyes back to Jay, and found his gaze still fixed on her.

�Blood pressure first, music later.� As the doctor spoke he reached toward the cassette player, but Jay guarded the controls with his four good fingers, then increased the volume. The doctor continued to talk above his son�s �...de colores son los pajaritos...� and only stopped when Jay pushed the volume up fully, and again, exactly as it had happened that morning, the four words �...que vienen de fuera...� boomed into the room. There was a moment of silence before they heard the taped crash of the tray, the shattering of dishes, Joni shouting, �You maniac!�

After one look of disbelief she said, �He tricked me! He erased your son�s music and he taped everything I said. Every word. I knew I couldn�t trust him. I said I couldn�t trust him. Did you hear me saying I was suspicious, Doctor?�

�I heard everything, se�ora.�

It didn�t occur to Jay to stop the tape, and as Joni talked he strained to listen to her two voices making different statements.

The doctor leaned over Jay and said, �I must persuade her to go with me when I phone the police. Will they find evidence? One blink, good. In the bathroom? Si. Because I must tell you, se�or, the capsule I took yesterday was empty. What would it prove? But you, Se�or Simpson, are a very resourceful man.�

Joni raised her voice above the volume of the cassette player and asked, �Doctor, do you realize he erased your son�s tape? After you instructed him to be careful. What kind of man would do that? I couldn�t do it, not to his mother. Please tell your wife that.�

�Why don�t you tell her yourself, se�ora? She�s next door, visiting my cousin. And Se�ora Valdez will be glad to have you. You have a tray to return, do you not? I will carry it.� While he was speaking he picked up the tray.

�Oh, well, Doctor, I�m not sure I want to...�

�But you understand mothers and sons, se�ora.�

�Yes. Yes, I�ll explain it to her, one mother to another.�

Jay heard the patio door open and shut while the cassette player continued to emit Joni�s voice saying �You know I�m going to kill you...�

Alone in the room he stopped the tape. Silence and peace settled around him.

�Capriccio� marks the second appearance of the Isak Romun byline in NBM. This story resulted from the author�s thoughts, while attending a concert, about the different performances of the same composition. A volume of Monahan stories is in the works.

Everyone was crowded into the large room buttock on buttock, as if packed in by a Japanese train guard. Clumsy waitresses in short black dresses and white aprons maneuvered trays of drinks through the mass of squirming and unpredictable bodies, maybe spilling one drink for every two for which they found thirsts. Overhead, a chandelier threw down a fierce light as its teardrop baubles, moving with the rising heat, tinkled short, awkward messages to the drinkers below. Around the room, huge fabric panels showed Versailles garden scenes. I wondered what those unbathed and lice-ridden elegants, strolling in the gardens and looking down from the walls, thought of the crowd below them.

The room was a late renovation at the Paulsburg Academy for the Performing Arts and must have cost Karol Kinseca, the director, a tidy sum. But he probably got it all back from this one night�s concert.

As I came in, the first face I recognized belonged to Erwin Jacoby, our paper�s part-time music critic. He was a small man with dormouse features and a dusty pince-nez pinned on to them. Jacoby had a solid musical education. He could have done well in one of the big music centers but for a hypertensive condition that brought him to the quiet of Paulsburg. He owned a music store and appeared satisfied with his life in the provinces.

He spotted me and came over, plainly agitated and shaking an empty champagne glass in my direction. �She�s crazy, you know. You hear what she�s doing to K�chel 242 next season? Her old game.�

�I�m dying to know,� I said, familiar with Jacoby�s passions, one of which was that no one, but no one, touches a note of the Mozart canon.

�She�s doing a reduction for one piano. Says Mozart took a single part and parceled it out to three of his no-talent students. She says she�s achieving Mozart�s spiritual and aesthetic intent. Also, it costs a bundle to get three world-class pianists together.�

�So?�

�So if Mozart wanted to transcribe the concerto�s three solo parts for single piano, he would have done it�

�Maybe he wouldn�t. Mozart the composer did damn little because he wanted to, mostly because he had to.�

�Oho, now Monahan is the great music historian,� Jacoby snorted and started stomping off to complain to someone else.

