"Got drunk, got wild, started throwing around clothes and stuff,"

Flanagan suggested.

"I like it," Flaherty said.

"A drunken party," Sloat said. "Cooper goes in the bathroom to run a tub. Jamal comes in after him, and they start arguing about how to split the money." "Better all the time," Flaherty said.

"Cooper pulls a knife, slashes Jamal. Jamal shoves out at him as he goes down. Cooper falls in the tub and drowns."

"Case closed," Flaherty said, grinning.

Assholes, Ollie thought.

"Hey, you!" he yelled to the technician.

The technician turned off his vacuum cleaner again.

"I want the knife and the champagne bottles dusted. I want every fuckin surface in this dump dusted. I want comparison prints lifted from both those two black shits in the bathroom. I want comparison hairs from their heads, and comparison fibers from their clothes, and I want them checked against whatever you pick up with. that fuckin noisy vacuum of yours. Where'd you buy that vacuum, anyway? From a pushcart Majesta?"

"It's standard departmental issue," the technician said, offended.

"Stand on this awhile," Ollie said, and clutched his own genitals with his right hand and then released them at once. "I want to know was there anybody else in this dump besides those two ugly bastards in the bathroom. Cause there's nothing I'd like better than to nail another son of a bitch up here in Diamondback. You got that?"

The technician was glaring at him.

"I go off at a quarter to twelve," Ollie said. "I want to know before then."

The technician was still glaring at him.

"You got it?" Ollie said, glaring back.

"I've got it," the technician snapped. "You fat tub of shit," he muttered, which he was lucky Ollie didn't hear.

Along about then, Steve Carella was just waking up.

Georgie and Tony had a serious problem on their hands.

"The thing is," Georgie said, "the old lady probably didn't even remember putting that money in the locker."

"An old lady, how old?" Tony asked. "How could she remember?"

"You see the envelope it's in?"

The envelope was in the inside pocket on the right-hand side of his jacket. It bulged out the jacket as if he was packing, which he was not. Georgie only carried a gun when he was at the club protecting Priscilla. Carrying a gun was too dangerous otherwise. People would think you were an armed robber or something. Georgie preferred subtler ways of beating the System. Beating the System was what it was all about. But now, Priss Stetson had in some strange mysterious way become the System.

"Even the envelope looks ancient," Georgie said, lowering his voice.

The men were in the bus terminal restaurant, eating an early dinner and trying to figure out what to do about this large sum of money that had come their way. The place wasn't too crowded at a little past seven.

Maybe a dozen people in all. Black guy and what looked like his mother sitting at a nearby table. Three kids in blue parkas, looked like college boys, sitting at another table across the room. Old guy in his sixties holding hands with a young blonde maybe thirty or forty, she was either his daughter or a bimbo. Two guys hunched over racing forms, trying to dope out tomorrow's ponies.

It had been snowing since two this afternoon. Beyond the restaurant's high windows, sharp tiny flakes, the kind that stuck, swirled dizzily on the air, caught in the light of the streetlamps. There had to be six inches on the ground already, and the snow showed no sign of letting up. Inside the restaurant, there was the snug, cozy feel of people hunched over good food in a safe, warm place.

Outside, buses came and

The hundred thou in the yellowing envelope was burning a hole in Georgie's pocket.

"The question here," he said, "is what is our obligation?"

"Our moral obligation," Tony said, nodding. "If the old lady forgot the money was there." "My grandmother forgets things all the time."

"Mine, too."

"She says it, too. I mean, she knows it, Georgie. says if her head wasn't on her shoulders she'd forget where she put it."

"They forget things. They get old, they forget things."

"You know the story about the old guy in the nursing home?"

"Yeah, you told us." "No, not that one." "Parkinson's? You told us."

"No, this is another one. This old guy is in a nursing home, the doctor comes in his room, he says, "I've got bad news for you." The old guy says, "What is it?" The doctor says, "First, you've got cancer, and second, you've got Alzheimer's." The old guy goes, "Phew,

thank God I don't have cancer." " Georgie looked at him. "I don't get it," he said.

"The old guy already forgot," Tony explained. -"Forgot what?"

"That he has cancer."

"How can a person forget he has cancer?" "Cause he has Alzheimer's."

"Then how come he didn't forget he has Alzheimer's?"

"Forget it," Tony said.

"No, you raised the question. If he can forget he has one disease, how come he doesn't forget he's got the other disease?"

"Cause then it wouldn't be a joke."

"It isn't a joke, anyway."

"A lot of people think it's a joke."

"If it isn't funny, how can it be a joke?"

"A lot of people think it's funny."

"A lot of people are pretty fuckin weird, too,"

Georgie said, and nodded in dismissal.

Both men sipped at their coffee.