Good Lord, Deliver Us

Book #2 in the Z-Detective Series

John G. Stockmyer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 John G. Stockmyer

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Acknowledgements

Cover Art: Ronald L. Brink

Ronald L. Brink, a self-taught artist and illustrator, has been drawing and painting most of his adult life. Watercolor is his medium of choice. He has illustrated the covers of several published works. His work was chosen for the President's Christmas card at William Jewell College for six years. He has created over 40 paintings for the College; most of them for clients and has sold many works of pets and homes. He has taught at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City for over 40 years. His works are displayed annually at the on-campus gallery. Brink received a B.A. degree from Missouri Valley College in 1964; an M.A. degree in 1967 from the University of Denver; and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1983. He served as Chair of the Communications Division at Maple Woods from 1990-1998. He resides in Kansas City.

Ebook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer

John L. Stockmyer is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in ecommerce, audio-book production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media and innovative technology. Thank you for helping us shake up the publishing industry!

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Introduction

The time: 1990.

The place: Kansas City, Missouri.

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Chapter 1

Sweating.

Bob Zapolska -- Big Bob Z to his friends back in high school -- bent down the corner of the page and put aside the latest paperback: John Lutz Scorcher. Z's eyes had begun to fuzz up anyway. Getting older would do that to you.

Time to eat the "luncheon" peanut butter and jelly sandwich he'd brought from home. Peanut butter and jelly for breakfast; peanut butter for dinner; peanut butter for supper. Until he collected on another case.

Using both hands, Z lifted his left leg off his scabby desk and eased it to the floor, his stiff knee giving him a twinge when his heel bumped down. Never be any better, his doctor said. Would only get worse, his doctor didn't say -- but meant. Z (as he called himself) could read other people pretty well -- a life-prolonging skill in the P.I. business.

Sweating.

No sense complaining, though. Considering the meager rent Z paid for this "two-holer" of an office at the cheap end of Chouteau, he couldn't expect air conditioning that would overwhelm the serious heat of Kansas City at the end of June.

To be completely honest, the Bob Zapolska Detective Agency was little more than an ad in the Yellow Pages:

Bob Zapolska Detective Agency: Quick, Inexpensive. Results Guaranteed.

Phone: 555-4520.

Z hoped no one noticed his ad made no mention of his being licensed.

With a sigh, Z dug the aspirin bottle out of his pants pocket, unscrewed the cap and shook a satisfying number of pills into his big, blunt hand; palmed them in his mouth; chewed them up and gulped down the sour, acid-tasting grit. At first, Z had needed water to down that many aspirin. But that was ... too many ... years ago.

Waiting for the pills to take effect, Z used the time to wipe the sweat out of the cracks in his forehead.

While he was taking a break, he fingered the bullet scar in his chest. Something Susan didn't like him to do. Probably because she thought he did that to make her feel guilty because he'd taken the bullet meant for her.

Z poked the depression again to demonstrate he wasn't a pussy-whip. At least, when Susan wasn't watching.

Z's Mother wouldn't have liked him using language like "pussy-whip," his Mom not even wanting him to think "bad words." Alive or dead, a man's mother lived forever, just behind his eyes.

It was then that Z heard a startling sound! -- someone knocking on the outer office door -- Z so surprised he lurched out of his chair without thinking .... to find himself sprawled painfully on the thin carpeted floor beside his desk.

Cursing inwardly, holding his trick knee with both hands, Z was treated to another, less patient knock, the sound so unfamiliar because Z never had walk-in trade ....

Finding that nothing was broken in the fall, grabbing the end of the desk, Z pried himself up on his good leg.

Another knock, considerably louder.

Testing his left leg, confident the knee would hold if he didn't ask it to do too much, Z began shuffling around the desk, past the empty file cabinets to either side, through the arch divider to flank his "secretary's" desk in the outer cubicle.

At the front in time to hear a frustrated fourth knock, Z opened the door to find ....

Susan!

His Susan. A dream, with glorious black hair and legs so long they could grip a man with the power of an anaconda! Susan, in a white linen dress that covered too much leg, but showed off the rest of ....

Z knew he was grinning like an idiot.

But why was she here? Susan rarely came to Z's office, and certainly not during weekdays when she was working.

Stepping back so Susan could enter, he was also happy to see the back side of her as she went by.

She turned. Frowned prettily. "Z, I know I said I could come over tomorrow night, but something on the job's come up." Susan worked for Screw-'em-to-the-Wall Insurance.

"Yeah?"

"Sorry," Susan purred, stepping forward to put her arms around him. "I don't know what it is, but it's big. I've got to be there to take notes. Very hush-hush." She smiled up at him.

"Yeah."

"I'll make it up to you. I promise," Susan pleaded, strengthening her pledge by tightening her arms into a hug, at the same time, nuzzling his neck.

"Yeah." No wonder he'd taken a bullet for this gorgeous piece; a girl he'd stop another for. ... Any time.

The phone rang.

As slippery as a dream, Susan was out of Z's arms, over to the "secretary's" desk, and lifting the receiver. "Bob Zapolska Detective Agency." The same thing she'd said when she'd recorded the message for the office answering machine, Susan knowing how much better her voice sounded in person than it did coming from the off-pitch machine. Grinning, she turned to hand the phone to Z.

"Bob Zapolska, speaking."

"Bob, this is Hugh Calder, at Bateman College." A pause. "Remember me?"

Of course Z remembered Calder, the Calder case not that long ago. Anyway, who could forget the chubby college professor; fine, sandy hair drifting down his forehead; blue eyes magnified behind large lenses?

He'd met Dr. Calder on the case of the murdered janitor, that case quickly turning into the mystery of the frozen secretary, that incident leading to a search for the Bateman ghost light, only to twist back on itself to the discovery of the stolen Monet, dead director, and missing rental equipment. No way Z could forget Hugh Calder.

"Yeah."

"Incidentally, catch any good ghosts lately?" Followed by a chuckle, Calder referring to the ghost light in the window of the third-floor turret room of Bateman Hall -- Bateman Hall the oldest, ugliest building on the campus of nearby Bateman College. The young prof had hired Z to poke around, part of the investigation to explore the rounded tower room in hopes of finding the source of the mysterious "Bateman ghost light," Z discovering the room's glow was nothing but a reflection of powerful lamps deep in the sub-basement of the moldering building.

In an attempt to get more "purchase" on the source of the ghost light, Z had then shorted out the entire Bateman College lighting system --- with unexpectedly grotesque results ..........

But ... that was another time. ... If not another place.

"I called," Calder continued, "because I may have a job for you. You busy at the moment?"

"No." A response that wasn't strictly true, Susan doing something interesting to Z's available ear.

"So -- this is the situation. For some years, the school's been buying up homes on the east side of the campus. One at a time; whenever they came up for sale.

"It was probably a secret at first. To keep people from jacking up the price." Calder hesitated to get himself back on track. "The reason the college needs to expand is soccer, a sport that's become so popular the college has to put in additional playing fields. Anyway, the school's gotten all the property it needs, has begun to tear down the old homes it owns. But there's a snag. With only two houses left where the college intends to put in the fields, suddenly, out of nowhere, comes a citizen's committee to save one of the houses. Something about preserving the old home as an historic site.

"And as if that wasn't enough, the people in the house next door to the one in question have reported hearing mysterious noises coming from the neighboring house at night. Seeing lights." Calder gave his soft chuckle again. "Another set of ghost lights made me think of you."

"Right," Z muttered, feeling he should say something to hold up his end of the conversation. Z did have intelligent things to say. It was just that he never knew when to say them.

Meanwhile, Susan had begun to massage Z's neck and ... other places. If she thought he was going to try to make her stop, she had another ....

"... shouldn't be anything in the house under discussion," Calder was saying. "Oh, maybe some pieces of old furniture. That kind of thing. The last person to live there -- a retired prof of the college -- died several years ago. The college, as I understand it, has owned the house for a long time.

"Thinking of you, I talked to our new Vice Chancellor of Incremental Augmentation Services -- that's a flashy title for Dean in charge of new construction. Found him to be as worried about rumors of ghosts as about the historic preservation committee. My impression was that anything that could be a roadblock to demolition of the last two houses will look bad on his record.

"So, I told him you were a good man. Had done work for me. And were experienced in the ghost business."

"Didn't find a ghost. Just a light," Z said, feeling the honest thing to do was call that to mind.

"Right! And that's just the point. The vice chancellor doesn't want to find a ghost on the property under discussion. Quite the opposite. He wants someone to assure whoever asks that there isn't a ghost there. The thing is, the vice chancellor wants to damp down any interest in the property from whatever quarter. The way I read him is that he lives in fear a reporter will get it into his head to feature the house in a story on Kansas City ghosts. And, God forbid that the T.V. people show up out there with lights and cameras! He wants to quiet everything down so he can sneak a bulldozer in there and knock down the house without anyone raising a stink."

"Sounds reasonable."

"So, are you interested in looking the house over and then turning in a report saying this ghost business is nonsense?"

An odd sort of case to be hired for, Z was thinking. In spite of his previous involvement with the "ghost light," the supernatural was outside a P.I.'s normal line of work. Contrary to what you always read in detective fiction, the P.I. business was ... boring, consisting mostly of shadowing someone -- camera at the ready -- to confirm or deny a spouse's suspicions of marital infidelity. Or digging up dirt on a business associate suspected of: 1. stealing money from the firm; 2. selling firm secrets to a rival.

In addition to tailing people, Z was sometimes hired to run off undesirables. (If Z's bulk and the sound of his strangled voice didn't spook the bad guys, his ghoulish-looking, mucus-colored eyes would.)

"You still with me, Z?" Again, Z had been thinking instead of talking.

"Yes."

Z now woke up to the fact that Susan had stopped "pestering" him, Z looking over to see her near the door.

"You want the work?"

Back to the phone -- a P.I.'s job not much fun and not paying that well, either.

"I don't know how much money there is in it," Calder continued, "but something."

"Yes."

"That means you'll do it?"

"Yeah."

