Star Song and Other Stories

Hitmen—See Murderers

It had been a long, slow, frustrating day, full of cranky machines, crankier creditors, and not nearly enough customers. In other words, a depressingly typical day. But even as Radley Grussing slogged up the last flight of stairs to his apartment he found himself whistling a little tune to himself. From the moment he'd passed the first landing—had looked down the first-floor hallway and seen the yellow plastic bag leaning up against each door—he'd known there was hope. Hope for his struggling little print shop; hope for his life, his future, and—with any luck at all—for his chances with Alison. Hope in double-ream lots, wrapped up in a fat yellow bag and delivered to his door.

The new phone books were out.

"Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages." He sang the old Bell Telephone jingle to himself as he scooped up the bag propped up against his own door and worked the key into the lock. Or, rather, that was what he tried to sing. After four flights of stairs, it came out more like, "Let your...

fingers do the... walking through... the Yellow... Pages."

From off to the side came the sound of a door closing, and with a flush of embarrassment Radley realized that whoever it was had probably overheard his little song. "Shoot," he muttered to himself, his face feeling warm. Though maybe the heat was just from the exertion of climbing four flights of stairs.

Alison had been bugging him lately about getting more exercise; maybe she was right.

He got the door open, and for a moment stood on the threshold carefully surveying his apartment. TV and VCR sitting on their woodgrain stand right where they were supposed to be. Check. The doors to kitchen and bedroom standing half-open at exactly the angles he'd put them before he'd left for work that morning. Check.

Through his panting Radley heaved a cautious sigh of relief. The existence of the TV showed no burglars had come and gone; the carefully positioned doors showed no one had come and was still there.

At least, no one probably was still there....

As quietly as he could, he stepped into the apartment and closed the door, turning the doorknob lock but leaving the three deadbolts open in case he had to make a quick run for it. On a table beside the door stood an empty pewter vase.

He picked it up by its slender neck, left the yellow plastic bag on the floor by the table and tiptoed to the bedroom door. Steeling himself, panting as quietly as was humanly possible, he nudged the door open and peered in. No one. Still on tiptoe, he repeated the check with the kitchen, with the same result.

He gave another sigh of relief. Alison thought he was a little on the paranoid side, and wasn't particularly hesitant about saying so. But he read the papers and he watched the news, and he knew that the quiet evil of the city was nothing to be ignored or scoffed at.

But once more, he'd braved the evil—braved it, and won, and had made it back to his own room and safety. Heading back to the door, he locked the deadbolts, returned the vase to its place on the table, and retrieved the yellow bag.

It was only as he was walking to the kitchen with it, his mind now freed from the preoccupations of survival in a hostile world, that his brain finally registered what his fingers had been trying to tell him all along.

The yellow bag was not, in fact, made of plastic.

"Huh," he said aloud, raising it up in front of his eyes for a closer look.

It looked like plastic, certainly, like the same plastic they'd been delivering phone books in for he couldn't remember how many years. But the feel of the thing was totally wrong for plastic.

In fact, it was totally wrong for anything.

"Well, that's funny," he said, continuing on into the kitchen. Laying the bag on the table, he pulled up one of the four more-or-less-matching chairs and sat down.

For a minute he just looked at the thing, rubbing his fingers slowly across its surface and digging back into his memory for how these bags had felt in the past. He couldn't remember, exactly; but it was for sure they hadn't felt like this. This wasn't like any plastic he'd ever felt before. Or like any cloth, or like any paper.

"It's something new, then," he told himself. "Maybe one of those new plastics they're making out of corn oil or something."

The words weren't much comfort. In his mind's eye, he saw the thriller that had been on cable last week, the one where the spy had been blown to bits by a shopping bag made out of plastic explosive....

He gritted his teeth. "That's stupid," he said firmly. "Who in the world would go to that kind of trouble to kill me? Period; end of discussion," he added to forestall an argument. Alison had more or less accepted his habit of talking to himself, especially when he hadn't seen her for a couple of days. But even she drew the line at arguing aloud with himself. "End of discussion," he repeated.

"So. Let's quit this nonsense and check out the ad."

He took a deep breath, exhaled it explosively like a shotputter about to go into his little loop-de-spin. Taking another deep breath, he reached into the bag and, carefully, pulled the phone book out.

Nothing happened.

"There—you see?" he chided himself, pushing the bag across the table and pulling the directory in front of him. "Alison's right; there's paranoia, and then there's para-noi-a. Gotta stop watching those late cable shows. Now, let's see here..."

He checked his white-pages listings first, both his apartment's and the print shop's. Both were correct. "Great," he muttered. "And now"—he hummed himself a

little trumpet flourish as he turned to the Yellow Pages—"the piece de resistance. Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages, dum dum de dum..." He reached the L's, turned past to the P's... And there it was. Blazing out at him, in full three-color glory, the display ad for Grussing A-One-Excellent Printing And Copying.

"Now that," he told himself proudly, "is an ad. You just wait, Radley old boy—an ad like that'll get you more business than you know what to do with. You'll see—there's nowhere to go but up from now on."

He leafed through the pages, studying all the other print-shop ads and trying hard not to notice that six of his competitors had three-color displays fully as impressive as his own. That didn't matter. His ad—and the business it was going to bring in—would lift him up out of the hungry pack, bring him to the notice of important people with important printing needs. "You'll see," he told himself confidently. The Printers heading gave way to Printers—Business Forms, and then to Printing Equipment and Printing Supplies. "Huh; Steven's has moved," he noted with some surprise. He hadn't bought anything from Steven's for over a year—probably about time he checked out their prices again. Idly, he turned another page—

And stopped. Right after the short listing of Prosthetic Devices was a heading he'd never seen before.

Prostitutes.

"Well, I'll be D-double-darned," he muttered in amazement. "I didn't know they could advertise."

He let his eyes drift down the listings, turned the page. There were a lot of names there—almost as many, he thought, as the attorney listings at the other end of the Yellow Pages, except that unlike the lawyers, the prostitutes had no display ads. "Wonder when the phone company decided to let this go in." He shook his head. "Hoo, boy—the egg's gonna hit the fan for sure when the Baptists see this."

