THE BUILD-UP

MY head throbbed, a sharp point of pain at the base of my skull. When I brought my hand away from the pain, it was sticky. I forced my eyes open, saw the dark red stain on my fingers. Still barely conscious, I moved my right hand and something dropped from it to the floor. It was a gun — mine, a little .32 revolver. I'm a private eye — that's why I always carry the gun.

Close on my left was the open window. It was screwy. I shouldn't have been sitting in an overstuffed chair next to the window. I struggled to my feet, got my hands on the sill. Six stories below was Main Street. Main Street in Altamira, California. I remembered part of it. There'd been the game here in the Raleigh Hotel. We'd been playing poker — five of us. Vic Foster, Danny Hastings, Jason, Stone, and me, Shell Scott.

I turned around. The felt-topped table was on its side in the middle of the room, green money on the carpet, alongside it. But it didn't look like more than a thousand or so. A couple of highball glasses lay on the floor. It looked as if there'd been a fight.

Then I saw him.

He was flat on his back beyond the table, eyes open and staring, blood all over the front of him, his white shirt streaked. It was Danny Hastings, two bullet holes in his chest. His face was marked up, blood under his nose and on his lips. No pulse, no breath — he was dead, all right.

The last I remembered of the game, there'd been only Vic Foster, Danny and me playing: the two others had left minutes before. Then Foster had quit, grabbed some fresh air at the window and walked behind me. Right after that, boom. The lights had gone out.

I heard a siren, went to the window, looked down as two cars pulled into the curb. Policemen left the cars and hurried into the building. At my feet was the little .32 I'd dropped when I'd come to; I picked it up, swung out the cylinder. Two empty cartridge cases were in it.

I didn't move for a moment, forcing myself to think. A Borneo headhunter could have figured out that Foster had killed Danny and was framing me for the murder — and Foster didn't do things halfway. That would be fixed so I'd have a fat chance of explaining to the police — especially now. For two weeks the papers had been riding the police hard about the still-unsolved murder of a union official named Tyler. Under the circumstances, they'd solve Danny's murder fast; it could even happen that they'd solve Tyler's murder fast.

My lips were sore, puffed and bruised. I'd been slugged while unconscious. Danny's face was marked up, too; it would look as if we'd been in a fight — and that could explain the lump on my head. It didn't help that I'd knocked Danny on his fanny a week ago.

I ran, I raced out of the room, down the stairs, and was at the third floor before I heard the heavy steps pounding upward. I didn't know how much the police knew about me — but I knew I had a murder gun in my pocket. A few feet on my right was the open door to room 302. I could see the middle-aged hotel maid putting new sheets on the bed. I jumped to the door and jerked off my coat, held it loosely in my hand as the officers reached the landing.

I glared inside at the woman, my hand on the doorknob. The two officers stood at the head of the stairs. "Okay, baby," I shouted, "if that's how you want it, you can fry in hell!"

The little woman's jaw dropped open and her eyes got very wide as I slammed the door shut with a crash that rang down the hallway. I swung around, putting on my coat, and walked to the stairs. The two uniformed officers were looking at me; one of them ran his eyes over my dark hair, my face, my puffed lips, checking my size and build. That probably meant they had some kind of description of the "killer."

"Well?" I roared at them. They looked at each other. I ran a finger over my puffed lips and mumbled, "The bitch, damn wildcat," as I started to brush by them. They shrugged, went on up the stairs.

Moments after they were out of sight the door behind me opened and the little old lady looked out. "What did I do?" she asked me.

I was on my way to the lobby. I got there, looked around. Several shops could be reached from the hotel lobby. I walked into one of them, a florist's shop. Several thousand dollars that had been in my wallet while I was unconscious were gone, I discovered, but I found a few bucks in my trousers pocket, bought a dozen roses, and continued with them to the street.

I was sweating, but I knew the mental storm wasn't showing on my face. Years of high-stakes poker had taught me to control my expression and bearing; but, inside, my kidneys were coming apart. Nobody stopped me while I walked to a cab a few yards away, told the driver to light out. He lit, I switched cabs a dozen blocks from the hotel, leaving my roses behind, got out of the second cab three blocks from Green Park. At Green Park I walked boldly onto the grass, picking up somebody's newspaper on the way, made a pillow of my coat and lay down with the newspaper over my face.

