"It figures. Look, you've got to stop - "

She wasn't paying any attention to me. She let out a high, h.o.r.n.y, squealing sound - Weeeeee - still moving a lot, and moving very fast, presumably so she could finish before Honey came in and caught her - or, rather, us - and killed her - or, rather, us.

"No," I said firmly. "You've got to stop."

"Weeeee!"

She wouldn't pay a d.a.m.ned bit of attention to me. And not entirely to my surprise, I discovered that she had the bright orange dress off, and a pink half-slip off, and was now slinking about in - from the floor up - high-heeled shoes, sheer nylon stockings apparently held up with invisible garters, sheer pink nylon panties, and a sheer pink nylon bra.s.siere, one of those low frilly ones called "Sheer Madness," or something wild like that.

It was, I'll tell you, something to see. But I couldn't afford to get carried away with the vista under the circ.u.mstances, and it's a good thing or I would have been pretty well shaken as she reached behind her back to fumble with the clasp of her bra.s.siere, the movement causing even more stretching than ordinarily. So naturally I said firmly, "This has got to stop!"

I was speaking more and more firmly, but it wasn't doing a bit of good. She got the clasp unhooked, let the bulging pink cloth start sliding down, down . . .

I said, "You really should stop, you know. Don't you think . . ."

Down the pink cloth slid, down to the floor. She was moving quite rapidly now, flinging her arms around, saying, "Vava Voom, Vava Voom!" And then a particularly strenuous conniption: "WEEEEEE!"

"Weee," I said, sort of tentatively.

Her blonde hair was starting to get loose, her arms were flying, she was rearing back, her fingers playing with the top of her pink nylon panties. "Vava VOOOM!" she cried. "Weeee . . . Weeeee!"

I suppose at practically any other time and under any other circ.u.mstances I would have heard the sound. The sound of footsteps. Footsteps in the hall, clattering closer. But I didn't. I just wasn't listening. That old Achilles thing again. And as luck would have it the blonde, though I wouldn't have believed she would really get carried so far away, was actually starting to slide the pink nylon down, either carried away by the sheer joy of the theayter or determined to make sure that old Sully remembered her when he had a spot available.

And so it happened that the blonde was only seconds from the climax of her act, crying "Weeeee" over and over in a thin, high voice, sort of scrunched forward and tugging delicately, when the door crashed open.

A large ape stepped inside saying in a loud, harsh voice, "What in h.e.l.l is comin' off in here?"

It was Fargo.

His eyes fell on the blonde, and in a flash he took in the vast bare expanse of her, as well as the oddly strained position she had gotten herself into, sort of bent over and thrust out behind and slightly atilt, tugging, and if his eyes had bugged out before, it was nothing to the way they went now.

He let out a roar like a wounded bull moose. "Ba-aby. What in h.e.l.l are you do-ing?"

The blonde didn't move, just kept tugging weakly, in the other direction now but too weakly to do any good; besides which, this moment was shot no matter how hard she tugged. In a plaintive voice she said, "Oh, honey, you spoil everything."

And I thought miserably: "Yeah, he sure does."

Twelve.

The blonde straightened up, pulling her pants on firmly, which seemed a pretty good idea, and then standing erect looked at Fargo and said plaintively, "Oh, honey, you won't let me do anything."

"Cheez," he said in a disgusted tone, shaking his head. He glanced at me, then back at the blonde. "Baby Doll," he said in a voice filled with suffering, "when is you goin' to give up your cracky ideas about a career in s...o...b..z?"

Then he turned, saying, "Come on, Baby Doll, the whole gang is waitin' on you." And he took one step toward the door.

But then he stopped.

He didn't merely stop; he froze. He came to an absolute tw.a.n.ging quivering halt, like those dogs that point their noses at birds, and he held very still, and then he slowly began shaking his head back and forth.

"No," he was mumbling. "It can't be."

I realized that it had finally penetrated Fargo's seven inches of skull that the big open-mouthed chap he had just glanced at was, despite the beret and cigar, despite what his Baby Doll had been doing in front of him, not the big open-mouthed chap he had thought him to be.

He kept mumbling to himself, wagging his head back and forth like a railroad semaph.o.r.e, "No. I'm wrong. I got to be wrong. It ain't him. I won't let it be him." He stopped mumbling momentarily but kept his head wig-wagging loosely. "I has gone cuckoo. Baby and me, we is all alone in here. That's it. I has gone cracky."

Well, Fargo had been frozen there for quite a spell - longer perhaps than you may believe - but I had been frozen for a while myself. Not, however, for as long as Fargo. So as he said his last "cracky", I was right behind him, swinging a chair. It was a heavy chair, and it landed heavily on the back of Fargo's wagging head, which stopped wagging.

