I went to the first door. There was a black iron key in the lock, its bow large enough that I could put all four fingers through it. I was annoyed that if this was my dream, I hadn't allowed myself to pack a pistol. I had nothing but the flashlight for a weapon. Cautiously, I turned the key. It flipped a tumbler, making a soft click. I opened the door, stepping back with it in case someone came charging out.

No one did. I leaned around the edge and shined the light inside. It was a room not much bigger than a flophouse bathroom. There were only two things in it: an old wooden chest like an ammunition box and, sitting on top of that, the biggest damn dog I'd ever seen. He was maybe the size of a pony. The light seemed to transfix him. "Hey, boy, nice fella," I said. The dog didn't move. I took a step inside. The dog didn't growl. I sidled close enough to touch him. His eyes bulged, big as tangerines that had been painted blue with tiny pupils. He didn't seem to see anything. I waved my hand around just outside the edge of the flashlight beam. He didn't react.

"Okay," I thought, and put a hand on the animal, ready to leap if anything happened. Nothing did. I was working with a fur-covered statue. I shoved the dog off the box. He settled onto the dirt as if he didn't weigh a thing.

The box wasn't locked. I lifted the lid on the biggest pile of pennies I'd ever seen. They were polished and fresh like they'd just come from the San Francisco Mint.

I scooped up a handful, looked at the dates. Not that they would have meant anything to me. I don't collect coins, and I've never been good at those games where you try to guess the number of pennies in the fishbowl. If I'd hauled the chest out of there, I would have had maybe five hundred dollars? I don't know.

I stuffed some of them into my pocket, shut the lid, and put the dog back on top of it. Then I backed out and closed the door.

The second door was identical to the first. I opened it and peered inside, and was rewarded with much the same view-a larger room containing a larger version of the first dog with larger eyes. Eyes like inverted coffee cups. He stared at the flashlight beam the same as his smaller brother, and let himself be pushed off the chest. Inside this one were silver dollars. This time I was impressed.

I filled my pants pockets with them 'til I thought the seams might give. I put the bug-eyed dog back in place and went out.

The third door concerned me. After pennies and silver dollars, what could be left?

I unlocked the door and threw it open.

The dog inside was too big to get through the door. How had they gotten him in there? His eyes were bigger than coffee cups, too, more like dinner plates. Seated on another big box, he loomed over me. He didn't move, didn't even look down. Another statue, I thought.

I went around in back of him and tipped him off the box. I'd expected him to be heavier than the previous two, but my hands were shoving something as light as papier-mache. The effect was dizzying, as if my balance were out of whack. In that disoriented state I opened the third box.

It was full of gold. Coins of every sort. Some I recognized: US Eagles, Frederic d'ors, British Sterling. There were others that I only learned the identities of later: crusados, moidores, napoleons, and pahlavis, and one called a solidus. I didn't spend much time thinking about them then. I just emptied as much of the silver as I could, refilled my pockets with the gold, and closed up the box. Picked up the monstrous dog, put it back, and hightailed it out of that room. Although nothing had happened, I still believed that at any moment the doors would crash open and those dogs, come to life, would charge out to tear me apart. I ran back to the rope and started to cinch myself.

The old lady's voice came drifting down to me. "Did you find it? Is it there?"

"Find it?" I was so crazy, I had to think about what she was asking. The lighter. The damned lighter.

I looked around me. Where the hell was I going to find that? There'd only been three rooms, and the lighter hadn't been in any of them. But she said she'd dropped it, right? So I shined the light at my feet, all around me, back toward the doors. There was nothing I could see and I wasn't about to let go of the rope. Finally, I thought to check where I was standing. I lifted my right shoe, and there, pressed into the heel of my footprint, lay a dented and scratched old steel Zippo. I'd seen a thousand of them; the military owned a concession in them. I brushed it off and stuck it into my breast pocket and fastened the button. "Got it!" I called.

I just barely got myself securely fastened when up went the rope. It was a long haul. All the time I rose I was of two minds. The first went skipping through all the things I could buy with this dough. The other speculated on what I'd find when I got out. Who was helping her pull me up? What waited for me outside the tree? Preoccupied with that, I didn't even try to sort through the subterranean fantasia. Leave the big-eyed dogs to Disney. Just let me live long enough to spend the cash.

