"I thought you said you liked him," Louise said, trying, and not quite succeeding, to sound light and bright.

"I do. But you were talking about marriage, and I think that would be a lousy idea."

"But if we love each other?" Louise asked, now almost plaintively.

"I have long believed that if it were as difficult to get married as it is to get divorced, society would be a h.e.l.l of a lot better off," Wells said.

"You're speaking from personal experience, no doubt?" Louise flared, "Cheap shot, baby," Wells said, getting up. "I've had a long day. I'm going to bed. I'll see you tomorrow before I go."

"Don't go, Daddy," Louise said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said."

"Sure, you did. And I don't blame you. But just for the record, if I had married your mother, that would have been even a greater mistake than marrying the one I did. I don't expect you to pay a bit of attention to what I've said, but I felt obliged to say it anyway."

He crossed the room to Peter Wohl and put out his hand.

"It was good to meet you, Peter," he said. "And I meant what I said, I do like you. Having said that, be warned that I'm going to do everything I can to keep her from marrying you."

"Fair enough," Peter said.

"You understand why, I think," Wells said.

"Yes, sir," Peter said. "I think I do."

"And you think I'm wrong?"

"I don't know, Mr. Wells," Peter Wohl said.

Wells snorted, looked into Wohl's eyes for a moment, and then turned to his daughter.

"Breakfast? Could you come to the Warwick at say, nine?"

"No," she said.

"Come on, baby," he said.

"I have a busy schedule tomorrow," she said. "I begin the day at eight by looking at a severed head, and then at ten, I have to go to a funeral. It would have to be in the afternoon. Can you stay that long?"

"I'll stay as long as necessary," he said. "We are going to have a very serious conversation, baby, you and I."

"Can I drop you at your hotel, Mr. Wells?" Peter asked. "It's on my way."

"Come on, Peter," Wells said. "Don't ruin a fine first impression by being a hypocrite now. Anyway, there's a limo waiting for me."

He kissed Louise's cheek, waved at Wohl, and walked out of the apartment.

SIXTEEN.

Arthur J. Nelson did not like pills. There were several reasons for this, starting with a gut feeling that there was something basically wrong with chemically fooling around with the natural functions of the body, but primarily it was because he had seen what pills had done to his wife.

Sally was always b.i.t.c.hing about his drinking, and maybe there was a little something to that; maybe every once in a while he did take a couple of belts that he really didn't need; but the truth was that, so far as intoxication was concerned, she had been floating around on a chemical cloud for years.

It had been going on for years. Sally had been nervous when he married her, and once a month, before that time of the month, she had been like a coiled spring, just waiting for a small excuse to blow up. She'd started taking pills then, a little something to help her cope. That had worked, and when she'd gotten pregnant, the need for them had seemed to pa.s.s.

But even before she'd had Jerome, she'd started on pills again, to calm her down. Tranquilizers, they called them. Then, after Jerome was born, when he was still a baby, she'd kept taking them whenever, as she put it, things just "made her want to scream."

She hadn't taken them steadily then, just when there was some kind of stress. Over the years, it had just slipped up on her. There seemed to be more and more stress, which she coped with by popping a couple of whatever the latest miracle of medicine was.

In the last five years, it had really gotten worse. Jerome had had a lot to do with that. It had been bad when he was still living at home, and had grown worse when he'd moved out. It had gotten so bad that he'd finally put her in Menninger's, where they put a name to it, "chemical dependency," and had weaned her from what she was taking and put her on something else, which was supposed to be harmless.

Maybe it was, but Sally hadn't given it a real try. The minute she got back to Philadelphia, she'd changed doctors again, finding a new one who would prescribe whatever she had been taking in the first place that helped her cope. The real result of her five months in Menninger's was that she was now on two kinds of pills, instead of just one.

Now, probably, three kinds of pills. What she had been taking, plus a new bottle of tiny oblong blue ones provided by the doctors when she'd gone over the edge when he'd had to tell her what happened to Jerome.

They would, the doctor said, help her cope. And the doctor added, it would probably be a good idea if Arthur Nelson took a couple of them before going to bed. It would help him sleep.

No f.u.c.king way. He had no intention of turning himself into a zombie, walking around in a daze smiling at nothing. Not so long as there was liquor, specifically cognac. Booze might be bad for you, but all it left you with was a hangover in the morning. And he had read somewhere that cognac was different from say, scotch. They made scotch from grain, and cognac was made from wine. It was different chemically, and it understandably affected people differently than whiskey did.

