"Unless family things come up."

"Now who's busting whose chops?" she said, and hung up, and turned to the job of unpacking.

She'd never been in Jake's mobile home before, but wasn't surprised by what it looked like: a neat, compact, old-fashioned design with an overlay of Jake-the-slob. There were more dishes in the sink than on the shelf, and it had been a long long time since anyone had cleaned the toilet or mopped the floor. Catch time since anyone had cleaned the toilet or mopped the floor. Catch me me being your housemaid, she silently announced, but she knew, before she got out of here, she would have done a lot of tidying up. And the worst of it was, Jake wouldn't even notice. being your housemaid, she silently announced, but she knew, before she got out of here, she would have done a lot of tidying up. And the worst of it was, Jake wouldn't even notice.

Fortunately, he didn't have that much clothing, so she could shove it all out of the way and put her own garments on hangers and shelves. His bathroom gear was at the hospital, leaving plenty of room-filthy sink-for hers.

She was just finishing up when a knock sounded, weirdly, on the metal door. Mistrustful, expecting no one, Wendy inched to the door, leaned against it, and called, "Who's there?"

"Police." But it was a woman's voice.

Police? Something to do with the crime victim, no doubt. Wendy opened the door, and this didn't look like any cop to her. her. A blonde stunner, tall and built, in a peach satin blouse under a brown leather car coat and black slacks. But she did hold up her shield for identification as she said, "Wendy Beckham?" A blonde stunner, tall and built, in a peach satin blouse under a brown leather car coat and black slacks. But she did hold up her shield for identification as she said, "Wendy Beckham?"

"That's me."

The cop smiled as though she knew a good joke about something, and said, "I'm Detective Second Grade Gwen Reversa, I'm a.s.signed to your brother's shooting. May I come in?"

"Sure. I just got here," Wendy explained as the detective entered and Wendy shut the door. "Sit down anywhere. I'm still unpacking."

"I asked the beat cop to keep an eye on the place," Detective Reversa said, "let me know when you showed up."

They both sat in Jake's sloppy yet comfortable living room, and Wendy said, "I was supposed to get here yesterday, but there's always last-minute fires to put out on the home front. I just called Jake at the hospital, he certainly sounds okay."

"It's not a bad wound," the detective told her. "The bullet's still in there, in the flesh, but it didn't hurt anything serious. They're supposed to take it out tomorrow. I'm looking forward to getting it to the lab."

"I bet you are. You got any suspects?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, two of them," the detective said, with another pleased smile. "But before I say anything about my my idea, let me hear yours. Do you have any suspects?" idea, let me hear yours. Do you have any suspects?"

"Me, no." Wendy hesitated, but the detective's silence encouraged her to go on. "I don't know how much you know about my brother."

"Military police, bank security, stole from his employer, went to jail, got out, on parole, works for a motel not far from here. No more black marks on his record."

Laughing, Wendy said, "I'd say, you know him about as well as I do. The thing is, since Jake and I both grew up, I'm talking about thirty years now, we haven't exactly lived in each other's pocket. Our parents are dead, neither of us lives in the old neighborhood. When I have family get-togethers these days, it's my my family, my kids and my in-laws. I got a divorce a while ago, but it was a strange kind of settlement. I got the kids, the house, the car, and his parents, who can't stand him. He got the bank account, but that's okay, I get it back in alimony and child support." family, my kids and my in-laws. I got a divorce a while ago, but it was a strange kind of settlement. I got the kids, the house, the car, and his parents, who can't stand him. He got the bank account, but that's okay, I get it back in alimony and child support."

"He's good about that."

"He's one day late, his parents are all over him. He's a lawyer, he makes good money, he doesn't want that trouble, and also he can afford it. Can you imagine you're talking with an important client, your secretary says your mother's on the phone, you have to say 'No! Tell her I'm out!'?"

The detective laughed, and then said, "The point is, Jake really isn't very much in your life, or you in his."

"Almost nothing, until this getting-shot business. It happened I had time on my hands. I was probably feeling a little guilty anyway, so I said I'd come here, help out while he was laid up. But who his friends are, who his enemies are, all of that, I haven't known that kind of thing about him since we were both in high school. And he didn't much want me knowing even then."

"Sibling rivalry."

Wendy shrugged. "He was a shortcutter, and I wasn't. So who are your suspects?"

Again the detective laughed. "You know," she said, "you just don't seem too much like a Wendy to me."

"I don't?" Wendy didn't get it. "Why? What's a Wendy supposed to be like?"