He scanned down the listing. Names—both women's and a few men's—addresses, phone numbers—it was all there. Everything anyone so inclined would need to get themselves some late-night companionship.

He frowned. Addresses. Not just post office boxes. Real street addresses.

Home addresses.

"Wait just a minute, here," he muttered. "Just a D-double-darned minute."

Nevada, he'd heard once, had legal prostitution; but here—"This is nuts," he decided. The cops could just go right there and arrest them. Couldn't they? I mean, even those escort and massage places usually just have phone numbers.

Don't they?"

With the phone book sitting right in front of him, there was an obvious way to answer that question. Sticking a corner of the yellow bag in to mark his place, he turned backwards toward the E's. Excavating Contractors, Elevators

—oops; too far—

He froze, finger and thumb suddenly stiff where they gripped a corner of the page. A couple of headings down from Elevators was another list of names, shorter than the prostitutes listing but likewise distinguished by the absence of display ads. And the heading here... Embezzlers.

His lips, he suddenly noticed, were dry. He licked them, without noticeable effect. "This," he said, his words sounding eerie in his ears, "is nuts.

Embezzlers don't advertise. I mean, come on now."

He willed the listing to vanish, to change to something more reasonable, like Embalmers. But that heading was there, too... and the Embezzlers heading didn't go away.

He took a deep breath and, resolutely, turned the page. "I've been working too hard," he informed himself loudly. "Way too hard. Now. Let's see, where was I going... right—escort services."

He found the heading and its page after page of garish and seductive display ads. Sure enough, none of them listed any addresses. Just for completeness, he flipped back to the M's, checking out the massage places. Some had addresses; others—the ones advertising out-calls only—had just phone numbers.

"Makes sense," he decided. "Otherwise the cops and self-appointed guardians of public morals could just sit there and scare all their business away. So what gives with this?" He started to turn back to the prostitute listing, his fingers losing their grip on the slippery pages and dropping the book open at the end of the M's—

And again he froze. There was another listing of names and addresses there, just in front of Museums. Shorter than either the prostitute or embezzler lists; but the heading more than made up for it.

Murderers.

He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. "This is crazy," he breathed. "I mean, really crazy." Carefully, he opened his eyes again. The Murderers listing was still there. Almost unwillingly, he reached out a finger and rubbed it across the ink. It didn't rub off, like cheap ink would, or fade away, like a hallucination ought to.

It was real.

He was still staring at the book, the sea of yellow dazzling his eyes, when the knock came at his front door.

He fairly jumped out of the chair, jamming his thigh against the underside of the table as he did so. "It's the FBI," he gasped under his breath. It was their book—their book of the city's criminals. It had been delivered here by mistake, and they were here to get it back.

Or else it was the mob's book—

"Radley?" A familiar voice came through the steel-cored wood panel. "You home?"

He felt a little surge of relief, knees going a little shaky. "There's paranoia," he chided himself, "and then there's para-noi-a." He raised his voice. "Coming, Alison," he called.

"Hi," she said with a smile as he opened the door, her face just visible over the large white bag in her arms. "Got the table all set?"

"Oh—right," he said, taking the bag from her. The warm scent of fried chicken rose from it; belatedly, he remembered he was supposed to have made a salad, too. "Uh—no, not yet. Hey, look, come in here—you've got to see this."

He led her to the kitchen, dropping the bag on the counter beside the sink and sitting her down in front of the phone book. The yellow bag still marked the page with the Prostitutes heading; turning there, he pointed. "Do you see what see?" he asked, his mouth going dry. If she didn't see anything, it had suddenly occurred to him, it would mean his brain was in serious trouble....

"Huh," she said. "Well, that's new. I thought prostitution was still illegal."

"Far as I know, it still is," he agreed, feeling another little surge of relief.

So he wasn't going nuts. Or at least he wasn't going nuts alone. "Hang on, though—it gets worse."

She sat there silently as he flipped back to the Embezzlers section, and then forward again to point out the Murderers heading. "I don't know what else is here," he told her. "This is as far as I got."

She looked up, an odd expression on her face. "You do realize, I hope, that this is nothing but an overly elaborate practical joke. This stuff can't really be in a real phone book."

"Well... sure," he floundered. "I mean, I know that the phone company wouldn't—"

She was still giving him that look. "Radley," she said warningly. "Come on, now, let's not slide off reality into the cable end of the channel selector. No one makes lists of prostitutes and embezzlers and murderers. And even if someone did, they certainly wouldn't try to hide them inside a city directory."

"Yes, I know, Alison. But—well, look here." He pulled the yellow bag over and slid it into her hand. "Feel it. Does it feel like plastic to you? Or like anything else you've ever touched?"

Alison shrugged. "They make thousands of different kinds of plastics these days—"

"All right then, look here." He cut her off, lifting up the end of the phone book. "Here—at the binding. I'm a printer—I know how binding is done. These pages haven't just been slipped in somehow—they were bound in at the same time as all the others. How would someone have done that?"

"It's a joke, Radley," Alison insisted. "It has to be. All the phone books can't have—Well, look, it's easy enough to check. Let me go downstairs and get mine while you get the salad going."

Her apartment was just two floors down, and he'd barely gotten the vegetables out of the fridge and lined them up on the counter by the time she'd returned.

"Okay, here we go," she said, sitting down at the table again and opening her copy of the phone book. "Prostitutes... nope, not here. Embezzlers... nope.

Murderers... still nope." She offered it to him.

He took it and gave it a quick inspection of his own. She was right; none of the strange headings seemed to be there. "But how could anyone have gotten the extra pages bound in?" he demanded putting it down and gesturing to his copy. "I mean, all you have to do is just look at the binding."

"I know." Alison shook her head, running a finger thoughtfully across the lower edge of the binding. "Well... I said it was overly elaborate. Maybe someone who knows you works where they print these things, and he got hold of the orig—oh, my God!"

Radley jumped a foot backwards, about half the distance Alison and her chair traveled. "What?" he snapped, eyes darting all around.

