Flashpoint

4

Five-o-five Fifth Avenue wasn't one of the newer buildings in the area. I studied the wall directory in the rundown lobby. Employment agencies dominated the second and third floors, after which the emphasis shifted to publishing companies. I recognized none of the names.

The slow-moving self-service elevator took me to the sixteenth floor. I emerged into a dimly lighted corridor with frosted glass doors stretching away in precisioned monotony on either side. Following Erikson's instructions, I passed doors lettered Magazine Bureau, Inc., M & M Publications, Inc., before I came to Intercontinental Plastics Company.

I knocked and waited. Erikson opened the door and stood aside to let me enter. We walked through a tiny office, large enough to contain a desk and a switchboard, into an inner office four times as large but hardly the lap of luxury. There was linoleum instead of carpeting on the floor, and there were no draperies over the Venetian blinds. A metal desk was piled elbow-deep with carelessly strewn papers. Funeral-home-type chairs lined two sides of the room. A topographic map of the world covered most of one wall space, a fair-sized painting of Emmett Kelley in clown costume another, and a detailed chart whose composition and purpose I couldn't fathom a third.

"You cut it fine," Erikson said as he closed the door between the two offices. "I'm expecting them."

"What's with the plastics company label when everyone else is in the publishing game?" I asked.

"I didn't want people trooping in and out of here trying to exchange shop talk." Erikson crossed the office to the clown picture and pressed its upper right corner. The section of the wall on which the picture rested pivoted at right angles as a hidden door opened, disclosing another small room beyond it. The joining was so cunningly fashioned as to be invisible except to the closest inspection.

I followed Erikson into a narrow room lined with shelves of equipment and benches loaded with gadgetry. It seemed almost an electronic arsenal with miniature recorders, cameras, microphones, and other exotic devices for eavesdropping, recording, and monitoring. I saw some more practical hardware items as well, including weapons camouflaged as fountain pens, cigarette lighters, and wallets.

I sat down on a padded stool that Erikson indicated. I was facing a benchlike counter on which three shoe-box-sized television monitors confronted me. "I want to explain how these operate first," Erikson said, "then if we have time you can tell me what you found at the Alhambra. I don't want-"

"I can cover that in one sentence," I interposed. "There's a Hawk who comes and goes, but who's to say if it's the right one?"

"At least it's not a complete dead end. Be sure you get a good look at my visitors."

"You don't think Israelis did the hijacking?" I said in surprise.

"No, but these types really get around. Look at them carefully in these TV screens. Each screen is connected to separate, wide-angle lenses in the office. Two-way mirrors are passe in today's intelligence work, and any observant agent would spot an observation window or peephole the moment he entered a room. Television has replaced the direct-view system."

He flipped a switch, and suddenly I was looking at sharp details of the tiny outer office. Erikson hit another switch and his paper-strewn desk and the office space around it floated into view on a second screen. He pointed to one of the recorders. "This is set to monitor as well as record, and it's already running. You'll be able to hear everything that takes place. I have it running because some of these sharp intelligence men now carry a meter which shows an added electrical impulse inside a room. A buzzer will sound in here when anyone enters the outer office."

I waved a hand at some of the items on the benches. "I recognize the snooperscopes on that shelf, but what's some of the rest of this junk?"

"We keep two laboratories busy turning out this 'junk' as you call it," Erikson said. "The majority of which isn't for public sale." He pointed to a bench piled high with gadgets. "Those are bumper beepers that operate from a triple-antenna switch."

"Bumper beepers?"

"Magnetized boxes attached to the underside of cars so that beeps from the box permit a following car with a receiver to trail them. The better ones have a range up to three miles, with an audio-homing device that makes the pings louder as the distance lessens. Those big discs next to the beepers are parabolic reflectors for gathering up sound waves and channeling them to a receiver. Next to those are suction-cup wall listeners. Some have their own transistor amplifiers."

"Whatever happened to freedom of speech and all the rest of that jazz?"

"That's not a concern of ours in the areas in which we work."

I pointed to several microphones with extremely long snouts, almost like rifle barrels. "What about those?"

"Two-directional long-range mikes. Aim one of those at a fly on the roof of a barn three hundred yards away and you can hear the shingles crackling under his feet. Now let's see you operate the monitors."

I turned the screens off, then turned on all three of them. The third screen offered another view of Erikson's office from a different angle. Satisfied with my performance, Erikson went back into his office and closed the wall panel.