"Great!" Calder could show interest for just about anything, Calder an intriguing man. "Here's what you do. Call the school. If you're free, make an appointment with the vice chancellor for this very afternoon. He's eager to get this settled, so the sooner the better. By the way, the dean's name is Ashlock. Dr. Cecil Ashlock. His office is in the Administration building." Again a pause. This time, Calder thinking. "I guess the only thing I really know about him is that he's new. A man in a hurry is his reputation." Another meditative silence. "You may have to sell yourself a little. He didn't enthuse when I mentioned your name. But he didn't say no, either."

"OK."

Across the room, Susan was waving. Blowing a kiss. ... Like a vision fading into memory, she was about to leave!

Stretching out, Z tried to catch her arm ... but found the phone cord too short for him to reach her.

"And Z. When you're on the campus, why don't you drop in to see me? It'd be fun to talk about old times."

"OK."

"Great talking to you again, Z!"

"Yeah."

Click. And click.

Followed by another, completely disgusting sound --- the snap of the door lock, delicious Susan ... gone.

Leaving Z to swear quietly to himself.

Susan couldn't stay. Z understood. It wouldn't have been like "work-ethic" Susan to be late returning to her insurance job after her lunch hour. Z knew that ... but didn't have to like it!

Damn insurance companies!

Damn Calder!

Damn this dean, whoever he was!

Continuing to damn this and that for some time, Z finally calmed himself by reflecting that Susan's showing up in person with the bad news of their non-date meant she still loved him.

Feeling better at last -- about feeling bad -- it was time for Z to reflect on what Calder said about this new case.

For one thing, that Z should get right on it. For another, something about "ghost" lights and soccer and that the main man's name was Dr. Cecil Ashlock, Vice Chancellor of Incremental Augmentation Services.

Too early to infer, from the man's inflated title, that he was a pompous ass.

Plenty of time to confirm the man's "assness" when meeting him this afternoon.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

Driving through the Kansas City satellite town of Liberty, past Courthouse Square, continuing to the far edge of town, Z had parked in the lower lot below Bateman College, after that, had dragged himself up the steeply slanted, concrete steps that led to the top of Bateman hill.

Now at the knee-wrenching summit, wearing a brown-striped shirt -- should he have worn a tie? -- and an almost-presentable, vanilla-colored suit coat, Z could only hope his sweat-activated deodorant didn't fail him.

Struggling through wind gusts that eternally crested the Bateman knoll, Z emerged at the front of the campus.

There, he turned left to limp along the broad front walk that led past the boomerang-shaped row of classroom buildings: Social Science ... Humanities ... Continuing Education ......

At least it was cooler on the hill, wind puffs ruffling the short nap of Z's gray hair, the breeze even drying Z's armpits through his poplin jacket.

The ground fell off sharply to his right, cement stairways climbing both ends of the campus hill. Summer school, book-carrying students were mounting the steps to join Z on the hill's front walk.

Trees clumped the hillside; skeletons in winter; now, leafy explosions. Oaks. Elms. Hickories.

Below, and rising to either side of the long front stairs, were thick, waist-high, dark green hedges (placed along the walkways to keep students from being blown off the stairs??) Iron pipe railings also "climbed" the cracked concrete steps.

The town of Liberty lay stretched out below the Bateman mound, the old city thick with tree-lined streets and stately homes.

To Z's left, the college's long, brick, single-story classroom buildings were hunkered down in a mosaic of grassy spots and plantings, the air laden with the sweet scent of .... mixed flowers. Wet flowers. Wet, because of whirling, sun-glazed sprinklers. (The grass had largely fled from Z's apartment house, the building's owner, Peg-Leg Mary, too feeble to do yard work anymore. Too poverty-stricken to hire it done.)

Continuing along the walk with the summer-clad students, Z kept on past Bateman Hall -- the queer old building named for the college's founder, P.T. Bateman.

And there it was, the low metal sign in the lawn out front of the next brick "long house" proclaiming the structure to be: Administration.

Z was honest enough to admit that he was nervous about confronting campus royalty. Was also aware of the quizzical looks of students passing by, boys in uniform shirts and shorts, young women in brightly colored silk blouses and expensive, lightweight skirts, Z's "look" as out of place in this high-toned society as a fur-dressed chimp at an English tea.)

Forcing himself, Z turned from the broad front walk to stumble down the narrower pathway to the administration building's door, the mix of flowering plants more lush here than those fronting the other buildings, the vegetation featuring oblong beds of red and white petunias, here and there, a circle of purple pansies.

Recalling this building from last winter, Z opened the front door to find himself in the entrance "airlock," another closed door directly before him. Pushing through the second door, Z was again in the main corridor of the building proper.

The same, light cream walls. The same framed portraits "decorating" both sides of the hall: paintings and photo-blowups of antique men with pinched-nose, granny glasses, all of them in ill-fitting, old-fashioned three-piece suits; no doubt, the school's former administrators at the turn of the century.

The hall itself was as he remembered it, the corridor welcoming visitors with its soft, pale blue carpet flanked with delft borders. Occasional tables along the walls held unlit lamps and neatly stacked, colorful brochures. Pots of greenery and flowers provided decoration -- the plants probably fake because they looked so good.

The smell ....... was also the same. Of paint applied within the year.

In addition, Z could detect the formaldehyde tang of recently installed carpet. Also pick up the lemony odor of furniture polish. (Ever since that brief period when Z had lost his sense of smell, he'd made it a point to enjoy odors: smell, the most underrated of the senses.)

And something more. Something .... different. .....

Air conditioning!

As he'd been grateful for the building's warmth last winter, he was glad for its summer coolness.

Hot and cold. Two sides of the human-comfort coin.

Back to the hall -- no people to be seen.

Just the way it was the last time he was in this building; not that the lack of students was that surprising, this, the administration building. Students would be sitting in classrooms in other buildings; spending between-class-time grouped about coke and candy machines in recreation areas.

Administration was the place where bigwigs guarded their offices with imposing secretaries, while "the girls" cowered behind partitions in the large area ahead of him, the large room's "animal life" caged behind clear-glass, double swinging doors.

In spite of no one being about, Z tried not to limp as he set off down the silent, carpeted hall. He was, after all, in the administration building.

Crossing the bisecting passageway at the end of the corridor, Z approached the thick glass door. Like the last time, read the black, painted-on lettering.

College President

Dean of Continuing Education

Dean of the School of Business

Dean of Arts and Sciences

Academic Dean

And a title at the bottom that was not there before:

Vice Chancellor of Incremental Augmentation Services

In spite of Z's six-foot plus and over two hundred pounds of bulk, this list of intellectuals shrank Z to the size of the mental pygmy that he was, Z wanting nothing so much as to slip back down the hall. (He'd been reluctant to enter this building last winter, when all he'd been doing was calling on a secretary.)

On the other hand, there was no denying that Z needed this job. Any job.

Bracing himself on his good leg, summoning the necessary combination of courage and leverage, Z pushed through the heavy door, the thick glass swishing shut behind him with the finality of a honed blade whispering down a guillotine.

As before, he found himself in the room of secretaries, each V-shaped, head-high, nubby cloth divider encompassing one or two "girls" plus their equipment: desks, chairs, file cabinets, and typewriters, the pitter-patter of keystrokes tapping his brain like Chinese water torture.

"May I help you, Sir?" asked a stylish older lady, looking up from a small reception desk to the right of the glass door.

"Dr. Ashlock," Z croaked, his voice even less reliable when he felt tense. "Appointment."

"Through there, sir," she said, pointing down the narrow space between secretarial stations, the woman managing to contain most of her surprise that a man like Z would be in a place like this.

Nothing for it now but to go on, Z walking between rows of six-foot-high, semi-private partitions, women behind them performing the mysterious process called "office work."

As Z passed his former -- murdered -- client's workspace in the middle of the secretarial line, he increased his painful pace.

Guilt.

Unreasonable -- but unavoidable.

Working his way through secretaries' row at last, Z came to the administration offices on the far side of a wide hall.

Arriving, looking both ways, Z noticed that each of the executive chambers (their solid, light-oak doors uniformly shut) had its corresponding secretarial station opposite it, even the clerical compartments somewhat larger than those of the "girls in the pool."

Turning left, Z followed the trail of doors, each with a title trumpeted in shiny brass. President. .... Dean of Continuing Education. ..... Dean of Business. ..... Dean of Arts and Sciences. .... Academic Dean.

To the last door labeled: Vice Chancellor. In smaller letters underneath: Of Incremental Augmentation Services.

What to do now?

Of course.

Consult the secretary in the station directly across the hall's width. The secretary of the "new" man.

Pivoting left, the tension of the moment absorbing any knee pain Z might have otherwise felt, he stepped across to lean into the secretary's office, finding a pretty, bobbed-hair blonde inside, the girl -- packaged in a pale blue dress -- perched delicately on her small swivel chair behind a well-kept desk. Certainly not one of the superior looking help-mates of the high and mighty, frumped down as they were, in isolated splendor.

The cutie looked up.

Was shocked -- big and ugly stunning most people.

"Bob Zapolska," Z said in his rattling whisper. (Another couple of hits on the pipes would have Z using sign-language.)

"Oh," the young woman said, fighting to recover. "Oh, yes. You're to see Doctor Ashlock." Z noted that the girl was already comfortable enough with her job to call her powerful boss "Doctor" instead of Vice Chancellor. Speculated that, in another year, she'd call him "Ashlock" ... at least to her friends. Pretty as she was, the Vice Chancellor might even invite her to call him "Cecil." .... And after that ... what?

Honey?

Sweet Cheeks?

Meanwhile, the girl had looked down at an LCD display on her phone. Looked up again. "Dr. Ashlock is on the telephone at the moment." She gave Z an apologetic, wet-lipped smile. "Please be seated."

Which Z did. In the uncomfortably-modern corner chair the girl indicated.

No magazines. Even high-brow ones.

With time on his hands, Z tried to think of something pleasurable, hitting on his annual trip to the scraggly town of Riverside to buy fireworks -- Riverside, another Kansas City suburb, but in the opposite direction from Gladstone, where Z lived.

Thinking about Riverside always brought to mind Z's two best friends from high school: Ted Newbold and Johnny Dosso: the three of them calling themselves, the Musketeers. Riverside, after all, was where the three of them had done what only dumb high school kids would consider funny: staged a fake murder in front of an unsuspecting family.

