Rumpelstiltskin

7

It was normally a twenty-minute ride from the New Orleans International Airport to the French Quarter, but the traffic on 61 was heavy, and our driver had to stop first at the Saint Louis Hotel on Bienville to drop off Joanna, Dale, and the luggage. The law offices of Foelger, Haythorn, Pelessier and Cortin were only half a dozen blocks away, but one-way streets in and out of the Quarter can pose problems of their own, and I did not get to Number One Shell Square until almost seven o’clock on Friday night.

The building was a monolithic monstrosity that occupied a full city block from Carondelet to St. Charles and Perdido to Poydras. Its entrance doors were on Carondelet, where the taxi dropped me, and access to them was gained first by climbing a short flight of steps to a landing some thirty feet across, at the outer edge of which was a standing, bronze-framed, ONE SHELL SQUARE marker, and then climbing another ten steps or so to a second landing, and yet another ten steps to a third landing across which were the spaced doorways with their brown antiglare glass. I felt rather as if I were climbing pyramids along the Nile. In the lobby a Burns Security guard sat inside a waist-high, oval counter fashioned of the same stone as the building itself, something that looked like a cross between marble and granite. He asked me if I was a Shell employee, and when I told him I wasn’t, he pulled back the ledger he had been in the process of offering, and asked me to sign my name in a second book instead. He told me to make sure I signed out when I left, and then gratuitously pointed out the location of the elevator bank. I stopped at the wall directory first, found a room number for Foelger, Haythorn, Pelessier and Cortin, and then took the elevator up to the seventh floor.

There was no one sitting behind the desk in the ultra-modern reception area with its white Formica desk and its dark blue carpet, its Mondrian print on the wall opposite the entrance doors, its modular sofas and easy chairs. But I heard a typewriter going someplace down the hall, and I found a harried secretary who seemed relieved I was offering her a brief respite from the tyranny of her machine and all those legal-sized pages scattered on her desk. She personally escorted me to a closed walnut door at the end of the hall, and then asked if I would like a cup of coffee. I told her I would not. I knocked on the door and a voice within said, “Yes, come in, please.”

David Haythorn was perhaps seventy years old, a frail-looking man with surprisingly jet-black hair and stern brown eyes set in a face that resembled browned and weathered parchment. His office, like the reception area and the other offices I’d peeked into along the hall, was decorated in a severe contemporary style that made him seem like a lost soul transported from Great Expectations into Star Wars. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and he offered me a seat beside his desk.

“So,” he said, “you’re here to see the trust instrument.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“No, sir, thank you.”

“You’re wondering why I insisted you come here to see it.”

“Considering I could have served Mr. Miller with a request for production...”

“Yes, if you’d brought suit. But you weren’t ready to do that, Mr. Hope, were you? Not really, were you? You may have scared Dwayne, but we’re both attorneys, so you can be honest with me. We have nothing to hide here.”

Whenever anyone says that to me — and David Haythorn had said it three times on the telephone, and a fourth time just now — the thing I run to hide is the silverware. I smiled at him. He smiled back.

“Do you know the one about the ship that sinks in the middle of the Pacific?” he asked.

“No, sir, I don’t believe so.”

“Well, a doctor, a minister, and a lawyer are floating around out there in shark-infested waters, and the sharks promptly eat the doctor and the minister, but they leave the lawyer alone. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Professional courtesy,” Haythorn said, and burst out laughing. His laugh, for such a frail-looking man, was surprisingly robust, as though somehow echoing his youthful head of hair. When at last he sobered, he said, “The reason I wanted you to look over the trust here in my office...”

“Yes, sir?”

“Was that I didn’t want it misinterpreted. I thought we could discuss it quietly and calmly here, and in that way you wouldn’t come to the conclusion I’m almost certain will at first occur to you.”

“And what conclusion is that, sir?”

“Why, the conclusion that Dwayne Miller killed his own daughter.”

I looked at him.

“Yes,” he said.

“I see.”

“Which, of course, is nonsense. And yet, the trust instrument might support such a supposition. Especially in view of the fact that no one has yet heard from the little girl’s kidnapper.”

“Which means what to you, Mr. Haythorn?”

“Which means that she, too, may be dead by now.”

“I hope that isn’t the case.”

“Well, naturally, naturally, but the possibility nonetheless exists. And if the primary beneficiary of the trust is dead — as of course Miss Miller is — and if the alternate beneficiary were to die before the trust terminates, why, then I think you can see why a supposition of foul play just might pop into someone’s head.”

“Why is that, Mr. Haythorn?”

“Because in such an eventuality the accumulated income and principal would revert to the grantor. And the grantor, as you know, is Dwayne Miller.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

“Well.”

“Yes.”

“May I have a look at the instrument now?”

“Certainly. I simply wanted to forewarn you against any hasty judgment.”

The trust instrument ran to twenty-eight pages, and it took me close to an hour to read through them carefully, making notes as I went along. Haythorn never so much as glanced at his watch during all that time, even though he’d told me on the phone that he had a dinner engagement here in town. When I turned the last page, he looked across the desk at me and said, “Well? What do you make of it?”

“It seems simple enough,” I said.

“Oh, yes, for certain, a model agreement if I must say so myself. Except for the reinvested income, of course, but that was Dwayne’s idea. I told him at the time that there’d be tax disadvantages, but he said he wanted the income to accumulate rather than have it distributed at regular intervals. He always thought of his daughter as something of a financial incompetent, insisted not a penny go to her till she reached the age of thirty-five, when presumably she’d have been wise enough to take care of it.”

“When would that have been, Mr. Haythorn?”

“Well, that’s another thing that could easily lead to a false conclusion.”

“Why?”

“Because Victoria Miller would have been thirty-five years old on the twenty-second of January — that’s next Tuesday, Mr. Hope.”

“Are you telling me the trust would have terminated only nine days after she was murdered?”

“Yes, sir, but please don’t jump to the obvious conclusion.”

“Who’s the trustee, Mr. Haythorn?”

“Cajun National.”

“Here in New Orleans?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would they know the current value of the trust?”

“I’m sure they would, but I have the most recent statements, and I can tell you it’s currently worth close to twelve million dollars.”

“Twelve...”

“Yes, sir.”

“Which Victoria Miller would have received on her thirty-fifth birthday next week.”

“Precisely. And which, under the provisions of the agreement, her daughter — as alternate beneficiary — will still receive next week.”

“Unless, as you suggested...”

“Yes, unless she’s dead by then.”

“In which case all of it reverts to Dwayne Miller.”

“I’m afraid so.”

He looked at my face.

“Ah,” he said, “I knew exactly what you’d think.”