I sat down again on the padded stool. There was a faint whispering sound from the monitor, and it took me a second to realize it was the slurring noise of Erikson shuffling papers on his desk. The microphone inside must really be as sensitive as he claimed, I decided. I fit a cigarette and settled down to wait.

Then a girl's voice sounded faintly. "I won't do it!" she said in a high-pitched voice. "It's not like you said!"

I leaned toward the tape-recorder monitor expectantly before I realized the voice hadn't come from it. The television screens showed no one in Erikson's office except him at his desk.

"Cut the stalling and unwrap the merchandise, baby," a man's voice said. Like the girl's, the voice was faint but clear.

I looked around the room. There was a door at the opposite end of the room from the hidden entrance. When I approached it, I saw the door was steel. It had a powerful spring-bolt lock. I eased the lock back, half-expecting to find the door locked on the other side. It wasn't. I inserted a hand and explored the other side of the door. It was paneled wood, concealing the steel, and it didn't have a keyhole. I opened the door wider.

Glaring light dazzled my eyes. I blinked and tried to focus. It was another moment before I could make out three women and two men in a room that looked like a photographer's studio. Cameras on tripods and high-intensity lights on standards with wires trailing from them were deployed seemingly at random. Along one wall was a backdrop depicting a beach scene. In front of the flat was a metal beach chair in a sandbox.

"When you said photos in the nude, you didn't say it was a gang job!" the girl's voice spoke up again. I could see her now. She was a frosted blonde with flippy curls and tight waves that made up a short, bouncy hairdo topped with short bangs.

"Look, Marcia," the younger-looking of the two men said. "We're paying you forty an hour and we thought we were buying a pro. Now either strip or bug off. The door is right over there."

The frosted blonde bit her lip. Her companions, a cynical-looking brunette and a chubby brownette, were already removing skirts and blouses. By the time the brunette peeled down a girdle and stood there rubbing at the red pressure marks on her slim flanks, the blonde was pulling her dress off over her head.

"That's better," the man said.

The brownette stripped to garter belt and stockings, the blonde to canary-yellow bikini panties. The second man, the photographer, held a light meter against each of the girls' bare bodies in turn. "That's a real nice piece of meat you've got there, Ginger," he said to the brownette as he removed the meter from the vicinity of her broad, nude buttocks. "Okay, Edna," he addressed the brunette, "get into the beach chair. I can't shoot your tail till those girdle marks fade out."

The brunette sauntered to the sandbox with an exaggerated hip flourish, tested the sand delicately with a toe, then sank down into the chair. Immediately she bridged with shoulders and heels, thrusting her stomach upward. "Goddammit, that's cold!" she cried out.

"Here's a blanket," the younger man said soothingly. He arranged it beneath her arched form and the brunette relaxed again. The man patted her bare belly. "That's the girl, Edna."

"Pants off, baby," the photographer said to the blonde. "We're all girls together here." He waited while the canary-yellow panties were removed. "A real blonde, hmm? When we do the black-and-whites, we'll have to touch up your bush with a little lampblack or there won't be enough contrast. That pale fleece of yours'll come through good in color, though. Now-"

"You're not going to put any dirty old lampblack on my-on me," the girl said indignantly. "I didn't come here to-"

"Oh, shut up, will you?" the younger man said wearily. "Get them posed, Ted. This is running into money."

"Stand behind the beach chair so your tits are aimed right at the camera over the top of Edna's head, Marcia," the photographer instructed the blonde. "Ginger, you squat down at the dividing line-no, make it at the foot of the chair with your butt aimed right at me and your-"

The sound of a warning buzzer jerked me to attention. I closed the door reluctantly and threw the bolt over quietly. When I turned around to look at the television monitors, a green light on the side of them had turned red. I went to the padded stool and sat down.

Erikson was admitting two men into the outer office. As they crossed the threshold into the larger office, one of the fluorescent tubes above my head flickered momentarily. At first glance both men looked more like insurance agents than Israeli counter-intelligence agents. The older man was stocky, with a dignified bearing and thinning gray hair. He had a wide mouth but thin lips, and his deep-set eyes appeared to lack warmth.

His companion was younger, taller, and muscularly lean. His small eyes were close set, like two rivets holding in place an elongated nose that was almost sharp at its end. His sandy hair had a reddish tint which was more pronounced in his thin, straight eyebrows. His entire face had a foxy, streamlined appearance.