I thought about the four men I'd been playing poker with until about four p.m. today, Thursday. Vic Foster was an attorney and small-time politician with big ideas who'd twice run unsuccessfully for Congress. He was a tall, bony man, thin and sagging with a craggy face. Foster looked like an old-time western sheriff relaxing after cleaning up on all the outlaws in town. By shooting them in the back. Short, fat, white-haired Arthur Jason was a circuit court judge. Bert Stone, fifty years old and six-feet-four inches tall, with a big red nose that looked as if somebody had just slugged him on it, was an electronics expert and well-to-do businessman, owner of Altamira's biggest radio and TV agency and repair business. I understand that he could be had for "special" work if the price was right. He'd been in trouble a few months ago for allegedly putting a "bug" or wiretap on a local policeman's telephone. It had been a two-day sensation in the news, but wound up "all a mistake."

Danny Hastings, until today, had been a man with quite a bit of weight in town. A councilman, he knew most of Altamira's — and many of the State's — bigwigs on a first-name basis, and I'd picked up word on occasion that Danny was a fixer, bagman, go-between. If you wanted something fixed up for you, the word was "See Danny." But not any more.

It looked as if there'd been a falling out among thieves — but that didn't explain why I'd been picked as the patsy. And another thing was bothering me. If the police had arrived a few minutes earlier, they'd have found me unconscious on the floor, and unconscious men don't go around shooting holes in people. How could Foster have known I'd be on my feet when the police arrived?

I thought back to the end of that poker game. The five of us had sat around the table, well over a hundred thousand dollars in the game, a good third of it piled in front of me. Danny was dealing draw. I'd raised Foster's opening bet mainly because I was pushing a lucky streak, and then drawn one card to four hearts, getting a spade. Jason on my right was out; Stone and Danny on my left were three-card draws; Foster's craggy face had got a frown on it at my raise, but he'd called and drawn two cards. After the draw he looked at his hand, checked to me.

Unless they'd helped, Stone and Danny, caught between me and the opener, would probably fold if I chucked it in; Foster was the only man I felt worried about. And by now I knew him pretty well. You learn a lot about men in poker games. With the ante, there was about ten thousand in the pot. So I counted out ten thousand, watching Foster from the corner of my eye. He reached up and tugged gently on his left ear lobe.

Whenever Foster got in a tight spot, and was worried, he unconsciously pulled that ear lobe. If he'd gone in with three of a kind, that was all he had now. And his three of a kind couldn't beat my nothing, not when he played with his ear. I threw the money into the middle of the table and said, "I'll match the pot. Make it interesting."

Stone scratched that big nose of his, then he and Danny tossed their cards into the middle of the table. Foster said, "Trying to buy it, eh, Scott? Hell, I got nothing in there." He showed two kings. "Openers," he said, and tossed in his hand. I started to take in the money.

Foster said, "Shell, you still carry that little popgun?"

I patted my left armpit. "You know it." I looked at the money on the table. "I'll be carrying over a hundred thousand when I leave here."

He grinned. "Not unless you use the gun."

"The way you guys play poker, I don't need it. Deal."

He didn't deal. He said, "Yeah, you're lucky at cards, all right. Lucky at cards, unlucky in love."

"Not always."

"Always."

He wasn't smiling. He was thinking about Gloria.

Foster didn't like me a bit today — or any day; maybe he even hated me. Both of us had seen quite a lot of Gloria Meadows, only Foster hadn't seen much of her lately; I'd been holding her hand for most of the time this past month. Nobody could blame Vic Foster for resenting the switch in Gloria's attentions, because she was a dream that was still there when you woke up.

Gloria Meadows, slim but with plenty of oomph here and there, or whatever you want to call it, and no matter what you call it, she had it. Eyes deep and dark as sin, lips with more personality than some whole people, a soft, husky laugh like a backsliding devil's. She played piano and sang at a supper club downtown, sang in her soft voice that was white fingers on your spine, that turned a pop ballad into bedroom whispers. She had everything she needed, and all that I wanted. I'm a twenty-nine-year-old bachelor; but Gloria made me feel like becoming a thirty-year-old papa. Maybe I was in love with her: I wasn't sure yet. But I was sure about Vic Foster. He was in love with her.

Stone and Jason got up, said they'd had enough, and left almost immediately. After three more hands, Foster said he was through, then went to the window, saying he needed some fresh air. In a minute he walked around behind me. I was looking at Danny when it happened.

Danny didn't look surprised; his eyes went up over my head, then down again, and that was all. But he must have been very surprised a few seconds later. Lying in the park with a newspaper over my face, I couldn't even remember if the blow had hurt; I knew it hurt now, though. I knew one other thing, too: Foster should have called my ten thousand. He must have known he'd get it back. But habit was too strong; a man plays poker the way he lives.