She was panting, her breath coming in short, hyperventilating gasps. "The...

the page. The listing..."

Radley dropped his eyes to the phone book. Nothing looked any different.

"What?

What'd you see?"

"The murderer listing," she whispered. "I was looking at it and... and it got longer."

He stared at the page, a cold hand working its way down his windpipe. "What do you mean, it got longer?" he asked carefully. "You mean like someone... just got added to the list?"

Allison didn't answer. Radley broke his gaze away from the page and looked at her. Her face was white, her breath coming slower but starting to shake now, her eyes wide on the book. "Alison?" he asked. "You okay?"

"It's from the devil," she hissed. Her right hand, gripping the table white-knuckled, suddenly let go its grip, darting up to trace a quick cross across her chest. "You've got to destroy it, Radley," she said. Abruptly, she looked up at him. "Right now. You've got to—" she twisted her head, looking all around the room—"you've got to burn it," she said, jabbing a finger toward the tiny fireplace in the living room. "Right now; right there in the fireplace."

She turned back to the phone book, and with just a slight hesitation scooped it up. "Come on—"

"Wait a minute, Alison, wait a minute," Radley said, grabbing her hands and forcing them and the phone book back down onto the table. "Let's not do anything rash, huh? I mean—"

"Anything rash? This thing is a tool of the devil."

"That's what I mean," he said. "Going off half-cocked. Who says this is from the devil? Who says—"

"Who says it's from the devil?" She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Radley, just where do you think this thing came from, the phone company?"

"So who says it didn't come from the other direction?" Radley countered.

"Maybe it was given to me by an angel—ever think of that?"

"Oh, sure," Alison snorted. "Right. An angel left you this—this—voyeur's delight."

Radley frowned at her. "What in the world are you talking about? These people are criminals, Alison. They've given up their right of privacy."

"Since when?" she shot back. "No one gives up any of their rights until they're convicted."

"But—" he floundered.

"And anyway," she added, "who says any of these people really are murderers?"

Radley looked down at the book. "But if they're not, why are they listed here?"

"Will you listen to yourself?" Alison demanded. "Five minutes ago you were wondering how this thing could exist; now you're treating what it says like it was gospel. You have no proof that any of these people have ever committed any crime, let alone killed anyone. For all you know, this whole thing could be nothing more than some devil's scheme to make you even more paranoid than you are already."

"I am not paranoid," Radley growled. "This city's dangerous—any big city is.

That's not paranoia, it's just plain, simple truth." He pointed at the book.

"All this does is confirm what the TV and papers already say."

For a long moment Alison just stared at him, her expression a mixture of anger and fear. "All right, Radley," she said at last. "I'll meet you halfway.

Let's put it to the test. If there really was a murder tonight at"—she looked up at the kitchen wall clock—"about six-twenty, then it ought to be on the eleven o'clock news. Right?"

Radley considered. "Well... sometimes murders don't get noticed for a while.

But, yeah, probably it'll be on tonight."

"All right." Alison took a deep breath. "If there was a murder, I'll concede that maybe there's something to all of this." She locked eyes with him. "But if there wasn't any murder... will you agree to burn the book?"

Radley swallowed. The possibilities were only just starting to occur to him, but already he'd seen enough to recognize the potential of this thing. The potential for criminal justice, for public service—

"Radley?" Alison prompted.

He looked at her, gritted his teeth. "We'll check the news," he told her.

"But if the murder isn't there, we're not going to burn anything until tomorrow night, after we have a chance to check the papers."

Alison hesitated, then nodded. Reluctantly, Radley thought. "All right."

Standing up, she picked up the book, closed it with her thumb marking the place.

"You finish the salad. I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

"Where are you going?" Radley frowned, his eyes on the book as she tucked it under her arm.

"Down to the grocery on the corner—they've got a copy machine over by the ice chest."

"What do you need to copy it for?" Radley asked. "If the police release a suspect's name, we can just look it up—"

"We already know the book can change."

"Oh... Right."

He stood there, irresolute, as she headed for the door. Then, abruptly, the paralysis vanished, and in five quick strides he caught up with her. "I'll come with you," he said, gently but firmly taking the book from her hands. "The salad can wait." It took several minutes, and a lot of quarters, for them to find out that the book wouldn't copy.

Not on any light/dark setting. Not on any reduction or enlargement setting.

Not the white pages, not the Community Service pages, not the Yellow Pages, not the covers.

Not at all.

They returned to the apartment. The chicken was by now stone-cold, so while Radley threw together a passable salad, Alison ran the chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy through the microwave. By unspoken but mutual consent they didn't mention the book during dinner.

Nor did they talk about it afterwards as they cleaned up the dishes and played a

few hands of gin rummy. At eight, when prime time rolled around, they sat together on Radley's old couch and watched TV.

Radley wouldn't remember afterwards much about what they'd watched. Part of him waited eagerly for the show to be broken into by the announcement of what he was beginning to regard as "his" murder. The rest of him was preoccupied with Alison, and the abnormal way she sat beside him the whole time. Not snuggled up against him like she usually was when they watched TV, but sitting straight and stiff and not quite touching him.

Maybe, he thought, she was waiting for the show to be broken into, too.

But it wasn't, and the 'tween-show local newsbreak didn't mention any murders, and by the time the eleven o'clock news came on Radley had almost begun to give up.

The lead story was about an international plane crash. The second story was his murder.

"Authorities are looking for this man for questioning in connection with the crime," the well-scrubbed news-woman with the intense eyes said as the film of the murder scene was replaced by a mug shot of a thin, mean-looking man.

"Marvin Lake worked at the same firm with the victim before he was fired last week, and had threatened Mr. Cordler several times in the past few months. Police are asking anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact them."

The picture shifted again, and her co-anchor took over with a story about a looming transit strike. Bracing himself, Radley turned to Alison.

To find her already gazing at him, her eyes looking haunted. "I suppose," he said, "we'd better go check the book."

She didn't reply. Getting up, Radley went into the kitchen and returned with the phone book. He had marked the Murderers listing with the yellow non-plastic bag.... "He's here," Radley said, his voice sounding distant in his ears.