“Mr. Haythorn,” I said, “I don’t want to keep you any longer, I know you have a dinner date. Thank you for your time.” I hesitated. “Could you possibly have the instrument copied and sent to me? Or would that be too difficult?”

“Now that we’ve talked, I’d have no objection,” he said. He grinned and added, “Anyway, if I didn’t comply, you might serve me with a request for production.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We shook hands. I walked up the long corridor with its doors opening onto ultra-modern offices, and past the room where the secretary was still struggling with reams of legal-sized paper, her typewriter sounding like a tap dancer on Bourbon Street, and I thought about a trust created back in 1965 and a will drawn only two weeks ago, and I thought about little Allison Konig out there someplace, and wondered if she knew that twelve million dollars was riding on her life.

I was not very good dinner company.

We had chosen a restaurant called Chez Jacques on the Rue Dauphine, highly recommended but exorbitantly expensive. I had ordered the shrimp remoulade to start, and then the turtle soup, and next the Chateaubriand for two, which I was sharing with Joanna. I kept hearing her conversation with Dale only as a background motif; in the foreground of my mind the words, “If Allison dies,” echoed and re-echoed relentlessly.

“How’s the steak, Joanna?”

“Terrific!”

“Here, try some of this zucchini.”

If Allison dies, I thought, either Konig or Miller will come into a sudden twelve million dollars...

“Do you think you’d like to hear some jazz tonight?”

“I sure would! God, I love this city!”

“Is this your first time?”

“Yep, but Dad’s been here once before.”

If Allison dies before next Tuesday, when that trust terminates, then everything in it will go back to her grandfather, Dwayne Miller...

“Well, then, I’ll have to give you both a guided tour. A little jazz tonight, either at Preservation Hall or Mo’Jazz, then maybe O’Brien’s later on for a little raucous singing and yelling...”

“Terrific!”

“And then breakfast at Brennan’s tomorrow morning, and a walk in the French Market afterward. In the afternoon, if you like, we can rent a car and go see some of the old plantations across...”

If Allison dies after next Tuesday, when all that money in the trust becomes legally hers, then her father — Anthony Konig — will without question inherit it from her...

According to Section 732.103 of the Florida Statutes, the estate of a person dying intestate (and six-year-old children cannot draw wills since they do not have testamentary capacity) would pass first to any surviving spouse (Allison was certainly not married) and next to a lineal descendant (Allison had no children), or, if there were no lineal descendants, then to the descendant’s father and mother — or the survivor of them. Anthony Konig had survived Victoria Miller. If his daughter died anytime after that trust terminated next Tuesday, he would inherit twelve million dollars from her.

Either one of them, I thought, Konig or Miller, has a damn good motive for bloody murder. Depending on the timing, either one of them can easily come into twelve million dollars — if Allison dies.

I told the waiter I did not want any dessert. The check for the three of us came to a hundred and fifty-five dollars plus tip. I refused to let Dale pay it, even though she insisted this was the night she’d planned to take me out. I told her she could treat at Brennan’s tomorrow morning, and then we thanked the maître d’ for a splendid meal, and went out into the streets of the Vieux Carré.

I have to explain, first, my daughter’s attitude toward the various women I’ve spent time with since the divorce. Joanna doesn’t like them. Joanna, in fact, hates them. She has come well beyond hoping that her mother and I will ever reconcile and remarry, and has even abandoned the possibility that we may one day treat each other more graciously than we now do — but this doesn’t mean she feels obliged to welcome any possible contender for her father’s hand or heart, or behave toward any female competition with anything even remotely approaching civility. Joanna has been known to remain utterly silent throughout the course of a three-day sailing trip in the company of a rather nice (and completely bewildered and finally routed) young divorcée from Tampa, a painter I’d met at a one-woman show in Calusa. Since the divorce I’ve met a lot of women at gallery openings; there is something about the creative ambiance that is conducive to fortuitous first encounters. Joanna has had the distinct displeasure of meeting many of these ladies after I’d been seeing them awhile. Her reaction has never varied. She will treat them with disdain and make it abundantly clear from the word go that the prize in dispute is none other than Matthew Hope, her daddy, a treasure already owned and cherished, thank you very much, by a loving daughter. So bug off, sister.

I have to explain, next, the city of New Orleans.

If a person lives on the Eastern Seaboard and anywhere south of, let’s say arbitrarily, the city of Memphis, Tennessee, then he does his shopping in Atlanta and his howling in New Orleans. Move a bit farther north, into the Carolinas and Kentucky, and nine times out of ten Richmond, Virginia, will be the stamping ground for Southern tourists itching to get away from all that Bible-thumping, if only for a weekend. Head even farther northward and then westward into the states of Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and the mecca will be Chicago — my kind of town, my home town, and never mind what my partner Frank has to say about it remaining ever and always the second city. According to Frank, New York is the mecca for every place, wherever you live, whatever your race, religion, or political persuasion. Frank believes that the United States of America ends just west of the Hudson River. But the fact remains that there are Southerners who’ve been to New Orleans a hundred or more times, and who have never once in their lives set foot on the island of Manhattan.

New Orleans is sheer magic.

Frank has never been there because he says he can fly to New York in less than three hours, so why should he bother making a two-and-a-half-hour trip — what with changing planes in Tampa — to a place perhaps only twelfth on the scale of desirable American cities? (He has never told me what the cities between number twelve and number one might be; all of us in the offices of Summerville and Hope, ho-hum, already know what number one is.) How can anyone explain New Orleans to a partisan New Yorker like Frank? How can anyone make him believe that this city is a microcosm of all the good things about the city he worships, combined with the best of San Francisco and yes, even Chicago, that wonderful town? How? Where would you begin?

How do you define a city that pronounces its French street names with a distinctive Southern flair, causing Chartes to become “Charters” and Burgundy to become “Bur-GUND-ee,” transmogrifying Iberville to “EYE-bur-vill” and Bienville to “Bee-EN-vill”? How do you explain that the French Quarter consists of an almost perfect grid that is only six blocks wide by fourteen blocks long if you don’t count the handful of streets on the bank of the Mississippi, but that within that mote of a metropolis there is more music, more blatant sex, more souvenir shops, more fine restaurants, more hotels, more antique shops, more flower carts, more neon, more Takee Outee Chinese food joints, more shoeshine boys and street performers and beautiful women than in any comparable stretch of turf in the United States?

