"Knock it off, G.o.ddam you. Just tell me."

He winced. "It was one of Frank's boys, I don't know which - that's a fact, Scott. I don't know. Last night it was, sometime. He made it look like an accident. You know, in the bathtub."

"How'd they find her, Jay?"

"h.e.l.l, that's all I know. Just that Frank gave out the word to do it. I got no idea about any of the rest of it."

"Who did it, Jay?" He shook his head and I grabbed his arm, kind of squeezed it. "Who do you think it was?"

"I could be wrong, Scott. I don't know. But - well, Papa handled Heigman, you know. And he was in on the party with Chester. So it could've been Papa."

"Yeah. It could have been Papa Ryan. You find out for sure, Jay. And let me know as soon as you find out. You got it?"

"Sure. Yeah, I can get the word, Scott. O.K."

"How come you didn't mention it earlier about Lolita?"

"h.e.l.l, you didn't ask nothing about it, it just didn't come to mind. Anyways, I didn't figure it was too important."

"You didn't, huh?" I stopped. In a few seconds I said, "You wanted me to slug you, didn't you, Jay?"

"Yeah, I did - "

If there was more, it never came out. I said, "Fine," and hit him on the mouth, and he flew back against the side of the car, slumped to the ground. He didn't get up this time. I pulled him a few feet to the side, left him lying on his back.

A little light fell on his face. Quinn would believe Jay's story now.

The ringing of the phone brought me back from the edge of sleep.

After leaving Jay I'd come straight back to the Spartan, mixed a drink and relaxed on the living-room divan, wondering if Jay would call. I grabbed the phone, shaking my head hard to get completely awake. It was Jay.

"Scott?" His voice was tight. He sounded excited.

"Yeah. What's up?"

"Man, get out of there. When I told Frank you got away, he flipped. He's gone and got all the triggers in town on your tail - he's putting up ten thousand clams for the guy who blasts you. But that ain't all - "

"What? Ten thousand - "

" - he's got the cops coming to put the arm on you, too."

"Cops? Are you nuts? I - "

"Don't argue. Get out of there, will you? If Frank's boys or the fuzz get them pictures . . . Scott, you ain't got them on you, do you?"

"No, they're in a safe place."

"Well, you ain't. Beat it - "

"Slow down. How in h.e.l.l did Frank - "

"Just beat it, please beat it, will you? Look, I'm callin' from a pay phone, which I sneaked out to. Get yourself out of your pad - where in a minute guys are gonna be shooting at you if you don't hurry - and call me back if you want to ask questions." He gave me his number.

I didn't even write it down, clamped it in my mind, hung up the phone and took off. The urgency in Jay's voice had gotten through to me.

Two hard-looking men came in the front entrance of the Spartan as I was about to leave - by the back door. They didn't see me, and even though I didn't know the men, I had a strong feeling it was just as well they didn't see me. One of them was tall, moved his head slowly from side to side like a tank turret as he advanced, and wore a black suit lumpy at the left shoulder; the other was shorter and thin, with the bleached look of a grub, wearing a gray snap-brim hat and a trench coat that had been too long in the trench. Two of them - five G's apiece?

I went out the Spartan's rear exit and trotted four blocks to where I'd parked Jay's Thunderbird. On my way to Beverly Boulevard, I drove back to North Rossmore and past the Spartan. A black-and-white police car was parked at the curb in front of the hotel.

I drove to a pay phone, called the number Jay had given me. He answered as soon as the phone rang.

"What in h.e.l.l is going on?" I asked him.

He started talking in a gush of words, and after a few seconds of that I said, "Slow down, Jay. Start at the beginning - when you got back to the ranch - and bring me up to date in sequence."

"O.K." He paused and I heard him take a deep breath, let it out. "Well, when I got back and told Frank you got away, he just about had a brain blow, like I said. When he was a little calmed down, I told him what you mentioned, about you knowing practically everything except how many moles there is on his gluteus maximus. About the meetings, and who the guys is - and you was going to spring some kind of bomb tomorrow, you know?"

"Yeah. So what happened?"

"What didn't? He looked like the shrimps he ate for dinner was alive and eating back. He got so shook he even stopped chewing me out for letting you get away, and getting myself half killed." He paused. "It was that last one done it, Scott. I don't hold it against you, only you might've pulled the punch - "

"He swallowed the tale, right?"