�Hold it� I said, grabbing him by a frayed sleeve. �Did you call in your review?�

�Of course.�

�Well?�

�Well what?�

�Well, what did you say about the Capriccio?�

�What am I, the town crier? Read tomorrow�s paper.�

�Tell me now.� I still held his sleeve and had no intention of letting go anytime soon.

Jacoby let out an exasperated breath. �I said Terence Scobie has at last arrived as a composer. He�s come out of the woods. He�s suddenly found the year he�s living in. There are still discernible traces of derivative romanticism in the Capriccio, but Scobie has taken a giant step into the twentieth century with this work which, despite influences, stands as the capstone of his corpus. Cormain Scobie, his estranged wife (I didn�t mention that), is today�s foremost woman conductor. I went further and said she probably ranks among, the top ten conductors in the world. Finally, I said she perfectly realized the Capriccio, that in her hands it was an exciting, riveting aural experience. Something else I didn�t put in my review: It�s pretty strange when the composer, at the great moment in his creative life, isn�t on hand to take a bow.�

�You know how Terence is about listening to his music live.�

�I know, but I don�t understand.� Jacoby looked searchingly around the room. I figured he wanted something liquid. Maybe a lot of it. �Now, Monahan,� he said, coming back to me, �is it okay if I refill this glass and find someone a little more interesting to talk to, like that pretty thing over there having trouble with her whalebone? Want more information, read the paper you work for. You get a free copy, cheapskate.�

�Thanks,� I said, and took my hand from his sleeve.

�Thanks? I wouldn�t write what I wrote if I didn�t mean it�

�You are an upright man and are released. And watch the old blood pressure. Whalebone in disarray can have an arousing effect on aging music critics.�

Jacoby, mumbling, went off in the general direction of one of the waitresses momentarily mired between a fat man in a thin man�s suit and the �pretty thing� whose strapless gown seemed held up by antigravity but more likely by the press of bodies around her.

I felt a pressure on my elbow and turned to look into the tired and slightly red eyes of Terence Scobie. Terence always looked and acted as though he were wearing a smoking jacket � he had that secure and settled look, though the appearance belied the character around which it was wrapped. Yet it was that serene image he projected to the world. Even now, in his mandatory tux, he seemed to belong in a study, brandy globe in hand, idly swishing the amber fluid while standing before a glowing (not roaring) fire.

Terence was a tidy, medium-sized man, whose dark hair, now nicely graying at the sides, was disposed evenly over his head and parted precisely in the middle. He wore glasses that seemed to draw those tired eyes out of his head so that they overhung a curiously undistinguished button nose. No matter how well you knew him, you never thought to call him Terry, though he invited the nickname.

He nodded toward Jacoby some feet away from us. �I gather you just got the news of Cormain�s intended ravishment?�

�Ah yes, Jacoby�s off and running. Guardian of the deposit of faith, that sort of thing. Particularly where Mozart�s concerned.�

Terence smiled slightly as, with some trouble, he guided me across the room toward a table in a corner. On it rested a large, almost square volume bound in cordovan leather with gold lettering on the cover. He picked up the book and handed it to me. �For you, Oscar,� he said simply. �The manuscript of the score.�

I looked at the cover and read the two lines there: �Capriccio for Orchestra, Opus 49, by Terence Scobie.� I said, �You know I�m a musical illiterate. Sure you want to waste this on me?�

�For a variety of reasons I want you to have it. Open it.� I did so and saw the title page. �No, no,� he said, �the next page.�

On the next page, I read my name on the dedication. I made a low whooshing sound with my mouth and looked at Terence.

�Surprised? You�re as much responsible for tonight as anyone.�

�A few articles.�

�And you went to New York and persuaded Cormain to come down here and do the premiere.�

�That was pleasure.�

He breathed in heavily, the way a man does who�s going to unload something on you, and can�t quite believe what he�s going to say. �We�ll announce it tonight. We�re going to get married. Is that the correct term when you retie the knot with an ex-wife? Of course, you would say we�ve always been married, and anything we do now just satisfies the state and not� � he looked up at the domed ceiling, a continuation of the Versailles theme done in tasteful pastels � �the great Maestro in the sky.�

�I don�t care what you call it,� I said, �I call it great.� I�m afraid I�m an insensitive prig who believes that solemn vows, once exchanged, are binding.