Arthur J. Nelson had come to believe that if he didn't make a pig of himself, if he didn't gulp it down, if he just sipped slowly at a gla.s.s of cognac, or put half a shot in his coffee, it was possible to reach a sort of equilibrium. The right amount of cognac in his system served to deaden the pain, to keep him from painful thought, but not to make him drunk. He could still think clearly, was still very much aware of what was going on. The only thing he had to do, he believed, was exercise the necessary willpower, and resist the temptation to pour another gla.s.s before it was really safe to do so. And there was no question in his mind that he had, in the last twenty-four hours, been doing just that. A lesser man would have broken down and wept, or gotten falling-down drunk, or both, and he had done neither.

When Staff Inspector Peter Wohl had telephoned, Arthur J. Nelson had been a third of the way through a bottle of Hennessey V.S.O.P., one delicate sip at a time, except of course for the couple of hookers he had splashed into his coffee.

And he took a pretty good sip, draining the snifter, when he hung up after talking to Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, that miserable arrogant sonofab.i.t.c.h.

He poured the snifter a third full, and then, carrying it with him, walked upstairs from his den to his bedroom on the second floor. He quietly opened the door and walked in.

Sally was in the bed, flat on her back, asleep. She looked, he thought, old and tired and pale. Although he hated what the f.u.c.king pills had done to her, he was glad, for her sake, that she had them now. And then she snored. It was amazing, he thought, how noisily she snored. It sounded as if she were a 250-pound man, and he supposed she didn't weigh 100 pounds, if that much.

He remembered the first time he had seen her naked, held her naked in his arms. She had been so small and delicate he had been afraid that he was going to break her. And he remembered when she was large with Jerome. That had been almost impossible to believe, even looking right at it.

A tear ran down his cheek, and he brushed at it, forgetting that that hand held the snifter. He spilled a couple of drops on his shirt, and swore, loud enough for it to get through to Sally, who sort of groaned.

He held himself motionless for a moment, until her regular, slow, heavy breathing pattern returned. Then he left the room as carefully and quietly as he entered it.

He stood at the top of the stairs. He was hungry. He hadn't eaten. The house had been full of people, and although Mrs. Dawberg, the housekeeper, had seen to it that there had been a large buffet of cold cuts, he just hadn't gotten around to eating.

And now all the help was in bed, and he hated to get them out of bed in any case; and especially now, when they would need all the rest they could get to get ready for tomorrow, when the house, all day, would be like G.o.dd.a.m.n Suburban Station at half past five.

He walked down the wide staircase, wondering if he really wanted to go into the kitchen and fix himself an egg sandwich or something. He went back in his den and drained what was left in the snifter after he-Jesus, what a dumb thing to do!!!-had spilled it on his shirt, and then poured a little more in.

To h.e.l.l with going in the kitchen, he decided. What I'll do is just get in a car and go find a fast-food joint.

The idea had a sudden appeal. He realized that what he really wanted was junk food. Hamburgers and french fries. Not what they served these days in McDonald's or Burger King, but the little tiny ones they used to sell for a dime, the kind they sort of steamed on the grill over chopped onions. In those white tile buildings with no booths, just round-seat stools by a counter, where everything was stainless steel. He could practically smell the d.a.m.ned things.

He had a little trouble finding where they kept the keys to the cars. He supposed they took them from the ignition last thing when they locked up for the night. He finally found a rack of keys in a little cupboard in the pantry off the garage. They were all in little numbered leather cases, except the key to the Rolls, which had a Rolls insignia on it.

Which was which?

He didn't want to take the Rolls. He was going to go to a hamburger joint and sit on a round stool and eat cheap little hamburgers and french fries, and you don't take a Rolls-Royce to do that.

He took one key and worked his way through a Cadillac coupe and a Buick station wagon before it worked in the ignition switch of an Oldsmobile sedan he didn't remember ever having seen before. He remembered vaguely that Sally had said something about having to get Mrs. Dawberg a new car, and that he'd told her to go ahead and do it.

He thought he remembered a White Palace or a Crystal Palace or whatever the h.e.l.l they called those joints about a mile away, but when he got there, there was a Sunoco gas station, so he drove on. When he stopped at a red light, he decided it had been some time since he'd last had a little sip, and pulled the cork from the Hennessey bottle and took a little nip.

Thirty minutes later, not having found what he wanted, he decided to h.e.l.l with it. What he would do was go by the Ledger. It wouldn't be a cheap little White Palace hamburger, but the cafeteria operated twenty-four hours a day, and he could at least get a hamburger, or something else. And it was always a good idea to drop in unannounced on the city room. Keep them on their toes.

