"TV detectives never suffer heartburn, dandruff, or the heartbreak of psoriasis."

"Mr. Pollard," Julie said, "I'm sure Mr. Karaghiosis has explained to you that strictly speaking we aren't private detectives."

"Yes."

"We're security consultants. We primarily work with corporations and private inst.i.tutions. We have eleven employees with sophisticated skills and years of security experience, which is a lot different from the one-man PI fantasies on TV. We don't shadow men's wives to see if they're being unfaithful, and we don't do divorce work or any of the other things that people usually come to private detectives for."

"Mr. Karaghiosis explained that to me," Pollard said, looking down at his hands, which were clenched on his thighs.

From the sofa to the left of the desk, Clint Karaghiosis said, "Frank told me his story, and I really think you ought to h why he needs us." Julie noted that Clint had used the would-be client's first name, which he had never done before during six years with Dakota & Dakota.

Clint was solidly built-five foot eight, hundred and sixty pounds. He looked as though he had on been an inanimate a.s.semblage of chunks of granite and stone marble, flint and field stone, slate and iron and lodesto which some alchemist had trans.m.u.ted into living flesh.

broad countenance, though handsome enough, also looked if it had been chiseled from rock. In a search for a sign of weariness in his face, one could say only that, though strong, so features were not as strong as others. He had a rocklike personality too: steady, reliable, imperturbable. Few people i pressed Clint, and fewer still pierced his reserve and elicit more than a polite, businesslike response from him.

Hint of the client's first name seemed to be a subtle expression of sympathy for Pollard and a vote of confidence in the truthfulness of whatever tale the man had to tell.

"If Clint thinks this is something for us, that's good enough for me,"

Bobby said.

"What's your problem, Frank?" Julie was not impressed that Bobby had used the client's first name so immediately, casually. Bobby liked everyone he met at least until they emphatically proved themselves unworthy of being liked. In fact, you had to stab him in the back repeatedly, virtually giggling with malice, before he would finally a regretfully consider the possibility that maybe he shouldn't like you.

Sometimes she thought she had married a big puppy that was pretending to be human.

Before Pollard could begin, Julie said, "One thing, first.

we decide to accept your case-and I stress the if-we are cheap."

"That's no problem," Pollard said. He lifted a leather flight bag from the floor at his feet. It was one of two he'd brought with him. He put it on his lap and unzippered it. He withdrew a couple of packs of currency and put them on the desk. Twenties and hundreds.

As Julie took the money to inspect it, Bobby pushed away from the windowsill and went to Pollard's side. He look down into the flight bag and said, "It's crammed full."

"One hundred and forty thousand dollars," Pollard said Upon quick inspection, the money on the desk did not appear to be counterfeit.

Julie pushed it aside and said, "Mr. Pollard, are you in the habit of carrying so much cash?"

"I don't know," Pollard said.

"You don't know?"

"I don't know," he repeated miserably.

"He literally doesn't know,"

Clint said.

"Hear him out." In a voice at once subdued yet heavy with emotion, Pollard said, "You've got to help me find out where I go at night. What in G.o.d's name am I doing when I should be sleeping?"

"Hey, this sounds interesting," Bobby said, sitting down on one corner of Julie's desk.

Bobby's boyish enthusiasm made Julie nervous. He might commit them to Pollard before they knew enough to be sure that it was wise to take the case. She also didn't like him sitting on her desk. It just didn't seem businesslike. She felt that it gave the prospective client an impression of amateurism.

From the sofa, Clint said, "Should I start the tape?"

"Definitely,"

Bobby said.

Clint was holding a compact, battery-powered tape recorder. He flicked the switch and set the recorder on the coffee table in front of the sofa, with the built-in microphone aimed at Pollard, Julie, and Bobby.

The slightly chubby, round-faced man looked up at them. The rings of bluish skin around his eyes, the watery redness of the eyes themselves, and the paleness of his lips belied any image of robust health to which his ruddy cheeks might have lent credence. A hesitant smile flickered across his mouth. He met Julie's eyes for no more than a second, looked down at his hands again. He seemed frightened, beaten, altogether pitiable. In spite of herself she felt a pang of sympathy for him.

As Pollard began to speak, Julie sighed and slumped back in her chair.

Two minutes later, she was leaning forward again, listening intently to Pollard's soft voice. She did not want to be fascinated, but she was.

Even phlegmatic Clint Karaghiosis, hearing the story for the second time, was obviously captivated by it.

If Pollard was not a liar or a raving lunatic-and most likely he was both-then he was caught up in events of an almost supernatural nature.

Julie did not believe in the SUPERNATURAL.

She tried to remain skeptical, but Pollard's demeanor and dent conviction persuaded her against her will.

Bobby began making holy-jeez-gosh-wow sounds and slurping the desk in astonishment at the revelation of each twist in the tale. When the client- No. Pollard. Not "the client." He wasn't their client yet. Pollard. When Pollard told them about waking in a motel room Thursday afternoon, blood on his hands, Bobby blurted, "We'll take the case!"

"Bobby, wait," Julie said.

"We haven't heard everything Mr. Pollard came here to tell us. We shouldn't-"

"Yeah, Frank," Bobby said, "what the h.e.l.l happened the Julie said, "What I mean is, we have to hear his whole story before we can possibly know whether or not we can help him "Oh, we can help him, all right," Bobby said.

"We-"

"Bobby," she said firmly, "could I see you alone for a moment?" She got up, crossed the office, opened the door to adjoining bathroom, and turned on the light in there.

Bobby said, "Be right back, Frank." He followed Julie i the bathroom, closing the door behind them.