From the park I went to the Dormann Hotel, directly across Main Street from the Raleigh. At the desk, a small gray clerk looked at me with no sign of recognition. There was one room available, on the sixth floor, facing Main Street; a "Mr. Brown" had checked out an hour or so ago. But his description was three or four inches over six feet, lot of bushy gray hair, big fat nose. "Brown," then, was Bert Stone. I paid for one night.

In the room I put a quarter in the radio and went to the window. Straight across the street was room 612 in the Raleigh. I could still see the overstuffed chair I'd been propped in while unconscious. The radio warmed up on what sounded like a news broadcast. I heard the words, "Shell Scott."

Your own name can always stop you, but especially if your first name is Shell and you'd like to keep it a secret. I'd missed the description of the murder scene, apparently, but the announcer went on to describe me very well, including "armed and dangerous." Then there was some interesting information. Victor Foster, Judge Jason and Bert Stone had told the police they'd been in a jolly "friendly dime-and-dollar" poker game with Danny Hastings and Shell Scott; the three of them had left together, leaving Scott alone with Danny Hastings. That was all they knew. But they were prepared to testify to that much, willingly, as good honest citizens interested in law and order.

To the police, and the average citizen, the testimony of those three upstanding citizens would be the truth; anything I said would be the natural attempt of a murderer to clear himself and shift the blame to others.

It was clever enough; they'd given this one a real buildup. But I had one ace left; I was alive and free, which those bums hadn't counted on. I used the room phone to call the home and office numbers of all three men but didn't get an answer anywhere. That figured. I got out of the hotel in a hurry, took a cab to Elm Street, where I hailed another cab and left it three blocks from Gloria's apartment house, the Essex, on quiet, tree-shaded Pepper Street. Gloria answered my ring. It was nearly dusk and she was already dressed for work. She had on a cocktail dress, as brief and stimulating as a straight shot, transparent as a martini with one olive. She didn't look surprised to see me, just a little worried.

Gloria stepped close and looked up into my face. "Shell, darling, I hoped you'd come here. I heard it on the radio. You didn't . . ."

"No, sweetheart. I didn't. You alone?"

She nodded, pulled me inside, literally shut the door with me, pressing me back against it. "Shell, honey, I knew you didn't . . . how did it happen —"

"Hold it. Most of the cops in town are looking for me. I haven't time to explain. Ah, sweetheart, uh . . . I haven't time for that, either." I pushed her away from me and we sat down, then I said to her, "Gloria, I'm sewed up in a tight frame and Foster's the guy with the needle. You know more about him than anybody else in town, including me. That's why I'm here, and I won't be here long. If you've got any idea why Foster and his pals would kill Danny and try to frame me for it, which is what happened, then give. I've got to start climbing out of this hole and I've got to find Vic Foster."

Dark brown eyes, long-lashed lids, soft unsmiling mouth. Her tongue moved slowly over her red lower lip; she shook her head. "I don't know, Shell. Vic was here a couple nights ago. That's why I couldn't meet you, remember?"

"Yeah."

"He asked me to marry him. But I told him no. That I wouldn't even be seeing him any more. You know why. I don't want to see anybody but you. And I told him so."

"How'd he take it?"

"Got angry. He'd been drinking, but he really began pouring it down then. Stormed out soon after."

I lit a cigarette. "Foster ever let anything drop about Danny? He say anything to you at all?"

She frowned. "He said something. That last night. But I can't recall . . ." She was quiet a few moments, then nodded slowly. "Yes, I remember now because it was so strange. He swore for a while, then he said, 'First Danny gets religion, and now you get stupid.' Something like that."

"Danny gets religion? What would that mean?"

"I don't know. But Vic said something else. I think I asked him what he was talking about and he said Danny had been spilling his . . . insides — to a priest."

"A priest?"

Gloria nodded. "That's what Vic said. But after that he got quiet, then yelled at me some more. Finally stormed out."

I could figure Danny's spilling his guts because he and Foster, and the other two, undoubtedly did know enough about each other so any one of them could hang them all. But to a priest? Danny lived on the west side of town. Pine Street; if he'd seen a priest it would probably have been in the church at Eighteenth and Pine, Father Shanlon. But I couldn't figure out how Foster would know about it. Danny wouldn't have told him. And Father Shanlon sure as hell — as Heaven wouldn't have mentioned it.