"Marvin Lake." He leaned over to offer Alison a look.

She shrank back from the book. "I don't want to see it," she said, her voice as tight as her face.

Radley sighed, eyes searching out the entry again. Address, phone number...

"Wait a minute," he muttered to himself, flipping back to the white pages. L, La, Lak... there it was: Marvin Lake. Address... "It's not the same address," he said, feeling an odd excitement seeping through the sense of unreality. "Not even close."

"So?" Alison said.

"Well, don't you see?" he asked, looking up at her. "The white pages must be his home address; this one"—he jabbed at the Yellow Pages listing—"must be where he is right now."

Alison looked at him. "Radley... if you're thinking what I think you're thinking... please don't."

"Why not?" he demanded. "The guy's a murderer." "That hasn't been proved yet."

"The police think he's guilty."

"That's not what the report said," she insisted. "All they said was that they wanted to question him."

"Then why is he here?" Radley held out the open phone book.

"Maybe because you want him to be there," Allison shot back. "You ever think of that? Maybe that thing is just somehow creating the listings you want to see there."

Radley glared at her. "Well, there's one way to find out, isn't there?"

"Radley—"

Turning his back on her, he stepped back into the kitchen, turning to the front of the phone book. The police non-emergency number... there it was. Picking up the phone, he punched in the digits.

The voice answered on the seventh ring. "Police."

"Ah—yes, I just heard the news about the Cordler murder," Radley said, feeling suddenly tongue-tied. "I think I may have an idea where Marvin Lake is."

"One moment."

The phone went dead, and Radley took a deep breath. Several deep breaths, in fact, before the phone clicked again. "This is Detective Abrams," a new voice said. "Can I help you?"

"Ah—yes, sir. I think I know where Marvin Lake is."

"And that is...?"

"Uh—" Radley flipped back to where his thumb marked the place. A sudden fear twisted his stomach, that the whole Murderers listing might have simply vanished, leaving him looking like a fool.

But it hadn't. "Forty-seven thirty West Fifty-second," he said, reading off the address.

"Uh-huh," Abrams grunted. "Would you mind telling me your name?"

"Ah—I'd rather not. I don't really want any of the spotlight."

"Yeah," Abrams said. "Did you actually see Lake at this address?"

This was starting to get awkward. "No, I didn't," Radley said, searching desperately for something that would sound convincing. "But I heard it from a—well, a pretty reliable source," he ended lamely.

"Yeah," Abrams said again. He didn't sound especially convinced. "Thanks for the information."

"You're—" The phone clicked again. "Welcome," Radley finished with a sigh.

Hanging up, he closed the phone book onto his thumb again and turned back to face Alison.

She was still sitting on the couch, staring at him over the back. "Well?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they won't bother to check it out."

She stared into his face a moment longer. Then, dropping her gaze, she got to her feet. "It's getting late," she said over her shoulder as she started for the door. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He took a step toward her. "Alison—"

"Good night, Radley," she called, undoing the locks. A minute later, she was gone.

For a long moment he just stood there, staring at the door, an unpleasant mixture of conflicting emotions swirling through his brain and stomach. "Come on, Alison," he said quietly to the empty room. "If this works, think of what it'll mean for cleaning up this city."

The empty room didn't answer. Sighing, he walked to the door and refastened the deadbolts. She was right, after all; it was late, and he needed to be at work by seven.

He looked down at the phone book still clutched in his hands. On the other hand, Pete would be in by seven, too, and it didn't hardly take two of them to get the place ready for business.

And he really ought to take the time to sit down with the book and find out just exactly what this miracle was that had been dropped on his doorstep.

It was nearly one-thirty before he went to bed... but by the time he did, he'd made lists of every murderer, arsonist, and rapist in the book.

The next time one of those listings changed, he wouldn't have to wait for the news reports to find out who was guilty. He got to the shop just before the seven-thirty opening time, feeling groggy but strangely exhilarated.

"Morning, Mr. Grussing." Pete Barnabee nodded solemnly from up at the counter as Radley closed the back door behind him. "How you doing?"

"I'm fine, Pete," Radley told him. "Yourself?"

"Pretty tolerable, thank you."

It was the same set of greetings, with only minor variations, that they'd exchanged every morning since Radley had first hired Pete two months ago.

"So.

The place ready for business?" he asked the other.

"All set," Pete confirmed. "You seen the new phone book yet?"

"Yeah—mine came yesterday," Radley nodded, resisting the urge to tell Pete about the strange Yellow Pages that had come with his. "The new ad looks pretty good, doesn't it?"

"Best of the bunch," Pete said. "Oughta bring in whole stacks of new business."

"Let's hope so." Radley looked at his watch. "Well, time to let the crowds in," he said, walking around the counter and unlocking the front door.

"Incidentally, you didn't happen to catch any news this morning, did you?" he added as he turned the "Closed" sign around.

"Yeah, I did," Pete answered. "They didn't mention our ad, though."

"Very funny. I was just wondering if the cops found that guy they were looking for in the Cordler murder."

"Oh, yeah, they did," Pete nodded. "Marvin Lake or something, right? Yeah, they found him holed up somewhere on West Fifty-second last night."

Radley felt a tight smile crease his cheeks. "Did they, now?" he murmured, half to himself. "Well, well, well."

Pete cocked an eyebrow at him. "You know the guy?"

"Me? No. Why do you ask?"

Pete shrugged. "I dunno. You just seem..." He shrugged again.

Again, Radley was tempted. But he really didn't know Pete well enough to trust him with a secret like this. "I'm just happy that scum like that is off the street," he said instead. "That's all."

"Oh, he's still on the street," Pete said, squatting down to fuss with the loading tray on one of the presses. "Made bail and walked right out."

Radley made a face. That figured. The stupid leaky criminal justice system.

"They'll get him again."

"Maybe. Maybe not. You don't get many volunteer stoolies after the first one bites it."

Radley stared at him, his throat tightening. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, it's just that an hour after Lake walked out of the police station the guy who lent him that apartment turned up dead. Shot twice in the face." Pete straightened up, brushed off his hands briskly. "Ready for me to start on the Hammerstein job?" Somehow, Radley made it through the morning. At lunchtime he rushed home.

