Kiss Her Goodbye

Chapter 5

FOR A WHOLE YEAR I had taken the ordered medication, capsules at regulated times, that were gradually being reduced in frequency and intensity as the physical damage repaired itself. The pain was gone, but so were my dreams. It took two months before I noticed it, and a direct inquiry pinned it down: my unconsciousness was being medicated as well as my body, but since there were no apparent side effects, I let it pass. Missing those surrealistic meanderings was no great loss, unless there were some lovely dolls involved.

But I had forgotten the meds on this night, and for the first time in a year, dreams came through. The first one was a jumble of guns blasting and orange flame chewing the night and exploding skulls and bursts of scarlet and white and gray, and then Velda, and me getting shot, and Velda, crying now, and me, dying now.

This faded into a new dream that wasn't scrambled at all. There was a continuity to it with an aim and a direction, but the light was fuzzy and I couldn't quite make it out. I was back on that war zone of a street looking down at the sand covering the awful puddle of blood on the sidewalk, feeling sand sift through my fingers.

Then it stopped being a dream and I realized I was half awake and thinking.

I kicked the sheet back and hung my legs over the bed. The pain was back again, a big hand feeling for a good grip. I got up, found my pants, and got the vial out of the side pocket. I flipped the cap off, shook one out, and swallowed it, then stuck the vial back.

That was when my fingers found the pebble, the souvenir of a lousy, dirty kill on the sidewalks of New York. It was an irregular oval, the size of a kid's marble, oddly colored with a frosted surface, and there was a distorted picture in my memory of something flashing near the short-sleeve cuff of the dead girl's dress.

Under my fingertip was a flat spot on the stone, and when I turned it over I knew what it was. What it meant. Slowly turning it to just the right place, I held my souvenir under the nightstand light and looked into a window that opened onto the pure brilliance hidden in that scruffy little stone.

What I had in my fingers was an uncut diamond with one hell of a carat weight, and somebody had ground a spot on it for absolute proof of what it was.

Ginnie Mathes's death had just taken on a new dimension.

There was a legal probability that I was withholding evidence, but not being an expert in the determination of precious stones, my accountability was limited. Which was nice phrasing, but probably a load of crap. What the hell, I hadn't mentioned to Pat the little arsenal squirreled away in Doolan's desk either.

What was the use of being a private cop if you had to go public with everything? Anyway, Captain Chambers had all sorts of murders on his desk to attend to. I had two. "Balls!" cried the queen.

Off Sixth Avenue on Forty-seventh Street is a curbside exchange in the most literal sense, where fortunes in diamonds and cash are traded daily, carried in the pockets of worn coats, wrapped in tissue-paper coverings, and displayed openly to proper customers ... and the only security is that custom, and the New York police.

It's one of the damndest things you've ever seen, if you are lucky enough to see it at all. A million might change hands when all you thought you saw was two humble Jewish merchants passing the time. It's an ethnic area where all the divisions of the international jewelry trade are busy at it, extending into the buildings on either side. Despite the wealth concentrated in that one block, it is as unpretentious today as it was fifty years ago.

David Gross was an old friend. In 1954 he had retired and left his thriving business to his son. But retirement almost killed him, so he started another business; and in 1965 he retired again and left this one to his grandson. Still he couldn't take retirement, so he went back out on the street, where he had started as a young man, hassling with the diamond traders.

Even among the common black rabbinical garb and the long gray beards, David was easy to spot. His beard had an uncommonly pure black streak on the right side that somehow marked him as the presiding patriarch in the business.

"Well, David Gross," I said. "You never change."

His head craned out and he peered at me through his thick, slightly magnifying glasses. It was hard to make out his smile through the nest of beard. "We have both changed, my friend, Michael. But we will pretend otherwise. How nice to see you again! And alive."

We shook hands warmly. "Good to see you too, Mr. Gross. Not bad being alive either."

"Since when to you am I mister?"