I said to Gloria, "You got any idea where Foster might go if he wanted to stay out of circulation temporarily?"

She did have an idea, but it didn't help much at the moment. A couple of months back, before I'd met Gloria and when she'd been seeing a lot of Vic Foster, he'd left town for a week or so and stayed at a small house he owned. "Vic said he had to get away for a few days, get some rest for his ulcer. Nobody would know he was at this house; kind of a hideaway for him, place to relax."

"Where is it?"

She shook her head. "Just out of town somewhere, Shell, but I don't recall where." She squinted at me. "He wrote me one letter, though; I even answered it, so the return address must have been on it. I've probably still got the letter — but no telling where. Want me to start looking?"

I stood up. "Yeah. But I can't wait. I'll phone you later. The police will probably get around to you before long. Don't lie to them and get yourself fouled up in this. Tell them I was here, and everything I said. Might even help me." I thought about that for a minute and had an idea concerning a cop named Billings.

"All right," she said. "If the police or anyone's here when you phone, I'll say, 'Hello, Lucille'." She got gracefully to her feet. "If I'm alone, I'll say, 'Shell, honey, honey, honey —'"

"Whoa!" Gloria had the habit, at certain highly stimulating moments, of saying, "honey," to me over and over again with a kind of hot husky intensity that did to my spine what Lionel Hampton does to a vibraphone. Wild music would click from my vertebrae, maybe audible only to me, but real crazy stuff in my ears. Stuff I always wanted to hear more of, too, but not at a time like this when hilarious cops with guns might burst in and fill my rear end with lead. Those wild-music moments were moments when I wanted no lead in me anywhere, but particularly not there.

So I trotted to the door. Another cab. Pretty quick the drivers were going to know me. This one took me to Eighteenth and Pine. Father Shanlon was a tall, thin man with a quiet voice and quiet eyes. It took a few minutes for me to explain what I wanted. He was shocked to hear that Danny had been murdered, but he didn't show any expression at all while I explained that the police were looking for me, looking for the wrong man.

Finally I said, "Father, had Danny just recently been coming to see you? Maybe asking for your help in . . . in some matter?"

He smiled. "Mr. Scott, I'm afraid that any conversations we might have had would be improper subjects for discussion."

It took me three more minutes of fast explanation, but then Father Shanlon told me that Danny Hastings had talked to him on several recent occasions. "He was troubled," Father Shanlon said. "He asked me for advice, and I told him to search his own mind and heart, that the answer was there." He sighed heavily. "Perhaps that wasn't enough."

Father Shanlon naturally wouldn't say what had been troubling Danny, but I told him what I suspected, and he took me to the confessional booth. I looked, searched while Father Shanlon watched me with an odd, unbelievable expression on his face. Neither of us said a word until I found it.

When I straightened up, Father Shanlon's expression wasn't unbelieving any more, but lined and sorrowful. "What is it?" he asked me quietly.

"I'm not quite sure, Father. I'm not the electronics expert — Bert Stone is, I told you there were three of them in on this deal." I held the thing out in the palm of my hand, a small oblong case a little larger than a pack of king size cigarettes. "It's some kind of bug, though. I'll give you generous odds . . . I mean, there's little doubt about it. Probably some kind of transmitter. Radio transmitter."

"But . . . It's impossible . . ."

"I'm afraid not, Father," I said. "Is this worse than murder?"

He didn't answer me, but his face answered for him. I'd found what appeared to be a battery-operated transmitter fastened beneath a seat; the receiver would have been almost anywhere within a mile or two of the church — with Foster, Stone, or Jason listening as Danny poured out his doubt and torment to his priest.

Father Shanlon agreed that I could take the small transmitter with me. Just before I left I said, "I'm sorry about this, Father. But you can understand why I had to come here. The men that did this . . . well. They've got me on a real hot spot."

He smiled gently. "I rather think they're on a much hotter spot than you, Mr. Scott."

This time I walked. I'd been pressing my luck long enough with cab drivers, and the address I wanted was only a few blocks away. Police Sergeant Dave Billings lived there, so I was going calling with my little .32 in my hand. We weren't exactly friends, but I'd known him ever since he'd worked traffic. He worked the day watch out of Homicide now, and I knew he often got home about this time; it was a little after seven p.m.

At seven thirty-five he turned in the drive and drove toward the closed garage. I waited till he had both hands on the garage door, then stepped from where I'd been waiting around the corner, stuck the gun in his back and said, "Easy, Billings. Just hang onto the door. All I want is some conversation."