"Not so forceful." Smiling, the detective said, "You ought to become a Gwen, like me. They're both from the same name, you know. Gwendolyn."

"I didn't know that," Wendy said. "What is it, you don't want to tell me about your suspects?"

Another laugh: "There, you see? Forceful. No, I'm happy to tell you, because so far, they're only suspects. Before your brother went to jail, he was having an affair with the wife of the owner of the bank."

Wendy said, "What? His employer? He's dipping and and he's dipping?" he's dipping?"

"It all came out when they caught his embezzlements," the detective said. "Everybody insists it's all over, and maybe it is, but when I went to see Mrs. Langen yesterday-"

"The wife."

"The wife. She has a pistol permit, and is registered with a Colt Cobra thirty-eight-caliber revolver. It's a very light, small defense gun, it weighs less than a pound, she probably carries it in her purse, when she carries it."

"Doesn't sound much like a banker's wife."

"Some women got into that women's self-defense idea some years ago. That's when she got the gun. The trouble is, yesterday, when I asked to see it, she said she'd lost it."

"Sure she did," Wendy said.

"Up to that point," the detective said, "I really wasn't considering her at all. If there are guns in the story, you want to see them, have they been fired recently, is the serial number one that will show up here or there. So when she said it was lost . . ."

"Oh ho, you thought," Wendy said. "It's her."

"Well, there's also the husband," the detective said, "which is why I said I had two suspects. Either of them could have taken the gun and shot it at your brother. If the husband did it, and then threw the gun away, then the wife is telling the truth. As far as she knows, it's lost."

Wendy said, "So what are you gonna do?"

"Wait for the bullet to come out of his leg, first thing tomorrow morning. If it's a thirty-eight caliber, we'll bear down." Looking around the room, she said, "I know you want to unpack and get over to see Jake. Tell him I'll drop in on him tomorrow afternoon, when we know about the bullet."

"I will. But first, shop."

When she came back from the supermarket, Wendy found herself envying those residents of Riviera Park who had those rusty little red wagons chained behind the office, for carrying their groceries home. As it was, she had two plastic sacks of necessities, and nothing to do but lug them on down Cannes Way and around the corner onto Nice Lane, where a tall man in a dark gray suit stood outside Jake's pea-green mobile home.

She kept on, though she didn't like the look of him, but then saw a big candy box in his hand and thought, Oh, it's a get-well present for Jake. How unexpected.

Yes. "This is for Jake," he said when she reached him, and lifted off the top of the candy box, and inside was a gun.

"Oh!" Startled, she jumped back, the grocery sacks dragging her down; she expected him to take the gun out of there and shoot.

But he didn't reach into the box. Instead, he said, "Tell him, this is the one did it."

Wide-eyed, she stared at the gun again. "Shot Jake? This is the gun?"

"Somebody told me Jake thinks I'm the one put the plug into him," the man said. "Tell him, if I had a reason for him to be dead, he'd be dead."

Now that the gun wasn't being used to threaten her, she leaned closer to it, studying it. It was black. The handle was crosshatched, with a white circle at the upper end that showed a rearing horse under the word COLT COLT. The same design, without the circle, was cut into the black metal of the gun above the crosshatching and below the hammer. The cylinder was the notched fat part, where the bullets would be and would revolve one step every time the gun was fired. The barrel was a stubby thing, with a simple sight on top and the word COBRA COBRA etched into the side. etched into the side.

"Oohh," she breathed, "It's hers. hers."

"You know about her."

"The police said." Still wide-eyed, she gazed at the man's cold face. "She's a suspect."

"She didn't do it to put him down," the man said, "but to get him out of the way for a while. You tell him when you go see him."

"I will."

He closed the box and tucked it between her left side and left arm. "You keep this," he said.

"I will."

And later, at the hospital, in the very clean private room, she said, "Jake, you have some bad companions."

7.

He makes a perfect ex-husband," Grace said.

Monica, who had one husband, no exes, shook her head yet again, and said, yet again, "Well, to me it seems weird."

The two women, who clerked together in the claims office of one of the big insurance companies in Hartford, and who had been pals since both had hired on here almost ten years ago, were similar in kind: both rangy and sharp-featured, both pessimistic about life in general and their own lives in particular, and both choosing to face the world with a kind of humorous fatalism. They disagreed about very few things, but one of those things was Grace's ex, a subject that tended to come up, as it had today, while they were on their ten a.m. coffee break in the ladies' lounge, where they could have some privacy.

Monica was going to do the litany again, no stopping her. "You never see him," she said.

"A good thing in an ex," Grace said. "I got a memory bank full of pictures, I ever want to go stroll down there."