"David, I'm just a goyim trying to be respectful."

"No—a mensch." He shook his head and the smile became manifest, beard or not. "You have been gone a long time, Michael. Sometimes I would think about you and worry. I remember well what happened in that trouble you had." He paused, the smile gone, looking around uncertainly as if a sniper might be lurking, and said, "This is not an accidental meeting, is it?"

"Not really."

"Nor a social call."

"There's an element of that, but—"

"But there is something we have to talk about?"

"Yes. You got a roof we can sit under, David?"

The old man nodded, his eyes flicking to a building across the street. "My grandson, his office is there. Not that he is. Too much money for that boy, it overwhelms him. Oh, he worked for it, but now he wants to spend it all. Always vacations. He's getting fat. That tan—don't tell me you've been on vacation? You're not fat."

"No. I've been sick."

"You look good to me. The city, it's good for you. Follow me."

"Sure. Do I have to keep my hat on in there?"

He let out a guttural snort. "That thing you wear with that awful name—what is it?"

"A porkpie. But I'm not asking you to eat a slice, David."

"Better you should eat it than wear it."

"Hey, it's brand-new."

"Then at least do an old friend the courtesy of changing its name."

I laughed. "Okay. Stetson makes it. We'll call it a Stetson."

"Perfect. Michael Hammer, western gunslinger."

"Eastern," I corrected.

Ordinarily, the old man would have wanted to spend an hour over such kidding pleasantries, but his curiosity got the better of him—me coming to him on a business matter was a rarity. So as soon as we had sat down in wooden chairs on either side of a scarred old table, he poured us each a paper cup of wine.

"Now, Michael, what is it you wish to see me about? A lawyer I'm not. Neither am I a ladies' man. Diamonds I know, but what would you..." He paused, looked at my face, and his expression grew curious. "Are you buying for that beautiful secretary of yours? You are finally coming to your senses?"

I shook my head. "We split up while I was away."

"A shame. Is there no hope?"

"I don't believe so. Anyway, David, I'm not here buying."

"Selling?" This time his tone was wary.

"Not exactly."

"So there's a third alternative?"

I held out my hand and let him see the marble-size stone in my palm. He didn't reach for it, just looked at it, then I let it roll over so he could see the ground-in little window into its gleaming soul.

This time he did reach for it, felt it, rolled it around in his fingers, then finally brought out a worn loupe, took off his glasses, twisted it into his eye, and examined the pebble carefully. Twice he changed the intensity of the light to be sure of his appraisal.

I let him take his time, not even watching him. Several times his eyes left the stone to peer at me, a strangeness in the silent expression.

I said nothing and waited until he was through. "It's for real?"

"Oh, yes, Michael. It is very much 'for real.'" He paused, then handed the stone back to me. "Do you know how much that is worth?"

I grinned at him. "That's what I'm here to find out."

"Something is funny?"

"How much the stone is worth is not the question you wanted to ask me, David."

"Now you are a mind reader?"

"Sure. When a guy like you has no expression just when he's gone into slow motion? Sure."

"So what is it I am supposed to ask?"

I grinned again and waited.

He squirmed because I wasn't playing his game. "Okay, Michael, I will ask—where did you get it?"

"I found it, which is the truth, but that's not what you want to know, is it? There's another overriding question, right?"

"How can you do this to me?"

"That's not the question."

And then he put me right where I wanted to be in this ball game.

"Where are the rest of them?"

I raised a hand in a gentle "stop" gesture. "Right now, David, I really don't know. But what you have in your head is what I have to know."

The excitement in his voice was the gentlest quiver that few would pick up on; he was under control again—almost. "Michael, do you think you can find them?"

I shrugged. "Maybe. I'm guessing this little gem has a history."

"It ... may have."

"David, don't hedge with me. We're not bargaining yet."

He shrugged. "With one stone, how can I be sure?"