He drove to the back of the building and pulled the nose of the Oldsmobile in against a loading dock, and took another little sip. He could hardly walk into the city room carrying a bottle of cognac, and there was no telling how long he would be in there.

There was a tap on his window, and he looked out and saw a security officer frowning at him. With some difficulty, Arthur J. Nelson managed to find the window switch and lower the window.

"Hey, buddy," the security officer said, "you can't park there."

"Let me tell you something, buddy," Arthur J. Nelson said. "I own this G.o.dd.a.m.ned newspaper and I can park any G.o.dd.a.m.ned place I please!"

The security officer's eyes widened, and then there was recognition.

"Sorry, Mr. Nelson, I didn't recognize you."

"G.o.dd.a.m.ned right," Arthur Nelson said, and got out of the car. "Keep up the good work!" he called after the retreating security officer.

He entered the building and walked down the tile-lined corridor to the elevator bank. Windows opened on the presses in the bas.e.m.e.nt. They were still, although he saw pressmen standing around. He glanced at his watch.

It was not quite one A.M. The first (One Star) edition started rolling at two-fifteen. Christ alone knew what it was costing him to have all those pressmen standing around for an hour or more with their fingers up their a.s.ses at $19.50 an hour. He'd have to look into that. G.o.dd.a.m.ned unions would bankrupt you if you didn't keep your eye on them.

He got in the elevator and rode it up to the fifth, editorial, floor, and went into the city room.

He felt eyes on him as he walked across the room to the city desk.

Well, why the h.e.l.l not? I don't come in here at this time nearly often enough.

There were half a dozen men and two women at the city desk. The city editor got to his feet when he saw him.

"Good evening, Mr. Nelson," he said. "How are you, sir?"

"How the h.e.l.l do you think I am?" Nelson snapped.

"I'd like to offer my condolences, sir," the city editor said.

"Very kind of you," Arthur Nelson said, automatically, and then he remembered that G.o.dd.a.m.ned cop, whatsisname, Wohl.

"I've got something for you," Nelson said. "The cops have found my son's car. It was stolen from the garage at his apartment when ... it was stolen from his apartment."

"Yes, sir?"

"You haven't heard about it?"

"No, sir."

"Well, I'm telling you," Nelson said. "And they're giving me the G.o.dd.a.m.ned runaround. Somewhere in Jersey is where they found it. Some Jersey state trooper found it, but he wouldn't tell me where."

"I'm sure we could find out, sir," the city editor said. "If that's what you're suggesting."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n right," Nelson said. "Get somebody on it. It's news, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, sir, of course it is. I'll get right on it."

"I think that would be a good idea," Nelson said.

"I was about to go to Composing, Mr. Nelson," the city editor said. "We're just about pasted up. Would you like to go with me?"

"Why not?" Nelson said. "Have you got somebody around here you could send to the cafeteria for me?"

"What would you like?"

"I'd like a hamburger and french fries," Nelson said. "Hamburger with onions. Fried, not raw. And a cup of black coffee."

"Coming right up," the city editor said.

Nelson walked across the city room to Composing. The Ledger had, the year before, gone to a cold-type process, replacing the Linotype system. The upcoming One Star edition was spread out on slanting boards, in "camera-ready" form. Here and there, compositors were pasting up. '

Nelson went to the front page. The lead story, under the headline "Man Sought In Police Murder Killed Eluding Capture" caught his eye, and he read it with interest.

If all the G.o.dd.a.m.ned cops in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned city hadn't all been looking for that guy, they probably could have caught the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who killed my Jerome. They don't give a s.h.i.t about me, or any other ordinary citizen, but when one of their own gets it, that's a horse of a different color. That sonofab.i.t.c.h Wohl wouldn't 't even tell me where Jerome 's car was found.

The city editor appeared.

"Now that the cops have found that pathetic sonofab.i.t.c.h," Arthur J. Nelson said, "maybe, just maybe, they'll have time to look for the murderer of my son."

"Yes, sir," the city editor said, uncomfortably. "Mr. Nelson, I think you better have a look at this."

He thrust the Early Bird edition of the Bulletin at him.

"What's this?" Nelson said. And then his eye fell on the headline, "Police Seek 'Gay' Black Lover In Nelson Murder" and the story below it by Michael J. O'Hara.

"I thought O'Hara worked for us," Arthur J. Nelson said, very calmly.

"We had to let him go about eighteen months ago," the city editor said.

"Oh?" Arthur J. Nelson asked.

"Yes, sir. He had a bottle problem," the city editor said.

"And a nice sense of revenge, wouldn't you say?" Nelson said. He didn't wait for a reply. He turned and walked down the line of paste-ups until he found the editorial page.