Lacking the proper "murder weapon" should have derailed that stunt -- and would have if it hadn't been for Johnny Dosso. As it was, it had taken no more than a couple of minutes for Johnny to disappear into his lavish home on North Enrico (a house Teddy and Z would never be invited into) and return with a small automatic equipped with what would tip off any adult to the special nature of Johnny's "family" -- a silencer.

So, they'd pulled off their completely stupid prank!

Odd, how differently the Musketeers had turned out. Z -- the knee injury ruining any hope of a college football scholarship -- after a number of joint-straining jobs -- now a Private Eye.

Teddy Newbold, the "corpse," revived to become a Gladstone cop.

And finally, like so many young men in those distant days, Johnny Dosso going into the family business -- his contingent of the family calling itself International Imports. (Z could only hope Johnny's duties as a part of "International Imports" was nothing more than what he claimed: gambling and prostitution.)

"Sir!" It was the young secretary. Trying to get Z's attention.

Z grinned sheepishly. Nodded.

"You can go in now."

Trying a smile, Z pushed himself up and out of the chair. "Just knock on the door."

Z nodded.

Turned.

Crossed the carpeted, extra-wide hall.

This was ridiculous! As a P.I., Z had fought criminals! Had survived assassination attempts! Had lived -- though just barely -- after taking a slug in the lung. Given the real dangers he'd faced, it was crazy to be afraid of people simply because they were better educated!

Maybe Susan was right; Z should try college. One course. Just to see if he could cut it.

What Z had discovered in the last year was that Susan was college material. She'd taken an American history course at Maple Woods College last winter and made an A. But then, he'd known all along that Susan was as smart as she was beautiful.

Making up his mind that the best way to proceed was to pretend he was as good as anyone, Z rapped on the door. Once. His touch, feather-light.

"Enter," came the muffled reply.

The invitation really a command, Z opened the door. Stuck his head in. "Bob Zapolska."

"Come in. Come in," bubbled the man behind an absurdly large desk. A little man with a booming voice. Younger than Z. Blow-dried, black hair. Large brown eyes in a small face. Prominent Adam's apple. Absolutely even teeth. (Z had always found it difficult to trust people with perfectly straightened teeth.)

Dressed for success, the dark suit of Dr. "Sweet-Cheeks" was a perfect contrast to Z's off-the-rack duds -- the vice chancellor's clothing expensively molded to his small body, the administrator's tie tastefully striped. "I've been expecting you. Punctuality. I appreciate that. Shows you're my kind of person."

Motioning Z in, the vice chancellor stood, leaned over the out-sized, extra-shiny, desk and brushed Z's hand.

Settling back, he directed Z to an overstuffed, brown leather chair across from the desk.

Between them on the administrator's hand-rubbed writing table was ... nothing ... except a mobile phone. And a single piece of paper of what looked like typed phone listings. Unlike the enslaved females "out there" in their clickety-clack world, this man's job was brain work.

"I've been checking on you, you know," the Vice Chancellor said, shaking a delicate finger at Z as if Z were a naughty, but always to be forgiven, child.

"Calder."

"Dr. Calder?" Vice Chancellor Ashlock paused as if to be certain they were speaking about the same man, then hurried on. "To be sure. To be sure. Dr. Calder has filled my ear with glowing reports of your competencies." Z should have used Calder's title. Was embarrassed that he hadn't. "But others, also, have praised your talents."

Others? Who could the vice chancellor of Bateman College possibly know who also knew Z?

Z must have looked as perplexed as he felt, for the administrator smiled his amusement. Then sobered. "This business is a most delicate one." The small man leaned forward, dropping his voice conspiratorially, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. "Most delicate. When looking for a man of discretion, questions must be asked. Asked of the highest authority."

God?

The man had a pipeline to God?

Z reminded himself it was not a good idea to get cheeky with a Vice Chancellor. It was just that something about the man made Z uneasy. A sensation like spiders crawling down the neck.

"So, please don't be offended that I took the opportunity to call local law enforcement to ask about you." Again, the smile; less "congenitally friendly" than "coldly crocodile."

Back to the conversation. Had the man behind the too-big desk talked to Z's cop friend, Teddy Newbold?

"And, of course, you came through fabulously." The vice chancellor waved both hands as if to dismiss any other possibility. "I already knew you were a man to trust. Dr. Calder would not have recommended anyone of less than sterling character. In addition, you have the reputation of being a 'take charge' kind of guy. A 'go-getter.'"

"You called Ted Newbold?"

A frown descended the man's small face. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure ....?"

"A detective. Friend of mind."

"Ah. I see what you mean." The showy grin was back, white teeth pinning it from ear to ear. "No, no. When one wants action, one goes right to the top. Talking to intermediaries wastes precious time. No, no. I placed a call to the Gladstone Chief of Police himself. Had met him at a business luncheon just the other day. At a brunch to benefit the little boy who needs the heart transplant." The vice chancellor's eyes misted up on cue. "Pitiful case. Glad to help in that way." Again, the sharp-toothed leer. "Presuming on our recent acquaintanceship, I dialed the Captain."

"Scherer?" Z tried to keep shock from his voice.

"That's the name! Captain Scherer. Charming man. Charming!"

Scherer?

Charming?

Something was wrong here!

"Gave you the most glowing recommendation," the Vice Chancellor was continuing. "Said you were a man I could trust. A man in whom I could have complete confidence."

No way that ferret-faced bastard-of-a-Police-Captain could have recommended Z. Scherer hated Z. Ever since Z had spilled the beans on a trumped-up charge Scherer had taken noisy credit for; the bust that Scherer thought would be his ticket to Clay County politics.

Could the Vice Chancellor have made a mistake about Captain Scherer's hostility toward Z? ...... Z didn't see how. ...... Meaning that, no matter what Ashlock's title, the little man behind the big desk ... was lying.

Z said nothing, of course. Tried to make his face say nothing. For some reason, catching a liar in the act was thought to be bad manners. ... Z wondered why.

"But down to business." Ashlock leaned forward again, arms stretched on the desk, sphinx-like. "Dr. Calder has explained this distressing situation about some ad hoc citizen's committee recently formed to delay this college's progress?" Z nodded. "Most depressing. We've a timetable for renovation. Do it while the market's oversupplied with labor. Get lower bids that way. Save the college money." Z nodded.

One thing Z had noticed about educated people was that they talked more than other folks. While often saying less. "The truth is," the chancellor continued, "I'm more concerned about this ghost business than with the preservation group. The chairman of the historical committee -- the troublemaker -- is a woman who is reported to be in extremis."

"What?"

The Vice Chancellor smiled while condescending to explain. "In what might be commonly called, 'bad shape.' Rearing a child alone -- that kind of thing. This fuss on her part may be nothing but a plea for societal recognition. An appeal for someone to come to her aid, as it were. A situation that, should she desist, the college might undertake to alleviate." Translation. The Vice Chancellor thought the lady could be bribed to get off his back.

"A committee?" Z asked. Vice Chancellor Ashlock nodded. "Perhaps you know some of the members?"

With a fluid movement, the administrator opened a whisper-quiet drawer and floated a piece of paper across the desk.

Z took the list. Scanned it.

Ms. V. I. Smith, Chairperson

Mr. Roger Lake

Ms. Peggy Ludlow

Ms. Janice Alexander

Ms. Mary Krag

Mr. Mario Uribe

To find that none of the names were familiar to him, Z putting the page back on the desk.

"Now to this business of the property being haunted. Nonsense, of course, but troubling." Z nodded. "And that's where you come in." Suddenly, the man's eyes flashed the kind of fire the devil hurls to probe for souls. "Captain Scherer, while not ...." Ashlock paused to think of the weasel-words he wished to use for whatever nasty things Captain Scherer had said. "While not praising you in every particular, said something that interested me. He said you got results for your clients without ... how shall I put it? .... Without bothering about legal technicalities."

"Sometimes," Z admitted. There had been occasions when, to get justice for a client, Z had interpreted the law ... leniently. On the other hand, following the Zapolska code Z had made up for himself, Z never broke the law ... unless absolutely necessary!

"Exactly. Exactly." The man leaned back in his large chair, fingers tented before his made-to-order vest. "An admirable trait, determination. Most admirable. One I have, as well. One shared by the great men of history. Napoleon. Bismarck. Edison." Also, Z thought, by Attila the Hun, Ivan the Terrible, and Hitler. "My role at Bateman College is to be a 'take-charge' kind of guy."

The Vice Chancellor smiled at being able to talk the kind of down-home language he imagined Z could understand. "The soccer field project is my first assignment. While I think I can handle the historical committee, this business of ghosts -- and a prying television reporter has already made calls to the school -- is preventing me from fulfilling my assigned task.

"But ... let me put you in the picture." Ashlock leaned forward again to give the impression he was taking Z into his confidence. "A wealthy family in the Midwest -- made their money in lead -- has, for many years, been granting bequests to private colleges. Generally for the improvement of athletics. Our gymnasium was built with a gift from that family's trust, for instance. This time, the family is offering to contribute the money to expand our soccer program.

"But, you must realize, other colleges are in competition for those funds. In this regard, the college that acts quickly, gets the money." The small man sank back to let his chair absorb him once again until only his Cheshire smile remained. "Part of my responsibilities the securing of grants for the college, the holdup on this project makes me look ... I would not say bad ... but certainly not as effective as I would like to be.

"Which brings me to the present."

"Hiring me to investigate the 'ghost.'"

"Yes ... that, too. On the other hand, if the troublesome house were ... just speculating, mind you ... to disappear .... If some magician could wave a wand and make the house go up in smoke, as it were ... then all problems associated with the house would vanish, too."

So that was it! Here's how it had gone down. Calder recommended Z to Ashlock. Ashlock called Scherer. Scherer told the vice chancellor that Bob Zapolska was the kind of no-good-son-of-a-bitch who stuck his nose in police business. That, though he was too sneaky to get caught, Z had broken every law in the book. Was the sort of slimy criminal who should be put away for life! In short, just the kind of man Ashlock was looking for, a man who, for money, would do anything! Like, "just speculating, mind you," set fire to the house in question so that all Ashlock's problems would "go up in smoke."

No way!