The music spills from the open louvered doors of the bars and clubs into Bourbon Street itself, blocked to traffic and designed for strolling, hot jazz and cool jazz, Dixieland and country-Western, you name it, we’ve got it. Black teenage kids sit on the curbs lacing their tap shoes, and then get up to dance to the overflow music, feet flying and clicking on the asphalt, a sly grin at the hat sitting in the middle of the street, an insistent nod toward it if the quarters and dollar bills are too slow coming. The strip joints offer topless and bottomless girls, boys performing in drag, boys and girls doing their timeless number in what are billed as “authentic” sex shows, the barkers out front flicking open the doors every now and then to reveal for only a second the gyrating flesh on the bartop or the stage inside — “Call the cops,” they shout, “there’s a naked lady in here!”

The souvenir shops on Bourbon are a bazaar of T-shirts printed while you wait, bumper stickers similarly emblazoned, buttons denouncing or deriding, vibrators in every size and color (“Holy cow,” Joanna said, looking into a shop window at one, “what’s that?”), French ticklers, electrified ben-wa balls, inflatable lifesize rubber dolls, aphrodisiacs, beer mugs shaped like a woman’s breast with a handle and a great big nipple. There are shops selling everything from open-crotch panties to panties you can eat should hunger overtake you in the midst of your ardor, studded leather collars and wristlets, a machine called “Suc-U-Lator,” which when plugged into your automobile’s cigarette lighter will make the drive back to Biloxi more pleasurable and interesting. There are shops on Royal Street selling chocolates and pralines, escutcheons and lead soldiers, leather-bound books and Indonesian puppets, antiques dating back to the Spanish and French colonial periods, elegant luggage and lingerie, silverware and clocks.

There are galleries showing contemporary abstractions, and cheap reproductions, and fine prints, and pictures by local artists favoring “shotgun” houses, wrought-iron balconies, flower carts, and jazz musicians. Surrounding Jackson Park, just on the edge of the muddy Mississippi, there are more portrait artists than could be flushed out of the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts on any given spring day, all of them sitting behind their easels and sketching in charcoal or pastel while their subjects sit unblinkingly (and a bit foolishly) as they try to ignore the gawking passersby. In the French Market there is fresh produce brought in from the surrounding countryside, oranges and apples and bananas and carrots and white potatoes and red potatoes and onions and green beans and yellow beans, a riot of color to rival the palettes of the portrait painters in the park.

And everywhere there is music. Everywhere in this city. Round a corner, and there will be a five-piece band blowing its brains out, trumpet and tenor saxophone, piano, drums and bass. Step off a curb, and there will be three kids blowing guitar, banjo, and washboard, singing a tune of their own composition, the guitar case open before them for voluntary contributions. There are lousy musicians and fine musicians here, and you will find them anywhere — on an island in the middle of one of the waterfront thoroughfares, traffic moving past on both sides as they blow “Basin Street Blues,” or playing flute in the doorway of a shop on Canal Street, or strutting to the music of yet another musician strumming a ukulele outside a shop printing phony newspaper headlines; the music is interlocking and overlapping, incessant and insidious. There is no place in the entire world like New Orleans, and my partner Frank is missing a hell of a lot.

The city’s magic, combined with the loveliness and charm of Dale O’Brien, caused my poor dear daughter Joanna to become a trembling, ecstatic wreck that Friday night. She had been her usual delightful self when I introduced her to Dale at the Calusa airport (“Yeah, hullo”) and had maintained her familiar silence all the way to Tampa and then to New Orleans on the connecting flight. When I dropped the pair off at the hotel, Joanna gave me a stricken look of horror — was I actually leaving her alone with this woman, this person, this threat to her prior rights? At Chez Jacques, while the appetizers were being devoured by a starving trio who’d had to wait till nine o’clock for dinner, Joanna thawed somewhat, but I suspected this was only because I myself had usurped her normal mute stance.

By the time the entrées were brought, however, she and Dale were engaged in a lively discussion about the inadequacies of the Calusa public school system, and about how glad she was to be at St. Mark’s. Much to my astonishment, I heard Joanna telling all about a Phys Ed instructor at Bedloe who gave passing grades to his female students if they engaged in a little extra-extra-curricular activity in the room where he kept his basketballs and all his other sports equipment. The timely arrival of the Chateaubriand rescued me from any further insights into my thirteen-year-old daughter’s wisdom of the ways of the world. Dale led the conversation into an outline of the itinerary she thought we should follow in New Orleans, and my daughter listened somewhat breathlessly and starry-eyed. Before we left the restaurant, I was sure she’d already fallen in love.

Strolling between them up Bourbon Street, the pair of them lovelier than any man in the world had any right to be flanked by, my daughter tall and blond and brown-eyed and gorgeous, Dale even taller and russet-haired and green-eyed and equally gorgeous, I felt strangely like the fellow who turns two’s company into three’s a crowd. Assailed by the sights and sounds and smells, the music blaring from the doorways, the glimpses of nudity, the cooking hot dogs and hamburgers and egg rolls, the glare of the neon, the medley of voices and laughter and song, I walked with Joanna on one side of me and Dale on the other, their arms looped through mine, and I felt oddly alone. Joanna chattered across me like a magpie, pointing out anything she saw to Dale (not me), and Dale reacted as though she were experiencing all of it for the first time instead of the fifteenth, both of them involved in a very personal mutual discovery that excluded me almost completely.

It was to Dale, for example, that Joanna pointed out the footlong flesh-colored vibrator in the window of the X-Rated-Sex Shop, not me. It was to Dale, not me, that she directed a learned discourse (read from a napkin at Mo’Jazz) on the invention of the cocktail right here in the city of New Orleans a hundred and sixty-five years ago by an apothecary named Antoine A. Pechaud, who called it a coquetier, since bastardized into the current word. It was with Dale that she joined in the rowdy singing at O’Brien’s (“No relation,” Dale shouted over the din) while I sat by twiddling my thumbs and sipping my cognac because I have never, but never, enjoyed group singing even if it is being led by a piano player whose mirrored image slanting overhead can be seen by everybody in a crowded-to-bursting room. It was Dale who put her arm around my daughter’s waist as we made our way back to the hotel at three a.m., Saturday morning already, all of us exhausted, Joanna’s eyelids beginning to falter and droop, her head tilting in to rest against Dale’s body. I was happy for the rapport, but I felt miserably left out.

At the front desk in the lobby, I picked up a copy of the morning Times-Picayune and was walking toward the elevator behind Dale and Joanna when I saw the front-page story on Allison Konig. It said she had been found dead in Calusa, Florida, at eight-thirty p.m. on Friday night, January 18, in a drainage ditch on Belfast Avenue and Aspen Road. Her throat had been slit.