My eyes narrowed and, through a slit of a smile, I asked, "How did you know there were more?"

He took a deep breath and sighed loudly. "I am too old to be doing this. Such excitement I do not need."

"Bullshit. You thrive on excitement."

"But I could be wrong."

"Come on, David. I'm here because I trust your opinion as much as I trust you."

He rubbed his eyes, then leaned forward, propping his chin on his fist. He tapped on the tabletop. "Put the stone there."

I set it in front of him.

"It looks like an ordinary pebble, yes?"

"Sort of."

"Do you notice on the surface anything peculiar?"

"No. I'm not a jeweler."

"It is like an erosion," he said. "But ... what has such hardness as to wear down a diamond?"

"Another diamond."

"Very good." He rolled the stone over gently. "Such an erosion as this ... no scratches, no chipping ... what does it tell you?" He watched me carefully again.

But when I could only shrug, he said, "I could say it is likely that this precious pebble was carried in a pouch with many other stones for a very long time. Continuous rubbing together, over a period of years, would make the surface like so. They are not like that when they come from the earth."

"David, you're looking at one stone and building a history out of it. Where is this going?"

He was good at long pauses. When he had finished thumbing through his thoughts like a Rolodex in his mind, he said, "Michael, you are my friend. You I can trust. When I look at this gemstone, I get a feeling only a true lover of fine jewels can possibly get. It is almost ... mystical."

When he spoke, there was a dreamlike quality about the words. Even his tone of voice changed, giving them a hollow ring.

"There is a story of a jewel cutter named Basil, a most mysterious man who came to Germany from Russia when the Communists took over the country. It was Basil himself to whom the tsar went for his jewelry. There have been tales of the fabulous stones Basil produced for the Tsar, rubies, emeralds, diamonds, fantastic baubles few outside the royal family ever got to see. After the revolution, these cut stones all disappeared, probably broken up and sold to make more revolution."

"But Basil himself managed to escape..."

"Yes. When the Communists killed the tsar, they searched for Basil, but never found him. Many thought he was dead, but every so often wonderfully cut stones would surface with the remarkable beauty that bore the mark of Basil himself. He became a legend in all of Europe. Whispers had him operating out of Germany, but even there he remained a man of mystery."

"If Basil fled to Germany, how could the quality of his stones remain so high?"

"It is believed he brought a quantity with him from Mother Russia, though it's possible he found some new source. Always of top quality, they were."

"Why didn't he get into the open market?"

For a second, David came out of his reverie. "And show himself?"

I nodded.

"Michael, he was a Jew. Let us say that, on his person, he carried the last of his treasured uncut stones. The Communists would declare them stolen from the state, thieves and mercenaries worldwide would make of him a target. Death could come from any side. Imagine, in a simple leather pouch, Basil carrying a multi-million-dollar value that in this day would be doubled and tripled a dozen times over."

"So he took his time."

"Yes, he was very clever, this Basil. He never showed himself, fashioning his works of art only if he needed the money. But he was a presence, a living legend, Basil and his pouch of huge stones. Just before Hitler came to power, he cut his last known diamond, a ninety-six-carat masterpiece that now graces an oil sheik's collection."

"Do we know if Basil survived the Holocaust?"

"Michael, we do not. We know the Nazis searched for him. Oh, yes, how they searched. But they were dealing with a person who had spent a lifetime in subterfuge, and was an expert at hiding and escaping or whatever was necessary to stay alive ... and he and his pouch of fabulous uncut stones never surfaced." His eyes burned into mine. "Until now, Michael."

"You seem pretty damn sure of what you're saying, David."

He nodded sagely.

"Why are you sure?"

His fingers turned the stone until I was looking at the window carved into its surface. David held the loupe out to me. I put it to my eye and drew the stone up to it. I could see, but I couldn't put it together.

I handed the loupe back, shrugged, and he said, "There are facets that are the trademark of Basil."

"Why isn't it eroded too?"