On the other hand, the man had wasted Z's afternoon; time for which Z should be compensated. "What you're saying is you're offering me this job."

"Absolutely. At your usual rates ... plus a two thousand-dollar bonus if the property is no longer a problem by the weekend."

"To prove there's no ghost."

The vice chancellor frowned, a rain-squall-blowing-up-to-ruin-a-sunny-day frown.

"That's not exactly what I had in mind."

"Oh?" Z said, pretending innocence. "I thought I was being hired to hunt ghosts?"

"If that's the only service you can provide, then I'm afraid I'm not ....."

"If I misunderstood, there's a quick way to find out," Z purred, patting the baggy pocket of his coat. "I always tape-record the conversations I have with prospective clients. Got it all down. Be glad to replay it for you. ... For anyone."

Realizing he'd been trapped as neatly as a bird beneath a stick-propped box -- Ashlock knowing that others might also "misunderstand" his intent -- the Vice Chancellor's smile slid back. "Of course. Of course. You are certainly hired. What I meant was that, since your experience in the, shall we say, ghost hunting business, is limited, any misunderstanding between us was about the nature of your employment. You are hired, never fear. But more to, shall we say, protect the person who will actually do the hunting."

"I see," Z said, choosing to go along with the latest lie. Work, after all, was work.

"Yes," the Vice Chancellor continued, more to himself than to Z. "Since Dr. Calder is a friend of yours, why don't we just leave it at this? I'll contact Dr. Calder when I need your services. He'll get in touch with you."

"Soon," said Z, in his most persuasive hiss.

"Of course. Of course. Within the week. It is just that, busy man that I am, there will be no further need for face-to-face meetings between the two of us."

Z was dismissed.

Out of the office to breathe the delightfully fresh air of the tightly enclosed hall, Z wanted to warn the young secretary about her boss. Wanted to say that Ashlock had the kind of teeth that feed on human flesh; including pretty, perk-nosed blondes.

But didn't. Though she looked young to Z, she was a big girl. Or about to be.

Instead, Z got out of the building as fast as he could, into the even fresher air atop Bateman hill.

Found that, in spite of the breeze, he was sweating -- but not from the heat.

Panting -- but not from overexertion.

These reactions came from ... fear ... Z always scared by money offered in exchange for extralegal work; frightened he might cross the moral line he'd made for himself, the divide separating "anything-to-help-a-client" from "breaking laws to benefit himself."

But not this time.

Not this time.

As for the pocket tape-recorder he'd mentioned to the Chancellor of Vice, Z had been planning to buy one.

And he would, too.

Some day.

* * * * *

Chapter 3

After the Vice Chancellor had propositioned him, Z had been in no mood to stop by Dr. Calder's office and talk pleasantries with the Bateman psychologist. What would he have said to Calder, anyway? That the new administrator at Bateman College was a crook?

And if he did warn Calder, what proof did Z have to substantiate the charge? Nothing tangible. Certainly nothing that would convince Judge Judy. Yet there could be no doubt that Ashlock had offered to hire Z as an arsonist. Done it with a smile and a nod and words that could be "misunderstood." But done it, nevertheless. Z had refused and, moreover, hinted at blackmail strongly enough to make the Vice Chancellor hire Z anyway.

Sitting at his own pathetically scarred desk, Z had put down the paperback he was trying to read to review his situation.

Had he really put the squeeze on a man as powerful as the Vice Chancellor of a college? He certainly had, leaving a question Z must now ask himself: just how dangerous was it to have Ashlock for an enemy?

A private eye could become so great a threat to the quarry that the prey would turn hunter ......

But Z didn't think this was the case with the Vice Chancellor. Z's read of the man was that he was the kind to get others to do his dirty work -- not the type to soil his own hands with a crime.

It was the morning of the next -- Thank-God-it's-Friday -- day, Z in his depressing office "working" the facts as he often did, in this instance, yesterday afternoon's particulars.

Again, Z thought about putting in a call to Professor Calder. And again, decided against doing that.

Having made up his mind not to apologize to Calder for failing to show up yesterday, Z could concentrate on the job he'd been hired to perform: protect some ghost hunter??

The first question his new job brought to mind was, is there really such an occupation as "ghost hunter"? If so, where would you go to find out? Not the Yellow Pages, surely. (There had to be even less work for ghost hunters than for private investigators, Z barely able to afford his ad in the Yellow Pages.) As for protecting such a person, protect him from ... what?

All Z knew about ghosts was what he'd seen in scary movies. Pictures about vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and mummies that haunted the silver screen of Z's childhood. Z thought then, and he thought now, that there was nothing so tingly-delicious on a hot Saturday afternoon as being scared shit less in an air-conditioned theater.

Z's favorite bogeyman was the mummy, that frightening-looking Egyptian corpse resurrected by a solemn, dark-skinned priest with an overturned flower pot for a hat. As Z remembered, the priest was a member of a secret cult (the Shriners??,) the priest knowing that burning tana leaves?? would bring old Kharis back to life. Z could still throw his mind back to those terrifying times of being all alone in a children-packed movie house; of shuddering as the linen-wrapped mummy, his tattered bandages shredding, took his first, halting steps. Of seeing the mummy limp out of the shadows, corner a petrified victim, and strangle the person with one outstretched hand.

Scary good times for all. So much creepy fun you almost wet your pants.

Now a grownup, Z wondered why he, or anyone else, had ever feared the mummy. Poor old Kharis. One arm knocked out for good. So lame he dragged along at a top speed of half-a-mile an hour. So tinder dry, you could have set him ablaze with flint and steel. Looking back, the mummy was such an object of pity that his victims felt compelled to trap themselves in dead-end alleys just to give Kharis a sporting chance of murdering them.

Horror movies. A big thrill. But mostly for people with childlike minds.

Anyway, Z guessed that many of his early favorites: the mummy, Dracula, demons, fiends, hobgoblins, zombies, and werewolves -- couldn't actually be categorized as ghosts.

What were ghosts, anyway? Creatures sent from Satan? An electrical phenomena? A powerful personality taking on a life form of its own? Spirits like elves or fairies? Gremlins? The souls of dead people?

If Z didn't have a clue about ghosts, how was he supposed to hunt them? .... Pardon me, Z thought, remembering. Defend the person who would hunt them.

The office phone rang.

Hoping for a case with quick pay attached, Z leaned forward to pick up the phone. "Bob Zapolska Detective Agency."

"This is Hugh Calder."

"About to call," Z said, chagrined; covering his embarrassment with a lie, a small lie sometimes OK when there was a benefit to it. (Big lies, he reserved for helping clients.) Anyway, listening to political speeches on TV had Z feeling better about being your average, ordinary, everyday, garden-variety liar. Made him feel good by showing just what an amateur he was in the falsehood game.

"I missed you yesterday, but I know you're busy," Calder was saying. "And this won't help. I just got a call from the Vice Chancellor. I don't know why he's contacting me, but I've never been good at figuring administrators." Z knew why. It was because Ashlock wanted nothing more to do with Z, Z too good at deciphering administrators' spiel. "Here's the deal. He wants me to tell you that the job starts tonight. If that's too soon for you to make it, he'll understand."

"I can make it." The Vice Chancellor wasn't going to kiss Z off that easily. If Z eventually blew the whistle on Ashlock, Z was not going to make it easy for the crook to say Z was making trouble only because Z couldn't do the job.

"Good. He said 10:00 P.M." A pause on the line. Calder -- thinking. "Something he said that I didn't fully understand, though. Something about a "poltergeist expert" coming? Do you know what he's talking about?"

Ashlock was talking about his ghost hunter, of course. "No."

"Like I said," the plump psychologist continued cheerfully, "no way to figure administrators. A breed apart. By the way, the address of the place is 2609 E. Franklin. It's on the back side of the campus. Beyond the stadium."

"Right."

"And Z?"

"Yes."

A space of time followed in which Z could swear he heard the precise ticking of Calder's fine-watch mind. "I don't know how to put this. But I've got a feeling something's ... not right. And I don't even know why I think that. Maybe something in the intonation of Chancellor Ashlock's voice." Again, the introspective pause. "What I feel I should say, though, is watch yourself."

"OK."

"That's it, then."

"Right."

"I'll see you later."

They hung up.

Z knew what wasn't "right" about the deal, but saw no sense in getting Calder all upset. Nothing Calder could do about the Vice Chancellor's crooked ways. Calder wasn't in charge of hiring the college's administrators.

Exhausting that line of thought, Z made a mental shift.

Tonight.

Quick work, hiring a ... poltergeist expert ... on such short notice. (Maybe ghost hunters did advertise in the Yellow Pages.) .....

A more reasonable possibility was that Ashlock had already been down the ghost hunter route when Calder had slipped him Z's name. Covering all bases, the Chancellor's call to Scherer had opened Ashlock's eyes to the possibility of hiring Z to burn down the house -- the quickest way to make the "ghost" problem disappear. Z's honesty blocking that path -- Ashlock had simply gone back to the original plan of hiring a ghost hunter to discredit the whole idea of a ghost being in the offending house.

The Vice Chancellor was certainly right about one thing. Ghosts were just the sort of "vitally important" subject that "in-depth" TV journalism liked to cover. Z could see TV people putting on pressure to have the house preserved until a series of "specials" had wrung the fun out of it. A length of time unacceptable to a man on the "rise" like Ashlock.

So, Calder thought there was something wrong with the deal, did he? That made two of them, doubling Z's need to take precautions by scouting ahead.

Z rolled his wrist. Looked at his watch. Saw it was almost 12 o'clock.

Nearly noon and not that hot.

Or the building's air conditioner was working better today.

Or Z's watch had stopped at just before midnight last night, Z raising his watch to his ear to hear its asthmatic ticking.

A quick P B and J sandwich from Z's lunchtime sack leaving Z with the afternoon to take whatever "ghostly" precautions seemed necessary.

* * * * *

The 1 o'clock drive to 2609 E. Franklin was pleasant enough, the open windows of the little Cavalier providing the evaporation to keep Z cool in spite of the day's heat. Or it could be that Z felt ... comfortable ... because he wasn't on his way to yesterday's meeting where he'd thought he'd be facing an academic giant. (An outside possibility was that Z felt fine because he liked detective work, the "ghost job" about to get underway.)

