I didn't answer her. I wanted to get up and go away but I couldn't do that either. I watched while she peeled off the panties and tossed them away. She had trouble with them but she got them off and danced her wicked dance in blissful nudity.

"Ed," she said.

She came at me, threw herself at me. Her flesh, warm with drink, was soft as b.u.t.ter in my arms. She looked into my eyes, her face a study in alcoholic pa.s.sion mixed in equal parts with torment. She looked at me, and she squirmed against me, and then her eyes closed and she pa.s.sed out cold.

There was a double bed in the bedroom. She had to sleep alone in it now. Some men with machine guns had killed the man who used to share it with her. I drew back the top sheet, put her down on the bed. I covered her with the sheet, tucked a pillow under her head.

Then I got out of there.

SEVEN.

The ride back to Manhattan was a long one. Every traffic light was red when I got to it.

I told myself that the picture was refusing to take shape, and then I changed my mind-it was taking shape, all right. It was taking a great many shapes, each conflicting with the other. Nothing made much sense.

Shirley Klugsman was a widow because her husband had tried to sell evidence to Rhona Blake. A man named Zucker wanted Rhona dead. He also wanted me dead, and three punks in East New York had tried to carry it off for him. And they were dead now.

I GOT THE CHEVY BACK TO MY GARAGE and walked halfway home before I changed my mind. Then I jumped in a cab. and walked halfway home before I changed my mind. Then I jumped in a cab.

Rewards and punishments-Phillip Carr's phrase. They were at the punishment stage now. They wanted me dead, and they had tried once already that night, and maybe my apartment wasn't the safest place in the world.

Besides, Rhona was alone...

The doorman barely looked at me. I let the elevator whisk me up to her floor, went to her door, and jabbed at the bell. Nothing happened. I remembered our signal, rang once, waited a minute, then started ringing. Nothing happened. I called out to her, told her who it was. And nothing happened.

She was out, of course. At a show, having a drink, catching a bite to eat. I got halfway to the elevator and my mind filled with another picture, a less pleasant one in which she was lying facedown on the wall-to-wall carpet and bleeding. I went back to her door.

On television I would have given the door a good hard shoulder, wood would have splintered, and that would have been that. This is fine on television, where they have balsa doors. But every time I hit a door with my shoulder I wind up with a sore shoulder and an unimpaired door. In Manhattan, apartment doors are usually reinforced with steel plates. You just can't trust television.

I took out the little gimcrack I use to clean my pipe. It had a penknife blade. I opened it and played with the lock. It opened. I went inside.

She wasn't there. So I sat down in the living room to wait for her, first checking the bar to see if there was any cognac. There wasn't. There was scotch, but cognac is all I drink.

h.e.l.l. This was a special sort of situation. I poured a lot of scotch into a gla.s.s and sat down to work on it.

After half an hour, I was worried. She was in too deep, playing way over her head, and she wasn't around. The room was beginning to get to me. I kept smelling her perfume and the furniture kept glaring at me.

Where the h.e.l.l was she?

I remembered the afternoon, and the green eyes warming very suddenly, and her body close to mine. Bed, and whispers, and pa.s.sion, and the happy drowsiness afterwards. And now she was gone. It was the sort of magic trick Jack Blake would have gone wild over. You just make love to this girl, see, and she disappears.

After ten more minutes of this I was morbid. I started combing the apartment in a c.o.c.keyed search for help notes or struggle signs or bullet holes. I got down on hands and knees and peered owlishly under the bed. There was a single slipper there, and a pair of stockings that had run for their lives, and a respectable quant.i.ty of dust. I checked out the closet in the bedroom. Her clothes, and not many of them. A suitcase, streamlined and airplane-gray. She had been traveling light. She was Jack Blake's daughter, coming from Cleveland with a single suitcase and a bellyful of determination, and that wasn't going to be enough.

I went back to the living room. The bedroom closet had been a disappointment from an aesthetic standpoint. You're supposed to open a closet door and watch a body fall out. That was how they did it on television. And all I got was a suitcase and some clothing.

There was still a closet in the front hall. I gave the k.n.o.b a twist, yanked open the door, and stepped ceremoniously aside so that the body wouldn't hit me when it fell.

No body fell.

Instead there was a noise like a shotgun blast at close quarters, and there was a wind like Hurricane Zelda, and I flew up in the air and bounced off one wall into another. Then the lights went out.

EIGHT.

It was timeless. There was the lifting sensation, the spinning, the impact, the blackness. Then I was on my back on that orange couch and my eyes were open. I saw ash blond hair, a red mouth.

Rhona.

She was saying: "Lie still, Ed. Relax, lie still, don't try to move. My G.o.d, I came in and found you. I thought you were dead. The whole hallway was a mess. It looked as though someone fired a cannon in here. Are you all right, Ed?"

She was leaning over me, stroking my forehead with one soft hand. Her eyes were wide, concerned. Sensation was starting to come back now, with pain leading the procession. My whole body ached. I ran hands over myself to find out what was broken. Surprisingly, everything seemed to be intact. I started to sit up. There was dizziness, and I fell back on the couch and closed my eyes for a minute.

I must have blacked out again. Then I came back to life and she was lighting a cigarette for me, putting it between my lips. I smoked. I started to sit up, saw the worry in her eyes. I told her I was all right now.

"What happened, Ed?"

"A bomb."

"Where?"

"In your closet," I said. "I opened the door and it went off."

