It was eleven a.m. Earlier I had made sure the camera and recorder were ready for action. The recorder was plugged in, set to record the sound from Sullivan's office whenever I punched the "Record" switch. The movie camera Gabe had left here, a 16 mm. Bolex with an f 1.4 Switar lens, was loaded with Kodak Tri-X film and in place on its tripod before the TV screen. Everything was in readiness. However, even if all went perfectly this noon, I still had the problem of getting out of the hotel. And of acting on whatever I might learn - if anything. But I'd cross those bridges when I came to them.

Despite the lack of sound sleep I felt surprisingly alert. I hoped it lasted; I would need all the zip available to me today. For this was Tuesday, the last day before Ross Miller's execution, the execution exactly twenty-three hours away now. It was the day of Quinn's noon meeting, hard at hand.

It was also, if I had to think about it, the day of Quinn's eight p.m. costume ball, his hoodlum Halloween. That was right - this was Halloween. When goons and goblins bark and witches fly over the moon. Well, I thought, Happy Halloween.

And with that happy thought in mind I sat down in the easy chair before my TV set, and waited for electronic magic - Frank Quinn and company, in living black and white.

Frank Quinn showed up on my TV screen at eleven-thirty, accompanied by a man who had to be Doodle, though I'd never seen him before. He was of medium height, the front half of his head bare of hair, his neck exceptionally long. He was wearing a dark suit, dark shirt, black tie, and looked a little like an undertaker. Which, in a way, is what he was.

An undertaker employed by Quinn, however. A solid pulse of anger started up in me at the sight of Quinn. All the h.e.l.l tossed at me - and at Ross Miller, Weiss, Heigman, Lolita - was Quinn's doing. Others had acted for him, but the real center of all the violence and blood, the focus of all the misery, was that flabby-faced, disgusting, sloppy, maggoty, b.l.o.o.d.y-eyed sonofab.i.t.c.h, Frank Quinn.

He had a double handful of white envelopes, and dropped one on each chair before the desk. He and Doodle went in and out a couple of times in the next few minutes, and at about fifteen minutes before twelve the guests started to arrive.

The first one inside the office was Judge Thornwall Smith. That settled that. Not only had Jay given me accurate information, but clearly Judge Smith was not all he was cracked up to be. He looked at a couple of the envelopes in the chairs, then picked one of them up and put it into his coat pocket and sat down in the chair where he'd found it. It was eight to five he'd not only found the spot where he was to sit but had just pocketed his monthly payoff.

Soon another man came in, found his chair and pocketed his envelope. He was a thin, dark-haired man who looked familiar to me, but I couldn't place him. After him came Ira Semmelwein, the well-to-do citizen I'd been told was getting paid off by Quinn.

By noon, apparently everybody was present, and Doodle closed and locked the door. I started my camera and tape recorder. Besides Quinn and his bodyguard, there were eleven other men present, and except for the one I couldn't place, they were so well-known or publicized that I recognized all of them. In addition to Judge Smith, the thin dark-haired man, and Ira Semmelwein, there was the other man Pinky had mentioned, John Porter, a minor city official. Plus Phillip Brenmount, a member of the city council; James H. Trout, a well-known, wealthy contractor; a couple of L.A. attorneys, one of whom had two years ago been elected to the State a.s.sembly; the president of the powerful local of a building-trades union; a "boy wonder" of the financial world, now forty-two and nationally known, very active in California real-estate developments; and a handsome, white-haired man, a textile manufacturer worth at least two or three million dollars, very active in politics and known to have an extremely influential voice in his party, especially in California.

After the door was locked Quinn stood in front of the desk and looked at the a.s.sembled men. I could see him clearly at the left of my TV screen, and the others' profiles were all visible. Doodle leaned against the far wall facing the concealed camera down there in Sully's office.

Quinn didn't waste words. He went right to the heart of the problem. He said, "Let's get down to business. Some of you know what's goin' on, but there's some I haven't talked to. All you need to know is we got one gob of trouble right now, and only one, and it's Sh.e.l.l Scott. We got to get the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, by one way or another."