It was a fifteen minute trip over the new stretch of I-35 connecting Gladstone to Liberty, the odors coming through the window the same as before: hot pavement and dry straw, straw that the highway department had spread up the sides of the raw cuts they'd made through the hills to "flatten" the rolling land for the new road, the straw anchoring grass seed sown in the bare spots. (Z tried not to notice the diesel odor of truck exhaust, the scorch of overheated tires, or the non-odor of carbon monoxide sifting through the floorboards from Z's rotted muffler.)

Strange, how driving the same route a few times last year (then again yesterday) had made the distance seem shorter.

Thinking about the tricks your mind could play on you (Z reviewing job-related information to take his mind off the stiffness in his cramped knee,) mental mistakes called even the most honest eyewitness testimony into doubt. Was it a green or a blue car that ran the light and killed those nuns? Two people standing side by side on the corner would give you different colors of the car they both "saw" speeding off. Nor were people's recollections any better after they'd had time to reflect, people "remembering" what they should have seen!

Which, now that Z was on this line of thought, was what was wrong with the Scherer bust. The cops who'd been following that rental vehicle at a distance had hit it soon after discovering it parked under an overpass, finding the van stuffed with marijuana. After that, no less than three witnesses had come forward to swear they'd seen the Betterton woman at the wheel of the rental as she passed them by, not five minutes earlier. Satisfied he could place her in the van (even though the police found nobody there when they raided it,) Scherer had proudly arrested her. Did it in person in order to take total credit for the bust, his plan to use that take-down to become Mr. Drug Fighter in the next Clay County sheriff's election. After that victory, run for ... anything he wanted.

It was Z, hired by the Betterton family, who had done the legwork that proved the woman was elsewhere at the time. So neat a bit of detective work that Scherer had never forgiven Z for it. Case closed.

Memory time over, Z left I-35 by spiraling down Exit Ramp 13 to take the old access road into Liberty, Z staying on it until the road changed its name to North Elm -- a wide, tree-lined boulevard that drifted into town through old, but well-kept, two and three-story residences.

Following Elm until it took him past the square and through the eastern part of Liberty, Z turned right at the front of the campus, then left again on the road below the bluff.

Passing the wedge of college buildings on the Bateman hill (so far up on top that Z couldn't see them through his side window,) Z flanked student parking at the back, continuing until he'd cleared the football stadium and an open, grassy space beyond, the street forking at that point, the left branch what he was looking for.

It was when veering onto Franklin that Z was surprised to discover ... what looked like "no-man's-land" in WW I -- gouges in the earth, no trees, no houses.

Of course! The soccer field. The place looked like a battleground because both sides of Franklin had been ripped up by bulldozers, some houses gone so long the land they'd stood on had been rain-washed flat, scraggly weed-clumps taking hold here and there in the bare dirt. Other plots were littered with hardened clods, uprooted trees, and smashed-up homes. Most lots had what looked like open graves at their centers -- these "graves" the exposed cellars of demolished homes.

Ahead, maybe two blocks (though it was hard to tell where the blocks had been,) Z saw a couple of houses still standing.

That's right.

A couple. Two, like Calder said. Side by side to the left of the road. Leaning inward in a vain attempt to comfort one another in their grief for fallen comrades.

No other "targets" available, Z continued to drive toward the houses -- going slowly, dodging chunks of concrete tumbled into the road as a result of demolition.

The first house coming up was what his Mother would have called a bungalow or maybe a Cape Cod, a house with a tiny porch covered by a peeked tar-paper roof, the sides of the house shingled a faded brown. Under normal circumstances, a home that would look .... cozy. Instead of mournful. Instead of resembling one of the last two ragged leaves clinging to a late-fall tree.

Slowing, Z picked out the battered metal numbers above the porch: 2607.

Making the house coming up, 2609.

Continuing to drift, Z looked ahead to the house next door (the last on the block,) a house deserted: weeds growing in the yard; a knee-high, used-to-be-white, picket fence across the front, the wire fence-gate open, sagging, the house built on the pattern of a small ranch, its warped clapboards a paint-chipped white.

Z pulled up to park.

Normally -- particularly in "open surveillance" situations like this -- Z would have gotten right out, gone up to the boxy "ghost house," and knocked on the door.

Getting no answer would be his excuse to look in the windows to see what he could see.

It was just that, this time, there was no need to approach the house.

There wasn't much he could learn by looking in the windows, after all, the house build on a standard floor plan. To the right was the usual, one-car garage, its badly warped door pulled down. There would be a tiny living room behind the front door. At the back-right of the living room, a plaster archway would lead to a short crossing hall providing access to two bedrooms, the larger one to the left behind the living room. Straight ahead would be a tiny bath. Right of that, a large kitchen with an eating area that served as a dining room. The smaller bedroom would be behind the garage.

No attic.

Possibly a basement or, at least, an old-fashioned root cellar.

Z had seen houses like this before. They were all alike.

As Z sat in the car with the afternoon heat "raining" through the Cavalier's steel top -- wanting to leave but unable to do so -- he finally had to admit to himself he was avoiding this "fixer-upper" because there was something he didn't like about it.

Was it because it reminded him of the cramped house where his mother had her final illness? Except that this house was a cube instead of a rectangle and built of wood instead of limestone. Judged objectively, the only resemblance between the houses was in Z's twisted memory.

Damn, memory!

There was no help for it. To do his duty as a professional, Z had to go up to the house.

Opening the car door, using both hands to pry himself out of the small driver's seat, straightening to stand, Z was struck by the dagger of the sun's direct rays.

Recovering, slamming the tinny door, he set out across the badly cracked pavement, his nose tortured by the oily smell of tar cooked on the street's "solar" griddle, the road soft underfoot. Blistering. Sticky.

Stepping up on the unkempt parking, Z crossed the weed-grown, crazed brick crosswalk, going through the open gate to pick his way up the house's octagonal tile path.

At the porch, climbing the splintered, wooden steps, Z knocked on the door.

No answer, of course, his knock's reverberation seconding what he'd assumed: that the place was ... empty.

Antique deadbolt lock on the door. Crude, but effective for its day.

The knocking over, Z backed off the porch to walk around the left side of the house and down the burnt-out side yard, pausing to take a hand-shaded look into what had to be the living room, moving on to a bedroom window, only to discover that the inside of the house was set up the way he'd envisioned it.

Beyond that, it was too dark in there to see anything much ... except that there was little left to see.

Nothing remarkable out back either, the backyard, like the residence itself, in the middle of the "war zone" of smashed houses.

Something shiny catching Z's eye, he bent to inspect the house's sloped-flat, overlapping cellar doors. Found that the reflection came from a cheap combination lock clicked through the double doors' rusty, but solid, hasp.

Finished with the cellar doors, Z rose to examine the back door, finding it "protected" by a standard spring lock -- easiest thing in the world to jimmy.

Z grinned.

To one-up the ghost hunter, Z would finesse his way past the well-protected front door; get some respect by showing off his lock-picking skills.

Until then .....

The heat hurrying him, salty sweat sliding from the runnels along his forehead, Z completed the circumnavigation of the house, cutting back across the abandoned yard before crossing the street to the sun-struck Cavalier.

Squeezing himself into the steamy little car, ignoring the heat buildup of the thinly padded seat, Z ground the car's small engine into life, popped the automatic into drive and slipped on past 2609.

Pulling up in a wide spot ahead, Z U-turned the Cavalier to ease back the way he'd come, it occurring to him he could do something to make this Liberty trip more than a complete waste of time.

"Someone" had reported there was a "ghost light" at 2609, that "someone" in the only other house in sight.

Figuring to pick up background information, driving past 2609, Z stopped in front of 2607.

Again with no way to "blend in," all Z could do was get out and struggle up 2607's front walk.

No reason to rush, Z needing time to decide who he wanted to portray in order to prompt a friendly chat with the person answering the door.

Still thinking about an alias, he pried himself out of the car, rounding the front bumper -- hamming it up shamefully -- and strained his leg over the concrete curb, all the while keeping his eyes open.

The house at 2607 had no fence, just a yard -- not too well-kept, a blind man "seeing" these last two houses were slated for demolition.

He'd need an excuse for knocking on the door, of course; meaning he had to choose which of his billfold's fake identity cards he'd use to impress the occupant (forged cards like these available to friends of Johnny Dosso.)

For instance, no sign of a dog argued against flashing his dog catcher credentials. Anyway, who'd complain about a barking dog in what had become nowhere?

Ah! An old house in an old neighborhood. Probably meant old people, old folks tending to be religious ....

OK, then. He'd be Pastor Goodfellow, recently arrived in Liberty to establish a ministry at his newly hallucinated, Church of the Living Word.

Concentrating, Z believed the I.D. card showing him to be the redoubtable Goodfellow was the third from the front of his billfold. (It would never do to identify himself one way while showing a card proclaiming him to be someone else.)

He'd have to decide on the spur of the moment what approach would produce the most information: a pitch soliciting members for his new church or one begging for a contribution to save the starving children of Beverly Hills.

Improvisations like this provided one of the few light moments in the detective business.

His mind made up, slow-shuffling his way to the small stoop, Z crippled himself up its two steps to the gray-painted door.

To knock. Three ... well-spaced ... dignified ... raps.

Followed by the instantaneous opening of the door, a tiny, gray-haired, grandmotherly, old lady in a bright print dress pushing open a sagging screen door to stick out her head.

In a voice as worn as her sweet face was wrinkled, she said, "Get your ass off my property or I'll blow your balls off with my 12-gauge." Spoken in the endearingly frank way of old folks everywhere.

Hmmm.

Forget Pastor Goodfellow. .....

Enter K.C. Power and Light, the authority of the government generally getting people to talk to you.

"Ma'am. I'm David Inman, K.C. Power and Light," Z said, pulling out his billfold, thumbing out the second I.D. card for the woman to see.

"What do you want?"

"I was sent out to check your neighbor's box." Z waved at the other house as he put away his billfold.

"Dr. Isaacs's dead."

"Dr. ....?"

"Emeritus. Retired from the college. Just like my husband and me."

"And what would your name be, Ma'am?"