"So far. After he got shook he sent me out, but I hung an ear next to the door. And what does he do but get on the phone and start calling them cats he meets with."

"How do you know it wasn't somebody else?"

"How I know is, he's changing the time of the meet. Says it can't wait till next Monday, they got to make it right away - tomorrow."

I smiled. I didn't know if this development would do me any good, but I knew a meeting on Monday would be of no help at all. It was hours after midnight now, already early Tuesday morning, which was cutting it pretty close, but at least Miller would still be alive when the meeting was held.

"What time tomorrow?" I asked.

"Noon, so they can all get away during lunch time. Same place - Sully's office, back of the Gardenia Room."

"You hear who he called?"

"Just one guy. I couldn't ride the Earie there next to Frank's door for long. It was Smith. But this time I heard the first name - Thornwall. Frank told him he was calling all the rest, too."

"Thornwall Smith? But that's Judge Smith."

"Yeah. Ain't it the nuts?"

Judge Thornwall Smith, a most righteous man. Judge Smith, who had presided at the trial of Ross Miller.

Jay went on, "It was when Frank was jawing with Judge Smith I heard him fix it to get the cops on your can. He told Smith to get the paperwork done, and he'd call a copper he knows and get a ball rolling there. Mainly he wanted the fuzz to have a reason for picking you up and holding you a while. You follow me?"

"Sure, hold me till Wednesday afternoon, say. But how'd he manage to frame me so fast?"

"No frame, Scott. It's a legit beef."

I blinked. "Legit?"

"Yeah, you're a car thief. See, I naturally told Frank you took my heap - that's the way we worked it out, you know. So he says for me to make the complaint, and naturally I got to do it. Frank's figuring some other angles, but that was his first idea. It must be on the radio by this time."

"It is," I said unhappily, remembering the uniform car in front of the Spartan. And also remembering, with a hollow feeling in my middle, that the car in question. Jay's jazzy blue T-Bird, was no more than ten yards from me now.

Jay said, "That ain't all."

"You mean the little matter of ten G's to the guy who ma.s.sacres me?"

"Yeah, there's that - he's got not only the professionals but even the amateur triggers in town looking for you, and he says they're to blast you in front of the Police Building if they got to. But that ain't what I meant."

"You mean - there's more?"

"Scott, Frank would sink California in the Atlantic Ocean if it'd just drown you. He thought you was done for tonight, and he'd barely started to loosen up when he finds out you ain't dead. Well, this tightens him up so much he can't hardly move, so he's doin' everything he knows how to if it'll just slow you down."

"Jay, what is this - this 'something more'?"

"Well, he says at the meeting tomorrow, another thing he means them to work out is for your snooper's and gun licenses to be no good. Invoked, or took back, or something like that."

"Revoked." The word fell from my mouth like a wet meatball. I said slowly, "How in h.e.l.l can a slob like Quinn get my license yanked?"

"Don't ask me, Scott - for stealin' my car, maybe. That's one of the things they're going to talk about at the meeting." He paused. "I don't know how he does the things he does. But I'll bet he can do it. He's got some pretty high-powered friends scattered around the state."

I was beginning to think they were higher and more powered than I had guessed. At least as high as Judge Smith and Ira Semmelwein - both of whom, I a.s.sumed, would be at that noon meeting. In company with several other guys I didn't know about but whom I wanted, especially now, to know plenty about. I could probably learn plenty about all of them, too, including Frank Quinn, if I could somehow learn what went on at that meeting. And a fat lot of good that it did me. I couldn't afford to go near the Barker Hotel again.

I couldn't afford to stand here in this phone booth much longer, either. I glanced out at Jay's T-bird, then said into the phone, "Is there anything else exciting, Jay?"

"No, I guess that's about all of it."

"There was one other answer you were going to get for me, remember?"

"You mean - about the girl?"

"That's what I mean."

"I told you right before."

"Papa Ryan, huh?"

"Yeah. It was Papa."

"Anything else?"

"That's it. Uh, you still got those, uh, copies, don't you?"

"I do. But you've more than kept your part of the bargain, Jay. I'll keep mine." I could hear him sigh. "But," I went on, "they'll still be intact until Wednesday - just so you don't get any wrong ideas."