Erikson thrust out his huge hand in welcome. The older man took it, but the younger one merely nodded. He turned and walked into the outer office again. When he disappeared from the left-hand television screen, I knew he was reconnoitering the corridor outside Erikson's office. He came into view again on the monitor almost at once.

"Sit down, gentlemen," Erikson invited the pair. The gray-haired man nodded and sat down so erectly his back didn't touch the metal of the chair. The younger man folded his arms and remained standing. "What can I do for you, Mr. Bergman?" Erikson continued.

"What I have to say, Mr. Erikson," Bergman began in a resonant voice, "will take as little of your time as possible because I'm convinced you have little time left. We appreciate that you are forced to work under what we consider to be unnecessary restrictions, and we will curb our impatience a little longer. We have, after all, agreed to cooperate to the fullest degree. We sacrifice this important element of time, however, only to urge you to act without delay."

Bergman spoke with a clipped, British accent which reminded me of Ronald Colman in his heyday on the screen.

"Act?" Erikson responded blandly. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

"Must we always play cat and mouse?" Bergman's tone had an undercurrent of harshness. "You know to what I refer. It's the matter of the airliner forced down by fedayeen commandos in Nevada."

He paused to gauge Erikson's reaction. "I see that you are not surprised that we know about this bold attack against your airplane," he went on. "We have ways and means of looking after our interests even in your country. It should suggest to you that if correct response on your part is lacking, we have all the information necessary to react in our own defense."

"The investigation isn't complete at this time," Erikson answered. "So it's impossible to verify your suspicion that foreign elements diverted the aircraft. At this time no one can officially name the saboteurs."

The younger man took a quick step forward but was stopped by a motion from Bergman in his chair. "Your government may choose to be as blind as it wishes, sir," Bergman replied. "We know that a quarter million dollars was acquired by Palestinian raiders from the passengers of the aircraft, and we know that this money will most certainly be used for purposes detrimental to the security of the state of Israel."

"That's quite a presumption," Erikson said.

"I know of what I speak," Bergman said firmly. "The same pattern has been practiced in the past. There is nothing new in this piracy of aircraft. This time it involves the cold-blooded murders of members of the Jewish faith. We have every reason to believe that this money will find its way to the El Fatah to reappear in the form of arms to be used against the defenders of the homeland."

"I don't mean to belittle your beliefs, Mr. Bergman," Erikson began, "but on today's underworld market even the sum of money you say was taken would buy few significant illicit weapons."

"Every bullet and every grenade is a threat to my people, sir, but that is not the point. You misjudge the situation, Mr. Erikson. The Palestinians will use this money as working capital to finance a more insidious operation. They will purchase drugs smuggled into your country and dispose of them right here in Harlem at a tremendous profit. It is happening every day, and I can only conclude that your government is blind to the fact or is deliberately averting its eyes from it, for whatever reasons I cannot understand. Why do you refuse to act when these facts are so plain?"

"I can understand your concern, but I'm one man with limited resources," Erikson said. I judged that his tone was intended to be placating. "And my task is primarily investigative. If the evidence warrants it, of course, I can call upon other agencies who will be happy to cooperate. In the meantime I must remind you that the U.S. government cannot willfully jeopardize delicate relationships with other major world powers who have an interest in the Middle East."

Even on the monitor screen I could see the sneer on the face of the younger man. "If you are as concerned as you say, why don't you put a stop to the recruiting of Americans by fedayeen?" The harsh question was bulleted directly at Erikson.

"Quiet, Ravish," Bergman said curtly. He made a gesture of apology to Erikson. "Like many of our young warriors who fought so well in the Six-Day War, Ravish is impetuous. I apologize for his outburst."

"You have proof of the recruiting of Americans by the fedayeen?" Erikson asked Ravish.

"We have," Ravish snapped. "There are seven documented cases in which discharged members of the United States Army, principally Green Beret officers, men qualified as instructors in infiltration and sabotage techniques, have become mercenaries for the fedayeen. All are in training camps in Syria."

"I will ask for details later," Erikson said.

"It's of small importance, actually," Bergman said mildly. "Such a meager effort in view of our own strength is like a man who throws a handful of sand at the desert. Since we pursue this line of thought, however, what about Dr. Emil Shariyk, who unaccountably is no longer at his post with the Physical Sciences Research Group at Los Alamos? It should be beneficial to both of us to verify the present whereabouts of Dr. Shariyk."