�My cup runneth over even more. The Capriccio will be published, and RCA is talking about recording it with Cormain on the podium.�

Just then I spotted a pretty black-haired woman across the room. She was wearing a low-cut white dress spangled with fake gems that caught the light and turned it into a thousand tiny rainbows. It was a dress that might be smashing on a beautiful woman or on a homely woman, and that somehow seemed to sag and slip on merely pretty Viveka Hussey. I nodded in her direction and said, �Ah�� in a meaningful way.

�Viv will understand,� Terence said.

I looked over at Viveka as she tried to control all that dazzling elegance in which she was smothering. I wasn�t sure, considering the stakes, she had it in her to be understanding. When Terence and Cormain broke up, he kept up a front, but those of us who knew him � and I�d known him since we were kids � weren�t fooled. He taught his classes at Paulsburg College as usual and taught them well, but there was a slacking-off of production. For one full year, he composed nothing, worked at nothing. Clearly, there was a vacuum to be filled, and Viveka, shortly after she joined the college music department, filled it. Terence started getting notes down on paper again, mostly keyboard music because piano was what Viveka taught. Some of his music began finding its way to records, usually the smaller labels, the last a full program of his Forest Etudes and other piano pieces performed by Viveka in a giutamente ma non brillante style (to cite Jacoby�s review of the time). Although the Capriccio was not a keyboard composition, she unquestionably provided the motivation that resulted in its composition. There was campus scuttlebutt that she was to become the second Mrs. Scobie.

Well, that was all out the window now.

�Where, by the way,� I asked Terence, looking to steer my mind in another direction, �is the eminent conductor?�

�Where would you think?� Terence said and gestured languidly toward a tight circle of men, among them Karol Kinseca and Carmen Burell, the Paulsburg Symphony�s concertmaster. I wondered at these two in the circle, smiling and nodding ceremoniously, concealing with smooth, meaningless words what must have been smoldering inside. Cormain was a wonderful woman, but a hard one. I had heard that at rehearsals she remorselessly criticized Burell�s bowing technique, his rapport with the music, and his understanding of music in general. You don�t do that to a concertmaster, not in front of the orchestra with which he�s associated. I understood he walked out of the last rehearsal. He came back for the concert, though.

In the case of Kinseca, he was a big talent situated improbably in Paulsburg. He had crossed barbs with Cormain over a matter of the placement of her name on some posters outside one of the nation�s prestigious concert halls of which Kinseca was director at the time. The posters stayed � it was too late to print replacements � but Kinseca didn�t. In a matter of days, he found himself traveling south, lucky to get the job in Paulsburg.

A chink developed in the circle, and I caught a glimpse of Cormain at its center.

She was not beautiful, she was not even pretty. Character rode a face in which mere good looks would have been a disfigurement. She wore a dress of severe design, black with a slash of off-white at the right shoulder. Her eyes moved slightly from one man to another in a way devised to make each believe her attention was his. Occasionally, she would raise a hand to cheek in false and graceful shock at something said.

I thought how well Viveka�s dress would look on Cormain, a case of spirit conquering cut. To me Cormain was then as she had always been: controlled perfection. If she had a weakness, it was her belief that everyone should forgive her anything.

Just then she spotted me and called to Terence � she called him Terry, the only one I knew who did � to stop holding me prisoner.

�Go ahead,� Terence said, giving me a slight push in the direction of Cormain. �I have to hear the Capriccio. Just before you came in, they told me they had the tape set up.�

�You haven�t heard it yet?�

�No, and please no discourse on my strangeness. I get enough of those from Jacoby and others.�

He waved wanly to Cormain, gave me another push, then turned and made his way from the room.

I went over and joined the gallery of men around Cormain.

Clark Dimond is a novelist, comic-story writer, and magazine editor. He is the author of No-Frills Mystery, the generic novel published by Jove in 1981, and he has written stories for Creepy and Eerie. Mr. Dimond has edited True Experience and For Men Only magazines, and he is currently editing and publishing Brunt, a humor magazine. �You Can�t Fire Me for Doing My Job,� a detective story without a crime, was drawn from his experiences as a private investigator in New Jersey.