He looked left and right, glaring at the men. I couldn't tell on this set, but in color I knew his eyes would be the shade of pink bougainvillea. He explained to the group some of the things I'd been up to during the last three days, then finished it up, "I don't know for sure how much about us he knows, but it's too G.o.ddam much. The b.u.m is giving me a ton of trouble. And I guess you know, if I get in trouble, then all of you gentlemen is in trouble." Still glaring, he paused to let that sink in, then added slowly, "So we better all work together on Scott."

n.o.body spoke, Quinn stood facing the a.s.sembled men like a fighter, swinging verbal blows at them. And they took it. Which was interesting. He waited a few seconds, then said briskly, "All right. Scott's somewhere around, but n.o.body's seen him since last night. He ain't in none of his usual spots - I got men watching his apartment and office both. Got more watching the Police Building, and he hasn't gone in nor out of there. And I can tell you I got a lot of other men looking for him. You can see I ain't been sittin' on my can. So what are you gentlemen gonna do to help?"

The thin, dark-haired man shifted in his chair and I got a better look at him. Finally I placed him. And that was another shock. He was a police officer. I didn't know him personally, but I'd seen him in the Police Building a time or two, in uniform. He was wearing sports clothes now, but it was the same man. There are, from time to time, a few bad officers in any big police department - just as there are a few bad lawyers, doctors, businessmen. But they're rare in the L.A.P.D. and quickly weeded out when found, so to see this guy here was actually the biggest shock of the afternoon.

He was saying, "I took care of that car thing, Frank."

"Warrant's out, huh?" Quinn said. The officer nodded and Quinn smiled. "Good. Most of you don't know what this is about, but it's more added help for us. Scott heisted a T-bird off one of my employees last night, and we got a warrant out for him on that right off. Now there's more good news. Police got another stolen car report this morning and found the car parked on Sycamore Avenue. It had Scott's prints on the rearview mirror and a couple other places."

I groaned. And right then the film in my Bolex reached its end. I opened the case fast, removed the exposed reel and slapped another one into place, got the camera going again, still mentally groaning. I hadn't paid any attention to leaving fingerprints on that Ford. h.e.l.l, I wasn't a car thief. Not really. Car thieves don't usually leave prints.

Quinn was still speaking, "Now, Scott's buddy-buddy with most of the fuzz, but I arranged it so the dude the car was stole from was sure to swear out the complaint, and there's a warrant out on that for Scott now. That's good." He paused. "But not good enough. We got to get a real charge against him, not something he might beat in a hurry like a car rap. So right now we're gonna dream something up."

One of the men said, "It will undoubtedly be difficult to bring any charge that will stick - "

Quinn cut him off. "It don't have to stick. If it does, that's gravy, but the main thing right now is to get Scott in the can and keep him there till tomorrow. I want that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in jail - if he's still livin' - or on the run, for the next twenty-four hours."

One thing was certain; Quinn was in control of the meeting. He was hard-boiled, arrogant, his tone almost contemptuous, but none of these big wheels had yet told him to go soak his head. "Hey, Quinn," I said aloud, "Go soak your head." It gave me only a mild pleasure.

Quinn looked back and forth at the men. "And I don't guess I got to remind you about me throwing a big spread tonight. But I'll tell you this, I've went to a lot of trouble to set it up, and I don't want nothing to interfere with it."

There was some more conversation about how best to get and keep several thousand L.A. cops on my tail, and after a few suggestions, none of which endeared these guys to me, it was decided that a man now at Quinn's ranch, who had no police record and wasn't even known to be on the coast, would swear out a complaint against me for a.s.sault with a deadly weapon, claiming I had shot him in the shoulder. One of the men present, James Trout, would support the man's story by saying he had seen me shoot the unarmed man - which bit griped me more than anything else so far in this session.

Trout protested, saying he couldn't get away with a bald-faced lie like that. It was chilling to see how quickly he stopped protesting when Quinn said, "You do it - or else."

Trout, Judge Smith, and the police officer got together to figure out exactly how to handle the frame, then the judge called to Quinn, "When did the victim get shot, Frank? If the wound is several days old, the police will know it. And unless we know where Scott was at all times, we could foul up."

"He ain't shot yet," Quinn said. "I'll shoot him this afternoon."