"None of your business." The old woman's faded blue eyes said she knew her rights.

"But I have to know. With the neighborhood being torn down, I need to know the names of the folks who still live here so I can be sure the power's left on." It was a fib and a long one at that, a lie Z paid for with an aching throat. If he used his vocal cords too much, they were apt to desert entirely, his doctor said. Meaning, no chance of a career in opera -- classical or "Grand 'ol ...."

"You can help me by not calling me Ma'am," the lady grumbled

"Yes, Ma'am.

Tough old bird. Shrunken to a whip-thin, five-feet two.

At her age she might as well speak her mind.

"Come in," the lady said to Z's surprise, the old woman drawing back inside the blackness of the house.

Recovering, Z followed her, the screen door flapping shut behind him.

"Sit."

Z sat -- in an old, brown-cloth, weak-sprung, overstuffed chair, Z sinking almost to the floor.

His eyes adjusting from the brightness of outdoors, Z saw he was in a comfortable living room. Aged furniture. But everything clean. Straightened up.

Ol' timey pictures hung on the walls: a wolf howling at a winter moon, a tired Indian slumped on his pony, a Dutch windmill.

By this time, the woman had slow-stepped across the space in front of Z to perch on a lace-doily draped divan, back held "at attention" straight, thick-stockinged, bird-thin legs precisely together, sensible black shoes side by side on the worn rug.

"What's your real reason for being here?"

"I'll be honest with you," Z said, knowing that pretending to be honest was always the best policy, "K.C. Power got a report of a light next door. I was sent to check. Nobody there. Out back, the electricity's been turned off."

"I saw you going around the house," the woman said, nodding, her wispy white hair highlighted by a golden light filtered through pulled-down yellow blinds. "Heard about the light, did you?" She smiled almost shyly, circling the fingers of one hand over the hooked nylon cover of the seat beside her. "I was the one who saw it."

"And how was that, Ma'am ... I mean Missus."

"My name's Devaux. Gwendolyn. Dr. Gwendolyn Devaux." Back even straighter, she paused to let her title hammer in the name. "You've got to understand about the houses along here. At least the houses that used to be along here."

Z settled back. The woman was going to tell him what she knew.

"These houses all belong to the college. Been buying them up for years. Well before that damned religious outfit took over the school!" Even considering her initial threat, Z could still be surprised by the force of the old lady's personality. "Bateman's been renting these houses out to faculty who retired. None of us ever got much of a salary teaching at Bateman or much of a pension when you retired, either. My husband and I both taught at Bateman, though. I taught American History. My husband taught Math. So we did all right while we were still on the faculty. We'd planned on having a nice retirement. Even do some traveling. Then, my husband got senile. He's in the back bedroom now. Has gotten so bad he just sits and stares most of the time." Her glare told Z she was not about to lose her composure. "Anyway, we'd saved our money which was a good thing because I can't take care of him anymore. We move at the end of next month. Into a retirement home here in Liberty. Out on the edge of town." She was looking through Z, now, into an unpleasant future. "We won't do as well as we had thought, interest rates on our C.D.s falling so low, but if we spend the principle slowly, I think we have enough to last the time we've got left." She stopped. Seemed to realize she'd been wandering off the subject. "Anyway, Dr. Netty -- that's what those who knew her called Dr. Isaacs. ... Dr. Netty died. Been more than a year, now." The old woman leaned forward. Lowered her voice. "She was insane, you know. But harmless. The neighbors who knew her called her Dr. Netty. Those who didn't, called her the Cat Lady. Because she had so many cats." Dr. Devaux eased back a little. "And that's another funny thing. Right after she died, all the cats just vanished. Seemed to know she was dead." She sat up straight again to resume her story.

"Of course, people who expect loyalty from a cat haven't got the sense to own one." Again, she shook her head to get herself on track.

This poor lady was lonely, Z thought. Her husband's mind gone; living out here all alone. She was bearing up, though, even in the face of an old folk's home. (Given the nature of Z's profession, he'd have to be unlucky to live that long.)

"It was after Dr. Netty's death that I first became aware of it," the woman continued.

"The light," Z said, to try to help her keep her place.

"No. First, it was the sound. Like a car. Or more like a truck; small truck. Heard it in the night. A number of times over some months. I wasn't sleeping well because I was worrying about Paul. Paul's my husband."

"Yes."

"I was up some at night. Worrying.

"I wanted to go over there but Paul wouldn't let me. He had more grip on his mind then than he does now. He didn't want me to leave him. He'd get lost a lot, you see. Needed me to tell him where he was all the time so he wouldn't get afraid." That faraway look again. "In some ways it's better for the both of us these days. Now that his mind is gone a little more."

She sighed. Waved a blue-veined hand to ban self-pity. "Then, there was the light. In the house. Late at night or, rather, after midnight, making it early in the morning."

"A light ... in the house?"

"Not much of a light."

"Where?"

"You know, I could never tell. As I said, not much of a light and I never saw it for very long. You've got to understand that I was in my nightgown with my glasses off. After I've been asleep for a time, even with my glasses on, everything's a blur at any distance." Unexpectedly, she smiled. "Though it's also the truth that my eyesight has begun to come back a little. Did you know that? Sometimes, the eyesight of old people actually gets better. It's a function of aging."

"I didn't know that," Z said.

Another, less fortunate function of age was outliving your time, this lady once being Dr. Gwendolyn Devaux, respected history professor.

"The best I could do," she continued, her voice the stir of wind blown leaves, "was to call the college and report the light."

"You believe there's a ghost over there?"

"You think I'm that damn stupid!?"

"I only meant ...." As always, Z was surprised to hear an educated person swear. (Z's Mom had maintained that the only people who used swear words were those who lacked a proper vocabulary.)

"Ghosts and Santa Claus are for children to believe in," Dr. Devaux interrupted impatiently. "And God, for that matter. Myths like that are just wishful thinking. Saccharine, is all that is, the stuff most folks use to sweeten up their lives. Leaves a bitter aftertaste is all it does."

"Just a light," Z affirmed, trying to return the conversation to its starting point.

"Well -- after I reported the light to the college authorities and didn't get any results from them -- I called a TV station, the one with the investigative reporter? And I sort of hinted there might be a ghost in the house next door. Had to, to get action."

"But if you don't believe ...?"

"Someone is over there. And that old house is in poor shape. What if a child is getting in? A child could get hurt playing in that old house."

"I see," Z said. And he did. No way Dr. Cecil Ashlock, Vice Chancellor of Incremental Augmentation Services, was going to pay attention to a light in a house he was having demolished. What he'd probably been waiting for was for these people to move out so he could knock down both houses at once.

So it was Dr. Gwendolyn Devaux who reported this ghost business to the TV reporter. This was some formidable, gray-haired lady.

One who'd gone silent, her voice, like her life, run out at last.

"Thank you," Z said, painfully rocking himself out of the too-soft, too-low chair. "I believe I've got everything I need to know."

The lady smiled sweetly. Stood up, also. (Got up a good bit more spryly, Z couldn't help but notice, than Z had been able to manage.)

"Sorry I yelled at you, young man," she said, extending her fragile hand to shake. "At the door, I mean."

"That's OK," Z said, carefully taking her paper-mache hand in his big one.

And it was OK. Anyone who called him "young man" had yelling privileges.

At the door, Z turned. "Goodbye, Doctor." Got the expected smile at the use of her title. "And good luck to you and your husband."

"We've just about had our luck," she muttered to herself. "Good and bad."

Rallying, she cocked her head; pulled it back, then back some more to look Z in the face. "I'd ask you to come back for a cup of tea but, in a month, I won't be here. Won't be anywhere much longer." Again, the smile.

A nice old lady. Life-weathered tough.

And one more thing.

Retreating down the walk, Z vowed not to shine a light of his own in the ghost house tonight. The last thing any part of him needed was for this sweet old lady to show up next door with a loaded gun!

* * * * *

Chapter 4

Z had gotten up speed, then switched to his parking lights as he cut the engine to coast the last fifty yards. He'd figured the distance pretty well, needing to tap his brakes only once to make the Cavalier settle beside the curb just beyond and across the street from the ghost house.

Z killed the parking lights and removed the car key, putting the key in his pocket.

Smelled: hot car engine, grass, dust, tar .....

Heard: a light breeze, insect noises, and the Cavalier's hot engine ticking down.

Fifteen minutes until ten on a warm, but not sweaty, evening. So dark, nothing was visible.

Looking out the open side window, it quickly became apparent why it was such a murky night. No streetlights. No car lights. No houselights -- not even from the old couple's home. They'd already gone to bed, their house as black as the ghost house just behind him. Adding to the impenetrable gloom was that Kansas City's lights didn't reflect from the clouds this far away from K.C.

Yes. Clouds. A late afternoon breeze had blown them in. Not the sort of thunder heads that menaced rain, but thick enough to mask the moon and stars.

It was Z's pattern to show up early for detective jobs, particularly for work that involved someone he didn't know. If there was the slightest risk of a surprise, he wished to do the surprising.

Showing up early, and prepared.

When he'd gotten home after the afternoon's reconnoiter, he'd removed his detective satchel from the hiding place he'd made for it under his self-installed fireplace. Had the dark leather briefcase on the passenger's seat beside him.

Though he didn't see any reason he'd need it, he'd put on his black "night fighter" outfit complete with inky, skin-tight leather gloves. He hadn't pulled on the sable ski mask (and didn't intend to in the 80-degree heat.) But had it in the satchel, just in case.

Knowing that he'd need lock picks, Z had put the lock pick case in his hip pocket.

His sap was in the satchel, Z not yet so paranoid he'd have that on him at the outset of every job.

Also in the briefcase -- wide elastic bands securing most items -- was his jimmy, a straight razor, container of lighter fluid, length of thin nylon rope, roll of white athletic tape, dynamite fuse, and rubber siphon.

To complete his preparation, Z had put in wooden kitchen matches and packets of paper matches, matches better for some jobs than a lighter.

In his left pants pocket he had the usual: penlight, bottle of aspirin, and cigarette lighter. (There were jobs where a lighter worked better than matches.)

Just the general items. (For specialty work, he'd have included other tools-of-the-trade; a small jack, lock-breaker, glass-cutter, suction cup -- that kind of thing.)