"Shariyk?" Erikson repeated.

"Let's be honest with each other, Mr. Erikson," Bergman said stiffly.

"My understanding is that Dr. Shariyk is on a sabbatical with the Atomic Science Foundation in Paris, Mr. Bergman."

"I know that is your government's official position." Icicles dripped from every syllable. "But it is not a true position. Your FBI has secretly requested Interpol assistance in locating Dr. Shariyk, whom we strongly suspect is working in a guarded laboratory in a country sympathetic to the Palestinian renegades."

"Can you substantiate your reasoning?"

"There is no need!" It was an explosive roar from the younger man, Ravish. "Your government knows it as well as we do! We waste time with this eternal fencing! I demand-"

"We ask again that your government take immediate steps to put a stop to the activities of the terrorists operating in your country," Bergman interrupted his companion. "You seem to take too lightly their battle cry 'Death to All Jews!'."

"Recognizing that I'm one man with limited prerogatives," Erikson wedged into the verbal assault, "what is it that you'd have me do?"

"Eliminate the terrorists," Ravish said quickly before Bergman could reply. "By any means. Or we will be forced to take matters into our own hands."

"We can maintain this informal liaison only as long as it promises fruitful results," Bergman added.

"Please don't think that we-" Erikson stopped speaking. Ravish reached into a jacket pocket and drew out a small leather case about the size of a cigarette pack. He thumbed a switch, silencing the tiny buzzer which had caused Erikson to fall silent.

Bergman rose to his feet. "An important telephone call," he said. "You will excuse us, please?" Erikson pushed his desk telephone toward the stocky man who smiled wryly. "You jest, my friend. We prefer to accept the call in privacy. Shalom."

The two men left Erikson's office. The fluorescent tube above my head blinked a goodbye as Ravish crossed the threshold. The red light near the monitors turned green, and Erikson opened the wall panel and looked in at me. "Come on into the office."

I followed him inside after turning off the switches on the television and tape-recorder monitors. "Wasn't that whole business a waste of time?" I asked him.

"It depends on how you look at it. By letting them sound off, I may have prevented their doing something."

"I doubt you've prevented that Ravish from doing anything he made up his mind to do. He looks like a handful."

Erikson smiled. "If it came down to guns, I'd bet on you. Let's see what sort of gun he carried."

"What the hell do you mean, what sort of gun? How do you know he was carrying one at all?"

"You noticed the flickering fluorescent light? It's not a bad tube; it's a signal. The frame of the door has an imbedded sensor wire. If there's a concentrated metal mass on an individual passing through the door, which could equate to a pistol or a knife, the sensors trigger the light tube. It's only a warning, of course, but in the split second during which a person walks through the door, other data are fed into a computer across the hall. Let me show you."

Erikson took a ring of keys from a locked drawer in his desk and led the way from his office. While crossing the hallway, he took out his wallet and extracted from it what appeared to be a white, plastic credit card. I could see that the card had only a network of thin copper wires imbedded under the surface.

"Printed-circuit code lock," Erikson said as he inserted the card into a concealed slot at the edge of the doorframe. An inner latch clicked, after which he used a normal key.

"Too fancy for a country boy like me," I commented.

"Don't ever try to pick one of these, as I've been given to understand you do occasionally with conventional locks," Erikson said with a smile. "Without the coded card release to disarm the lock, you'll set off an alarm. And if you persist in forcing it, there's a shaped explosive charge which will blow off your hands."

The room inside wasn't much larger than a janitor's closet. Erikson and I almost filled it when we entered. On a sturdy shelf extending from the far wall was a machine that looked like a teletypewriter. "Did you ever see either of those agents before?" Erikson asked as he closed the door.

"Never."

Erikson removed the cover from the machine and punched half a dozen buttons. A whirring, thumping noise followed; then a sheet of yellow paper blossomed jerkily from an aperture at the top. A dozen lines of squarish print covered the paper.

Erikson quickly decoded figures and symbols that were meaningless to me, as I leaned over his shoulder. "Well, here it is. At nine-twelve, Bergman and Ravish entered the office. The first man through the door, Bergman, was clean. The second, Ravish, was armed with a 7 mm Luger, validity factor eighty-three percent. The weapon was carried between the waist and the shoulder. Ravish is six feet, one and one quarter inches tall, weighs one hundred and eighty-six pounds, and has steel lifts in his shoes."

