"He'd think of something, Frank would."

"He'd shoot me all over the place. And you know what?" Jay's face took on the most lugubrious, the most sad and sorrowful expression it had yet attained. "It wouldn't be worth it."

"Jay, don't you think - "

"Yeah," he interrupted, almost briskly. "Yeah. I guess you're right." He pulled a small Beretta automatic from his pocket, aimed it casually at me, and told me to step away from the wall. When I did, he listlessly jabbed the Beretta into my back. "Stick 'em up," he said.

We started walking out. Jay tossed a few words to the a.s.sembled menagerie. It was approximately what I'd suggested, that he was going to reserve for himself the pleasure of knocking me off and so on. The boys seemed disappointed, but n.o.body protested out loud.

We were about ten feet from the door when Fargo came barging up from behind us. He stopped between us and the door and said, "Where in h.e.l.l you going?" Without waiting for an answer he said to Jay, "Boss is real pleased. Real pleased. Says go ahead like he told us. Kill the sonofab.i.t.c.h."

"Sure," said Jay dully. "Yeah. Sure."

Naturally, Fargo had no idea of what was going on. He simply saw Jay behind me, and me apparently under control. Captive. Helpless. So he balled up a fist and took a swing at my face. It was perhaps the slowest poke ever launched at me. I could probably have ducked it in both directions, but I just pulled my head aside far enough so his fist whistled past my ear, and then I hauled off and popped him with a long, looping right that landed over his right eye.

The skin split. Blood spurted, splashing my knuckles. Fargo spun sideways, his arms flapped, and he crashed heavily to the floor, rolled onto his back. He was not quite unconscious, and moved a little down there, but couldn't get up. After a few seconds he mumbled something. There was a stunned expression on his face. Then he mumbled again.

It would almost have been worth waiting around to find out what he was saying. Almost. But I didn't wait.

Fargo was still mumbling on the floor when Jay and I went out to the street.

Ten.

Jay and I sat in the front seat of his Thunderbird, talking. I'd left my Cad behind, and Jay had driven us to a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, just off Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

He had been, and was continuing to be, very cooperative.

I explained to him that if he extended me a helping hand, or rather two helping hands, I would destroy all the evidence Wednesday. At that time it wouldn't make any difference; if I hadn't cleared Miller by then n.o.body ever would. However, if Jay was n.i.g.g.ardly with his cooperation, the horrifying enlargements would reach Frank Quinn within the hour.

So far in our conversation he had corroborated most of what I had already learned from others - the shooting of Casey Flagg, pressure on Heigman to make him swear falsely that Miller had purchased the murder gun, some of the other items.

I mentioned the info I'd gotten from Pinky, and Jay said, "Yeah, Papa Ryan did the job on Heigman." He squinted at me. "But how in h.e.l.l did you find out about it?"

"Never mind that. What about the bagman?"

"Casey was it, all right. But it's like you said, since then Frank's been handling that end personal."

"How does he handle it? And who gets the loot?"

"You got me."

"Jay, if you're holding back - "

"Dammit, Scott, I am telling you everything I know excepting only my mother's maiden name. Which, if you got to know, was Abigail Emily - "

"Never mind. You're closer to Quinn than anybody else is, though."

"Yeah, but Frank is a close-mouthed b.a.s.t.a.r.d when he wants to be, which is practically always. Look, he is very secret about this jazz - especially since Casey sticky-fingered part of the finances. Don't that make sense?"

"It makes sense."

"h.e.l.l, even them meetings he has every month is just the club, exclusive. I don't go, Papa don't go, n.o.body goes but Doodle. And he's deef and dumb."

"You lost me. Doodle?" I remembered Pinky had mentioned something about monthly meetings. "And what meetings are these? What goes on?"

"n.o.body knows what - excepting only Doodle, who can shoot the ears off a cat at a hundred paces, and like I said is deef and dumb, so he can't hear nothin' or say nothin'. Frank'd probably blind him too, only then he couldn't see to shoot n.o.body if it got necessary. So, excepting Doodle, only Frank and the cats he meets with know what goes on."