That seemed to shock even the eleven men present, and Quinn tempered his statement a bit. "Just in the shoulder," he said. "I ain't going to kill the guy." That made it all right. Except with me.

In a few moments Judge Smith said, "We're set, Frank. We'll get a warrant out charging Scot with ADW. With that and the auto-theft charges he's in real trouble."

Quinn was pleased. "Good. If he even calls his pals downtown there'll be ten cops land on him. Good." He paused. "Well, Scott beat up one of my boys last night, stole his car, stole that Ford, and now he's gone and committed criminal a.s.sault, so I guess we shouldn't have no trouble getting his PI license pulled, and his gun license, too. That's in ease he manages to keep livin'. As long as we're workin' on him, we might as well cover all the angles."

The talk went on, but I lost part of it. Because a weird feeling had crept over me. I had been watching the show as if it were a late-late gangster program sponsored by Drano or something. But this was not a show; this was the real thing. These guys were planning real crimes. And I had been watching myself get cooked more thoroughly than in a cannibal's pot. These guys were cooking me. Not only were most of the hoods in town hunting me, but these b.u.ms were arranging it so that the entire Los Angeles Police Department would also be on my tail - not just for auto theft, but for ADW, for criminal a.s.sault. Local broadcasts would be going over the air, probably an All Points Bulletin; officers downtown, on the street, in radio cars, would be looking for Sh.e.l.l Scott.

But if I could get out of here with my film and tape - they would be looking for Frank Quinn. For Quinn and his council of crooks.

Someone in the room downstairs had just said to Quinn, "I was wondering about something, Frank. You say Scott stole a car and it was found - where?"

"Over on Sycamore, about a block and a half . . . from . . . here."

He stopped, and his unpleasant expression got even more unpleasant. I'd run out of film again and had to insert a new reel in a hurry, or I might have paid more attention to Quinn's reaction. I got the Bolex in operation once more, trying at the same time to watch Quinn as he waved at Doodle, who walked over near him. Quinn was doing something with his hands and fingers. Finally it registered on me that he was using sign language. Doodle left the room; when he returned, the talk continued.

It didn't appear that the meeting was going to last much longer. Judge Smith and Trout had just left, and I was wondering if I should call the police while there was still time for them to break in on the meeting and catch these guys with Quinn. But I knew the call could easily be, and probably would be, traced through the hotel switchboard to my room here in the Barker; and if the police got their hands on me they would undoubtedly keep them on me. For hours, unquestionably, despite the info I now had - I hoped - on film and tape, and maybe for days. Besides, the fix I was in wasn't as important as Ross Miller's increasingly fatal predicament. The main thing now was for me to get out of here, keep my freedom of movement.

So I probably would have decided not to call the law.

But, as it turned out, that was one decision I didn't have to make.

It was, I guess, my thinking about the police tracing me here that triggered the a.s.sociation, made me remember Quinn's curdled expression after the man had asked him where the car I'd stolen had been found. "About a block and a half . . . from . . . here," he'd said - then sent Doodle out of the room.

A block and half from the Barker - I should probably have parked the d.a.m.ned car three miles away, but I'd been in a hurry. And I'd been a little too occupied to move the thing since then. It could be, I thought, that Quinn had been wondering if I might have come to the Barker, might even now be in the Barker. Because while Quinn wasn't bright, he wasn't completely stupid, either. You couldn't say he didn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain; he'd get inside, all right, but he'd be d.a.m.ned wet.

And if I was right about Quinn's possible deductions, I could also guess why he'd sent Doodle out of the room. Some of the hired hands just might be knocking on doors in this here hotel. I was right, too - or almost right. They weren't knocking, they were using floor keys or master keys.

I had cleverly figured it all out, and just as I was congratulating myself on my cleverness there was a crash behind me and a voice gargled: "Up with them hands, you mizzuble joik."

Fourteen.

It was not a jolly voice to begin with, but now it sounded like the snakes in Medusa's hair, or Death with double pneumonia, and it repeated: "Up with 'em, or I'll let you have one in the biscuit."

I craned my biscuit around, looked toward the door. It was open, and filling it were two .45 automatics and Blister and the little hood named Shadow. Great. Among the many imbeciles employed by Quinn, Shadow and Blister were possibly the two farthest removed from brilliance. They were two very dopey citizens, almost literally half-wits. But that didn't mean I could outwit them.