"Detective Abrams," he told the person who answered the phone. "Tell him it's the guy who gave him Marvin Lake's address last night."

"One moment." The line went on hold.

Wedging the phone between shoulder and ear, Radley hauled the phone book onto the table and opened it to the Yellow Pages. The M's... there. Mo, Mu—

"This is Abrams." The other man sounded tired.

"This is Ra—the guy who told you where Marvin Lake was last night," Radley said.

He had the Murderers listing now. Running a finger down it...

"Yeah, I recognize the voice," Abrams grunted. "You know where he's gone?"

Radley opened his mouth... and froze. The Marvin Lake listing was gone.

"You still there?" Abrams prompted.

"Uh... yeah. Yeah. Uh..." Frantically, Radley scanned the listing, wondering if he'd somehow been looking at the wrong place. But the name wasn't under the L's, or under the M's, or anywhere else.

It was just gone.

"Look, you got something to say or don't you?" Abrams growled. "If you do, spit it out. If you don't, quit wasting everyone's time and get off the phone, okay?"

"I'm sorry..." Radley managed, staring at the spot where the Marvin Lake listing should have been. "I thought—well, I'm sorry, that's all."

"Yeah. We're all sorry for something." Abrams sounded slightly disgusted.

"Next time just write me a postcard okay?" Without waiting for an answer, he hung up.

Blindly, Radley groped for the hook and hung up the handset, his eyes still on the page. "This," he announced to himself, "is crazy. It's crazy. How can it be here one day and gone the—"

And right in mid-sentence, it hit him. "Oh, real smart, Radley," he muttered.

"What are you using for brains, anyway, oatmeal? Of course Marvin Lake's not here anymore—if he had any brains he'll have left town hours ago. And soon as he leaves town..."

He sighed and closed the book, the ail-too familiar tastes of embarrassment and frustration souring his mouth. "Doesn't matter," he told himself firmly.

"Okay.

So this one got away. Fine. But the next one won't. There's still gotta be a way to use this thing. All you have to do is find it." He returned to the shop and got back to work.

If the new display ad had helped at all, it wasn't obvious from the business load. For Radley the day turned out to be an offset copy of the previous one, with the added secret frustration of knowing that a double murderer had slipped through his fingers.

And then he got home, to find Alison waiting for him.

"Did you see this?" she asked when they were safe behind the triple-locked door.

The article the newspaper was folded to...

"I heard about it, yeah," he said. "Tried to call in Marvin Lake's new address to the police on my lunch hour, but the listing's gone. Best guess is he skipped town."

"So it didn't really do any good, did it?"

"It did a lot of good," he countered. "It showed that what the book says is true."

"Not really. We still don't know that Marvin Lake killed anybody."

"We don't? What about that guy?" He jabbed a finger at her newspaper. "If he didn't kill Cordler, why would he kill the guy who hid him from the cops?"

"We don't know he did that, either," she retorted. "Face it Radley—all you have there is hearsay. And not very good hearsay, either."

"It's good enough for me," he said doggedly. "Half the time people get away with crimes because the police don't know who to concentrate their investigations on.

Well, this is just what we need to change that."

"And all thanks to Radley Grussing, Super Stoolie."

"Sneer all you like," Radley growled. "This is truth, Alison—you know it as well as I do."

"It's not truth," she snapped back. "It may be true, but it's not truth."

"Oh, well, that makes sense," he said, with more sarcasm than he'd really intended. "I can hardly wait to hear what the difference is."

She sighed, all the tension seeming to drain out of her. "I don't know," she said, her voice sounding suddenly tired. "All I know is that that book is wrong.

Somehow, it's wrong." She took a deep breath. "This isn't good for you, Radley.

Isn't good for us. People like you and me weren't meant to know things like this. Please, please destroy it."

He looked at her... and slowly it dawned on him that his whole relationship with Alison was squatting square on the line here. "Alison, I can't just throw this away," he said gently. "Can't you see what we've got here? We've got the chance to clean away some of the filth that's clogging the streets of this city."

"And to fluff up Radley Grussing's ego in the process?"

He winced. "That's not fair," he said stiffly. "I'm not trying to make a name for myself here."

"But you like the power." She stared him straight in the eye. "Admit it, Radley—you like knowing these people's darkest secrets."

Radley clenched his teeth. "I don't think this discussion is getting us anywhere." He turned away.

"Will you destroy the book?" she asked bluntly from behind him.

He couldn't face her. "I can't," he said over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Alison... but I just can't." For a long moment she was silent. Then, without a word, she moved away from him, and he turned back around in time to see her collect her purse and jacket from the couch and head for the door. "Let me walk you downstairs," Radley called after her as she unlocked the deadbolts.

"I don't think I'll get lost," she said shortly.

"Yes, but—" He stopped.

She frowned over her shoulder at him. "But what?"

"I just thought that... I mean, there are a lot of rapists running loose in this city...."

She gazed at him, something like pain or pity or fear in her eyes. "You see?" she said softly. "It's started already." Opening the door, she left.

Radley exhaled noisily between his teeth. "Nothing's started," he told the closed door. "I'm just being cautious. That's hardly a crime."

The words sounded hollow in his ears, and for a minute he just stood there, wondering if maybe she was right. "No," he told himself firmly. "I can handle this. I can."

Turning back to the kitchen, he pulled a frozen dinner out of the refrigerator and popped it into the microwave. Then, pulling a notebook from the phone shelf, he flipped it open and got out a pen. Time to compare the Book's listings of murderers, arsonists, and rapists against the lists he'd made last night. See who, if anyone, had sold their souls to the devil in the past fourteen hours.

According to the papers, there had been two gang killings in the city that day, both of them drive-by shootings. Both apparently by repeaters, unfortunately, because no new names had appeared in the Murderers listing. The Arsonists listing hadn't changed since last night, either. On the Rapists list, though, he hit paydirt. The phone rang six times. Then: "Hello?"

A woman's voice. Radley gripped the phone a little tighter. He'd hoped the man lived alone. "James Whittington, please," he said.