I tried reaching Bloom at his office at eight in the morning because it seemed to me — especially in light of Allison’s death — that I now possessed information vital to the investigation. The police officer who took my long-distance call told me that Detective Bloom wasn’t in yet and asked if I would care to leave a message for him. I told him this was urgent, and would he please call Detective Bloom at home and ask him to call me back in New Orleans at once. I gave him the number at the Saint Louis, but I was doubtful Bloom would ever get the message. The man on the phone sounded like one of those officious little bastards who make summary decisions based on how they believe an organization or a firm should be run; calling long distance was clearly against his principles, this staunch guardian of the City of Calusa purse strings. I stressed again the urgency of the situation, and he said he would make certain Detective Bloom got my message. I didn’t believe him for a minute.

Directory Assistance gave me a listing for a Morris Bloom at 631 Avenida Del Sol on Calusa’s mainland. I dialed the number and got no answer. I could not believe Bloom was off on a weekend jaunt the morning after Allison had been found dead. I dialed the number again and let it ring a dozen or more times before I hung up. A call to National Airlines informed me that I could catch a nonstop flight out of New Orleans at 2:35 p.m., arriving in Tampa at 4:51. The earliest connecting flight to Calusa would be on Eastern at 7:53, but I’d get home earlier if I simply took a limo from the airport in Tampa. I asked Dale and Joanna whether they would like to stay over without me till tomorrow; Joanna seemed tempted. But the three of us boarded that mid-afternoon National flight, and indeed took the limo from Tampa, which dropped Joanna and me at the house, and then proceeded to take Dale home to Whisper Key. It was a quarter to seven when I tried Bloom’s home again. A woman answered the phone.

“Hello,” I said, “this is Attorney Hope, I’m trying to reach Mr. Bloom. Is he home?”

“No, he’s at work,” the woman said.

“Is this Mrs. Bloom?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll try to reach him at the office, but if I miss him, would you please ask him to call me at home? I’ll give you the number.”

“Yes, just a minute,” she said.

I waited while presumably she looked for a pencil and pad, and when she came back on the line I gave her my home number. As soon as she hung up, I dialed the Public Safety Building. My call was put through to Bloom at once.

“I’ve been trying to reach you in New Orleans,” he said. “I just got your message a little while ago. Where are you now?”

“Home,” I said.

“I guess you heard.”

“I heard.”

“Something, huh? You know the drainage ditch behind the Cushing Sports Arena? On Belfast and Aspen? Found her there last night, facedown in the water. Couple of kids necking in a parked car, the boy had to take a leak, he went over to the ditch, and there she was. Still wearing this long granny nightgown drenched with blood. The kid phoned us right away. What were you doing in New Orleans?”

“Looking at that trust instrument,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I’ve got to talk to you, will you be there awhile?”

“Sure, come on down,” he said.

He listened attentively as I reviewed for him the directives in Vicky’s will, and then spelled out for him the terms of the trust. Every now and then he nodded. When I told him the trust would terminate in three days, he raised his shaggy eyebrows in response. When I further explained that the twelve million dollars in that trust would — now that Allison was dead — revert to Dwayne Miller, he made a small clucking sound and then nodded again. I waited. He began pacing the office. He turned to me at last and said, “From what you just told me, if Allison had survived past Tuesday, Anthony Konig would’ve got a quarter of all that money, is that right?”

“According to Vicky’s will, yes.”

“Which is a legal and binding will.”

“Legal and binding, yes.”

“And if she’d died after that, Konig would’ve got the whole shebang.”

“Yes.”

“So you’re assuming that since somebody conveniently killed her before Tuesday, and since Dwayne Miller now stands to get all that money back, then the person who killed her has got to be Miller. Is that it?”

“I’m suggesting it as a possibility.”

“Mm. Well, Matthew, let me ask you some questions. One, are you familiar with F.S. 732.802?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I know it by heart, one of the first sections I learned when I moved down here. Here it is: 732.802. Murderer. A person convicted of the murder of a decedent shall not be entitled to inherit from the decedent or to take any part of his estate as a devisee.”

He looked at me.

“So?” I said.

“So if Miller did kill Vicky and his granddaughter, under 732.802 he wouldn’t inherit a rat’s ass.”

“Wrong,” I said.

“Wrong?”

“Wrong. A trust isn’t a will. This has nothing to do with inheritance, Miller’s not inheriting anything from anybody. The money is simply reverting to him.”

“Mm,” Bloom said. “Okay, so let’s keep him up there as a possibility for the time being. But why eliminate Konig?”

“Because unless his daughter survived past Tuesday that money in the trust...”

“Sure, but did he know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s take this a step at a time, okay? Number one: let’s assume Konig knew he’d been named in Vicky’s will.”

“Back up just a bit,” I said. “In order to assume that, we’ve got to figure he talked to her after he received her letter.”

“Why?”

“Because the letter proposes guardianship of Allison as a new idea. I think it came as fresh news to Konig.”

“Okay. So he got the letter, and when he came down here to see her on Saturday, he said, ‘Listen, Vicky, this is swell about wanting me to have custody of our daughter, but have you taken any legal steps to insure that I get her?’ And she tells him all about the will she wrote, and about him getting custody of their daughter’s person and property and, oh, by the way, you’ll also inherit a quarter of the money in the trust. How does that sit with you, Matthew?”

“Fine, go ahead.”

“Number two: Konig’s got to know there’s a trust. He was once married to her, after all, they must’ve discussed it. And he probably knew the trust would terminate once Vicky reached age thirty-five. I’m assuming he also had to know her birthday was the twenty-second of January. And I’m further assuming he knew there was a sizable amount of money in that trust. But — and this is the big but, Matthew — did he know that in the event of little Allison’s death, all that money would go back to Miller? I’m guessing he didn’t.”

“On what basis?”

“You told me a little while ago that Miller thought his daughter was a nitwit where it came to money. So why would he have given her any of the intimate details of the trust? No way. I figure him for a redneck who thinks women are just supposed to smile and look pretty and not bother their empty little heads about matters best left to men. All that Southern macho bullshit, you know what I mean?”

“I still don’t see where you’re going.”

“Here’s where I’m going. If Konig didn’t know the twelve million bucks was going back to Miller in the event of the little girl’s death, he might have believed he’d be the one to get it as her natural father. That’s the law, isn’t it?”

“That’s the law.”

“So maybe he figured the money would first become part of Vicky’s estate, and then part of Allison’s, and he’d be standing next in line with his hat in his hands.”

“Maybe.”

“In which case, he still looks like real meat.”

“Maybe.”

“Only one way to find out about both these ginks,” Bloom said, “and that’s to bring them in here and do a dog and pony act.”