I could feel the muscles in his back ridge and tighten, moving the gun; I stepped away from him. "Back in the car, Billings; first drop your gun, slow." In a few seconds we were both in his Ford sedan, with me in the rear seat still pointing my gun at him, his .38 in my pocket. I had him drive out to the street and park a couple blocks away. He already knew about the murder, so I merely told him exactly what had happened.

When I finished he said, "I won't call you a liar, Scott. Not while you've got a gun on me." He turned his head slightly. "Thirty-two, isn't it? A thirty-two killed Hastings."

"Sure. This is the gun that killed him. It's my gun. Only I didn't use it. I'm not going to tell you again. But half the town knows that Shell Scott always carries a gun. I made sure half the town knew it."

He grunted. There was a little clicking sound and I noticed that Billings had leaned away from me. I grabbed him by the back of his coat collar and yanked him against the seat. "What in the hell you trying to do?"

He swore. "Take it easy," he said. "Can't I get a light?" A cigarette was dangling from his mouth. I could feel perspiration moist on my palms.

"Billings," I said, "don't pull anything like that again. You can smoke when we finish talking. Till then, don't even wiggle."

He said, "You and Hastings had a beef a week or so back, didn't you?"

"Little one. Stang's bar and grill. He was drunk, took a swing at me, and I knocked him down. Hell, I was a shade spiffed myself. The boys who hung this frame on me probably figured that was another good reason to make me their patsy. Besides, they knew I'd be carrying my popgun. Handy murder gun for them. Most important, Foster was hot for my girl. With me out of the way, maybe he could do himself some good. And you've admitted the police got an anonymous tip. Another thing, I'm out maybe seventy thousand bucks today in that small game, bonus for the killers. That enough reason?"

"Sure," he said. I was making a big impression.

I told Billings then about my visit with Father Shanlon. He didn't say anything. I had him get out of the car and walk a few feet beyond it, then I put his gun and the little transmitter on the curb and told him to wait till I was long gone before getting them. And to check on that transmitter. Just before I got back into the car I said, "That's it, Billings. Nobody has heard my story before, but I could hardly walk into police headquarters with it. Now you know my side. Try to believe it."

He still didn't say anything. I started the car and took off in a hurry, went around the corner with the tires shrieking, and put some distance between Billings and me. At a pay phone I called Gloria.

"Hello, Shell, Shell, honey, honey, honey."

"Whoa, I get it —"

"Shell, you shouldn't have left. You got me all . . . I jumped right into a cold shower. I've just got a towel on —"

"Stop it, I didn't call —"

"Wait . . . there! No towel! You should see me now. I haven't a thing —"

"Shut up will you? Did you find that address?"

She sighed, told me it was 1844 Kingsman Road. That would be about ten miles out past the city limits. I hung up on Gloria in the middle of dialogue that ordinarily I'd have asked her to repeat, and gunned the Ford.

The house was small and white, surrounded by eucalyptus trees, back from the road about a hundred feet. A car was parked in the drive alongside it, and a light was burning beyond drawn curtains. I parked at the side of the road, walked to the house and found a window with the blinds up about an inch. Peering through it I could see into the room. Foster was in there.

He was standing, his back to me, at a small portable bar squirting soda water into a highball. He turned around and stared at the glass for a few seconds, then drank deeply from it. And I suddenly realized that I hadn't been really angry at any time since I'd been snapped by Foster, because seeing him now, the gripe swelled up in me suddenly, hot and red like a six-foot boil. I almost raised the .32 in my hand, but I didn't want to shoot the guy; I wanted to play with his head like a gourd and listen to the words spill out of him.

The front door was closed but unlocked and I eased it open, walked a few steps down a narrow hall to the partly open door behind which Foster was, pushed it open and stepped inside. Foster was looking away from me, didn't see or hear me. Not at first. I glanced around the room, then walked toward Foster with my gun pointed at his head. He turned casually, saw me, and his face got white.

His eyes dropped to the gun and riveted there. "Don't!" he squawked. "Shell. For God's sake, don't. We can work it out."

I kept walking toward him and he moved away from me until his back was against the wall. "Shell, we can fix it, I tell you. We can get you out of this."

"Seems only right, Foster," I said. "You worked hard enough to get me into it."

"Please." His voice rose. "You'll never get out if you kill me! They'll get you sure." I was nearly to him by then. He shut his eyes. "Shell, don't kill me. I'll confess it, everything. I'll write it out. Only don't kill me. He screamed. It startled hell out of me.