Fifteen minutes to wait. If the ghost hunter was on time -- and most people weren't.

It didn't matter. Z was prepared to spend the night in any case. If he had to do it in the car, he'd only be a little stiffer come morning than if he'd slept on the floor inside the house.

Thinking ahead, Z fished out the aspirin bottle; unscrewed the cap; and shook out a palm full of pills, popping them in his mouth and crunching them up to wait for the sour-acid taste of the powder to encouraged enough saliva for him to swallow.

No one there to see him, he allowed himself to grimace as he waited for his throat to cool after the scorching aftereffects of the aspirin.

He'd also been having heartburn lately. Maybe he'd better think about carrying a roll of Tums.

Satisfied that he'd arrived first and that he was alone, Z ratcheted back the seat as far as he could, lying back until only his eyes showed above the window -- the position he often assumed when doing surveillance work.

He'd decided to leave his camera behind, also the long distance lens that doubled as a telescope, any ghost worth watching needing to be big enough to see without magnification. (Could it be that ghosts -- like aliens from outer space -- were never photographed because they were crafty enough to keep from showing up on film?)

Since stakeouts were as much a part of a P.I.'s life as that of a cop, settling down at last, Z put himself into his usual, sleep-like trance to dull the pain of waiting, while at the same time, leaving him alert to changes in the world around him.

* * * * *

Aroused by a distant sound behind him, Z clicked the seat back forward, hunching up as the backrest rose.

Adjusting the rear view mirror, he saw a car coming down the street behind him. ... No. ... A small truck, such tiny "trucks" made these days it was hard to tell them from cars. This was definitely the sound of a light-truck engine, though. Something imported.

Lights on, of course. Who, but a private eye, would take the sort of "lights out" precautions Z did?

A miniature truck, slowing to park a ways behind Z, nestling to the curb in front of the ghost house, the driver shutting down the engine, insect sounds reclaiming the night.

Z heard the door latch being worked, the dome light coming on in the truck cab, a shadow-shape sliding out the driver's door. Followed by the door slamming shut.

Though the brief glow of the truck's ceiling light had showed Z nothing but an outline, the driver looked ... small. Seemed to be dressed in dark slacks and a loose work shirt.

Apparently not bothered by the presence of Z's Cavalier, the driver walked to the back of the truck where, after a momentary pause, came the sound of the tailgate slamming down.

Equipment.

That was the only explanation for why the ghost hunter (and who else could this be?) would need something out of the back of the truck: equipment too heavy or too bulky to fit in the cab.

Time for Z to help.

Switching from lethargy to action, Z eased open his door.

Slipped out.

Pushed the door closed, the carefully greased lock making only the tiniest of clicks as it engaged.

Beginning the short walk to the truck, Z meditated on the fact that soft-soled shoes were a must in the detective business.

Meanwhile, the ghost hunter had jumped up on the truck bed; had switched on a flashlight; was shining the beam on some apparatus as Z rounded the back of the truck.

"Evening," Z said in his strangled purr.

"My God!" the ghost hunter gasped in a high, frightened voice.

Whipping the flashlight wildly, the man located Z's shadowy bulk in the generalized darkness behind the truck. (If the guy hoped that shining the flashlight on Z's ugly face would be soothing, he was mistaken.)

"It's just me," Z said, feeling guilty for deliberately startling the principal player in the night's adventure.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Irritating! To be low-rated this way. Also, to have a light shined in his eyes and by the very person he'd been hired to protect.

"Bob Zapolska."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Now that they were talking like people meeting under less bizarre circumstances, the ghost hunter didn't sound as frightened.

"I've been hired to help." Z still didn't want to admit he was excess baggage -- signed on, not to do the job, but to protect the "doer."

"I still don't understand." The ghost hunter's voice remained high, which figured. It was always the smallest man who sang tenor in Barbershop Quartets.

"Vice Chancellor Ashlock hired me."

"For what purpose?"

"Protection."

The man laughed. Which didn't make Z feel any better.

"Protect me? From what?"

"Ghosts?"

"He must be as crazy as I am."

Since Z had forced Ashlock to hire him, Z couldn't blame the ghost hunter for seeing Z as the fifth wheel Z was. "Could I help ... another way?"

"That's an offer I can't refuse," the ghost hunter said, finally turning the light away from Z's face. "By the way, what did you say your name was?"

"Bob Zapolska. Call me Z."

"I'm Jamie Stewart."

"The ghost hunter."

"If you like."

Z noticed the man made no offer to shake ... which was probably just as well. Who knew what diseases a man with that high a voice might carry. "And you can help me get this battery pack down."

The guy turning the flashlight on a long piece of equipment, Z saw a couple of stacked car batteries web-belted on a two-wheeled dolly, the batteries looking like they'd been wired in series, the wires neatly coiled and fastened with twist ties, their ends tipped with metal jacks. Along side the dolly was a large and lumpy, denim gunny sack; behind the two-wheeler, a number of different-sized cardboard boxes.

Mr. (Doctor?) Stewart now squatted to pull up the two-wheeled dolly by its recurved handles.

Z's eyes adjusted to the dark, he reached up to take hold of the bottom of the dolly, pulling it to the edge of the truck bed. There, considering that the batteries were heavy, the angle of the lift awkward, and Z's knee never that reliable, it was fortunate that only a surge of strength lowered the dolly's wheels to the street, Z taking control of the two-wheeler, tipping it forward until it stood alone on its steel, lifting plate.

Picking up the cloth sack, Stewart jumped down. "I've got a battery-operated lamp and a hot plate in here," he piped. "Also a battery coffee maker. A friend of mine converted them from AC to DC. I do a lot of work in places without electricity."

"Sounds good," Z admitted. "I'm not sure about the light, though."

"One too many lights in there, already," Stewart said, instantly picking up Z's meaning.

"Frightens the neighbors."

"Particularly one neighbor." Stewart waved the lighted flashlight at the Devaux house.

Wanting to be fair, Z was forced to acknowledge that the ghost hunter wasn't stupid. Not much of a man, maybe, but sharp enough to notice there were only two houses left. Had put that together with the complaint about the ghost light.

"I got the lamp problem fixed, though," the man continued.

"OK."

"Shall we go up?"

"Got to get something first," Z said.

Leaving the battery cart, Z walked back to his car and opened the door to toss in his hot gloves and jacket. (There was never any need for 90-percent of the precautions Z took.)

Decidedly more comfortable, Z stretched in to pull out his satchel, then shut the car door.

Walking back, he laid the leather case on the uppermost battery, sighing at how good the breeze felt on his bare arms.

Ready at last, Z grasped the "pistol grip," plastic-wrapped handles and rocked the cart back on its wheels, balancing the weight over the dolly's axles. Paying attention to any shift in load, Z trudged the two-wheeled cart across the street to join the ghost hunter who'd already crossed.

At the curbing, circling until his back was to the parking, Z "walked" the cart wheels up and over the curb.

Making a tight rotation again, Z trundled the dolly after Stewart (the ghost hunter leading, looking like a miniature Santa with the bulky gunny sack slung over his shoulder).

Thumping the two-wheeler up the irregular tile walk, Z turned again at the stoop to bump the dolly up -- each -- step -- until he and the cart were safely on the porch.

At the door, using his foot to "brake" the wheels, Z tilted the cart forward on its front plate so he could let go of it without it rolling.

"I can get us in," Z said, Stewart waiting for Z to climb the porch, the man's bag already on the stoop, a shadow within the greater darkness of the porch.

Z reached in his back pocket.

Took out the packet of lock picks.

Digging out his small penlight, Z used it to open the case of picks and select what looked like the right-sized tools. Shutting the slim packet, Z slipped the case back into his pocket.

Kneeling before the door, aware that the ghost hunter was watching him intently, Z inserted the slender steel blades in the lock; turned them delicately to the right; then to the left, probing for the mechanism that would trip the tumblers so he could turn the lock cylinder.

Not the right picks after all. Too thin, perhaps.

Getting up from the paint-peeled porch, Z fished out the container of picks again. Snapped it open.

Stewart cleared his throat. "We're trying to get inside, right?" Was the man still nervous or was his voice always that high?

"All it takes is a little time and some skill," Z said in what he hoped the guy would interpret as understated modesty.

"Why don't we just use the key?"

With that, the fellow stepped to the door and fumbled at the lock.

A click, and the front door swung in.

"Key?"

"From the Vice Chancellor. Didn't he give you one?"

"Ah ... no."

So much for impressing the ghost hunter.

Disappointed, Z's role again reduced to "beast of burden," he pocketed the picks, levered back the dolly handles, turned, and while Stewart held the door for him, thumped the cart up over the sill and into the short hall beside the small living room.

Shouldering the lumpy bag, the ghost hunter came in after him, turning to close the door.

Shut inside at last, Z clicked off his little light to save its battery, Stewart producing a tiny flashlight of his own to begin what looked like a laser scalpel dissection of the small room.

Meanwhile, Z let the heavy batteries carry the cart forward until the simple machine's front was firmly on the floor.

The ghost hunter slicing the room here -- and there -- the living room gradually emerged.

No furniture. Some old newspapers underfoot. Green wallpaper. Standard, 9-foot ceiling. Dirty hardwood floor. No curtains.

Rooms without curtains had always given Z the chills, their lidless windows glaring at him like blind, reproachful eyes.

In spite of the warm air trapped in that long-closed space, Z shuddered.

Could it be that this empty place reminded Z of the bare rooms in which his Mother had taken too long to die?

"This way," Stewart said, stabbing his light through the arch at the back of the hall. "I think we'll use the guest bedroom on the other side of the house from the neighbors."

"You been here before?"

"Ashlock gave me the floor plan to the place."

No doubt about who was the superior partner of this team. "Yes, Massah'. Just tell 'ol Toby what to do, Massah,'" -- what Z felt like saying ... but didn't.

The undersized ghost hunter leading -- Z still not getting anything but a shadowy look at him -- Z wheeled the battery pack through the arch and down the short hall to the right, then into the open-doored bedroom.

A stingy room. Dirty-white wallpaper. Scuffed hardwood floor.

No bed. No dresser.