He did not have to send anyone to pick up Anthony Konig at the Breakwater Inn because Konig was waiting impatiently in the outside office. He told Bloom at once (and I’m not sure Bloom believed him; I know I had my doubts) that he hadn’t bought a newspaper this morning, and he hadn’t watched television or heard a radio until just a half-hour ago, when there was a news report on his car radio while he was driving to dinner. He’d come here immediately and was advised that Bloom was in a meeting and asked if he would mind waiting. He had told me on more than one occasion exactly how he felt about Detective Morris Bloom, and it was plain now that he was smoldering with rage over the indignity of having been asked to wait when he was here to talk about his daughter’s murder.

“Where is she now?” he demanded. “Why wasn’t I notified?”

“We tried to reach you at the Breakwater last night,” Bloom said. “You weren’t there. We’ve been trying to reach you all day today, too, still no answer in your room. Where were you, Mr. Konig?”

Konig hesitated.

“Let’s go find a nice quiet place where we can talk, okay?” Bloom said, scowling at the typewriter clacking away at sixty words a minute across the reception area. “Captain’s office should be empty,” he said, and led us past an American flag in a floor stand, to where a pair of doors stood at right angles to each other in a small alcove. He opened the door on our left, and we went into the room. I had been in this office before, when the son of a client named Jamie Purchase confessed to three murders he hadn’t committed. There was a desk on the wall opposite the door, a green leatherette swivel chair behind it. On the paneled wall above the desk there were several framed diplomas. Bookshelves behind the desk, a hookah pipe on the top shelf. Framed photos of women I guessed were the captain’s wife and daughters. Konig looked around the office as though expecting a trap.

“Sit down, Mr. Konig,” Bloom said. “Make yourself comfortable.” He went behind the desk and sat in the swivel chair. Konig and I took seats opposite him. “I’ve got to ask you some questions,” Bloom said, “so I think we’d better make this all legal and proper.” He took a deep breath. “In keeping with the 1966 Supreme Court decision in Miranda v. Arizona, we are not permitted to ask you any questions until...”

“Just a minute here,” Konig said, his face beginning to flush. “What is this?”

“The questions I’m going to ask you have to do with the murders of your former wife and daughter, Mr. Konig. What I’m about to explain to you...”

“Am I under arrest here?”

“No, sir.”

“Then...”

“Mr. Konig,” Bloom said flatly, “talk to your attorney.”

“You needn’t answer any questions if you don’t want to,” I said. “Mr. Bloom was just about to advise you of your rights, and that’s one of them.”

“Well... should I answer his questions?”

“That’s entirely up to you. Why don’t you hear your rights first?”

“Well, all right, go ahead,” Konig said.

“Fine,” Bloom said, and began his recitation once again. Konig listened intently, telling Bloom all along the way that he understood what was being said.

“... right to consult with an attorney before or during police questioning.”

“I understand.”

“If you decide to exercise that right, but do not have funds with which to hire counsel, you’re entitled to have a lawyer appointed, without cost, to consult with you before or during questioning. Do you understand all that?”

“I do. And God bless America.”

“Sir?”

“I can just imagine how this’d be handled in Russia,” Konig said.

“Yeah, well,” Bloom said. “Do you wish to have an attorney present while I question you?”

“My attorney’s already here.”

“You’re willing to have Mr. Hope present as your attorney?”

“I am.”

“Fine then. Mr. Konig, can you tell me where you were yesterday between four-thirty p.m. and midnight?”

“Why those particular times?” Konig asked.

“Because the Medical Examiner has estimated the time of your daughter’s death as approximately six p.m., and because a police officer visited your hotel last night at midnight, after we’d tried calling you repeatedly and unsuccessfully, and he asked the security officer there to unlock your room and you weren’t in it.”

“That’s right, I was out.”

“Out where, Mr. Konig?”

“With a friend.”

“Who was the friend?”

“A lady friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know...”

“I know her first name. I don’t know her full name.”

“Okay, what’s her first name?”

“Jenny.”

“But you don’t know Jenny what.”

“No.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I can take you to the house, but I don’t know the address.”

“Were you there last night, Mr. Konig?”

“Yes.”

“From when to when?”

“We got there at a little before six.”

“And when did you leave there?”

Konig hesitated.

“Mr. Konig. When did you... ?”

“This evening. I was heading back to the hotel when I heard the... the news about Allison on my car radio.”

“So you were with this woman from just before six last night to... what time would you say tonight?”

“About six.”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Yes. About twenty-four hours.”

“Did you leave the house at any time during those twenty-four hours?”

“No.”

“Neither of you left the house?”

“We were both there all that time.”

“Neither of you left the house and drove to Belfast Avenue and Aspen Road, to the drainage ditch behind the...”

“Mr. Bloom,” I said.

He turned to look at me.

“If I’m here as Mr. Konig’s attorney, I think I’ll have to object to that last question.”

“Right,” he said, “sorry. Mr. Konig, I’ll be asking you about how we can find this mysterious lady later on, we’ll probably want you to take us there so we can talk to her, if you think you can find the house again, wherever it is.”

“It’s near the Beachview Shopping Plaza, I’m sure I can find it again.”

“Good, we’ll worry about that later. Meanwhile, you keep trying to remember her last name, will you? It might save us a lot of trouble.”

“I never knew her last name, it’s not a question of trying to remember it.”

“Where’d you meet this woman, Mr. Konig?”

“In the bar at the Breakwater. The Buoy Five Lounge.”

“This was... when did you say it was?”

“About five-fifteen or thereabouts.”

“Went down for a drink, did you?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“And met this woman whose name is Jenny.”

“That’s right.”

“And then you drove to her house and spent the next twenty-four hours with her.”

“Yes.”

“In bed, Mr. Konig?”

“Much of the time, yes.”

“Was she a prostitute, Mr. Konig?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Well, did you pay her for her services, or were they free?”

“I paid her. But she didn’t ask for any money.”

“I see, okay. Mr. Konig, when did you get the letter your former wife sent you? I’m referring to the one where she mentioned wanting you to have custody of your daughter in case anything happened to her.”

“Last week sometime.”

“When last week?”

“Thursday or Friday, I don’t remember exactly.”

“Well, the letter was written on the seventh, which was a Monday...”

“I don’t know when it was written.”

“That was the date on the letter, Mr. Konig.”

“Well, fine, if you say so.”

“So let’s assume it took two, three days at most to get to New Orleans...”

“Mr. Bloom,” I said.

“Yes, yes, all right, Mr. Hope, okay. You don’t remember exactly when you got the letter, is that it, Mr. Konig?”

“I told you. It was either Thursday or Friday.”

“That would’ve been either the tenth or the eleventh.”

“If those are the dates, yes.”

“Those are the dates.”

“Then yes.”

“Did you talk to your former wife at any time between receiving the letter and the night of her murder? That would’ve been Sunday night, January thirteenth, Mr. Konig.”

“Yes, I did.”

“When did you talk to her?”