I got to my feet, turning to face the men. I was a little slow about getting my hands up, and red-faced, cauliflower-nosed Blister said, "Don't try no fancy stuff with me, Scott. I'll just haul off and shoot you in the grizzard."

"It's gizzard," I said. "And there's no such - "

"However you pernounce it, I won't miss it."

He wouldn't, either. When you shoot a guy with a .45 automatic pistol at close range, all you have to do is. .h.i.t him anywhere and you ruin his grizzard and everything else.

But I kept trying. "If you shoot me," I said, "it will make a h.e.l.l of a noise. And people will hear - "

He chuckled and waved the gun in his hand, and I noted there was a big nozzle like a hunk of bathroom plumbing on the end of it. It was a dumb-gat, a silenced pistol.

"Well," I said, "I will make a h.e.l.l of a noise."

"You won't make it long." Blister jerked his head at Shadow and said, "Frisk him for his heat. He's stupid enough he might try usin' it on us."

"Stay the h.e.l.l away from me," I said, my voice hard.

Blister grinned.

"Don't try it," I said, my voice harder.

Blister kept grinning.

I sounded pretty tough to me. But it wasn't working. Blister said, "Don't do that route with me, Scott. So you play it hard, so I got to shoot you."

He aimed with a little more care, smack at my breastbone, and I'm convinced he had started to squeeze the trigger when I yelped, "Hey, hold it! That's not - not - not the way to do it."

"It's the only way I know."

Shadow stood to one side, peeled back my coat and neatly s.n.a.t.c.hed my Colt. I let him do it - reluctantly, and with a vast sinking sensation in my middle, but without argument.

Shadow dropped my gun into his coat pocket and stepped back. "I guess dat does it, Scott," he said cheerily. "But we all got to go sometime." He laughed. Shadow had a high, weak, artificial-sounding voice, like those trained birds which squawk a few words and whistle a lot. Also he had a miserable sense of humor. The monicker, Shadow, suited him, since he was thin as a crutch, and so pale and puny the weight of his automatic bent him; I could have broken him in two with one hand - some other time, and in some other place.

Shadow kept grinning and nodding his sparrowlike head in unconscious emphasis of the words as Blister spoke to me. "I really didn't want to shoot you, Scott," Blister said, "since Frank sends Doodle with the word, which he writ down on a paper, for a couple of us to check out all the rooms into which any cats was registered last night. If any of us finds you, we're to bring you down to the office, where he is at." He paused. "Frank wants to talk to you first."

First, huh? It didn't look good at all, but I hadn't completely given up hope. Mainly, I suppose, it was because both of these characters were used to having somebody tell them what to do, and making their own decisions was not a highly developed art with them. It had been rumored that Blister once sat on his bed for ten minutes trying to decide which leg to put into his pants (he finally went back to sleep), and Shadow on one occasion not only shot the wrong guy but did it in the wrong city. I knew both these guys were pretty well confused to begin with, and if I could confuse them just a little bit more, there was a faint chance I could wallop Blister with Shadow, or maybe just run like h.e.l.l.

But how to confuse them? It was a very faint hope, and I wasn't feeling optimistic about my chances, when I noticed the expression on Shadow's face.

His mouth was open and round, his eyes were squinted, and he had his head c.o.c.ked on one side. He held the pose for long seconds, then said, "Lissen. Hey, Blister, will you lissen?"

Blister listened, and on his face, too, grew an expression of marvelous perplexity.

Quinn's voice was filling the room, his words clear and recognizable; ". . while we're waitin' on that, we might as well settle on who we're gonna elect . . ."

For a moment, looking at guns and so forth, awareness of the still-functioning TV set and speaker right behind me had been pushed from my mind. I grinned, partly because of the rigid, almost cataleptic, att.i.tudes of Shadow and Blister, but in greater part because they looked - confused.

I knew that, to these apes, television meant the Sat.u.r.day night wrestling matches, and maybe the Zest commercials, but that their understanding of closed-circuit TV would be on a par with their grasp of advanced trigonometry. They thought nuclear physics was a triple dose of salts plus two Ex-Lax, and a closed circuit was when a pal got executed in Sing Sing. So, while they could understand a hidden microphone, the concept that anybody could be bugged by television - except perhaps in the sense that everybody is bugged by television - would surely prove too great a strain on their mental equipment. At least, that's what I hoped.