David smiled. "That is a ... shall I say, concave cut? This you understand?"

"The surfaces of the other stones couldn't touch it?"

"That is right."

"Why cut the window at all?"

"Basil never displayed a finished work. It was ordered, paid for, then delivered. Now—what layman knows from an uncut stone? Not many. To show them what is this pebblelike thing, from which will emerge an art object of untold beauty and value, he would open up a small part of it. And even doing that he left his trademark. Yes, the mark of Basil—it was always there."

"You've seen it before?"

"No. Only fine drawings made by a master craftsman who had indeed known Basil. He was no legend, Michael—he was a man. Remarkable men do walk this earth from time to time. I would say, with no intention of embarrassing you, that you are such a man."

"I can cut a throat, David, but not a diamond."

"You are indeed a diamond in the rough, Michael." He shifted in his chair. "Twenty years ago, I was fortunate to be able to study two of Basil's early pieces. Remarkable. There is nothing done like that today."

"You think Basil's dead?"

"Wouldn't he have to be?" the old man asked. "Who lives that long? Even men who become legends die. This is something you might keep in mind, Michael, the next time a burst of recklessness comes upon you."

I put the stone back in my pocket. "Thanks, David. This is helpful."

"It is unless I have just been making all of this up. Just an old windbag trying to impress his young friend."

"Not you, buddy."

"Michael..."

"What?"

"This is trouble. Big trouble. Trouble as big as man's greed. You do know that?"

"David, that I really know. That I can give you an expert opinion on."

"Someday ... you will tell me more?"

"Sure."

"And if you should wish to put this pebble on the market, will you remember your old friend?"

"Of course. Maybe we can get rich and retire to Florida together."

He waved the offer away. "You may have retirement, my friend. I prefer to live."

As I wandered through the many deals being made on that singular street, I could only think how amazed each of these merchants would be if they knew about the rough pebble in my pocket with its window into untold wealth.

It had fallen out of her sleeve cuff.

Things don't fall into a place like that, so it had to have been put there. And the only people who put things in the cuffs of sleeves are those who wear them.

And now the big question... why?

David Gross may have put his finger on it when he asked me where the rest of the stones were. Suppose the dead girl did have a pouch of them? Why would she extract one, and one with a window in it?

Come on, I told myself, it isn't that hard.

Virginia Mathes was no heist artist. She wasn't into any part of that game at all. Somebody had used her as a patsy, dropped a fortune in uncut diamonds on her with a story to go with it, and she'd bought the lie.

She was a suddenly recruited carrier, told just to follow instructions, but curiosity had compelled a look at what she was carrying. Not being a lapidary, she couldn't tell one pebble from another, but picked one as a sample, the one with the shiny window—maybe to take to a jeweler herself to find out what this was all about.

Or maybe whoever she was working with only sent her out with one stone—maybe that missing purse hadn't held a pouch of diamonds, and her cuff had been home to a sample to prove to some buyer that the precious things existed and were in her controller's possession.

Still, either way—why walk down a damn dangerous street? She'd have been better off one street over, where it was still hopping and other people were around. Or maybe she thought she could avoid being followed by cutting over onto some out-of-the-way route. A normal person in her position would have been jumpy—checking behind her would have been automatic.

But she hadn't been jumpy, or a guy in sneakers couldn't have sneaked up behind her.

Or had she been jumpy?

And a mugger hugging the shadows let her go by, then went at her when she passed. He could have had the knife out as a threatening gesture, but the victim was so on edge that her frightened turn, and readied scream, were so instantaneous the guy just stuck the knife in her, ripped it out, cut her purse straps, and took off with the bag.

But the purse wouldn't have held the rest of the pebbles if she'd brought only a hidden sample with her. And a mugger wouldn't think to go check out her apartment looking for stones he hadn't known existed. He might go there to make a simple heist, only Ginnie's pad had been searched, not stripped.