It took a while, since Jay kind of lunged all around the point, but finally I understood that once each month Quinn met with a dozen or so men in an office at the rear of the Gardenia Room - the lecherous "Sully" Sullivan's office, which I'd visited briefly earlier tonight. The meetings were held there, rather than at Quinn's ranch, because if men were seen entering or leaving Quinn's they might well, and with reason, be looked upon with more than a little suspicion; whereas anybody could visit the Barker Hotel, or drop in for a drink at the Gardenia Room - then slip into that back office - without anybody being the wiser.

Jay a.s.sumed that they were extremely important meetings, this testified to by the secrecy with which Quinn surrounded them. It could also be a.s.sumed that on these once-a-month occasions Quinn personally paid off his a.s.sociates. Jay believed the men Quinn met with were local citizens of considerable power and influence, but nonetheless cooperating with Quinn either for profit or for some other good reason. In Jay's words, "I'd say they must be very big apples, either on the take or else Frank's got them by the loins somehow." He stated it a bit more baldly, but his meaning was clear.

"When's the next meeting?" I asked him.

"Next week. Monday afternoon. He's sort of holding off on everything till after . . . you know."

I knew. Till after Ross Miller's execution. With Miller dead, it wasn't likely that many people would be eager to have it proved that Quinn himself had murdered Casey Flagg. Not if Miller had already been put to death for murdering Casey Flagg. If Quinn made it to 10:01 a. m. Wednesday, he'd probably make it all the way.

I said, "You don't know anybody who's present at these get-togethers?"

Jay frowned. "I heard a couple names once." He shook his head. "Semmelbaum . . . Semel . . . something or other."

"Semmelwein? Ira Semmelwein?"

"That's it. How in h.e.l.l - ?"

"Anybody else?"

"A guy named Smith. Never heard his first name."

Smith, great. That pinned it down. But Ira Semmelwein was one of the two names Pinky had given me; he was President of the Golden Coast Insurance Company in L.A. I tried the other name, John Porter, on Jay, but he'd never heard of him.

"Jay," I said, "we're going to try pulling a little bluff on Quinn. You'd like to help me, wouldn't you?"

"Sure," he scowled. "I'd get a real bang out of it."

I went on, "When you get back to the ranch tonight I want you to tell Quinn I spilled several things to you - when I thought you were going to shoot me. Among them that I know who the people are who gather at these secret meetings. Say I mentioned Semmelwein, Smith, and Porter among others." I thought a minute. "Tell him I even know why he holds the meetings. It might shake him up a little more, and the more the better."

"I can do it, Scott - if he hasn't already chopped my head off. How am I going to explain it if the corpse I killed is spotted alive by one of the boys? I got the feeling you aren't going into hiding."

"I'm not about to. But you've got the wrong idea - you don't tell Quinn you shot me."

"But . . . I sprang you out of the club. Frank'll kill - "

"Tell Frank you tried to shoot me, you tried very hard and loyally, but I jumped you and got away. Dream something up."

"Dream something up?"

"Say your gun jammed, anything."

Slowly he nodded. "I could do that. This rod of mine's a foreign heater, a little Beretta. It jammed once before when we was target practicin'." He paused. "But you'll have to pound on me a little, won't you?"

"Well . . . I don't know about that. I don't want to - "

"You don't get it. I want you to pound me. Beat h.e.l.l out of me. If I ain't a mess, Frank won't believe it."

"We'll see. For now, just keep talking."

He told me more of interest, some of it even good enough to give Quinn a great deal of trouble if Jay were willing to go into court with the same testimony - which, of course, he decidedly was not willing to do, not even if I had color movies of him, he said; his consuming desire was to stay alive, and testifying would get him killed just as dead.

His face took on the same lugubrious expression which had captured his features earlier when he'd cried out, "It wouldn't be worth it!" and he said to me, "No matter what, I'm gonna get killed. She'll kill me, or you'll kill me, or he'll kill me - or maybe even I'll kill me. Scott, of all the miserable ways to stab me you couldn't of picked a worse one. How did I get in such a mess? How? How?" He paused, shaking his head. "It ain't only I can't afford to let Frank - you know. But I am sick of Maude." He started sort of moaning. "Boy, am I sick."