The set was behind me, partly concealed by my body. I stepped aside slowly but didn't say a word. I just waited.

Both of them lamped the scene on the little tube at the same moment, but Shadow's reaction was first and loudest. He let out a high whistling squawk, like the mating call of a pa.s.sionate macaw, and pointed speechlessly, finger poking at the TV set. By about his fourth or fifth poke, a very odd expression had captured Blister's chops. He looked, leaned forward and looked a little harder, and his mouth dropped open and his brows pulled down in the same instant, as if his jaw hinge was attached to his eyebrows. Then his face went into reverse, jaw clicking shut and brows flying up as his eyes opened wide.

Then he pulled his head around toward me and said, "You know, I - it . . ." He stopped.

Shadow said in a strained voice, "Hey, Blister, that there actor looks like Doodle, don't it?"

"Yeah, it do, don't it?" Blister looked strenuously at the little screen, bent forward again, took one step closer, then another. "Man," he said wonderingly, "if that ain't Doodle, I ain't Blister."

"How can it be?" Shadow said. "He was just downstairs. And what's he doin' on the television? He ain't no actor."

"Sure he is," I said. "He's a bad actor."

They didn't appear to have heard me. Despite their fascination with the view in the little box, it so happened that when one of them was eyeballing the screen, the other was looking at me, and both of them held their guns at the ready. The time was not yet.

Shadow said, "What in h.e.l.l is Doodle doin'?" and Blister echoed, "Yeah, what is Doodle doin'?"

"You jerks sound like a couple of roosters," I said. "Who cares what Doodle's - arrh. The important thing is that Frank is on the show. The boss. Doodle's just there to give him immoral support."

Shadow peered at the picture, then glanced at me. "Dere is some'p'n queer goin' on here," he said.

"Dere is indeed," said Blister. "What is goin' on?" he asked n.o.body in particular.

"Quinn's this afternoon's guest on Slob For A Day," I said. "It's the human counterpart of - "

"Slob?" Blister stared at me, mouth open, lower lip hanging down loose, with the blank, empty, dopey expression of a man whose brain had just been amputated.

"Sure," I said. "It's sponsored by the Mafia. If he wins, they give him a chromium-plated machine gun, but if he misses a question they shoot him. That's what Doodle's - "

"You're kiddin'," Blister said. "Frank's downstairs waitin' to get to kill you."

"Don't be silly," I said, as if amused. "How can he be? He's on television, isn't he? You can believe your own eyes, can't you? Are you stupid or something?"

"No," he said. "I ain't stupid. But . . . but . . ."

Shadow said, "Dere is some'p'n, queer goin' on here."

"Look!" I yelled. "Listen! They just asked him 'When's Al Capone's birthday?' He doesn't know! They're going to shoot him!"

I really had Blister convinced. His eyes were poking out and he was bent far over toward the screen. "They ain't," he mumbled. "Is they?"

I thought for a moment I was going to make it. I had taken advantage of these last few seconds to slide my feet sideways toward the door. Both men were gawking at the screen, apparently lost in it, and I was about to leap the last few feet when Shadow straightened up and turned his head to look at me. Over the sights of his automatic. "I don't know how you done it," he said slowly. "But . . . I think you done it."

I stopped moving. I almost stopped breathing.

Blister said, "Shadow, either it is or it ain't, either Frank's on the television or he ain't, but this is too much for me." He paused. "I got to find out what the boss thinks."

Well, maybe that says something about the way Blister's mind functioned. Or malfunctioned. But pursuing his own peculiar logic he stepped to the room phone on a table a few feet from the TV receiver, picked it up and asked for Sullivan's office. From where he stood he could still see the front of the set.

I heard the phone ring - the phone downstairs in Sullivan's office, heard it ring here in the room, the sound coming from the speaker. I saw Frank Quinn jerk his head toward the phone on that gray desk, then reach over and pick it up. It was fascinating to me - but not that fascinating to Shadow. He didn't take his eyes off me. Or his gun.