Though I�ve been called worse, I�m just an independent dick.

I�ve been in the business for a while. Worked my way up from agency security and guard duty. Up is the only way to go from there.

It�s a job. For a job not to eat your stomach up, you need a hobby. I like to think about fitting things together.

Some things seem to fit together naturally. I just know there was joy in the heart of the first guy who figured, probably by association and trial, that the large section of a car antenna is .22 caliber, leading to the discovery of the zip gun.

I am a hobbyist of sorts, and I don�t like to go around unarmed. I like to have a surprise ready just in case I need a backup. When the boss wanted his gun returned, I needed something to make up for the security I lost, and the cosh I carried wasn�t long enough to keep me totally out of reach of the average large thief.

Funny thing. A store dick�s not a regular employee of the store he prowls for boosters, but of the security agency. I had to cross employee picket lines in the line of work. There was a civil-rights boycott of certain dime-store lunch counters. So I got pretty restless and I was young. My life stretched out before me in the land that held for me no promise of compromise.

I complained to my boss, the ex-cop running the local dick franchise, who explained, while promoting me to nighttime security guard in Brickville, that I wouldn�t have trouble with picketers there. �People don�t picket stores that ain�t open yet.�

�I don�t mind night work,� I said. �After all, the only boosters I catch are kids... Oh, and that lady who wore her hat and suit and shoes out the door with the price tags still dangling. And hell, I was tempted to boost a pair of gloves the other day myself.�

�This is a uniform job. On this one you�re supposed to look like a cop.�

�I have a friend with a P-38 Walther I might borrow.�

�You�ll look like the Gestapo. And besides, they jam, those automatics. Use a revolver. Use mine with the Sam Browne belt.�

�What do I do?�

�Make three rounds an hour. Look, I�ll meet you down there at six. Show you around the place.�

�What�ll I be protecting?�

�Mostly copper tubing.�

�All night every night?�

�Yeah. But if you don�t work out as a night guard, we can put you on for a couple of hours a day at the Mall taking candy from babies.�

�Sounds like fun.�

�Can�t eat on the floor of the discount house at the Mall.�

�I get the picture,� I said. �Young suburban mom in white pinafore buys a lollipop for her little Wally, a drooler. Flies are sticking to the slobber-eroded valleys that have already formed on his downy cheeks; but for the moment, to Mom�s satisfaction, he�s not crying. No food at the discount house, so I take the huge twirly caramel stickum out of his grubby paws and plop it down in the ashtray sand. He starts to bawl. And she screams.�

�If you�ve got an automatic, she�ll scream Gestapo.�

�A revolver keeps things cool?�

�You should never have to unbutton your holster.�

�What if I have to draw it?�

�This isn�t the Wild West, sonny. The draw is in two motions. It gives fair warning of your intentions. You unbutton the holster, then you draw. My weapon is a double action with a hair trigger. It�s always cocked. Don�t drop it. Try not to fall down. There�s always a bullet under the hammer. No empty cylinders. You getting this down?�

�Yes, sir. But I still want a job where I can wear a suit.�

�I told you the first day. When you wear a suit you look like a cop. I told you. When you�re working in the stores, wear grease in your hair. Look like the customer. Fade into the walls.�

�Can�t I blow-dry my hair now if I�m in uniform?�

�That�s okay, but you�ll always be wearing a hat. So what�s the difference?�

�It�ll make me feel better...�

�Cleaner? This is not a clean job, kid.�

And it wasn�t. The copper tubing I was guarding down in Brickville was in a dusty construction site, but it was no great challenge. I could work four hours on store security and still make my rounds at night. I was guarding a roofless shell. There were loading pallets, holes, and trenches in the dirt, but no corners behind which a thief could hide for long.

My office was in the construction trailer, of course. The radio was always on. I could listen to Wheeling or Chicago until dawn, but in the cheery desk-lit trailer I found a tendency to rock back on the chair like a deputy in a Western, put my feet up on the desk, and sort of nod out for twenty minutes at a time.