Somebody else went through her apartment. Looking for the rest of the stones? And found them, maybe?

If a mugger had been the fly in this ointment, he was out of it now—he had his thirty-five bucks plus tips and that was all. Muggers don't hold on to wallets or purses very long. They empty them out, grab the cash, and dump them. Credit cards and checks can be chancy, but everybody takes cash.

Ginnie had been a messenger, a go-between in over her head. Somebody had sent her to show somebody else one of the stones—that had to be it.

It felt like someone had either heisted the stones or stumbled onto them somehow, and was either in the market to sell them to a buyer or back to the owner.

I knew I should turn the pebble over to Pat Chambers and share all of these thoughts with him. I was in no position to do the kind of in-depth investigation it would take to follow all these threads. Pat had an army, and I didn't even have an office.

Or a secretary who happened also to be a P.I. herself, and who could have helped me figure this damn thing out.

So why wasn't I going to Pat?

Because this little kill, which had turned out to be about very big money, had taken place within a few blocks of the mortuary where Bill Doolan had been sent off. What I had blithely written off as coincidence was feeling more and more like something significant, something I didn't understand yet.

But if whoever killed Bill Doolan was also responsible for Ginnie Mathes's murder, only one person was going to settle both scores.

And it wasn't Pat Chambers.

It had gotten dark faster than I expected. There was none of the quiet ease of evening, the way it was at my Florida place, no soft smells and faraway sounds. It was all New York hardness, and the sounds were brazen with impatience, the odors sharp, pungent. Sidewalk traffic had the same hostility the roadway had, everybody in a damned hurry and coming straight at you. Some of the younger wiseass punks even played the chicken game but when they got up close and saw my face, they didn't do any shoulder jousting.

Damn, had it always been like this? What had happened in the one year I had been away?

When I reached the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street, I stopped and stared around me. I had been walking for a good half hour without realizing it, letting the city get back into my pores again. Now I was hoping the place wasn't going to poison me. If I had been thinking, I couldn't remember what it was about.

The girl said, "Were you looking for someone?"

She was still pretty, like a college postgrad, with a pert smile, brown hair highlighted blonde, and a cute shape in a floral-print minidress. There was even a quizzical expression in her eyes as if she really meant what she said.

But the dress was too short and too tight and her makeup was heavier than back when she was trying to date guys her own age in Bumfuck, Utah, or Arsehole, West Virginia. Before she became a runaway. And a hooker.

A year ago she never would have come near me.

I had paused, so she repeated, "I said, are you looking for someone?"

"Why?"

"You look lost."

I smiled a little. "Maybe I am."

"Then..." A smile flashed, and life pretended to come into dark blue eyes. "... I may be the one you're looking for." She moved, a silken little gesture, and her eyes locked on mine. The headlights of a car turning the corner swept over her face and the little-girl look went hard for a moment.

"You have supper yet?" I asked her.

"What?" She seemed surprised, then: "No."

"Good. Let's get some. And you'll get paid for your time. Is it still a dollar a minute?"

She smirked but it was friendly. "Mister, are you out of touch..."

"Okay, I'll settle for the going rate."

Her head cocked, like the RCA Victor dog. "You're not kidding about supper, are you?"

"No, I'm hungry, and I want to talk."

I picked out the place, since if she'd chosen it, I might still wind up sapped by her boyfriend for my wallet. It was a small Italian restaurant east of Sixth Avenue and she had veal Parmesan and I had sausage and peppers, and for an hour I talked about New York and Velda, and she told me all about three abortions, a bad marriage, and I don't think either of us always knew exactly what the other was saying, the Generation Gap being what it is.

But somehow we both enjoyed the talk.

Going out the door into the evening, she asked, "Are you a tourist?"

"Sort of. I used to live here."

I slipped her two hundred bucks that she didn't want to take until I stuck it in her purse.

On the way out, she said, "I never did that before."