At the top I clutched the split in the tree and dragged myself over it. Nobody helped me out. I had splinters in my hands, and a couple big ones in my shirt. I was expecting a shovel in the back of the head, and I dropped and rolled. Coins spilled out behind me. I came up on my knees, only to discover her by herself. This was almost worse than the weird weightlessness of the dogs. This little bird-eyed crone had pulled me up out of a mine using nothing but the strength in her arms. Hadn't even worked up a sweat.

"You give it to me," she said, as I brushed leaves off my shirt and pants. My gold was strewn all over the ground.

"Yeah, sure. Just let me get my breath, will you?" I pulled myself up along a large broken branch. Something jabbed me as I stood, and I drew a long sliver of wood out of my side, hissing from the pain. I reached over and grabbed my coat to get the handkerchief in the pocket.

"No, you give it now."

"Look, lady," I said as I dabbed at the spot of blood, "what the hell do you have down there? The river Styx?" I drew on my jacket, then picked up the big flashlight and turned to face her.

She'd pulled something new out of that bottomless bag: a nasty old Browning High Power. The gun made her hand seem about the size of a squirrel's paw.

"Where is it? You let me have it."

"Let's take it easy now," I said. "I don't want you to let me have it."

Her smile at my joke was anything but friendly.

I reached carefully under the jacket-thumb and forefinger only, so she could see I wasn't dangerous. I stared at all the gold lying there and figured I was dead in about two minutes, no matter what happened next. I couldn't understand why she hadn't shot me already.

I took out the lighter, held it straight in front of me as if to ward her off. Her smile became nearly beatific. "Now," she snapped.

I tossed it. I tossed it just hard enough to pass over her outstretched claw and past the gun. She turned automatically, clutching the air, and the instant she did I swung that flashlight as hard as I could. The gun discharged, blowing nine-millimeter hell right through the flap of my jacket, just missing my side. The branch behind me cracked. The flashlight smacked her beneath the ear, and it felt like I'd punched a saltine. She did a frog leap sideways and away, letting go the gun, spinning as she fell.

The sound of that gunshot dashed among the trees.

I checked her pulse and there wasn't one. I left her the gun, but I threw the flashlight down inside that tree. If the cops wanted it, they were welcome to rappel after it. I would've liked to hear their explanation for the doors and the dogs and the money.

I might even have gone back later to get the rest of it, but by the time I collected my earnings and found a way out of the trees and underbrush to the driveway, I was so lost I could never have hoped to find the way back inside.

The car was still parked by the house. It was unlocked. I opened it quietly and climbed in, then rifled through the glove box. Can't say what I was looking for. I think I just wanted something simple and tangible and sane to tie everything together. Like a pay stub indicating that she was the prop lady at Paramount. There wasn't much, but I came up with an envelope addressed to a "Madame Tzeil" at an address that could have been this one, and containing a handwritten note thanking her for all her help "mapping our daughter's future." There was a little hand-tinted photo inserted in the note, of a young woman with black hair and green eyes and the most perfect face I'd ever seen. On the back someone had scrawled "Janine."

I glanced at the signature on the note: H. W. Kildragon.

I closed up shop then. Left her car, got in mine, backed down that damn dirt drive, and drove like hell. Good riddance was what I was thinking.

But what I'd gotten into was like a stray dog. It followed me home. And there was no point in asking whether I should keep it.

The coins, when I'd finished cashing them in-selling them to dealers and collectors-and added in the advance fee she'd paid and the new pennies still in my pockets, came to exactly ten thousand dollars and fourteen cents. The old woman had been a little ahead of the game, it seemed to me. I couldn't quite square it. I didn't try very hard.