He was scared, but I didn't think he was as frightened as he pretended to be. I'd fix that, though. It didn't seem right to do it with his eyes closed, but I remembered that he'd sapped me from behind, then slammed me in the mouth while I was out, so it wasn't too difficult. I leaned forward, pivoting, and tried to shove my fist from his stomach to his backbone. Breath and spittle spewed from his lips and he bent forward, knees sagging. I stepped back, cocked my left fist again and tossed it against his mouth. At the last moment, though, I pulled the punch; I wanted him conscious, even if toothless. He slid to the floor; hands flapping against the carpet.

I said quietly, "All right, Foster. You want to start it with Danny?"

He licked his lips, grimaced in revulsion and spat. "He was going to the cops, spill everything," he said. "We'd have gone to jail — Stone, Jason, me. Danny had been in all of it with us, he must have gone crazy."

"Go on. All of it."

"The four of us, we've made a million the last couple years here in town. Started with Bert Stone. I gave him the idea. He tapped wires around the city, officials' phones right on down to local businessmen, people with money. Got plenty on them, blackmailed them. Not just for money; we got control of some contracts, money from building around town. In case of trouble, we could bring enough pressure to keep it quiet. The new housing development that's going up, fifteen-million-dollar operation. He says who gets the contracts, where the material has to be purchased. Voters don't know what's going on; they never do. There's plenty off the top." He licked his lips again. "Shell, we can cut you in. And Stone's a wizard. He's got a parabolic microphone that can pick up conversations right in the middle of the park, from a hundred feet away. No wires nothing. There's millions —"

"Shut up."

He stopped talking, and I started to turn away from him. I wanted cords from the windows, something to tie him up with. But Foster began talking again suddenly without prompting.

"Stone used that parabolic mike of his to get what we wanted on Tyler." Tyler, the union boss who'd been shot a couple weeks back. "Taped a talk Tyler had with a member of the Atlas Company's Bargaining Committee. About a strike Tyler was going to call if the company management didn't pay off fifty thousand. We got the hooks into him good, scared him plenty. Tyler handed us a hundred thousand from the union welfare fund; he must have got that much himself. Members didn't even know how much was in the fund, perfectly safe. Only he got rough. Threatened us. Waved a gun around. We had to shoot him."

"We? Or you, Foster?"

"I shot him. But we were all in it, deep. That's what got Danny; the killing, I mean. He started getting jerky. All on edge. Then when you cracked wise to him that day, he took a swing at you. Right then's when I figured it all out."

He kept on talking, and I finally began wondering how I'd managed to turn him on so completely with just a couple of pokes. Maybe I'd have figured it out. The rate I was going, I might have managed it by the year two thousand. But I got some help.

"Drop the gun, Scott. Turn around slowly."

I craned my head around, saw Stone in the open doorway behind me, a big automatic in his hand. Jason was in the hall beyond him. Foster was getting to his feet. "You took your damned time," he said angrily. "I yelled loud enough for you to hear me in the City Hall."

So that was why he'd screamed. He'd been ahead of me all the way, spilling everything to keep my attention. Stone was wearing slippers and trousers, his big chest bare; he must have been lying down here when I'd come in. I swore. I hadn't been able to reach any of them by phone earlier, and it probably should have occurred to me that all of them might be together; but it hadn't and when I'd seen Foster through the window, I hadn't been doing any thinking except about how I'd mangle him.

"I said to drop the gun," Stone said.

His .45 was pointed straight at me. I dropped the .32. From the corner of my eye I saw Foster move, step toward me. "Stop it, Vic!" Stone yelled sharply.

Foster had his fist drawn back, his mashed lips pressed together. "Look what the bastard did to me," he said.

"Don't be a fool. We can't mark him up."

"Then shoot him. Shoot him!"

"Just a minute," Stone said. "I want to know how he found us."

Foster apparently hadn't thought of that yet. His face went blank, then his lips twisted angrily. "Gloria," he said bitterly. "Well, she's asked for whatever —" He cut it off, jaws grinding together.

After a moment he went on, looking at Stone, "Scott's not just a handy out for us now; I've told the bastard everything. So get it over with."

Stone licked his lips. "You got us all into this, Vic. It was your idea. You'd better finish it."

Foster walked to Stone, jerked the gun from his hand and aimed it at me. For a second there I was a dead man. Nothing worked, not my muscles, my brain, nothing. Then I said the words, coming in a burst, "Better think about it, Foster. You've got nobody to frame for this one."