He crumpled silently to the floor, all his problems solved for the moment - which was more than I could say for me. I turned, grabbed my suitcase, spun around and started out.

The blonde was gawking. "Why did you do that?" she asked me.

I didn't tell her; I was on my way.

I had heard those other male voices; I had heard Fargo say "the whole gang" was waiting; and I knew I had to move fast even if not far. Hoods were probably all over the joint, and I had a hunch that in about ten seconds half the G.o.ddam Mafia would be in here giving me a hand, a big black hand, and shooting bullets into my fatal wounds.

I jumped over Fargo, grabbed the door and slammed it shut as I went through - and hesitated. I had a momentary impulse simply to turn left and run out that door I'd come through earlier and keep on going. But it was only for a moment. I turned right, ran to the hall's end and started to leap up the stairs there.

I was going up when I heard the blonde's voice.

She yelled, "Blister! Speedy! Come here, will you? You'll never guess what happened."

Wrong again, I thought. I'll bet they guess.

But by then I was at the top of the stairs, on the Barker's second floor. I made it to the fourth floor without complication, let myself into room 418, locked the door behind me and collapsed in a chair.

Well, I'd made it to here, but I didn't exactly feel safe. I felt more like those people who use the wrong deodorant, only half-safe. I figured that any hood in his right mind would a.s.sume I must have managed to escape from the hotel - certainly that I wouldn't have remained in the Barker by choice. The trouble with that reasoning was the fact that many hoods are not in their right minds.

Even if I was safe here for a while, it looked as if my night's work had gone to waste. Once word reached Quinn that Sh.e.l.l Scott had been surprised in Sullivan's office, Quinn would have that office gone over inch by inch. Even a casual search would turn up my camera - or Quinn might simply transfer the planned meeting to another, uncontaminated location.

I swore, wondering what was going on down there in Sully's office. They might at this very moment be sending goons to search the hotel. If I knew what they were up to, I might . . .

I slapped a hand against my forehead. What was the matter with me? All I had to do to find out what was happening in Sully's office was - turn on my TV set. Moreover, I'd find out if the thing really worked.

Gabe had told me he'd left the set on Channel 12, and all I had to do was turn it on, then switch on the recorder, without necessarily starting the tape, and I'd get sound from the recorder's speaker. I jumped up, crossed to the TV receiver and turned it on, switched on the recorder at the receiver's base. While the tubes warned up I watched the twenty-one-inch screen, unconsciously holding my breath. Only when light flickered and a picture formed did I realize I was letting out my breath in a long sigh.

It was happening before my eyes; the thing was actually working - working beautifully, the picture perfect except for a blurred inch or two at the right of the screen. There was Fargo, sitting in the chair I'd hit him with, ugly eye, ma.s.sive nose, pained and sour expression, all clear as could be. He was facing almost directly toward the bar, and alongside him with one hand on his head was the blonde.

In all the rush, she hadn't had time to dress yet, and though she'd managed to put on the low and frilly bra.s.siere, that was the only change since I'd been down there myself. It was something to see on television. In fact it was astonishing to see on television.

Squatting beside the chair was Speedy Gonzales, and a couple of feet behind him was another man, identifiable from his almost noseless profile as Blister. In the blurred area at the right side of the picture tube I could make out the hazy form of another woman standing near the door.

I was so exhilirated to see the actual scene, to see what was right now transpiring in Sullivan's office and to know that this d.a.m.ned closed-circuit setup was no-fooling working, that I wasn't listening closely at first. The sound from the tape recorder's speaker was low and I turned it up.

In those first moments I'd found it difficult to believe my eyes - but now it was impossible to believe my ears. It was crazy; it didn't make sense.

Fargo, his face angry, was saying, ". . . dammit, I tell you nothing happened. How many times do I got to tell you?"

I blinked, shook my head, turned the sound up a little louder.

The blonde said, "But - " and Fargo yelled at her, "Shut up. I told you, keep your yap clammed . . . uh, Baby Doll."

I felt peculiar. This was unreal. Had I truly addled Fargo when I'd hit him on the head with that chair? Or could his noodle have gone Tilt there after he'd spotted me and was wagging his head about? Maybe he had amnesia, maybe he was simply nuts, and maybe he was just confused - but if so be was no more confused than I. I dragged a chair over in front of the set, sank down in it, keeping my eyes on the picture.

Fargo winced and put one hand on the back of his head, then said to Blister, "You and Speedy go on out in the club. Baby Doll and me, we'll be there in a minute."