Erikson ripped the printed sheet from the machine and dropped it into a chrome-rimmed receptacle. Flashing knife-blades chewed the paper into tiny, pinhead-size confetti, and a rush of water through the receptacle flushed even that fragmentary evidence away.

"That bit of science fiction won't hold enough water to float a teacup," I told Erikson.

He smiled.

"Admit it," I said. "You're putting me on."

"Nary a put," he insisted. He patted the machine as he replaced the cover. "Maxine here is getting more sophisticated all the time. It's getting harder to fool her now, although a year ago she registered a man with a 37 mm rocket launcher entering the office. Turned out to be the maintenance man with a file cabinet on a hand truck. And another time Maxine blew it was when I had a visit from a CIA man who had been a polio victim. Maxine interpreted his leg braces as a bulletproof vest. At that time she couldn't distinguish the placement of metal except between the shoulders and feet. Now she can."

We left the room.

I couldn't help thinking that if banks were half as well equipped as Erikson's office, my former career wouldn't have lasted nearly as long.

Back at his desk, Erikson lit a cigarette. "It's interesting that the Israelis feel that the fedayeen are buying up high-priced scientific talent. And they really touched a sore spot with Shariyk. We'd like to know what's become of him, too. A couple of years ago he was a contender for a Nobel in physics. His specialty was mesons and antimatter. You know, digging into the guts of the atom."

"With that name, what was his nationality?"

"American born, of Armenian stock. He spent the three years prior to the Six-Day War teaching at Beirut in the American University. What do you suppose Bergman would have said if I'd told him that?"

"Bolt the doors before you lose any more." The thought of bolted doors reminded me. "Who's your next-door neighbor on this side?" I waved in the direction of the photographer's studio.

"A girly-magazine publisher's office. Why?"

"Just curious. Well, what comes next?"

"I want you back at the Alhambra to try to get a line on the hijacker, Hawk," Erikson frowned. "You'll have to get yourself a place to stay, too, so I can reach you when I need you."

"Okay. I'll call you when I have a phone number."

I rode down sixteen floors to the street and caught a cab to within a block of the Alhambra. I stood on the sidewalk on Lexington Avenue, running my eyes up and down the street in the direction of lighted hotel marquees, wondering where to come to roost. Then on a hunch I decided to try the Alhambra again first, to see if Hawk had made an appearance.

There were fewer people under the billowing canopy when I entered the cocktail lounge, and I was able to corral a corner booth for myself. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting before I began what I hoped was an unobtrusive inspection of the bar customers. Then I examined the occupants of the booths. There were plenty of dark faces-even no shortage of hooked noses-but there was no Hawk. It came to me again, as it had in Tucson when Erikson first proposed it, that this search was really far out.

"Hello, again," a little-girl voice said beside my booth.

I looked up to see Chryssie, the flower child. Her blond hair was in a tangled mass, and her burnt-orange sari looked dirtier and more wrinkled than before. "Sit down and have a beer," I invited her. She was evidently a regular in the place, and I would attract less attention if I sat with her.

She floated down into the booth across from me as if she were boneless. She propped her chin in both hands and studied my face. Her eyes had the same glazed look I'd seen before, and one corner of her soft-looking mouth twitched occasionally. I caught a waitress' eye and placed my order. When the beer and the Jim Beam arrived, Chryssie picked up her glass, held it to her lips, then set it down again without drinking. After a moment, though, she picked it up again and took two long swallows. "What have you been doing while I was gone?" I broke the silence.

"Nothing."

"Did you eat?" It reminded me I was hungry. "How about a sandwich?"

Her nose wrinkled in distaste. "No food, thank you."

"What are you going to do tomorrow?" I continued, knowing the answer before I received it.

"Nothing." She stared at me wide-eyed, then drank some more beer. Her eyes were on mine above the rim of the glass. "Why did you come back?"

"I didn't think you were real. I had to make sure."

She attempted a smile. It was a dim, damped-out effort. The tip of a pink tongue circled her lips. "And now you know?"

"Now I know. Why do you wear-" I stopped. The childish face across the table from me had gone slack suddenly. The blue eyes bulged, slitted, then bulged again. "What's the matter?"