He chuckled. "We don't need anybody. You killed Danny, remember. The three of us here were the men who could place you there as the last man in the game with Danny. So you came here to shut us up."

That second, plus the time Foster had been speaking, was all I needed. If everything had been frozen before, it was racing now. I had always been able to bluff Foster out of any pot I really wanted, whether it was big or small, and this was the biggest pot of all. Maybe, I thought, maybe it would work. So I said. "Kill me, and you're all going to that little gas room at Quentin. The police will know it's cold-blooded murder."

Foster looked as if he were going to pull the trigger, but he relaxed slightly, let the gun drop lower and said, "You're crazy, Scott. This is self-defense. We've even got the gun you brought here — the gun you used on Danny."

I said, "You damn fool, the police know I didn't kill Danny. I've talked to them."

He frowned, then chuckled. "Sure you have. Never say die, huh? Well, it won't do you any —"

"I can prove it, Foster. Sergeant Billings for one. Call him; he's off duty, but I'll give you odds he's at the station now. He'll tell you the same thing. I even told him about the bug Stone planted in Father Shanlon's confessional booth." That jarred him and doubt grew on his face. I kept talking. "No reason for me to lie. You can check it in fifteen seconds. And I wish you would. If you don't, you're cutting your own throats along with mine."

Foster, frowning, reached up with his left hand and tugged gently at his earlobe. It was the moment I'd been waiting for, so I laughed out loud. It sounded pretty genuine and all three men looked at me. "Don't you get it yet?" I grinned at them. "Danny's not dead."

There was complete silence for a second. Then Foster said, "You're lying."

I looked at the other two then, at Stone and Jason. "I was unconscious when it happened, sure. But you two were clear out of the hotel — you, Stone, in the Dormann Hotel waiting to watch me come to so you could call the cops. Another part of your build-up — the frame wouldn't fit if they found me unconscious. When I came to, Danny was still breathing."

"You're lying," Foster said again. "I killed him."

I looked at him then. "Nuts. You shot him with that thirty-two of mine. You called it a little popgun, yourself, when you made sure I had it on me. Men have been shot two or three times with a forty-five and lived. Those little slugs poked holes in Danny, and shook him up, but they didn't kill him."

They just about half believed me. Even Foster. But it wouldn't last forever and I knew it. A bluff has to work only long enough for the man to toss in his hand, but to do me any good, this one had to work longer. I was praying that Foster would actually phone and talk to Billings. But even if that should make Billings wonder plenty after what I'd told him, it would still take ten minutes after the call for him to get out here — even if the police could trace the call.

Foster said, "We talked to the police. They said he was dead."

"I doubt that. I imagine you did most of the talking. Besides, what would you expect them to say? They still don't know who shot Danny. I told Billings who did it, though."

Foster tugged at his ear, then moved to the phone, keeping the gun pointed at me. I looked at Stone, at Jason. "You're the men who should be scared and running. You might make it if you started now."

Foster dialed. I held my breath, but then he said, "Who? Mr. Grant? This is Victor Foster. About Danny Hasting's body . . . I don't believe he has any relatives near here. I'd like to be sure he has a decent funeral . . . Yes."

Foster was grinning while he looked at me. And with good enough reason. The bluff had worked; he'd phoned. But he hadn't called Billings, or even the police. He'd called Grant, at the morgue. And Danny was in the morgue.

He talked for a few more seconds, his grin widening. Then he hung up. And this time he wasn't going to listen to any more conversation. He was going to kill me right now. I bent forward, tensing my leg muscles.

And then we heard it. We all heard it, the still distant, but clear, sound of a siren. Foster didn't take his eyes or the muzzle of the automatic off me, but Judge Jason walked to the window and raised the shade. "It's coming up here," he said. "They are. Several cars. It's police, I can see the red lights. I . . ." He let it trail off.

I heard Stone jump toward the window as the siren got louder, but my eyes were on Foster. If they were police cars, I didn't know how or why they'd come here, but I knew they must be for me. And I waited for Foster to take his eyes off me for one second. He did. He looked toward Jason and Stone at the window, the gun muzzle wavering away from me.

I lunged forward, bent over, and dived at him. The gun roared with a deafening crash almost in my ear; the bullet burned across the skin of my neck, and then I hit him, legs driving, and slammed him back against the wall with a crash that shook the little house. My shoulder ground into his side and cut off the yell that ripped from his throat. His hand clawed across my face and I swung my right fist at him, knuckles bouncing off his arm. The gun dropped, and then Foster had squirmed away from me.