I paid off the Packard. Mapes wanted to have my children. I got myself a nice apartment downtown, bought a better wardrobe, and started making the club scene. No more cigarette girls, I decided. Why settle for anything less than everything? It was a great attitude for cutting a swath through the middle of L.A.'s nightlife. In retrospect most of the parties remain a blur. I can't remember what I was doing, only what I thought I was doing-showing Mr. and Mrs. Paney that I'd dusted them. And since they weren't actually around to get the message, I sent it to myself. With a vengeance. A blur did I say? Hell, I made Ray Milland look like a piker.

All through this period, while people I'd never met before showed up to help me spend my money, I would find some corner by myself and take out that photo and look at it. Before long I had Janine memorized. I'd even fashioned a torso to continue past the bottom of the frame. If I'd died any of those nights she would've been burned on my retinas. The last thing I saw-Kildragon's daughter.

I can't tell you how long this phase lasted exactly, since I missed a lot of it myself. I expected it to take considerably longer to go through that much money. One morning I just woke up and the party had moved on without me. I'd been beached, washed up with the debris. There was a lot of debris. Most of it in my head.

There was a little money left, about as much as I had sense to give up drinking while I still had something resembling a liver. I quit the expensively worn-down apartment and moved to a cheaper place more like where I'd started. Way up on the top floor, with a fire escape holding on by its last bolt and a broken elevator that wasn't going to be repaired in this decade. Not a flophouse, but not by much.

I'd paid the rent on my office for a year in advance, which turned out to be the second smartest thing I did with the cash after paying off the Packard. I went back to work. Elroy looked me over severely the morning I came back, while he buffed my Italian leather shoes. "You been hung out to dry while you's gone," he said critically. Caught red-handed, I could only nod. "Gotta git yourself some stability." I gave him two bucks for the sage advice, and for not rubbing it in.

It was like coming back from a new and different war, starting over a third time. In the dead hours of the day, after a couple hands of Canfield, I started looking into the mayor of Las Hadas.

Henry Wadsworth Kildragon, a Broderick Crawford of a politician. Meaty, loud, tough as a fifty-cent steak, and very connected. In his youth, he'd run illegal booze up and down the coast for rich clients. Rumor was, he'd eliminated the competition himself. That hadn't hurt his reputation, either. The society pages framed him regularly, him and his wife. She was the former Jenette Demarque, nee Pelata, star of no film you've ever seen unless you like your film stars in black masks and socks, but still sharp enough to have caught your eye from a chorus line. That's where Kildragon spotted her. The dark hair and green eyes of the daughter belonged to her. The nose maybe was H. W.'s, but he had a pretty tiny nose for such a fist of a face.

The thing about the daughter was, I couldn't turn up much on her. Oh, she'd been to good schools, mostly far away. She'd been in the middle of some sort of graduate studies, when something changed, something happened that had caused her to move back into the family home. End of story. Was she a spoiled little daddy's girl? No, everybody who knew Janine thought she was a swell kid, unconcerned with her own beauty and untainted by her crummy, vain, and nasty parents. No one had any explanation for why she would have wanted to return to the family nest. But from the moment she had, she'd vanished. Nobody but me was seeing her now, and I was only dating her on the inside of my eyelids.

You'll say this was none of my business and I should have stayed out of the family closet. You're right. But somewhere during my inebriate period that girl became an obsession.

A few jobs floated my way while I was prospecting for Janine Kildragon. One was for Senor Aranjuez, who thought his wife was cheating on him-that's maybe half of what a PI does, chase after one spouse or the other. Usually it turns out the fears of the offended party are wholly justified. In this instance, however, it wasn't what he thought. His wife was taking a real estate course to better herself and she didn't want him to know, 'cause she wanted to surprise him . . . also she'd borrowed from their savings to pay for it. Anyway, he was so relieved that he gave me a box of decent Cuban cigars as a gift. A man of his emotions, the Senor. In this case, joy.

It was early evening when I hauled myself up the stairs to my dingy apartment. I felt pretty good about clearing up somebody's affairs if not my own. Decided to give myself a reward. In the subterranean depths of my sock drawer I had a pint of Scotch. I took off my shoes and moseyed into the bedroom. Unwrapped the band from a cigar, slit the tip with my pocketknife, then went to light I didn't have any matches. I hunted around the dresser but didn't find any there. Usually I have a book or two stashed somewhere.