"May I ask who's calling?"

A secretary, then, not a wife? A thin straw, but Radley found himself clutching it hard. "Tell him I'd like to discuss this afternoon's activities with him," he instructed her. "He'll understand."

There was a short silence. "Just a minute." Then came the sound of a hand covering the mouthpiece, and a brief and heavily muffled conversation. A

moment later, the hand was removed. Radley waited, and after nearly ten seconds a man's voice came on. "Hello?"

"Is this James Whittington?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Someone who knows what you did this afternoon," Radley told him. "You raped a

woman."

There was just the briefest pause. "If this is supposed to be a joke, it's not especially funny."

"It's no joke," Radley said, letting his voice harden. "You know it and I know it, so let's cut the innocent act."

"Oh, the tough type, huh?" Whittington sneered. "Making anonymous calls and vague accusations—that's real tough. I don't suppose you've got anything more concrete. A name, for instance?"

"I don't know her name," Radley admitted, feeling sweat beading up on his forehead. This wasn't going at all the way he'd expected. "But I'm sure the police won't have too much trouble rooting out little details like that."

"I have no idea what the hell you're talking about," Whittington growled.

"No?" Radley asked. "Then why are you still listening?"

"Why are you still talking?" Whittington countered. "You think you can shake me down or something?"

"I don't want any money," Radley said, feeling like a blue-ribbon idiot.

Somehow, he'd thought that a flat-out accusation like this would make Whittington crumble and blurt out a confession. He should have just called the police in the first place. "I just wanted to talk to you," he added uncomfortably. "I suppose I wanted to see what kind of man would rape a woman—"

"I didn't rape anyone."

"Yeah. Right. I guess there's nothing to do now but just go ahead and tell the cops what I know. Sorry to have ruined your evening." He started to hang up.

"Wait a second," Whittington's voice came faintly from the receiver.

Radley hesitated, then put the handset back to his ear. "What?"

There was a long, painful pause. "Look," the other man said at last. "I don't know what she told you, but it wasn't rape. It wasn't. Hell, she was the one who hit on me. What was I supposed to do, turn her down?"

Radley frowned, a sudden surge of misgiving churning through his stomach.

Could the Book have been wrong? He opened his mouth—

"Damn you."

He jumped. It was a woman's voice—the same voice that had originally answered the phone. Listening in on an extension.

Whittington swore under his breath. "Mave, get the hell off the phone."

"No!" the woman said, her voice suddenly hard and ugly. "No. Enough is enough—damn it all, can't you even drive to the airport and back without screwing someone? Oh, God... Traci?"

"Mave, shut the hell up—"

"Your own niece?" the woman snarled. "God, you make me sick."

"I said shut up!" Whittington snarled back. "She hit on me, damn it—"

"She's sixteen years old!" the woman screamed. "What the hell does she know about bastards like you?"

Radley didn't wait to hear any more. Quickly, quietly, he hung up on the rage boiling out of his phone.

For a minute he just sat there at his table, his whole body shaking with reaction. Then, almost reluctantly, he reached for the Book, still open to the Rapists listings, and turned to the end. And sure enough, there it was: Rapists, Statutory—See Rapists.

Slowly, he closed the Book. "It was still a crime," he reminded himself.

"Even if she really did consent. It was still a crime."

But not nearly the crime he'd thought it was.

He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly. The tight sensation in his chest refused to go away. A marriage obviously on the brink, one that probably would have gone over the edge eventually anyway. But if his call hadn't given it this particular push...

He swallowed hard, staring at the Book. The solitude of his apartment suddenly had become loneliness. "I wish Alison was here," he murmured. He reached for the phone—

And stopped. Because when she'd finished sympathizing with him, she would once again tell him to burn the Book.

"I can't do that," he told himself firmly. "She can play with words all she wants to. The stuff in the Book is true; and if it's true then it's truth.

Period."

A flicker of righteousness briefly colored his thoughts. But it faded quickly, and when it was gone, the loneliness was still there.

He sat there for a long time, staring at nothing in particular. Then, with another sigh, he hitched his chair closer to the kitchen table and pulled the Book and notebook over to him. There were a lot of criminals whose names he hadn't yet copied down. With the whole evening now stretching out before him, he ought to be able to make a sizeable dent in that number before bedtime. He arrived at the shop a few minutes before eight the next morning, his eyelids heavy with too little sleep and too many nightmares. Never before had he realized just how many types of crime there were in the world. Nor had he realized how many people were out there committing them.

Business was noticeably better than it had been the previous few weeks, but Radley hardly noticed. With the evil of the city roiling in his mind's eye like a huge black thundercloud, the petty details of printing letterhead paper and business cards seemed absurdly unimportant. Time and again he had to drag his thoughts away from the blackness of the thundercloud back to what he was doing—more often than not, finding a bemused-looking customer standing there peering at him.

Fortunately, most of them accepted his excuse that he hadn't been sleeping well lately. Even more fortunately, Pete knew his way around well enough to take up the slack.

Partly from guilt, partly because he wanted to give his attention over to the Book when he went home, Radley stayed for an hour after the shop closed, getting some of the next day's work set up. By the time he left, rush hour was over, leaving the streets and sidewalks about as empty as they ever got.

It was a quiet walk home. Quiet, but hardly peaceful. Perhaps it was merely the relative lack of traffic, the fact that Radley wasn't used to walking down these streets without having to change his direction every five steps to avoid another person. Or perhaps it was merely his own fatigue, magnifying the caution he'd always felt about life here.

Or perhaps Alison had been right. Perhaps it was the Book that was bothering him. The Book, and the page after page of Muggers he'd leafed through that first night.

It was an unnerving experience, and by the time he reached his building he was seriously considering whether to start carrying a gun to work with him. But as soon as he left the public sidewalk, the sense of imminent danger began to lift; and by the time he was safely behind his deadbolts he could almost laugh at how strongly a runaway imagination could make him feel.

Still, he waited until he'd finished dinner and had a beer in his hand before hauling out the Book, the newspaper, and his notebook and beginning the evening's perusal.