He was scuttling across the floor on all fours. Jason and Stone were piling out the door and I saw them turn, start toward the back of the house. The siren was screaming almost in our ears now, and I could hear cars sliding to a stop in front. Foster got to his feet, as I slapped my hand against the automatic, raised it in my fist.

"Hold it, Foster! One step and I'll kill you," I shouted.

He was almost at the door. He turned his head around, face panic-stricken, then made his mistake. He gave one big leap toward the doorway and I fired. I aimed low and the heavy slug caught him while he was still in the air. It slammed his body around with a sudden wrench, drove him against the door frame. He bounced against it, fell to the floor and lay there with his hands clawing at the carpet.

Then the room was full of policemen. I couldn't remember seeing so many cops in one place at the same time. I took a few minutes, but Foster was still conscious and he talked to Billings just as eagerly as he'd earlier talked to me. I filled in anything he forgot, or otherwise neglected to mention. When things quieted down, Billings took me aside. "That happened pretty fast," he said. "We didn't come out here for them." He pointed at Foster; Jason and Stone had been grabbed as they went out the back door. "We came out for you."

"How'd you find me? It wasn't that phone call?"

"What phone call?" He paused a moment, then went on. "You got me a little hot, you know, when you stole my car."

"I needed transportation, and I'd already used too many cabs."

"Shouldn't have stolen a police car. That baby belongs to the city. Come on, I'll show you something." As we went outside he said, "I usually drive it home. Looks like anybody else's buggy — a plainclothes car we call them. Microphone in the glove compartment, aerial under the frame, everything looks normal." We were at the car then and he opened the right-hand door, pointed a glowing flashlight at the seat. "Take a look."

Something was stuffed down in back of the seat. "Transmission microphone," he said. "When you thought I was plugging in the lighter for my cigarette, I was turning on the radio. When you yanked me back by the collar, that gave me the chance to stuff the mike in there." He pulled the mike free. "Had to stuff it in so the button would stay down. You started transmitting to the police station before we even finished talking, and you drove off. You were transmitting all the time you were driving up here."

I swore, but happily.

He went on, "Didn't hear anything but the engine, since you didn't talk to yourself. Lost you for a while, but we finally got a fix on this transmitter and zeroed you in. Had all the radio cars in town out after you." He grunted heavily. "And we got three other live ones."

"You came close to getting a dead one," I said. "I guess you talked to Father Shanlon."

He shook his head. "No, but we will now. I've been too busy trying to catch up with you. And I didn't believe a word you said, anyway."

The ambulance attendants came out carrying Foster on a stretcher. Before they put him into the ambulance he started swearing at me. I leaned over the stretcher and said, "Foster, I've got a hunch you should have never bugged Shanlon's confessional. I'm not a very religious man myself, but it might be you were fooling around with some laws a little stronger than the city's."

His voice was weak, but he managed to swear filthily. "Don't give me that crap, Scott."

I shrugged. "Crap huh? I dunno myself, but maybe you will."

"What the hell do you mean?"

"You're gonna find out."

It seemed to me his face turned pale green, the color of Quentin's gas chamber, and that he held his breath. One thing was sure. Foster might never find out where he was going after that gas chamber, but he was going to go.

Billings drove me downtown in his police car. He was headed for the station, but I talked him into letting me out on Pepper Street. He said, "Listen, you've got to come down to Homicide, make a statement."

"Look, Billings, I'll come down. Hell, I want my money back. But there's somebody I've got to see first."

"Well, okay. But make it snappy. It's Thursday night; tomorrow's my day off, you know. Like to get everything cleaned up early."

"Don't worry about it."

He drove on toward town and I walked to the Essex. Two seconds after I pressed the buzzer, Gloria swung the door open, and her soft voice said, "Shell, honey!"

"Gloria," I cried. "Where's your towel?"

She pulled me inside and slammed the door. Some women take off their towel and they are merely nude; Gloria looked as if she'd just stepped out of a black-lace negligee. It was wondrous, it was tremendous, it was marvelous. It was Gloria's.

She grabbed me and said, "Oh, I was worried. But it's all right now."

"I can stay only a minute. Got to see Billings."

"Oh, honey, no."

"Got to get downtown . . . to police . . . headquarters . . ."

"Honey, honey, honey . . ."

Poor old Billings. I didn't get downtown until Saturday.