Finally I went to the closet and started slapping through my suits, until I patted the old one I didn't wear anymore and felt the hard lump in it. By the touch alone I knew what I had.

The Zippo was back.

I couldn't remember having retrieved it; it ought to have been lying in the woods somewhere near that tree.

Maybe I should have thrown it out the window. Thing was, right at the moment I had a cigar in my hand.

I snapped back the top and thumbed the wheel. It sparked. Not your usual sparks, either, but colorful ones that spiraled out for a second like a miniature fireworks display. The wick didn't even try to catch.

Before I could thumb it a second time, the door to my bedroom opened as if of its own accord.

I must have looked like an expired mackerel standing in front of the closet with my mouth open and the cigar in my fingers. The dog probably didn't care.

He was as big as I remembered, about the size of a miniature Clydesdale. His bright blue eyes were larger than you'd find even on a stuffed panda doll.

What he wasn't was a statue.

The door closed behind him, and he parked in the center of the room, staring straight at me. I considered my options, debating how much damage I could do him with a fresh Cuban corona.

I never found out. The dog spoke. "What does my master bid?"

The cigar slipped between my fingers. I tried to laugh, but nothing came out.

"I-I . . . what?" I asked.

"What does my master bid?" repeated the dog. He could've waited all day for the answer.

Other people might not have a problem with this, but I never went to those Francis the Talking Mule pictures. I said, "Can I sit down?"

The dog went out and came back carrying one of my folding kitchen chairs in his teeth. Warily, I took it from him and opened it up and sat backward on it. That at least put the chair between me and him. I leaned off it and picked up the cigar.

"Okay, I think I'm getting this," I said. "I ask you for something, and you go and retrieve it. Whatever it is." The dog nodded solemnly.

"Phenomenal idea. Let's see, I've used up my funds from the last time; how about you get me some money?"

The dog stood up and calmly went out. I listened but didn't hear him in the next room, but he couldn't have gone much farther in the time it took him to bring back the leather pouch. He placed it on the floor in front of me. I swung around the chair and retrieved it.

It was full of pennies.

Naturally. He'd guarded the pennies, and I hadn't specified the type of money. "Okay, tell me, how would I call your bigger brothers?" He said nothing but stared pointedly at the lighter. That was the key. That was how I'd called him. Now I did start laughing. No wonder the old woman had pulled a gun when I wasn't quick enough handing it over; and no wonder she hadn't shot me right away. She hadn't dared, for fear of nailing the lighter. And thinking about the old woman got me thinking about the mayor of Las Hadas and his interned daughter.

"Anything I want," I muttered, and the dog nodded again.

"I want you to bring me the daughter of H. W. Kildragon. Here, I've got a photo of her." I set down the bag and reached into my suit coat and took out my wallet. That was all the time he needed to disappear. I was holding her picture out to an empty room.

I got up and went to the dresser. The bottle was in with the socks where it belonged. I unscrewed the cap and took a good solid pull on it. The first swallow made my eyes water. I took a second pull before I replaced the cap. All I could think was, "Who's going to believe me?" Paney and Sally would've called the wagon after the first minute. Hell, so would I.

Out in the other room, there was no sign of the dog or his treasure. I thought about the bag of coins in the bedroom and decided to try an experiment. I flipped up the lighter and thumbed the wheel twice. More funny sparks.

The new dog came straight through the front door like the ghost of a train engine. He saw me and sat down and repeated what his little brother had said. Same question; very well trained. I asked him specifically for bills instead of coins and he went out the door and returned almost before his tail had gone. He carried a canvas bag by its drawstrings. I took it from him but didn't have to open it to know it was full of paper money. It looked like it had fallen off a Wells Fargo truck. I didn't ask.

I told the dog thanks. "Give yourself something you want," I said, and sent him away.

Once he'd vanished I took the bag back into the bedroom. The first dog was waiting for me there. He had a passenger.

She lay unconscious, sprawled along his back, her head resting between his massive shoulders and her black hair fanned across his neck. She was dressed in a satin nightgown the color of cinnamon that clung to every part of her. If the Scotch had brought tears to my eyes, the sight of the sleeping woman of my dreams and hallucinations robbed me of breath.