“On Saturday night. When I went to see her.”

“At the Greenery?”

“Yes.”

“And you had already received her letter by then.”

“Yes.”

“So you knew she wanted you to have custody of your daughter in case anything happened to her.”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Did you discuss that at any time Saturday night?”

“No.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Her performance, and the bad review she’d got in that morning’s paper. And Allison... she was supposed to be spending the Washington’s Birthday weekend with me, we talked about that awhile. And... well, yes, custody, I suppose. She’d mentioned custody in her letter, so I thanked her and told her I appreciated her confidence in me.”

“Did you discuss her will?”

“Her will? No, sir.”

“You did not discuss a will she wrote on January fourth, three days before she sent that letter about custody?”

Konig turned to look at me.

“Is there a will?” he asked. “Have you found a will?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, what does it say?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Konig,” Bloom said, “but you haven’t answered my question. Did you, on the night before your former wife was murdered, discuss her will with her?”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Bloom,” Konig said, “but I did answer your question. I told you we did not discuss a will, her will or anybody else’s.”

“Did you know of the existence of such a will?”

“I did not.”

“Weren’t you curious?”

“No, I was not.”

“Your former wife writes to you saying she wants you to have custody of your daughter in case anything happens, and you weren’t concerned about whether she’d taken the legal steps to make this possible?”

“I figured the letter was all the piece of paper I needed. The letter clearly stated her intention, that was all I needed. I knew Mr. Hope here was her executor, I figured all I had to...”

“How did you know that?”

“What?” Konig asked.

“That Mr. Hope was her executor.”

“Well, the... it said so in the letter.”

“No, it didn’t, Mr. Konig. I’ve read that letter a hundred times, it doesn’t say anything about Mr. Hope being executor. It says you should contact him in case anything...”

“Well, that’s what I assumed. That if I was supposed to contact a lawyer named Matthew Hope, then he was obviously the executor of her...”

Konig cut himself short. He looked first at Bloom and then at me. I said nothing.

“Executor of what?” Bloom asked.

“Her will.”

“You just said you didn’t know of the existence of a will.”

“That’s right.”

“But you assumed Mr. Hope here was executor of a will you didn’t know existed, is that it?”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“No, what do you mean? Did you know there was a will or didn’t you?”

“I suppose, now that I think of it, I knew there was a will.”

“How did you know?”

“Well... I suppose I asked Vicky about it. When we talked after the show that night.”

“And she told you there was a will.”

“Yes.”

“Did she tell you what the will said?”

“Only that I was to have custody of my daughter’s person and property.”

“And that’s all.”

“Yes. Oh, wait a minute. She also mentioned that she was leaving the house and everything in it to Allison, and I should take good care of it for her.”

“Uh-huh. What about the trust?”

“What trust?”

“The trust Dwayne Miller created in 1965.”

“Why would I have asked her about the trust?”

“Did you know such a trust existed, Mr. Konig?”

“Well... yes, I did.”

“Did you know that it would terminate this coming Tuesday?”

“I knew it was supposed to terminate when Vicky reached thirty-five.”

“Which is this coming Tuesday, January twenty-second.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, you knew her birthday, didn’t you?”

“I suppose I...”

“You were married to her for how many years?”

“Seven.”

“So you must’ve known her birthday.”

“Yes, I knew her birthday.”

“You knew it was January twenty-second.”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“And you further knew that the trust terminated on that date.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that you were to receive a quarter of the accumulated income and principal in that trust? Did Vicky tell you she’d left that to you in her will?”

Konig looked at me. He took a deep breath.

“Yes, I knew that,” he said, “she told me that. But that doesn’t mean...”

“Mr. Konig, please take your time before answering this next question. What did you think would happen to the money in that trust if Vicky died before the trust terminated?”

“I don’t know. I never saw the trust.”

“The trust instrument, do you mean?”

“Yes, I never laid eyes on it. Neither did Vicky. All we knew about it was what that crazy old... what her father had told her.”

“And what was that?”

“That she would come into some money when she was thirty-five.”

“Did he say how much money?”

“No.”

“But you knew it had to be a sizable amount since her earnings as a big recording star—”

“I didn’t know how much. It was my impression Dwayne was socking most of that money into his own bank account. I told you, I never saw the trust, the trust instrument, and so I didn’t know what he’d set aside for her. I only knew she was to get it when she reached the age of thirty-five.”

“So you didn’t know what would happen to the money if she happened to die before then.”

“I didn’t expect her to die before then.”

“But she did.”

“Yes, she did.”

“So what did you think would happen to that money?”

“Vicky said it would go seventy-five percent to Allie, and twenty-five percent to me.”

“That’s what Vicky said. But what do you think the trust said?”

“I have no idea what the trust said.”

“What did you think would happen to that money if Allison also died?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you think it would go to Dwayne Miller?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or a cat hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or do you think you would’ve got it, Mr. Konig?”

“I resent what you’re implying, sir.”

“What do you think I’m implying?”

“That I killed my own...” He stopped abruptly. “Mr. Hope, if I understood what was said to me earlier, I am not obliged to answer any questions if I choose not to. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I stop the questioning now if I wish to?”

“Yes, you can.”

“Then I would like to stop it.”

“Fine,” I said. “You heard him, Mr. Bloom.”

“Okay,” Bloom said. “Thank you, Mr. Konig.”

“Can I go now?”

“First I’d like you to try finding that house for us. The one this woman Jenny...”

“Yes, I’ll take you there.”

“I’ll call down for a car,” Bloom said, and lifted the telephone receiver.

“Where’s my daughter now?” Konig asked.

“At the morgue.” Into the phone Bloom said, “Harry, I’ll need a car, will you have it waiting downstairs for us in about ten minutes? Thanks,” he said, and hung up.

“Where’s the morgue?” Konig asked.

“Calusa General.”

“Because I’ll have to make funeral arr—” He cut himself short. “What are they doing to her there?” he asked. “Are they doing an autopsy?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Are they allowed to do that?” Konig asked me. “Cut her up and...”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Under Section 406.11, an autopsy is mandatory when any person dies in a state of criminal violence.”

Konig sighed and nodded his head. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and rose ponderously.

Jenny lived on Avocado Way, in the black section of Calusa, across the tracks and just behind the Beachview Shopping Plaza, which apparently had been named by a visionary builder since it was fifteen miles from the nearest beach. The house Konig pointed out was a cinder-block structure with a gray shingle roof and shutters painted a bright red. A lamppost illuminated the mailbox, which was painted an identical red. There was no name on the box, just the number 479. We walked together to the front door, also painted red and flanked on either side by climbing bougainvillea. The Venetian blinds on the windows facing the street were closed. The house was dark. Bloom rang the doorbell. He rang it again. He rang it a third time. An elderly black man sitting on the porch steps of the house next door kept watching us. Bloom pressed the bell button yet another time.