"What were you doing in the closet?"

"Looking for bodies."

"Huh?"

"Forget it." I closed my eyes, remembering the cute little sidestep I'd executed, a nutty bit of business designed to permit the mythical corpse to fall out of the closet without hitting me. Corny, but d.a.m.n fortunate. The sidestep had taken me out of the way of the blast. If the full force had gotten me, I'd have found a body, all right.

My own.

"Ed-"

I took a breath. "Rhona, somebody had it set up for you. You were supposed to walk into the apartment and hang your coat in the front closet. They must have rigged it with a wire running to the door handle, something like that. Open the door and you yank the wire and the thing blows."

"G.o.d."

"Uh-huh. When did you leave, Rhona? Why the h.e.l.l didn't you stay put?"

She was chewing on her lower lip and her eyes were focused on the floor. She said: "I got a phone call."

"You weren't supposed to answer the phone."

"I know. But it rang and rang and rang...I picked it up."

"Who was it?"

"A man. He didn't give me his name. He just said he was calling for you."

"For me?"

She nodded. "I didn't know whether to believe him or not. But he said you were in trouble and couldn't call yourself, and I thought you were the only person who knew the telephone number here-"

"Klugsman knew it, didn't he?"

"Oh," she said. "I forgot that, Ed-"

"When did he call?"

"Around midnight."

"And you left right away?"

"That's right."

I put out the cigarette. "Then I missed you by less than half an hour," I said. "They must have had a man stationed right out front, ready to drop up and install the bomb the minute you left the building. It's easy enough to get into this place. The doorman is so busy being proper and distant that he doesn't pay any attention to what's going on. So the guy came in, set up shop, and left. Then I got here and waited for you." I looked at her. "Where the h.e.l.l were you, anyway?"

"Times Square."

"Huh?"

"I took a taxi to Times Square, Ed. That's what the man on the phone said I was supposed to do. I went to a place called Hector's, a big cafeteria. I took a table and waited for you."

"For how long?"

"A little over an hour, I guess. It was a bore and I was scared stiff and I didn't know what was going to happen next. Then finally a man came over to me and handed me a note. He was gone almost before I knew what was going on. The note said you wouldn't be able to meet me but everything was all right and I was supposed to go back to my apartment. I got here just in time to find you."

I got up, dragged myself over to the front hall, what was left of it. There was a gaping hole in the wall directly opposite the closet door. If I hadn't stepped aside, the blast would have made a similar hole in me.

It was something to think about.

I dropped to my hands and knees and poked around in the closet. There wasn't much to look at, just enough to confirm my diagnosis of the blast. It was a simple sort of b.o.o.by-trap, the kind even a child could put together. A few sticks of dynamite, evidently touched off with a blasting cap. A piece of thin copper wire was attached to the cap and to the doork.n.o.b. There was still a trace of the wire around the k.n.o.b.

"G.o.d, Ed."

I got up, put an arm around her. We walked to the kitchen. She put water on for coffee. While it cooked, I gave her a quick run-down on my part of the evening. I left out the call to the Continental agency in Cleveland. She didn't have to know that I hadn't trusted her.

SHE WAS SMOKING TOO MANY CIGARETTES too quickly. She was nervous and it showed. Why not? She had a lot to be nervous about. Half the world was trying to kill her. That sort of thing tends to get on your nerves. too quickly. She was nervous and it showed. Why not? She had a lot to be nervous about. Half the world was trying to kill her. That sort of thing tends to get on your nerves.

"It doesn't add," I said.

"What doesn't?"

"The whole thing. This morning they didn't know where to find you, Rhona. Zucker's lawyer was ready to pay ten thousand bucks just to get hold of you. A few hours later they know where you are and all they want to do is kill us both. They hand out contracts on the two of us. I'm supposed to get shot in East New York and you're supposed to get blown up in your own apartment."

"Maybe they had us followed. Or maybe somebody tipped them off."

"Who?" I shrugged. "But there's more. Why should they play around with a bomb? They could decoy you with a phone call, then drop you with a bullet on the street. Why get so fancy? Why send you on a wild goose chase to Hector's? That's the kind of play an amateur might use. A pro would be more direct. And we're up against professionals."

The coffee finished dripping. She poured out a pair of cups. I sweetened mine with a shot of scotch and let it cool a little.

"Look," I said. "Let's suppose they wanted to search the apartment. They still didn't have to get cute about it. Did you have anything here?"

"Nothing they would be interested in."

"Well, they might not have known that. But they still could have shot you down on the street and then sent a man upstairs. Or they could break in, kill you, then search. It just doesn't make any sense."

"I guess not," she said.

We sat there drinking our coffee, tossing it all back and forth and getting nowhere in particular. She started to relax. G.o.d knows how. I decided that a card mechanic has to have a sound nervous system, and she was a card mechanic's daughter. Maybe that's the sort of thing that pa.s.ses down a family tree.

I told her to go to sleep.

"Is it safe?"

"Nothing's safe," I said. "I don't think they'll be around tonight. It's late and we're both half-dead. I am, anyway, and you must be."

"I'm kind of tired, Ed."

"Sure. We'll get some sleep and see what happens tomorrow. It's been their play all along now. Maybe I can start something for our side, set some wheels in motion."

"I'm scared, Ed."

"So am I. But I'm tired enough to sleep. How about you?"

She shrugged. "I guess I'm all right," she said. "Uh...you'll sleep on the couch tonight, won't you?"

"No."