"Now that you mention it, neither have I." I glanced at my watch. "Are you done for the night or are you going back to your corner?"

She threw me a quick, impish grin. "I think I'll go home. Why spoil a nice evening. Listen, I could still go somewhere with you—no charge. I like you. I can make you happy."

"You could make me ecstatic, kitten."

She laughed. "'Kitten'—that's a funny thing to call a person. How about it?"

I thought about that double bed back at the Commodore, but I said, "Another time."

"Sure." There was something sad in it, which from a realist like this kid was remarkable. "You could walk me back to Fifth. I'll get a cab there."

"Pleasure."

She hooked her arm in mine and we headed east. Halfway up the street, we were crossing over so she could pick up a cab by the stoplight, and we almost made it.

Neither of us saw the car coming. There was no warning blast of a horn or flash of lights, just the roar of an accelerating engine that was right behind us and I heard the dull, sickening sound of the car smashing into a body just as the edge of the fender caught me under my thigh and spun me toward the sidewalk.

For a minute I lay there, dazed, waiting for the sudden flood of pain to come on, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. I moved, sat up, and knew that nothing was broken. The breath was still out of me and inside of me I could feel that everything was still in place.

Up ahead, people were milling about and somebody was screaming hysterically. The crowd seemed to flow in as though drawn by a magnet and blue lights were making psychedelic patterns on the walls of the buildings.

Then the disorientation passed and I remembered the car. Remembered getting the sense of a car, its engine roar and the flash of metal and headlights passing as we'd been struck.

But no recall, no sense, of the vehicle's make or color much less a goddamn license plate. Only that it had been big, a Caddy or Lincoln maybe. Or maybe any car that knocks you on your ass seems big in your fragmented memory....

My hat was lying right beside me and so was her purse. Swearing under my breath, I picked them both up and walked unsteadily toward the crowd. They were three thick, but I edged my way through as a lady in front got sick to her stomach, grabbed at her mouth, and forced herself away.

What was there was enough to make anybody sick. The impact had crushed my dining companion's body into odd angles and the force of her head hitting the pavement left nothing recognizable. She didn't look young and she didn't look old.

She just looked dead.

I realized I had her purse in my hand, then edged back out of the crowd. I had seen enough. A uniformed officer was standing beside a prowl car and I eased over to him.

"This was lying in the street back there," I said. I handed him the pocketbook.

He looked at me sharply. "You see the accident?"

I told him the truth. "No, I sure didn't."

Being in the accident didn't mean I had to see it.

"You open this purse?"

"No, but maybe you'd better. Some legalities involved, aren't there?"

That got me a frosty look, then he said, "I'll go get the sergeant."

I didn't wait for him to come back.

Two blocks away I looked down at myself. There was a small tear in my pants leg and street dirt on the sleeve of my coat. With all that jostling, I checked to see if the pebble was still in my pocket.

It was.

My hat needed straightening out, but I wouldn't have been taken for an accident victim, not as long as I was up and walking. Not that that mattered—a guy unconscious on the sidewalk would just be a drunk to anyone running where the action was. If there was no blood, there was no hurt, so who needed to stop, in this town?

My side was hurting again, a dull ache that had all the promise of building into a boiling agony if I didn't get back to my medication fast.

But first I had to make sure of something. I found where the car had made the initial contact and I kept on walking. About two hundred feet down, I found the skid marks that curved out from the curb where the driver burned rubber pulling away. Any squeal noise he made would have been buried in the traffic clatter from Sixth Avenue.

It had to be a big car with a big engine that could pick up momentum fast, but the driver was lousy and never took his foot off the pedal long enough to counteract the centrifugal force of the curve.

He had wanted me, but all he got was her.

And I didn't even know her name.

I got up at six-thirty, showered, brushed my teeth, and shaved. I began to come alive when room service got there with my coffee and the News. "I have the Times if you'd like, sir..."

"News is fine," I said.

I signed the bill, fixed my coffee, and opened the paper.