“She doesn’t seem to be home,” he said, and looked at his watch. “What time did you say you picked her up in that bar Friday?”

“About a quarter past five,” Konig said.

“Almost eight-thirty now,” Bloom said, and shrugged. “Must be on the town with another John. Let’s see what the guy next door has to say about her.”

We crossed the lawn to where the black man was sitting under his porch light. Bloom showed his shield and his I.D. card, and introduced himself. The black man looked as if he were used to being hassled by policemen. His manner was deferential, but his brown eyes looked expectant and wary.

“Would you know who lives in the house next door?” Bloom asked.

“Yes, sir, that’d be Jenny,” the man said.

“Jenny who? Would you know her last name?”

“Jenny Masters.”

“Know where she is now?”

“Why? She done something?”

“No, nothing at all,” Bloom said.

“P’lice always say somebody done nothing a’tall,” the man said, “den next t’ing you know, they ’resting somebody.”

“Nobody’s going to be arrested,” Bloom said. “Would you know where she is?”

“Wukkin,” the man said.

“Where does she work?”

“Downtown. Club Alyce.”

“On 301?”

“Thass d’place.”

“Thank you,” Bloom said.

“Don’t make no fool of me now by ’resting her,” the man said.

“No, no, nothing to worry about,” Bloom said, and waved as we walked back to the unmarked sedan waiting at the curb.

“Where to?” the uniformed patrolman behind the wheel asked.

“Club Alyce on 301,” Bloom said.

“Gonna glom you some tits, sir?” the patrolman asked.

“Sure, glom me some tits,” Bloom said sourly.

Club Alyce was one of only a very few topless joints in all Calusa, which city prides itself on being above such crass forms of entertainment. In addition, there are within the city limits three — count ’em, three — movie theaters showing pornographic (XXX-rated films as they are known here), and there once was a place selling marital aids and drug paraphernalia on the South Trail, but it was closed down by the police last August when they discovered the proprietor was also selling the stuff you smoked in all those pipes and roach holders. It has since been taken over by a man who sells take-out Chinese food, and maybe a little opium on the side, but the police don’t know that yet. I’m not positively sure of it myself, in fact, but my daughter Joanna says that a junkie at Bedloe buys all his dope from the Hongkong House, as the place is called, and she is usually a reliable witness.

A neon sign outside Club Alyce announced TOPLESS DANCERS and a hand-lettered three-sheet on the front wall advised any potential customer that the place was open from seven p.m. to two a.m. A pickup truck was parked at the end of a row of cars outside, and a young girl with a mass of blond curls sat behind the wheel. She smiled invitingly as we pulled in beside her. The patrolman looked at the girl and then, grinning, asked, “Anybody want a quick blow job?”

“Sure, a quick blow job,” Bloom said. “You wait out here.”

“Sir?”

“I said you wait out here. I don’t want everybody running for the exit the minute they see that uniform.”

“Aw, Jeez, sir,” the patrolman said.

We got out of the car, the patrolman sulking at the wheel, and walked toward the front door of the club. The door was painted an electric blue, and it opened onto a dimly lighted hallway at the end of which a girl sat on a stool behind a high table. She was wearing a black leotard, black tights, black net stockings, and spike-heeled black patent-leather shoes. There was an open cash box on the table in front of her. A green light over her head washed down onto the bills in the box, making them look even greener than the United States Treasury had intended. The girl smiled as we approached.

“Hello, gentlemen,” she said, “welcome to Club Alyce.”

A sign on the wall behind her warned that a person had to be over eighteen years of age to enter the premises, and further advised that anyone offended by nudity ought not to venture inside.

“Are all you gentlemen over eighteen?” she asked coyly.

Bloom showed her his shield. “Police,” he said curtly, and the smile dropped from her face. “We’re looking for a woman named Jenny Masters. Is she here?”

“Why?” the girl asked. “What’d she do?”

“Why does everyone always want to know what someone did?” Bloom asked. “It’s possible she witnessed an automobile accident, isn’t it? It’s possible she just inherited a million dollars. Is she here or isn’t she?”

“Did she inherit a million dollars?” the girl asked.

“Two million,” Bloom said. “Where is she?”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Is she inside there?”

“Yes, sir. But admission is five dollars a head.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bloom said, and pushed aside the black velour curtain that shielded the club from the corridor outside. We followed him in. The club proper, if anything, was darker than the entrance hallway. Only one part of it was brilliantly lighted, and that was a circular stage in the center of the room, occupied now by a girl wearing only a sequined G-string and a pair of red-satin spike-heeled shoes. A rock-and-roll tune was blaring from a pair of speakers hanging over the stage, on the same pipe that carried the leikos and spots. At least three dozen bar stools immediately surrounded the stage, most of them empty at the moment, the dancer wildly tossing her breasts at a clutch of four customers who sat in a row with their backs to us. Spreading out from the stage like ripples on the surface of a lake after a stone has been dropped into it, the stage itself the center of the spreading circles, were some fifty to sixty small tables. Unlike the bar stools, most of the chairs around the tables were occupied. There was good reason for this.

The tables were in semidarkness. At each of the tables a virtually naked girl danced for the private enjoyment of the customer sitting there. Some of the girls were wearing bikini bottoms and no tops. Some were wearing tank suits cut high on their long legs, the tops pulled down to reveal their breasts. Some were wearing G-strings and baby-doll nightgowns, the hems hand-lifted to just above the breasts. All the girls were wearing four-inch spikes, and all of them were straddling the legs of their various customers as they pumped vigorously into their chests. The men all sat motionless and goggle-eyed, idiotic smiles on their faces, their hands dangling at their sides; a huge sign on the wall warned that the dancers were not to be touched. The girls were white and black and brown and yellow. Some of them were spectacularly beautiful. A blonde who looked no more than sixteen years old was sitting alone at one of the tables, clutching a giant stuffed panda in her arms. She was wearing only sequined pasties, and a G-string — the band of which bristled with folded dollar bills — and her long legs were crossed, one spike-heeled shoe tapping the air in time to the music.

“Police,” Bloom said to her, and showed his shield. “Which one is Jenny Masters?”

The girl almost leaped out of her chair. She clutched the panda to her defensively and said, “I’m new here.”

“So am I,” Bloom said. “Jenny Masters. Which one?”

“Over there,” the girl said. “Dancing for the sailor.”