There had been two more murders—again, apparently by repeaters, since there were no new names under the appropriate listing in the Book. Ditto with rapists and armed robbers. The Muggers listing had increased by eleven names, but after wasting half an hour comparing lists it finally dawned on him that isolating the new names wouldn't do anything to let him link a particular person to a particular crime. The Burglars listing, increased by three, presented the same problem.

"Growing like a weed," he muttered to himself, flipping back and forth through the Book. "Just like a weed. How in blazes are we ever going to stop it?"

It was nearly nine o'clock when he finally went back to the Embezzlers listing... and found what he was looking for.

A single new name.

And what was more, a name Radley couldn't find mentioned anywhere in the newspaper. Which made sense; a crime like embezzlement could go unnoticed for weeks or even months.

Radley had tried informing on a murderer, and had wound up making matters worse.

He'd tried wangling information out of a rapist, with similar results.

Perhaps he could become a conscience.

The phone was picked up on the third ring. "Hello?" a cool, MBA-type voice answered.

"Harry Farandell, please," Radley said.

"Speaking," the other man acknowledged. "Who's this?"

"Someone who wants to help you get off the path you're on before it's too late,"

Radley told him. "You see, I know that you embezzled some money today."

There was a long silence. "I don't know what you're talking about," Farandell said at last.

Almost the same words, Radley remembered, that James Whittington had used in denying his rape. "I'm not a policeman, Mr. Farandell," Radley told him. "I'm not with your company, either. I could call both of them, of course, but I'd really rather not."

"Oh, I'm sure," Farandell responded bitterly. "And how much, may I ask, is all this altruism going to cost me?"

"Nothing at all," Radley assured him. "I don't want any of the money you stole.

I want you to put it back."

"What?"

"You heard me. Chances are no one knows yet what you've done. You replace the money now and no one ever will."

Another long silence. "I can't," Farandell said at last.

"Why not? You already spent it or something?"

"You don't understand," Farandell sighed.

"Look, do you still have the money, or don't you?" Radley asked.

"Yes. Yes, I've still got it. But—look, we can work something out. I'll make a

a"

"No deals, Mr. Farandell," Radley said firmly. "I'm trying to stop crime, not add to it. Return the money, or else I go to the police. You've got forty-eight hours to decide which it'll be."

He hung up. For a moment he wondered if he should have given Farandell such a lenient deadline. If the guy skipped town... but no. It wasn't like he was facing a murder charge or something equally serious. And anyway, it could easily take a day or two for him to slip the money back without anyone noticing.

And when he had done so, it would be as if the crime had never happened.

"You see?" Radley told himself as he turned to a fresh page in the notebook.

"There is a way to use this. Tool of the devil, my foot."

The warm feeling lasted the rest of the evening, even through the writer's cramp he got from tallying yet more names in his notebook. It lasted, in fact, until the next morning.

When the TV news announced that financier Harry Farandell had committed suicide. Business was even better that day than it had been the day before. But again Radley hardly noticed. He worked mechanically, letting Pete take most of the load, coming out of his own dark thoughts only to listen to the periodic updates on the Farandell suicide that the radio newscasts sprinkled through the day.

By late afternoon it was apparent that Farandell's financial empire, far from being in serious trouble, had merely had a short-term cash-flow problem. In such cases, the commentators said, the standard practice was to take funds from a healthy institution to prop up the ailing one. Such transfers, though decidedly illegal, were seldom caught by the regulators, and the commentators couldn't understand why Farandell hadn't simply done that instead.

Twice during the long day Radley almost picked up the phone to call Alison.

But both times he put the handset down undialed. He knew, after all, what she would say.

He made sure to leave on time that evening, to get home during rush hour when there were lots of people on the streets. All the way up the stairs he swore he would leave the Book where it was for the rest of the night, and for the first hour he held firmly to that resolution. But with dinner eaten, the dishes washed, and the newspaper read, the evening seemed to stretch out endlessly before him.

Besides, there had been another murder in the city. Taking a quick look at his list wouldn't hurt.

There were no new names on the listing, which meant either that the murderer was again a repeater or else that he'd already left town. The paper had also reported a mysterious fire over on the east side that the police suspected was arson; but the Arsonists listing was also no longer than it had been the night before. "You ought to close it now," he told himself. But even as he agreed that he ought to, he found himself leafing through the pages. All the various crimes; all the ways people had found throughout the ages of inflicting pain and suffering on each other. He'd spent he didn't know how many hours looking through the Book and writing down names, and yet he could see that he'd hardly scratched the surface. The city was dying, being eaten away from beneath by its own inhabitants.

He'd reached the T's now, and the eight pages under the Thieves heading.

Compared to some of the others in the Book it was a fairly minor crime, and he'd never gotten around to making a list of the names there. "And even if I did," he reminded himself, "it wouldn't do any good. I bet we get twenty new thieves every day around here." He started to turn the page, eyes glancing idly across the listings—

And stopped. There, at the top of the second column, was a very familiar name.

A

familiar name, with a familiar address and phone number accompanying it.

Pete Barnabee.

Radley stared at it, heart thudding in his chest. No. No, it couldn't be. Not Pete. Not the man—

Whom he'd hired only a couple of months ago. Without really knowing all that much about him...

"No wonder we've been losing money," he murmured to himself. Abruptly, he got to his feet. "Wait a minute," he cautioned himself even as he grabbed for his coat.

"Don't jump to any conclusions here, all right? Maybe he stole something from someone else, a long time ago."

"Fine," he answered tartly, unlocking the deadbolts with quick flicks of his wrist. "Maybe he did. There's still only one way to find out for sure."

There were more people on the streets now than there had been on his walk through the dinnertime calm the night before: people coming home from early-evening entertainment or just heading out for later-night versions.

Radley hardly noticed them as he strode back to the print shop, running the inventory lists through his mind as best he could while he walked. There were any number of small items—pens and paper and such—that he wouldn't particularly miss even if Pete had been pilfering them ever since starting work there.

Unfortunately, there were also some very expensive tools and machines that he could ill afford to lose.

And he'd already discovered that Thieves, Petty and Thieves, Grand were both included under the Thieves heading.