I spent the first night taping my truncheon, a billy club made out of rough-textured iron with two steel spring sections that telescoped inside, which would pop out like a gravity knife when shaken with a twist of the wrist. I soldered a bolt at the tip end for added weight and after I had removed the useless pen-clip that couldn�t support the truncheon�s weight and tended to tear any pocket, I taped the rough texture of the iron with the sort of care I had previously reserved for baseball bats. The advantage of this sort of club was obvious. Each end had a different use. The light end was a coil-spring knuckle duster. With the soldered bolt instead of a plastic safety tip it was no longer harmless, since I filed it so it would cut. And whip-fast. The short butt end was a lethal cosh.

I found a length of iron sewer pipe that a tennis ball or beer can would just fit inside, and I found some dynamite fuse in the construction trailer. I figured I could punch a hole in a tennis ball and feed the fuse inside.

At night, thinking I might need reinforcement sometime, I mined the perimeter of the area I was guarding with a couple of black powder mortars. I welded a square plate to the base of the pipe. I drilled holes in a couple of tennis balls and funneled them full of 4FG powder � a much better grade than the homemade black. Then I ducoed a three-inch length of dynamite fuse into the holes and left the tennis balls sitting in the sewer pipe, into which I�d tapped fuse holes, like cannons have.

Ever since I fitted a 16-gauge shotgun shell into the pole of a beach umbrella and found that it fit, I had become obsessed with the pursuit of high-quality lawn furniture. I had cut a length of umbrella pipe, chambered spent shells from which I removed the pin-dented primer, and inserted dynamite fuse. It just fit.

It had been a matter of a few minutes to add these to my sewer pipe mortars and train them on the area I was guarding. On my rounds at night I strung fuse to my �wooden arsenal,� my euphemism for toy guns since childhood.

Tired of weaponry as a full-time hobby after the third night, I brought a Gibson mandolin with a cracked neck, which I glued and clamped at the security desk. My mother bought it at a rummage sale. I practiced chords between my rounds.

The boss wanted his gun back a couple of days after that. As many as he owned, he seemed to need my loaner for some reason. I had spent my salary on uniforms but hadn�t earned enough for any store-bought weapon but the cosh.

The trailer window that fronted my desk was high enough off the ground that only a basketball player on tiptoe could see if I was at the desk. There was a bathroom in the middle of the trailer, separating it into two rooms. The bathroom had two doors. About the time I was ready to make my rounds, I would open the desk-side door to the bathroom, sit on the john lid for several minutes to accustom my eyes to darkness, get my night vision, then move into the dark end of the trailer and past the silent magnetic-latched door into the night. I varied my moves. Sometimes I was the jaunty obvious stooge bumbler, sometimes the darkest commando to raid Calais.

On the ninth night I got some action.

I had done an obvious turn for my unseen and imaginary audience of thieves. Upon reentering the lighted door of the construction trailer I stood silhouetted in the doorway with an immense Macanudo cigar. I lit it and yawned, stretching excessively, as in a silent movie. I felt no undue risk in such a gesture. No one would resort to assassination of a guard in order to obtain copper tubing. With the sound of WWVA on the radio, if anybody was watching I would be presumed to be sitting somewhere in the office, relaxing with my midnight cigar. In fact, I had left it to go out in the ashtray. I slithered down the steps by the silent darkened door that faced away from the construction, wormed through a gap in the trailer skirt, wriggled across the hard-packed dirt to a spot below the office window where the indirect spillage of light was sufficient to my acclimated eyes to observe the territory I was hired to peruse.

Methodically I scanned the grounds. There was a feeling, a sixth sense, a tightening at the gut level. This was the time something was going to happen.

It occurs to me now, as it did then, that I was a fool to be protecting property without a gun, since I was skinny and had no experience in hand-to-hand. To bust somebody in the chops with my truncheon would necessitate getting closer than I wanted to be. My fingers strayed to the handcuffs on my belt. No problem with what to do � just how to get there.

The fool had shined his shoes. I missed the deduction. In the shadow of the wall across the alley from the open-roofed, half-constructed building with the copper tubing, I saw the trailer light reflected with clarity on the caps of his spit-shined cordovans.