A dirty hand was at her slim throat. "Shouldn't- have mixed beer-with grass." Her voice was a whisper. "Know-better."

"Then why the hell do it if you know better?"

Her eyes had gone completely out of focus. "What difference-does it make? Goin' be-got to get-home."

"Where's home?"

She didn't answer me. The upper part of her body began to bend forward over the table. I forestalled the collapse by sliding out of my side of the booth and moving in beside her. I propped her up and leaned her against the booth's back. "Where do you live, Chryssie?"

No answer.

She had no handbag. I glanced around to make sure we weren't attracting attention, then frisked her. My quick-patting hands discovered only that she probably didn't have a stitch on beneath the sari. I tried it again. This time I found a small green purse safety-pinned to a shoulder of the sari under a loose fold.

I unpinned the purse and examined its contents which I held on my lap. There were three one-dollar bills, an emerald ring that looked genuine, a bronze door key, and a last year's driver's license made out to sixteen-year-old Cornelia Lavan Rouse. The address on the license was 229 East Fiftieth, four blocks away. I put my lips against the girl's ear. "Who's Cornelia Rouse, Chryssie?"

She stirred, then became semi-comatose again. "Use'- t'-be me," she muttered thickly.

"Where's your car?"

"Sold-it. Long-time ago."

"Don't you have any friends here?"

"No friends-anywhere."

I hesitated, but this youngster was prey for the vultures. "Stand up," I ordered.

She made no move. I stood up myself, lifted her erect, then supported her with an arm around her slender waist. I got her out of the booth and we moved toward the door in a slue-footed shuffle. I kept waiting for someone to challenge our departure, but nothing happened.

The first four cabs passed us up-not that I blamed them-but the fifth one stopped. Chryssie's address turned out to be a building that could have been anything from a mortuary to a warehouse loft. There was nothing on the first floor but a scruffy-looking lobby. I half lugged the girl up a narrow flight of stairs. I still had the key I'd extracted from her purse. There were four doors opening off a second-floor landing, and I tried the key in each door in turn. I half expected a smash in the mouth from an irate householder, but the whole building was quiet.

The key opened the third door, and I wrestled Chryssie inside. There were two rooms, tenement rooms, indescribably filthy. Dirty dishes were stacked on every item of furniture, and empty wine bottles lined the walls. In the bedroom the bed looked as though it hadn't been made for a month. I moved aside the curtain on the bedroom's single window and looked down at a narrow alley below with headlights passing through it.

I dumped Chryssie on the lumpy bed and scouted the bathroom. It had a long, narrow, old-fashioned tub sitting up on four legs. I scoured a couple layers of grime from it, ran hot water, and returned to the bedroom for Chryssie. Surprisingly, in view of the general wasteland atmosphere, there was a telephone in the bedroom.

I shucked Chryssie out of her bedraggled sari and carried her nude, dead weight to the tub. She stirred at the touch of hot water on her flesh and murmured something unintelligible, but she didn't open her eyes. I left her there to soak while I went back and remade the bed with some semi-clean linen I found in a drawer. I went back to Chryssie and soaped and rinsed her a few times. Her skin that had felt coarse and pebbled gradually became paler and softer.

While drying her off, I made a discovery. There were dark striations at the base of her lower abdomen. At the ripe old age of seventeen Chryssie had already had a baby. I brought a pillow from the bedroom, folded it over the side of the tub, and laid the girl across it. She sprawled limp as a jellyfish with her childish, bare behind pointing up in the air.

I washed her hair, twice. She slid forward on the pillow once until her head went under the water, but even that didn't rouse her. I dried her hair and toted her back to the bedroom. She was breathing shallowly but evenly, and her color seemed better.

The bureau drawers yielded nothing but soiled underwear and nightgowns. I finally dumped her into bed naked and pulled the sheet up over her. There was a sofa in the sitting room, and I cleared the debris from it before sponging off the top layer of crud with a wet rag. Then I went back into the bedroom and called Erikson at the office. "I'm staying here tonight," I said, and gave him the phone number.

"Where is it?"

I gave him the address.

"Anything doing?"

I looked toward Chryssie's slim form huddled under the sheet. "Nothing."

"Call me no later than noon tomorrow," Erikson said.

"Fine."

I stripped to my underwear and stretched out on the couch.

A fly buzzed around my head, and it was hot in the close apartment, but neither fact kept me awake long.

It had been a full day.