He reached the shop and let himself in the back door. The first part of the check was easy, and it took only a few minutes to confirm that the major machines were still there and still intact. The next part would be far more tedious. Digging the latest inventory list out of the files, he got to work.

It was after midnight when he finally put up the list with a sigh—a sigh that hissed both relief and annoyance into his ears. "See?" he told himself as he trudged back to the door. "Whatever Pete did, he did it somewhere else.

Unless," he amended, "he's just been stealing pencils and label stickers." But checking all of those would take hours... and for now, at least, he was far too tired to bother. "But I will check them out eventually," he decided. "I mean, I don't really care about stuff like that, but if he'll steal pencils, who's to say he won't back a truck up here someday and take all the copiers?"

It was a question that sent a shiver up his back. If that happened, he would be out of business. Period.

He headed toward home, the awful thought of it churning through his mind...

and, preoccupied with the defense of his property, he never even heard the mugger coming.

He just barely felt the crushing blow on the back of his head. He came to gradually, through a haze of throbbing pain, to find himself staring up at a soft pastel ceiling. The forcibly clean smell he'd always associated with hospitals curled his nostrils.... "Hello?" he called tentatively.

There was a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, there was a young woman leaning over him. "Ah—you're back with us," she said, peering into each of his eyes in turn. "I'm Doctor Sanderson. How do you feel?"

"My head hurts," Radley told her. "Otherwise... okay, I guess. What happened?"

"Best guess is that you were mugged," she told him. "Apparently by someone who doesn't like long conversations with his victims. You were lucky, as these things go: no concussion, no bone or nerve damage, only minor bleeding. You didn't even crack your chin when you fell."

Reflexively, Radley reached up to rub his chin. Bristly, but otherwise undamaged. "Can I go home?"

Sanderson nodded. "Sure. You'll have to call someone to get you, though—your friend didn't wait."

"Friend?" Radley frowned. The crinkling of forehead skin gave an extra throb to his headache.

"Fellow who brought you in. Black man—medium build, slightly balding. Carried you about five blocks to get you here—sweating pretty hard by that time, I'll tell you." She frowned in turn. "He told the E/R people you needed help—we just assumed he was a friend or neighbor or something."

Radley started to shake his head, thought better of it. "Doesn't sound like anyone I know," he said. "I certainly wasn't with anyone when it happened."

Sanderson shrugged slightly. "Good Samaritan, then. A vanishing breed, but you still get them sometimes. Anyway. Your shoes are under the gurney there; come on down to the nurses' station when you're ready and we'll run you through the paperwork."

He thought about calling Alison to come get him, but decided he didn't really want to wake her up at this time of night. Especially not when he'd have to explain why he'd been out so late.

With his wallet gone, he had no money for a cab, but a tired-eyed policeman who had brought in a pair of prostitutes gave him a lift home. What the blow on the head had started, the long trek up the steps to his apartment finished, and he barely made it to his bed before collapsing. His headache was mostly gone when he awoke. Along with most of the day.

"Yeah, I figured you were sick or something when you didn't show up this morning," Pete said when he called the print shop. "Didn't expect it was something like this, though. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Radley assured him, a wave of renewed shame warming his face.

How could he ever have thought someone with Pete's loyalty would betray him?

"Let me shower and change and I'll come on down."

"You don't need to do that," Pete said. "Not hardly worth coming in now, anyway.

If I may say so, it don't sound to me like you oughta be running 'round yet, and I can handle things here okay." There was a faintly audible sniff/snort, and Radley could visualize the other man smiling. "And I really don't wanna have to carry you all the way home if you fall apart on me."

"There's that," Radley conceded. "I guess you're right. Well... I'll see you in the morning, then."

"Only if you feel like it. Really—I can handle things until you're well.

Oops—gotta go. A customer just came in."

"Okay. Bye."

He hung up and gingerly felt the lump on the back of his head. Yes, Pete might have had to carry him home, at that. That little outing had sure gone sour.

As had his attempt to catch a murderer. And his attempt to solve a rape. And his attempt to stop an embezzlement.

In fact, everything the Book had given him had gone bad. One way or another, it had all gone bad.

"But it's truth," he gritted. "I mean, it is. How can truth be bad?"

He had no answer. With a sigh, he stood up from the kitchen chair. The sudden movement made his head throb, and he sat down again quickly. Yes, Pete might indeed have wound up carrying him.

Like someone else had already had to do.

Radley flushed with shame. In his mind's eye, he saw a medium-build black man, probably staggering under Radley's weight by the time he reached the hospital.

Quietly helping to clean up the mess Radley had made of himself.

"I wish they'd gotten his name," he muttered to himself. "I'll never get a chance to thank him."

He looked down at the Book... and a sudden thought struck him. If the Book contained the names of all the criminals in town, why not the names of all the Good Samaritans, too?

He opened to the Yellow Pages, feeling a renewed sense of excitement. Perhaps this, he realized suddenly, was what the Book was really for. Not a tool for tracking down and punishing the guilty, but a means of finding and rewarding the good. The G's... there they were. Ge, Gl, Go...

There was no Good Samaritans listing.

Nor was there an Altruists listing. Nor were there listings for benefactor, philanthropist, hero, or patriot. Or for good example, salt of the earth, angel, or saint.

There was nothing.

He thought about it for a long time. Then, with only a slight hesitation, he picked up the phone. Alison answered on the fourth ring. "Hello?"

"It's me," Radley told her. "Listen." He took a careful breath. "I know the difference now. You know—the difference between true and truth?"

"Yes?" she said, her voice wary.

"Yeah. True is a group of facts—any facts, in any combination. Truth is all the facts. Both sides of the story. The bad and the good."

She seemed to digest that. "Yes, I think you're right. So what does that mean?"

He bit at his lip. She'd been right, he could admit now; he had enjoyed the knowledge and power the Book had given him. "So," he said, "I was wondering if you'd like to come up. It's... well, you know, it's kind of a chilly night."

The Book burned with an eerie blue flame, and its non-plastic bag burned green.

Together, they were quite spectacular.