She switched on the ceiling exhaust fan to help m.u.f.fle the voices, and spoke in a whisper.

"What's wrong with you?

"Well, I have flat feet, no arches at all, and I've got that mole in the middle of my back."

"You're impossible."

"Flat feet and a mole are too many faults for you to hand You're a hard woman." The room was small. They were standing between the sink and the toilet, almost nose to nose. He kissed her forehead "Bobby, for G.o.d's sake, you just told Pollard we'll take case. Maybe we won't."

"Why wouldn't we? It's fascinating."

"For one thing, he sounds like a nut."

"No, he doesn't."

"He says some strange power caused that car to disintegrate blew out streetlights. Strange flute music, mysterious blue lights... This guy's been reading the National Enquirer too long."

"But that's just it. A true nut would already be able to plain what happened to him. He'd claim he'd met G.o.d or Magicians. This guy is baffled, looking for answers. That strikes as a sane response."

"Besides, we're in business, Bobby. Business. Not for fun.

For money. We're not a couple of d.a.m.ned hobbyists."

"He's got money. You saw it."

"What if it's hot money?"

"Frank's no thief."

"You know him less than an hour and you're sure he's no thief'? You're so trusting, Bobby."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment. How can you do the kind of work you do, and be so trusting?" He grinned.

"I trusted you, and that turned out okay." She refused to be charmed.

"He says he doesn't know where he got the money, and just for the sake of the argument, let's say we buy that part of the story. And let's also say you're right about him not being a thief. So maybe he's a drug dealer. Or something else. There's a thousand ways it could be hot money without being stolen. And if we find out that it's hot, we can't keep what he pays us. We'll have to turn it over to the cops. We'll have wasted our time and energy. Besides... it's going to be messy."

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Why do I say that? He just told you about waking up in a motel room with blood all over his hands!"

"Keep your voice down. You might hurt his feelings."

"G.o.d forbid!"

"Remember, there was no body. It must've been his own blood."

Frustrated, she said, "How do we know there was no body?

Because he says there wasn't? He might be such a nut case that he wouldn't even notice the body if he stepped in its steaming bowels and stumbled over its decapitated head."

"What a vivid image." "Bobby, he says maybe he clawed at himself, but that's not very d.a.m.ned likely. Probably some poor woman, some innocent girl, maybe even a child, a helpless schoolgirl, was attacked by that man, dragged into his car, raped and beaten and raped again, forced to perform every humiliating act a perverse mind could imagine, then driven to some lonely desert canyon, maybe tortured with needles and knives and G.o.d knows what, then clubbed to death, and pitched naked into a dry wash, where coyotes are even now chewing on the softer parts of with flies crawling in and out of her open mouth."

"Julie, you're forgetting something."

"What?"

"I'm the one with the overactive imagination." She laughed. She couldn't help it. She wanted to thump skull hard enough to knock some sense into him, but laughed instead and shook her head.

He kissed her cheek, then reached for the doork.n.o.b.

She put her hand on his.

"Promise we won't take the case until we've heard his whole story and have time to think about it."

"All right." They returned to the office.

Beyond the windows, the sky resembled a sheet of steel that had been scorched black in places, with a few scattered incrustations of mustard-yellow corrosion. Rain had not begun to fall, but the air seemed tense in expectation of it.

The only lights in the room were two bra.s.s lamps on tables that flanked the sofa, and a silk-shaded bra.s.s floorlamp in the corner. The overhead fluorescence were not on, because both hated the glare and believed that an office should be as cozy lighted as a den in a private home. Julie thought it should look and feel like an office. But she humored Bobby and usually left the fluorescence off. Now as the oncoming storm darkened the day, she wanted to switch on the overhead and chase away the shadows that had begun to gather in the corners untouched by the amber glow of the lamps.

Frank Pollard was still in his chair, staring at the framed posters of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Uncle Scrooge that adorned the walls.

They were another burden under who Julie labored. She was a fan of Warner Brothers cartoons, because they had a harder edge than Disney's creations, and owned videotape collections of them, plus a couple of additional cells of Daffy Duck, but she kept that stuff at home. Bobby brought the Disney cartoon characters into the office because (he said) they relaxed him, made him feel good, and helped him think. No clients ever questioned their professionalism merely because of the unconventional artwork on the walls, but she still worried about what they might think.

She went behind her desk again, and again Bobby perched on it.

After winking at Julie, Bobby said, "Frank, I was premature in accepting the case. We really can't make that decision until we've heard your whole story."

"Sure," Frank said, looking quickly at Bobby, at Julie, then down at his scratched hands, which were now clutching the open flight bag.

"That's perfectly understandable."

"Of course it is," Julie said.

Clint switched on the tape recorder again.

Exchanging the flight bag on his lap for the one on the floor, Pollard said, "I should give you these."

He unzippered the second satchel and withdrew a plastic bag that contained a small portion of the handsful of black sand he'd been clutching when he had awakened after his brief sleep Thursday morning.

He also withdrew the b.l.o.o.d.y shirt he had been wearing when he had arisen from his even shorter nap later that same day.

"I saved them because... well, they seemed like evidence. Clues. Maybe they'll help you figure out what's going on, what I've done."

Bobby accepted the shirt and the sand, examined them briefly, then put them on the desk beside him.

Julie noted that the shirt had been thoroughly saturated with blood, not merely spotted. Now the dry brownish stains made the material stiffer.

"So you were in the motel Thursday afternoon," Bobby prompted.

Pollard nodded.

"Nothing much happened that night. I went to a movie, couldn't get interested in it. Drove around a while. I was tired, real tired, in spite of the nap, but I couldn't sleep at all. I was afraid to sleep.

Next morning I moved to another motel."