Jack eyed his forensic got.

"Did they at least repair your built-in cameras?"

"Sure, all fixed and shipshape. You got a surveillance job for me, boss?" The metallic hound curled up into a comfortable sprawl on the private investigator's cushion.

"Yeah, a couple of adultery cases," Jack told him.

"Plus a possible industrial spying thing. I've been handling that and Reisberson's working on one of the fooling around cases, but--"

"Reisberson?" Tinker produced a derisive noise.

"It's a real pity they can't send humans to repair shops. There's a lad who is in serious need of an overhaul."

Resting his backside against the desk edge, Jack said, "Apparently they didn't adjust your snide gear either."

"Truth is never snide," Tinker pointed out.

"Okay, here's how we ... Oops! What time is it anyway?" He held his left forepaw up to his ear, consulting his voxwatch.

"Holy s.h.i.t, three minutes after eleven am. All your distractions nearly made me miss my favorite vidwall show."

"Nope, no, not at all. You aren't going to watch that henceforward,"

he informed the dog.

"Those half wits at the repair shop were also supposed to curb your admiration for her broadcasts."

"They did, sure, but it wasn't tough modifying their adjustments."

Rising up on the chair on his hind legs, Tinker pointed his right forepaw at the wall opposite.

The vast vidwall screen came to life.

A thickset man in his fifties, clad in a pale yellow bizsuit was smiling behind a large rubberoid desk.

".. . though I control Stemwinder Electronics International, the Waterworks Potable Water Company, Latin American Sweatshops, Inc."

Total Multimedia, and other monopolies and trusts too numerous to list, I am still humble and awed in the presence of certain exceptional talents," he was saying.

"That's right, folks, Erie Trafalgar is a simple fan like you when it comes to the lady I'm about to introduce. Here she is, Polly Bowers, Hollywood Detective."

The plump tyc.o.o.n vanished. Now on the immense screen appeared a sunlit bedroom. There was a large, unmade floating oval bed in the shades-of-blue room's exact center. From an arched doorway a very pretty naked red-haired young woman came hurrying in.

"Jesus," observed Jack, "it gets worse and worse."

"Hey, Polly's got an impressive figure. She may as well display it."

Tinker rested his metal chin on the desk top, let his plaz tongue loll.

"Not to 3,500.000 viewers."

"3,700,000, according to E-Variety."

Polly halted beside the bed, catching her breath.

"I.

stayed in the darn sonic shower too long," she apologized.

"I got to woolgathering, you know, and .. ."

She shrugged her bare shoulders.

"That's why I'm late."

Smiling, she located a pair of all-season sin silk panties among the tangle of bedding and started slipping them on.

"Oh, and don't let me forget to make the required dippy disclaimer."

She undulated as the underwear reached her hips.

"I'm compelled to inform you that I'm Polly Bowers, Hollywood Detective, and that I have absolutely no connection with Jack Bowers, Hollywood Detective." She gave an exasperated shake of her head as she plucked a one-size-fits-all bra off the bed.

"As if anybody would confuse my top-of-the-line detective agency with that rundown pest hole operated, barely, by that doddering old coot to whom I ..." Frowning, bra only partially in place, she glanced off camera.

"Huh? What?"

Polly shrugged and put on the bra.

"Yeah, okay," she said resignedly.

"My darn producer reminds me that, even though I'm speaking G.o.d's truth, I'm to refrain, for legal reasons, from mentioning that my erstwhile husband is an inept private eye or a superannuated old fogy."

Jack said, "Being forty-two doesn't put me in the old fogy category."

"You're forty-six, chief," reminded the robot dog.

"That still isn't old."

"Polly's twenty-eight, so to a kid like that, you seem--"

"She's thirty-one."

"You've never been able to prove that."

Polly had pulled on a pair of skin fit crimson slax and was wandering around her bedroom in search of a suitable singlet.

"Lots of you have called in asking about the next issue of Polly Bowers' Mystery Magazine," she was saying.

"Well, I'm happy to announce that the latest multimedia edition will be out next week, coming to you from dear Erie Trafalgar's Stranglehold House division. And, yep, for the thousands of you who've been demanding it, there will be another installment of my ongoing memoir, / Married A Nitwit But Had The Good Sense Not To Renew Our 3-Year Marriage Contract And Instead Founded My Own Detective Agency And Am A Huge Success Today And Happy As A Clam To Boot. You'll also find fiction, puzzles, recipes and .. . Hold it, folks." She frowned off camera.

"Huh? What?"

"She's not supposed to call me a nitwit," said Jack.

Polly said, "My producer reminds me that I was conned into agreeing not to call Jack Bowers a nitwit on my show anymore. So what's left? Can I call him a dumbbell, a schmuck, a moron, a buffoon, jerk?"

Eyes narrowing slightly, she glanced again toward the unseen producer.

"Goof? That's it? That's all I'm allowed to use? Goof? Well, okay.

I can use nitwit in my magazine but not on the air. But a nitwit by any other name .. ." Bending from the waist, she picked up a candy-striped singlet from the floor.

"You'd better," Jack told the robot dog, "get in touch with my attorneys."

"Already did. They say you can't afford any more lawsuits. We still owe them for the last one."

"s.h.i.t," observed the private eye.

On the wall his former wife was pulling on the singlet over her head.

"Before I show you the interview I did with the GLA DA," she said, "I want to make an important announcement."

"She'd better not call me anything else." Jack left the desk and eased closer to the vidwall.

"Every one of you out there in Greater Los Angeles has been living in abject fear over the past two weeks," Polly said, sitting on the edge of her floating bed and crossing her long legs.

"I'm referring, of course, to the latest serial killer to emerge in our area.

The one the media's dubbed The Malibu Sheer.