They went out and closed the door. Fargo got to his feet, turned with his back to me - to the TV camera in the bar, that is - and faced the blonde. She was saying, "What's happening? Why'd you tell Speedy and Blister you just got dizzy all of a sudden? You ask me, you're dizzy now. When that guy hit you - at first I thought it was because he really liked my dance, but I guess that wasn't it. Otherwise he wouldn't of run off like that. But when that guy hit you - "

"Shut up. You and that yap of yours is goin' to drive me cracky . . . uh, Baby Doll." He paused, sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Listen to me. You know who that guy was?"

"No, but he did like my dance, though. I know, because - "

"To h.e.l.l with your G.o.ddam dance! Shut up and listen!" He didn't even call her, uh, Baby Doll, this time. He went on, his voice low and earnest. "I know who he was. But you just forget you ever seen him, understand? He wasn't here. n.o.body was here. Understand?"

"No."

"Well, nuts. I mean, you don't got to understand it. Just do what I tell you. Look, it's our secret, Sweetpants. n.o.body else is gonna know. Just do that for me, huh?"

"Why?"

"G.o.ddammit. Why? Oh, G.o.ddammit. Because I say so, G.o.ddammit. Oh! One of these days . . . Cheez. If you wasn't so. . so . . . so . . . Uh, Baby Doll, just do it, will you, please?"

"But why?"

"Oh! You are gonna drive me - " He cut it off, and from little twitching movements he made, it was pretty clear he was undergoing a mental struggle of some intensity. Finally he let his arms go up and flop down and then said, "O.K. O.K. Look. You don't know what's been goin' on around here the last couple days. But I do - and so does Frank. Frank, the boss. Now, if he finds out what happened here tonight - well, I'll put it simple. He will kill h.e.l.l out of me. You will have no more Honey Bunny."

I shuddered at the thought of anybody - especially any female so delectable as Vava Voom! - calling Fargo "Honey Bunny." But no amount of shudders would have bothered me at the moment because now I understood. And it was marvelous.

He was going on, "We just got to pretend nothing happened, n.o.body was here tonight. If Frank ever found out I . . . did it again, he would do something terrible. He already told me if I goofed any way, he'd plant me up to my neck in the stretch at Santa Anita and let the horses run over me. Baby Doll, it wasn't a joke, he would do it. And he'd bet on every G.o.ddam horse in the race just to make it more interesting." He stopped, sighed a couple of times, then went on, "So don't let a word slip about this, see? Don't even think about it."

"Well, I suppose so, honey. After all, you've been awful good to me."

"Yeah."

"You've been awful good to me."

"You said that."

"You've been awful good to me. All those pretty things."

"Yeah." There was silence for a few seconds. Fargo didn't have the most well-oiled brain in the city. But then he got it. "Yeah! Baby, you know that mink coat you went fruit for in the store - out on Wilshire?"

"Yes. Yes, I do!" Her voice was gay again.

"Well, keep your yap - don't spill nothing about this, and the coat is yours."

"Oh, honey! That wonderful long coat, almost down to my ankles. You're so good - "

"I meant the one that hangs on your shoulders - "

"That wonderful long coat - "

"Don't they call it a stole or something?"

"- down to my ankles."

"Yeah, that long coat. That's the one I meant."

"Oh, honey, you're so good to me."

Fargo made that little flipping up and then flopping down motion of his hands again, more eloquent than words.

But this super-shapely blonde knew when words had done all they could, knew the leash that kept the Fargos in line, knew that one picture is worth ten thousand words. Vava knew when to Voom!

"We been so busy," she said, "you haven't even kissed me." She reached behind her again, stretched, let the bra.s.siere slide down her arms to the floor. "Don't you want to kiss me?"

Well, that was a twist, I thought. Did she always do that? I had no idea, since I didn't know much about Fargo's habits. That is, about his good habits. But at least he, too, knew when to stop talking. In a minute they turned out the lights.

But I didn't care. Nothing could diminish my happy mood now. Neither Fargo nor his gal would spill the story about me - and almost surely my TV camera was safe in the bar. All was set for that upcoming meeting, and I felt reasonably secure and almost snug here in room 418 of the Barker Hotel.

Everything was rosy - for everybody.

I'd got my job done, it was paying off, and I had high hopes for a real payoff later today.

Fargo was getting what he wanted - he wouldn't be buried in the stretch at Santa Anita.

And the blonde would get her mink coat, almost down to her ankles.

Thirteen.

I awoke suddenly, but without the dopiness which normally characterizes my return from wherever I go. That was probably because I hadn't gone very far. I leaned forward, turned down the sound blasting from the tape-recorder's speaker.

On the TV screen now, two men were placing leather chairs in a couple of ragged lines before Sullivan's gray desk. The sound of them moving in and out, maybe the slamming of the door, had awakened me. Nothing important was happening - the important thing was that the closed-circuit system was still closed, still working admirably.