In the photo her body was covered on the stretcher but I wasn't interested in that. The story was brief because she was a nobody who had gotten splattered publicly, a twenty-nine-year-old named Dulcie Thorpe who lived alone in a small East Side apartment. She apparently maintained a nice lifestyle with no visible means of support, no family, and apparently few friends. Her purse had been recovered and had contained a little over six hundred dollars in cash.

So there were still honest cops in New York.

It was strictly a hit-and-run accident and from the damage it did, the car must have been well above the speed limit. No one saw the accident, although several saw a car race by, turn against the light of Fifth, and fly away. One said a headlight was out.

Pat was in when I called, told somebody in his office to close the door, and said, "Well, how are things going, pal?"

"Could be better."

"Yeah?"

"Last night there was a hit-and-run on Forty-seventh right off Fifth."

"Right, a young girl."

"Since when do hit-and-runs hit your desk?"

"It's in the papers this morning. Why?"

"They locate the car, Pat?"

"Beats me."

"Think you can find out?"

"Why?"

"This is where I remind you I'm a taxpayer, and you tell me to go fuck myself and do what I ask anyway."

I heard him breathing hard, then, irritably, he said, "Hang on," and put me on hold.

My coffee was gone and I had finished the paper when he came back on. "Mike...?"

"I'm here."

"It was four blocks away, double-parked outside a bar. The lights and grille were smashed, blood, pieces of flesh, and bits of clothing were in the wreckage. A cabbie parked down the street saw it pull in, a man get out and apparently walk toward the bar. That was all. It was a stolen late-model Caddy and the driver probably wore gloves."

"When was it reported stolen?"

"At eleven P.M. when the police tow-away truck saw what had happened to the front end. They pulled the owner's name from the computer and got him out of bed."

"Who was he?"

"A young doctor who had spent the whole day in surgery at Bellevue."

"And no prints," I said.

"Actually, plenty of 'em, but they all belong to two people—the doctor and his wife." He paused, then added, "It was a real pro job—the entry, hot-wiring, the whole bit. Does this have something to do with you, Mike?"

I let out a little laugh. I could feel Pat stiffen on the other end of the line. My voice sounded strained when I said, "How long have I been back, Pat?"

"Two days."

"Two D.O.A.s."

"Okay, Mike, say it."

"That guy in the car was trying to take me out. He got the girl instead."

"You're not in the report," he said quietly.

"Right, and there's no sense getting me in it either." I took a deep breath, sat in a different position, and told Pat how it had gone down.

When he had mulled it over, he said, "How do you see it?"

"Somebody doesn't appreciate me snooping around. Whether it's Doolan or the Mathes girl that has made me popular, I can't say yet."

"Mike, you were already popular."

"Like with Alberto Bonetti?"

"Hell, man, that makes zero sense. Like old Alberto so cleverly put it to you the other night, he could have had you pickled or fried anytime he wanted to."

"He didn't say it that cleverly, but you have a point.... Shit."

"What?"

"Nothing. These damn pills are still working on me. Give me a while and I'll think this thing through."

"And the answer will come out just the same," he told me. "You were inside a hit-and-run, and came out lucky. Try looking at it that way. You're the one always saying coincidences do happen."

We said so long and hung up.

Suppose, I thought.

Suppose somebody had picked me up coming out of the hotel, tailed me all day trying to figure a way to nail me, watched when the little hooker and I went to that restaurant for supper, and—knowing we'd be there at least an hour—snagged a car, parked, and waited, hoping he'd get a crack at us.

The possibility was limited, but it was a possibility. And if it happened that way, the killer was in a real bind. That "accident" was a murder with the wrong one down, and whoever pulled it would know damn well I'd figure it out.

I felt a grin grow and blossom teeth. Whoever tried to hit me—whether for Doolan or the Mathes kid or both—would have to start all over again.

Only this time I'd be expecting it.