No question about it. He was checking out the light at the guard-post window above my prone body. I could sneak back out the other side of the trailer skirt, swiftly circle the building, and come up behind him. He wasn�t moving now, but would he still be there? Right now I was certain of his position. That was an advantage.

A light breeze carried the palpable aroma of skunk. In the distance I heard the bark of a dog. Headlights of a single car with its brights on passed on the parkway beyond the deserted parking lot. I thought for a second that the intruder was wearing a baseball cap. Maybe a windbreaker. The bricks of the building support stood out from the fascia only about four inches. It was enough to conceal but not to hide this figure as patient as I.

He thought, I presumed, that I was goofing off in the trailer. Thus at this moment the advantage was mine, the advantage of the righteous salaried employee over the sneak thief with no healthy reason for being out at night.

He hunkered down into a sprinter�s crouch and in the blink of an eye he was across the alley and into the construction zone. Tableaux are made to break. He was on my turf, watching the trailer window from a new vantage point where the shine of his shoes mattered little. Though I could no longer see him, it seemed logical that was what he was doing. Being careful. That was part of his pattern.

My first duty was clear: call the cops. My second duty was in my job description: hold him until the cops arrive. That was for my benefit as well as the agency�s. That was so the client knew his money was well spent. The intruder would run from the cops when he heard them coming, saw the lights. He might get away. I might have to reenact this darkling waltz. Next time it might not accommodate my pleasure. This time the advantage was clearly mine. I belly-crawled quickly under the trailer and made my way through the silent magnet-latched aluminum door, through the bathroom light-lock. Sitting on the floor, I dialed the cops.

�This is the security guard at the construction site in Brickville. I have a possible perpetrator. I will apprehend said perpetrator in trespass. Better get here.�

Cosh ready in my right hand, I went into the character of the stumblebum guard. I made my exit from the backlighted trailer door, flooding the entrance to the dusty amphitheater with yellow incandescent light. I was the well-rehearsed actor embarking on his greatest entrance.

Only performance can validate planning. My aforementioned hobby of weaponry had taken a rather funky and direct turn.

Dynamite fuse is timed to an inch a second. Dynamite fuse will burn underwater, unlike the fuse of a cherry bomb, the timing of which is unpredictable in the extreme. Never throw a cherry bomb. It might explode in your hand and shred your fingers. Dynamite fuse is predictable. You could, if you wanted, bundle a number of fuses together, as I had done. I relit the Macanudo and started my hastily made timing device with the cigar for a punk.

Silently counting the seconds, I ran toward the empty maw of the pit-black depth of the building. I went in low, rolling to a combat stance behind a pile of loading pallets just as the whump whump of my twin tennis ball mortars quivered the ground. A couple of seconds later, white, puffy like flak, the tennis balls exploded at the periphery of my vision, arcing down from their apogee a millisecond late for a perfect shot. I would remember to shorten the fuses next time. Quite pretty, but I hadn�t time to savor the pyrotechnics as I was scanning the enclosure for a glimpse of the intruder in the windbreaker.

I glimpsed the prone figure in the brief flaklight just as the lawn-umbrella popcorn shotguns exploded, showering the building�s interior with the haillike rattle of ricocheting kernels � harmless but distracting. The intruder�s face was buried in the soft dirt. It was short work to bop him on the cap with the weighted end of my cosh and cuff his hands behind him, pulling his shoulder sockets to the point of dislocation and none too gently grinding my knee into the small of his back as the screaming sirens and lights swung into the parking lot and lit the site with flashes that reminded me of a grotesque rock �n� roll dance hall.

�He�s yours, boys,� I said to the approaching cops. I let them pull my boss to his feet, to the toes of his spit-shined cordovans, stumbling and incoherent, but not too demoralized to fire me on the spot. The reason my boss had taken back his pistol was that he had decided to sneak up on me to find out if I was doing a proper job.

I was proud of myself, though. I�d nailed him before he had a chance to draw.