The sailor was sitting at a table in a corner of the room, his long legs stretched out in front of him. A tall black girl, her back to us, was straddling one of those legs and pumping away at him. She was wearing a white baby-doll nightgown, a white sequined G-string, and spike-heeled shoes. She was holding the hem of the gown up above her naked breasts. The sailor had a glazed look on his face. Because the girl’s back was to us, he saw our approach before she did, and he smelled cop on Bloom from a hundred paces away. He whispered something urgently to her, and she turned immediately, letting the hem of the gown fall from her hands, the sheer fabric scarcely covering her nakedness. She may not have recognized Bloom as a cop or me as an attorney, but she certainly must have recognized Konig as the John she’d spent twenty-four hours in bed with. She put her hands on her hips, one hip jutting, and waited for us to come closer. The sailor, trapped in the corner, seemed desperately searching for a way out of the place.

“You Jenny Masters?” Bloom asked.

“That’s me,” she said.

“You know this man?” Bloom asked.

“I know him,” Jenny said, “but who the hell are you?”

“Detective Bloom, Calusa Police.”

“I thought so,” she said, and nodded.

“How do you know this man?”

“He’s a friend,” Jenny said, and smiled. Her teeth were a radiant white against the mocha brown of her face. Her hands were still on her hips. “Leastways I thought so. What’s the beef?”

“When did you see this man last?” Bloom asked.

“He missing a wristwatch or something?”

“Nothing like that.”

“No complaint?”

“No complaint.”

“No complaint, well, well,” Jenny said.

“So when did you see him last?”

“A few hours ago.”

“What time?”

“What time’d you leave, honey?” she asked Konig. “Musta been about six, I reckon. Wun’t it about six?”

“Where were you?” Bloom asked.

“My place.”

“On Avocado?”

“Oh, you been there, huh?”

“We’ve been there.”

“Who told you how to find me?”

“Never mind that,” Bloom said. “When did you and Mr. Konig get there?”

“That your name, honey?” Jenny asked, and smiled again. “The house, you mean?” she asked Bloom.

“Yes, the house.”

“Last night sometime.”

“When last night?”

“ ’Bout the same time as when you left tonight, wun’t it, honey? ’Bout six, ’long about in there?”

“You were there at your house together from six p.m. yesterday to six p.m. today, is that it?”

“Just about.”

“Either one of you leave the house during that time?”

“Too busy to leave, man.”

“He was there all that time, huh? Never left the house.”

“Not for a minute. Ain’t no law against two people enjoying each other’s company, is there?”

Bloom looked at her. His glare would have frozen the Sahara. Jenny shrugged. Konig glanced at his shoes. The sailor was busy trying to keep his face turned to the wall.

“Okay?” Jenny said.

“Yeah, okay,” Bloom said sourly.

We dropped Konig at the Breakwater Inn on Tidal Street, and then the patrolman drove us back to the police station. The patrolman was silent all the way crosstown, miffed because Bloom hadn’t let him into Alyce’s pleasure palace. He was still sulking when he let us out at the front door of the building. In the elevator on the way up to the third floor Bloom said, “Assuming the ME’s right about the time of death, Konig’s home free. You can’t be fucking a black whore and slitting a little girl’s throat at the same time.”

“When do you plan bringing Miller in?” I asked.

“I’ve got somebody trying to reach him right this minute,” Bloom said.

The somebody who’d been trying to reach Vicky’s father was a detective named Pete Kenyon, a short (for a cop), stocky young man in his early thirties, I guessed, with a head of hair as bright as Dwayne Miller’s mailbox, and a face blooming with freckles. He had two very white and prominent upper front teeth, and his upper lip was tented above them in a permanent wedge, so that he resembled either a chipmunk or a beaver, I wasn’t sure which. I wondered at once where he would fit into my partner Frank’s Fox-Face/Pig-Face view of the world. He was holding a sheaf of papers in his right hand, and the first thing he said was that he’d been trying to reach Miller by phone with no luck, and did Bloom want somebody sent out there to roust him? Bloom thought about this for a moment, and then said he wanted to keep a low profile on this, get Miller to come in voluntarily if they could get him by phone.

“Have you been calling the groves there, or his house?” he asked.

“Both,” Kenyon said. “Ain’t no answer neither place.”

“What’s all that in your hand?” Bloom asked.

“Just came Express Mail from Illinois. Whole shithouse full of radio stations in Georgia. Pages two forty-three to two fifty-nine, Xeroxed for us by that nice lady in Skokie, wherever that may be. Four pages of networks, and then another ten pages of alphabetical listings starting with Austell and ending with Wimo. Must be more’n a hundred towns listed here, Morrie, don’t know how many radio stations. You take a town the size of Savannah, there’s something like seventeen, eighteen stations there alone, AM and FM. If we started calling them all right this minute, we wouldn’t be finished till next Christmas.”

“Do they list personnel?” Bloom asked.

“Yeah, but not disc jockeys. Just people like general managers and sales managers and like that.”

“Shit,” Bloom said.

“I had an idea, though,” Kenyon said.

“Yeah, what’s the idea?”

“If Marshall’s working up there someplace, he’s got to have filed an income tax return, am I right? So whyn’t I give the IRS in Jacksonville a call, see if they can put us onto a regional office in Georgia, get ourselves a current address for this bugger?”

“They won’t give it to you,” Bloom said. “Not since all that funny business with Nixon.”

“This is homicide, Morrie.”

“They won’t care if it’s genocide. You can try them, but you’re gonna strike out, I know it. What’d you get from the F.C.I.C.?”

“Nothing. No Georgia arrests in the past year — did I feed the right dope in? Edward Marshall, N.M.I., born circa 1941 or ’42, six feet tall, one-eighty, black hair, blue eyes?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing,” Kenyon said. “Doesn’t have a federal rap sheet, either. Why’re you so hot on finding him, anyway?”

“Because, one, he can maybe give us some more information on this guy Sadowsky, the drummer, who the N.Y.P.D. has nothing on so far, and, two, he can maybe tell us who this fucking mysterious friend of his is who supposedly lent him a boat so he could be conveniently out on the water while Vicky Miller was getting killed. Do those seem like two good enough reasons for us to be breaking our balls?”

“I suppose,” Kenyon said, and shrugged. “It’s too bad there ain’t some kind of union where these guys—”

“Wait a minute,” Bloom said. “He’s got to belong to a union, doesn’t he? I mean, if he’s in radio? Isn’t that required? Equity or something? What the hell do they call it? For radio performers? Equity?”

“That’s for actors,” Kenyon said. “Actors Equity.”

“Then what? It’s something like Equity, I know it is. Find out what it’s called,” he said, “the union these radio guys belong to.”

“Georgia’s a right-to-work state,” Kenyon said, “same as Florida. He wouldn’t have to belong to a union if he didn’t want to.”

“Find out anyway,” Bloom said.