"Maude?"

"Yeah, Maude. Maude Quinn, who else?"

"Maude Quinn? You're sick of her?"

"Sick-sick-sick! You don't know - that face of hers, like a old mud fence, is startin' to haunt me nights. At first I didn't even see it, you know? But now - ah, I couldn't tell you. I can't do nothing about it. If I tried to drop her she'd tell Frank to kill me. And he'd do it. If he didn't, some night she'd . . . ah. Oh. Gah. You and your G.o.ddam pictures."

Finally, after Jay had promised to phone me at my apartment if anything at all of interest occurred when he got back to the ranch, I decided to leave. We got out of the car and stood facing each other.

"O.K.," he said after a few seconds. "Pop me."

I balled up my right fist, then relaxed. "Jay, I can't do it. I can't just haul off and sock you."

I have not the slightest reservation about slamming characters who are giving me a bad time, but simply to pound on a guy who stood there asking for it was beyond me.

"Nuts," Jay said. "I'll just have to do it myself somehow. Ah, come on, sock me."

"No."

"Please."

It was pretty silly. I almost had to chuckle at the thought of one of Frank Quinn's hoodlums begging me to pop him, but right then Jay raised his voice and yelled at me.

"You lousy b.a.s.t.a.r.d, you G.o.ddam filthy-picture peddler, you creep! So you won't pop me, huh?" And he hauled off and socked me in the eye.

It just happened, the old nerve patterns going automatically into action, and my left hand zipped up, becoming a hard, h.o.r.n.y fist on the way, and bounced off Jay's chops, and I was leaning over him with my right hand high, stretched open, the thick blade of my palm almost on its way down to hack at his skull like a cleaver - when I managed to call everything to a halt.

Jay was sliding down the side of the car, slowly, his knees bending like elastic hinges, and he went all the way down onto his hind end and said, "Blah," or something like that. Then, sort of creakingly, he got to his feet.

"That ought to do it," he said. "That was a good one. Yeah, I think that's enough."

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't think - "

"'Sall right, Scott. That was a good one. Yeah, that's enough, I think."

He climbed into the Thunderbird and looked into the rearview mirror, climbed out again. "You got my eye fine," he said. "But Frank still won't believe it."

"Jay, don't take another poke - "

"No." He shook his head. "You was going to kill me, wasn't you?"

"I didn't even think - "

"I seen your face. It looked like you was going to eat me." He paused. "But I guess that'll do it, I hope."

I said, "O.K., if you'll drop me off in town - "

"No, sir. I'll walk or hitch a ride - you take the T-bird. n.o.body's going to see me with you. Besides, if you knocked me out, you'd take the heap, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah, that's right. O.K. But don't forget to shake Quinn up good. Tell him I'm going to blow everything wide open - tomorrow. Tell him I know the whole bit, how he shot Flagg, had Heigman drowned . . ." I stopped. "What about Weiss?"

"What do you mean, what about him?"

"Did Quinn kill him?"

"Sure. That is, he had the boys do it."

"How?"

"Well, for a week or so before then, Frank was getting leery about maybe Weiss might spill his guts - he'd quit his job for one thing - so he had him followed. Weiss got out of line somehow, and Frank had the boys bring him out to the ranch last Friday night. They wrapped him in blankets and tied a rope around him and made him run along behind a car till he flopped. Then they did it again. Finally he just keeled over and kicked off." Jay gently fingered his eye. "The toughest part was getting him into his hotel again, but they managed to sneak him in the back way, while it was still dark."

I shook my head. "What a lovely group you mingle with."

"He had a bad heart, you know."

"Yeah. That's what he died of. Heart failure."

I was quiet for a few seconds, then said, my voice soft, "Now tell me about Lolita, Jay."

His eyes flickered. "What you mean, Scott?"

"You know what I mean. Now tell me."

He swallowed. "Well, uh, Heigman and Weiss and the Lopez chick was the only three what might've put a squeeze on Frank. And with Miller so near going, and you stirring up a h.e.l.l of a storm the last couple days, which got Frank plenty worried - "

"I know she's dead. Just tell me who did it."

"You won't - you won't be able to prove nothin'."