Ron Goulart has had many identities. He was �Avenger� series author Kenneth Robeson; as Con Steffanson he adapted the �Flash Gordon� comic strip and the �Laverne and Shirley� television series into novels; and as Frank Shawn he did the same for the �Phantom� comic strip; as Josephine Kains he has written mysteries; and using house pseudonym Zeke Masters, he has written Westerns. He is best known as a science fiction writer, the heir to Kurt Vonnegut as the genre�s leading humorist, in the opinion of New Statesman reviewer Martin Amis. The unifying element in Ron Goulart�s career is that he is a popular-fiction historian, a bent that informs this story.

A couple of hikers were the first to spot him in the misty morning woods in the canyon above Hollywood. They hurried back, knapsacks rattling, to the nearest highway and managed to flag down two cops in a patrol car.

He was still on the mossy ground when the two uniformed young men got there. He was wearing a heavy New York overcoat that was much too warm for California in early April, his broad back against the trunk of an oak tree and a brand-new shovel resting across his knees.

The officers were named Robinson and Konheim. Robinson was the lean, blond one and he had his revolver out, aimed at the man with the shovel.

Officer Konheim, dark-haired and just an inch over the required height, moved cautiously closer. �Could you perhaps tell us, sir, what the trouble is?�

The man was heavyset, his short-cropped black hair graying. He blinked at the two officers. �I�m suffering from a failure of nerve,� he said in a slightly raspy voice. �It all started, so help me, as a literary quest. A pilgrimage, you might say.�

Officer Konheim spoke to his partner out of the side of his mouth. �I�ve seen this guy�s picture someplace. In a mug book or��

�Book jacket.� The seated man cleared his throat.

�Sure, that�s it.� Brightening, Officer Konheim suddenly snapped his fingers.

Officer Robinson flinched. �What did I tell you about all the time doing that while I�ve got my piece out?�

�You�re Fredric Sherwin, aren�t you, sir?�

�I thought so, up until yesterday.�

�Right. Your newest mystery novel, Dead Before You Know It, has been on the best-seller lists for a dozen weeks.�

�Twenty-three weeks,� corrected Sherwin.

�This guy�s some kind of writer?�

�Yeah, he�s done five books about a tough Hollywood private eye named Joe Tennyson.�

�Seven,� said the seated author.

�And he�s just about the best-selling mystery writer, except for Mitch Gunnerson.�

�That heavy-handed hack has never outsold me.� Sherwin used his newly purchased shovel to lean on while he grunted to his feet. �I�ve got sales figures in one of my pockets to prove beyond a doubt that he��

�That�s right; you were on a talk show the other day, flashing those figures.� Officer Konheim, remembering, chuckled. �You called Gunnerson some great names, got off some terrific insults. You said his private-eye novels about Jock Bricker were a lot of crap.�

�That doesn�t,� said Officer Robinson, �sound like such a terrific��

�He�s paraphrasing me,� explained the detective novelist, crossing his hands over the handle of the new shovel.

Officer Konheim said, �According to that TV interview, Mr. Sherwin, you came out here from New York to work on a screenplay based on one of your��

�Based on Might As Well Die, yes. Television movie for Hollywood Video Productions,� said the writer. �My first trip out here to the Coast, or so I thought.�

�Do,� asked Konheim, �your reasons for being here in the wilderness have anything to do with the movie?�

Shaking his head, Sherwin answered, �Has more to do with my past.�

Officer Robinson said, �A while ago you told us it had something to do with a literary pilgrimage.�

�They�re all linked, my past and my books. Although I wasn�t aware of that until yesterday... was it yesterday? Yes... I didn�t know that when I began my quest. If you fellows have a few minutes, I can explain.�

Robinson kicked at the loamy ground. �Has a crime been perpetrated, sir?� Impatience showed in his voice. �Because otherwise��

�Murder,� said Sherwin.

�Murder?� echoed both officers, glancing around.

Easing himself down onto a fallen log and setting the bright shovel aside, the writer said, �It�ll take, you know, a few minutes to make it all clear.�

After holstering his gun, Robinson took out his pocket notebook. �Guess you�d better tell us exactly what you mean, sir.�

Konheim found another log and sat. �Maybe we ought to read you your rights.�

�Plenty of time for that,� said Sherwin.

The mist was growing thicker, closing in around the three of them.