I walked around and around the dog but couldn't bring myself so much as to touch her for fear she would come awake screaming. I rubbed her hair between my fingers, though, and finally, unable to restrain myself, leaned over and kissed her as lightly as I could. Without waking she put her arms around my neck and kissed me back with more passion than I'd dreamt of. Then she let go, folded her arms across her breasts, and lay back. Her toenails were painted deep red.

I stumbled against the folding chair and collapsed on it. I ran my hand through my hair as I gaped at her. My apartment had become a broiler. I cleared my throat, and managed to say to the dog, "Take her back. Take her back right now."

Around the door he went. She wasn't out of my sight a minute before I sprang up and ran after her into the hallway. I'd changed my mind. I didn't want to lose her. Ever.

I didn't sleep at all that night. Having had her in my arms-or, more truthfully, having been in hers-I couldn't be quit of her. I paced the floor, finally smoked that cigar, and steadily drained the pint of Scotch, which should have fogged my brain a lot more than it did. Bleary-eyed, I watched the sun come up; I didn't feel any smarter than I'd been the day before.

I took a shower, got some coffee and eggs at Albright's Diner, then went to my office. There, at least, I could pretend to work.

I reread everything I'd amassed on Kildragon, made a few more calls, but gained no further insights as to what was going on between him and the girl. The only significant blip on the radar was when my friendly police departmental contact (whom everybody called "Spanking" because of some long-forgotten joke) politely told me to stay as far away as possible from Kildragon and the Las Hadas cops he owned. "It's like another country there," Spanking said. "They get hold of you, no one here's gonna lead the charge across the border."

It was good advice. There was no reason for anyone to suspect me of anything to do with the mayor and his family, but that situation might change. So I got in my car and gave myself the nickel tour of the sights in Las Hadas. The police station was a two-story brick, about two blocks off the water. I drove inland from there, up past Kildragon's estate. He had walls that Schliemann might have excavated. There were a couple of doormen guarding the gate, too, the kind who had engine blocks in their family trees. I drove past a couple of times and parked on a side street, then loitered in the hedge across the road.

I finally caught a glimpse of the house when the laundry truck arrived. For a few minutes the gate opened on a long snaking drive up a low hill to a wide adobe-colored portico. Above that stood a house that looked like some clever child had fit together interlocking building blocks at crazy angles, leaving gaps between some, standing others on end. It was too clever a design for the Kildragon I'd read about; he must have bought it already assembled to show off to people.

Somewhere up there they had her, like a princess locked in a tower, but no one could have got in without a blueprint and maybe a squad of marines. Disheartened, I drove back to the office.

Elroy shook his head at me as I shuffled through the lobby. I guess I looked like I'd fallen off the wagon again, and I didn't feel like explaining.

Late in the afternoon, out of sheer exhaustion, I put my head down on the desk blotter and slept. When I woke, it was dark, and I had a crick in my neck. Switching on the light, I checked my pocket watch. It was past eleven.

First I stepped into the little water closet adjoining the office and splashed cold water on my face. Looking in the mirror, I could see why Elroy had given me such a disapproving look. I toweled off, combed my hair, and decided I had to buy some new blades for my razor.

I took my hat and locked up, then walked along the avenue. It was a balmy night, not many people around. The walk cleared my head and by the time I got home, I was ready.

I took out the lighter and called my canine pal.

He came in like before, and asked the same question as if we hadn't done this last night. I sent him after her and he brought her back.

She looked the same, in the same spaghetti-strapped nightgown. My heart was racing again at the sight of her, but I wasn't giving in this time.

I picked her up and carried her over to the bed. She came to as I was setting her down. I don't know what I expected as much as what I hoped. She didn't fight, didn't kick and scream. She just looked up at me, green eyes searching, studying, confirming. I backed away and she sat up. She looked at the dog, then back at me.

"So it's real. Or are you a dream?" she asked.

"Funny, I've had the same question awhile now."

"How does he do it?" She meant the dog.

"You'd have to interrogate him. I just send him out."