"But I mean you never never see him," Monica insisted. "I don't think anybody ever sees him." see him," Monica insisted. "I don't think anybody ever sees him."

"No, that's pretty true," Grace admitted. "I guess he's like the tooth fairy in that."

"The tooth tooth fairy!" fairy!"

"Or Santa Claus. You know he's been, because the tooth is gone or the presents are there, but you never see him at work."

"Grace, he's a criminal!"

"Another good reason not to see him at work. If people see Nick at work, they'll dial nine-one-one. Right away."

"Let me say this about Harold," Monica said, referring to her husband, which sooner or later she always did. "Harold may not be the most exciting man in the world, or the most brilliant man in the world, but at least he's there there. And when he puts bread on the table, he puts it there with the sweat of his brow."

"With the ink of his brow, you mean," Grace said. "Monica, he's an accountant. accountant."

"You know what I mean. It's honest money, honestly earned, and it puts honest bread on the table. Grace, you're living off a gangster!"

"He is not," Grace said. "In the first place, he's not a gangster, he's a heister, which is a very different thing. Gangsters deal in prost.i.tution and gambling and drugs, and Nick would never do any of that. In his own way, he's almost as law-abiding and moral as your Harold."

"That's why he's in hiding all the time?"

"He's not in hiding, hiding, he's just very careful, because you never know. The world he's in is full of dangerous people, so he's smart to be cautious." he's just very careful, because you never know. The world he's in is full of dangerous people, so he's smart to be cautious."

"Harold can walk the street in the sunshine with his head up high and not be afraid of anything."

"Monica, Harold lives in the world of accountancy."

"Don't try to make Harold sound dull."

"That wasn't my intent."

"Anyway," Monica said, "not that I ever expect anything like this for myself, G.o.d forbid, but you don't even have proper alimony."

"That's the other thing I was gonna say," Grace told her. "I'm not living on Nick, I get a salary here, same as you do. I get a supplement from Nick."

"When he feels like it."

"Which is often. From time to time I can help him out a little, pa.s.s a message on, whatever, and from time to time he helps me out a little, with a money order. It probably works out to more than alimony anyway, and there's no lawyers involved, no judges, no bad feelings on any side. Honest to G.o.d, Monica, I understand why you think what you think, but I'm telling you, I've got the best ex-husband in the world, because I never have to confront him, I never have to argue with him, and I never have to be mad at him." With a little grin, she added, "And in addition, I've got Eugene."

"Oh, Eugene," Monica said, with her own little grin, because both women agreed that Eugene was a total stud m.u.f.fin. Unfortunately married, but n.o.body's perfect.

"Never you mind Eugene," Grace told her, though she had no fear that Monica might poach. "You just go on feeling sorry for me over Nick."

"I don't feel sorry sorry for you," Monica insisted. "I just think it's weird, that's all. Well, you heard me on this before. Time's up, anyway." for you," Monica insisted. "I just think it's weird, that's all. Well, you heard me on this before. Time's up, anyway."

Back at her desk, Grace saw that a fax had come in. It was just the one sheet of paper, blank except for a large, scraggly handwritten 4.

This was precisely the sort of thing Monica would find weird, so Grace had never gone into detail with her about the kinds of favors she sometimes did for Nick. He'd phoned her about this a few days ago, that a fax would come in containing a number from one to thirty. He didn't tell her what it was about, and she didn't want to know.

So here it was, and now she was to phone Nick. He wouldn't answer-he didn't even have the ringer on at his place, wherever that was-but after ten rings a light would go on, and she'd hang up. On her way home today, she would stop at the public library and go to the hardcover mystery section, and put the folded fax into The Gracie Allen Murder Case, The Gracie Allen Murder Case, by S. S. Van Dine, which was always there, and then she'd continue on home. by S. S. Van Dine, which was always there, and then she'd continue on home.

And in a little while, a nice money order would arrive in the mail. What was so weird about that?

8.

The bullet coming out was worse than the bullet going in. Not the instant of it-they had him doped for that-but the aftermath. The anesthetic wore off slowly, leaving him dazed, with a jumble of dreams he couldn't remember, couldn't even understand when they were going on, except that some of them seemed to have something to do with prison. Happy G.o.ddam thing to dream about.

What brought him out of the daze finally was the discomfort. They had his leg in a sling hung down from a contraption over the bed, so it was up in the air with the heel pointed at where the ceiling met the wall to the right of the room door. He was like that, and would be for the next few days, because they didn't want him to lie on the wound for a while. But that meant he couldn't move much of himself at all, except his arms.