"Don't worry. I'm with you. Don't worry. Just . . . be sure to take care of it Wednesday."

"I will, Jay." I paused. "Unless I'm dead, of course."

There were long seconds of silence. Then he said, his voice joyless, "Scott, you wouldn't - you wouldn't do that to me!"

On that mutually depressing note we hung up. For a moment I thought of the 4300 officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, now trying to find me and jail me. And of the word from Quinn going out over the underworld wireless, reaching into sw.a.n.k nightclubs and crummy dives, the floating c.r.a.p games, the bookie joints, Sunset Strip apartments, downtown L.A. Hotels.

Then I took off in a hurry.

I drove a mile or so away, then started checking cars parked along the curb. I didn't like it, but I couldn't keep driving Jay's car. So I would have to steal another one. The first two cars were locked but the third, a three-year-old Ford, wasn't; two minutes later I'd crossed the ignition wires and was driving the Ford down the street. The probability was that it wouldn't be reported stolen until at least seven or eight o'clock in the morning. It was four a.m. now, so that gave me a little time.

But if Quinn managed to accomplish everything he was trying to do, I would need more than a little time; I'd need a miracle. Especially since I couldn't ask the police for help now; whatever I did, I would have to do alone. I parked on a dimly lighted street and sat quietly, thinking. I went back over everything that had happened in the case, all I knew and had guessed, the things I knew from personal experience and the other things I'd been told.

This was a peculiar one, this case. I knew I didn't have a thing on which the police, much less the courts, could act. Particularly in these days when so many of our laws, so much of the public's apparent sympathy, seem directed at protecting and coddling the criminal, from the juvenile hood on up to the narcotics peddler and the Communist and professional killer. So I was in the peculiar position of knowing what the crimes were and who had committed those crimes, yet being unable to do a d.a.m.ned thing about it. Actually, my major concern was not to ama.s.s enough evidence to hang Quinn, but simply to get my hands on any kind of evidence which would prevent, or at least postpone, Miller's execution.

But I had just finished going over the whole case in my mind, everything, and I didn't have it. Not yet. So finally I faced the obvious: there were only two possible ways out, neither of them very exhilirating. One of those possibilities required my attendance at Frank Quinn's upcoming Halloween ball for hoodlums, but until I learned how to make myself invisible - and immortal - that was going to be my very last resort. Which left only the noon meeting tomorrow - or, rather, later today - in the Barker Hotel.

I knew I couldn't be there in person. But maybe I could bug Sullivan's office somehow, plant a microphone - or even a small transmitter, similar to the one which was about now in Dallas, Texas. With luck I could hear what went on during the meeting, even tape it. But that wouldn't tell me who was in attendance, what they looked like, what the men's names were. Just knowing what was discussed might give me much of what I needed - if, of course, I could get a microphone into the Barker.

And that thought gave me a sensation of snails inching along my spine on a cold night. I leaned back on the car seat and pressed my fingers against my closed eyes so hard that I saw whirling lights and lines, like a TV test pattern dissolving against my closed lids, geometric designs of light and darkness forming and fading. Then I sat up, fumbled for cigarettes, swearing softly under my breath. I got out my lighter, started to flip it on - and stopped.

I sat bolt upright. I had it. I knew I had it.

But it meant I would have to go back to the Barker Hotel again.

Whether I liked it or didn't.

And I didn't.

Eleven.

At four-thirty a.m. I was in another phone booth, waiting for the man I'd called to answer the ring. He was a guy named Gabe, a former client, and now a friend of mine; moreover, he was an electronics expert, a top-notch TV technician, owner of three retail television stores, two in L.A. and one in Hollywood.

I was calling him because I hoped to bug Sullivan's office not merely with a microphone - but with television.

Gabe had become my client when he learned his teenage son was joy-popping, taking shots of narcotics for kicks; after a tour conducted by me, during which the kid saw men and boys in the agony of withdrawal, and a once-sweet-faced girl of fifteen who'd paid for her habit through prost.i.tution, the boy hadn't joy-popped any more, since the joy had kind of gone out of the pop. Consequently, Gabe would probably have helped me bug the inside of a blast furnace in action if I asked him to.

He answered, yawning, at about the sixth ring.

"Gabe?" I said. "Sh.e.l.l Scott - I need some help."