The room's only furnishing was a mattress; a worn-out, king-sized job that took up most of the cramped room's floor space.

Nothing else "haunted" the bedroom but a short length of closet to the right, abused-wood folding door crowded to one side, a few rusty coat hangers clinging to a fat, wood rod. Maybe the ghost would rattle them just for laughs, Z thought. Shake up both hangers and the ghost hunter.

Circling behind Z, Stewart closed the bedroom door with a hollow thwack.

Stepping back, the man lowered his twill sack to the mattress' bare, striped ticking, bending down to spread open the bag's drawstring top.

Holding the narrow light so he could see, Mr. Ghost Hunter began rummaging around inside -- but quickly changed his mind -- stopping to stick the back of the penlight in his mouth. Clamping the back of the light in his teeth so he could see, at the same time get both hands in the bag, Mr. "Hunter" took out what looked like a folded piece of heavy black cloth, laying the cloth on the mattress. A second dip in the bag produced ... a hammer. Fumbling inside again, he retrieved a small, clear plastic box that, by the look and rattle of it, had to be nails.

Stewart turned in Z's direction; looked up. "Tha thin' a thu," Stewart lisped, stopping to take the penlight out of his mouth so he could be understood, "is to nail this over the window." As an indicator, Stewart shined the beam on the cloth, the thick black pad refusing to reflect the light, the beam itself visible because it silvered dust-motes stirred up in the grimy room.

The place smelled ... dry. ... Stale. .....

"That way, no light will shine out. If we're careful to switch off the lamp when we need to open the bedroom door, we'll maintain the blackout."

Meaning, get your unessential ass over there and nail the cloth over the window.

Z sighed.

Taking a long step forward, bending to pick up the cloth, hammer, and box of nails, Z straightened to walk around the end of the mattress to the room's single window on the "far" wall.

The little man trying to hold the light where it would do the most good, Z fumbled the plastic box open, managing to get a number of the short, flat-headed nails out and into his mouth. Setting the box on the floor and the hammer on the window sill, Z reached up to spread the cloth over the window.

Allowing the bulk of the material to drop but holding the top corner of the drapery to the upper left window frame, transferring the first nail from his mouth to that hand, picking up the hammer, Z tacked the cloth to the frame, continuing to nail the thick fabric across the dark-stained top of the window frame.

Finished above, Z tacked a line of nails through the cloth into the wood sills down both sides, then nailed the bottom along the window ledge.

The window "buttoned up," the ghost hunter turned the light away, leaving a once-more-useless Z alone in the dark.

Z turned; stooped to toss the hammer back on the mattress.

For Stewart's part, he was fumbling in the open sack again, something coming out, Stewart standing to step over to the batteries on the dolly. Penlight in his teeth once more, the ghost hunter made some metal clicks followed by a loud snap, the room exploding in light!

Instinctively putting his hands over his eyes to filter out the sudden glare, Z was gradually able to blink his eyes back to normal, finding that, rather than the arc-light it had seemed to be in the cave-black room, Stewart had plugged a small lamp into the battery pack and switched it on.

And one more thing of interest. ...... Now that Z's eyes had adjusted to the light, a look at the ghost hunter revealed something Z had not expected.

Jamie Stewart ... ghost hunter extraordinaire ... was a girl!

* * * * *

Chapter 5

A girl! And from what Z could see of her, a shapely one. (Her checkered, tucked-in work shirt was a lot tighter than he'd thought when he believed her to be a man.)

Undersized for a male, she was about average height for a female: perhaps five-foot four. (Susan was more like five-ten, a better "fit" for someone Z's size.) Jamie Stewart had a shiny bob of straight, blond hair, violet-blue eyes, high cheekbones, dimples and full, "pouty" lips.

"What?" she asked defensively, glancing over to catch Z staring at her.

High-pitched for a man, her voice was low ... for a girl.

"You're a woman."

"The last time I looked." Her enigmatic smile showed small, white, even teeth. While braces-perfect teeth had always intimidated Z, that was the only flaw he'd seen in the girl so far.

"I didn't know."

"A name like Jamie can ... swing both ways." Again, the cloudy smile, the girl leaning back against the wall by the lamp, hands at ease, fingers interlocked in front of her. "Which has gotten me some jobs I wouldn't have been hired for otherwise." Said almost defiantly. Z thought about how it was his practice to try to sign up clients over the phone. Big and ugly -- while an asset in some aspects of the detective business -- could frighten off a prospect.

The girl paused; brought her hands up to smooth her fine, shiny hair; shook her hair loose again, girl-style. A light frown creased her forehead. "That didn't seem to be the case, here, though. Ashlock hired me after a personal interview."

Z was sure of that.

There didn't seem to be much else to say on the subject of employment.

"For now, there's more equipment in the truck ...."

"I'll get it." Women like this were made for inspiration, not perspiration.

"I'll need to come, too. To show you what to bring."

That settled, putting a tapered, delicate-fingered hand into the slit pocket in her dark slacks, Ms. (Mrs.? Miss?) Stewart brought out her thin penlight.

No wedding ring.

The lack of a ring meant less than it used to, of course. Wearing a wedding ring meant less than it used to.

Switching on her little light, kneeling down, snapping off the table lamp, the girl straightened to open the door.

First shining her light into the hall, she slipped out, Z following the girl until they were out of the house's front door into the oxygen-rich evening air; down the walk; through the gate; and across the street to the truck.

Several times.

On the third trip out, Z took his detective case back to his car. (The girl was so at ease with this ghost business Z saw no need for his satchel of "goodies.")

Returning to the tiny bedroom with the last of the containers, the little room getting even smaller as it filled up with boxes, the door firmly shut, Miss Stewart -- Z had decided to think of her as Miss -- squatted down to turn on the white-shaded table lamp.

Rising with the desk light in hand, she stretched the lamp cord from the battery cart in order to place the lamp on top one of the larger boxes.

After that, putting away the penlight, the girl kneed several containers to the edge of the mattress.

Sitting down on the pad, the springs inside barely squeaking under her 110 (soaking-wet) pounds, Miss Stewart slipped the canvas shoes off her small feet. After that, contorting first one slim ankle under her, then the other -- she assumed the always intriguing, knees wide, "pretzel" position only young girls could manage.

Wiggling herself comfortable, the girl set about the task of unpacking by stripping a length of gray duct tape from the top of a box, wadding the tape into a sticky ball and placing it on the floor at her feet. Spreading open the cardboard "wings" that formed the lid of the box, she began scratching inside, scooping away plastic-worm packing, eventually taking out what looked like an underwater camera.

Beasts of burden no longer needed, Z stood awkwardly by the door, Z sweating a little in the too-still air, wishing he could open the cloth-draped window he'd so carefully blacked out.

As if just remembering he was there, the girl looked up; noticing he was ill at ease, flashed him the high-voltage smile girls use to warm men to the bone. "Not much you can do -- for now." Even her foggy voice was ... cute. "It's just a matter of deciding what I want to use and where to put it."

"Have you been ... a ghost hunter ... for long?"

"Ghost hunter?" She looked up at him and smiled. "Since I went to Duke. You know, parapsychology?" Z did remember something about quirks of the mind being studied at Duke University. "Didn't that program ....?"

"Fail," she finished matter-of-factly, ripping another piece of duct tape off the top of a smaller box, strips of cardboard tearing with the tape to reveal the box's corrugated bones. "Asking a blindfolded subject to guess what card was drawn from a fifty-two pack. Telling someone to concentrate on a circle, wavy line, square, rectangle, or triangle -- a psychic trying to 'read' that figure in the subject's mind." She shook her high-fashion-model head as if remembering unpleasant times.

Again, she looked up at Z with penetrating blue eyes. "You're right. They all failed. 'Gifted' subjects who tried to move objects by psychokinesis. The spoon-benders. Levitators, table-rappers, conjurers, and ESP freaks as well as faith healers, astrologers, numerologists, and prophets."

"No truth to any of it?"

"None."

"But you ....?"

"Check out hoaxes."

"The lights? A hoax?" Z gave a wave that took in the whole house.

"Could be. Maybe done cleverly. Maybe not." Again, the mysterious smile flickered at the corners of the girl's mouth. Looking at her more than paying attention to what she was saying -- Z noticing that not even a "beauty" mark flawed the young woman's juicy looking skin -- he realized she was still speaking. "... every trick in the book. Have to go some to fool me," she finished, Z deciding not to ask her to repeat the first part of what she'd said.

There could be no doubt about why the Vice Chancellor had hired Jamie Stewart (other than that she was pretty.) She didn't believe this ghost nonsense any more than Mr. Vice.

Goodbye TV special on the supernatural. Goodbye house.

"Of course, there's always the possibility there's something ... out there." Again, Miss. Stewart smiled her withdrawn smile. "A real ghost. A poltergeist. If so, I'm going to be the first to discover it." She frowned. "No chance of a genuine spook, though. Jobs like this are the result of somebody breaking and entering." She smiled again. "Either way, it's extra money.

"I generally work for city government."

Z had a comforting thought. If some nutcase was playing a mindless prank, it could be that this young and pretty -- bordering on beautiful -- girl did need a big, ugly guy to protect her.

What had she said? Something about working for the ....

"City?"

"With my credentials, I get work when the city decides to round up fortunetellers. I go in as a 'client.' Hear the pitch. Figure out how the 'miracles' are worked: ectoplasmic manifestations, sudden cold spots on the neck, voices of the dead. Then, expose the hocus-pocus. Testify in court that it's fraud. That the city's now prosecuting 'religious liberty.'" She nodded to herself. "I like that. Bust the bloodsuckers. Save some credulous old ladies a buck or two." She shrugged. "But its not steady work. With too little money to solve the city's problems, K.C. cops run a three-year rotation: they bust fortunetellers this year, hookers next year, and murderers the next." She gave Z a smile that, on anyone but such an innocent young girl, could be interpreted as cynical. "My day job is teaching psych at a Catholic girls' school. St. Francis in Kansas City, Kansas."

The explanation of her background delivered, Jamie Stewart went back to work, busying herself by looking in this box and that, sifting plastic "peanuts" to find what she wanted, taking out jars and packages. Food?

"Much of this ghost business," she began again, continuing to lecture, "is the church's fault, of course. All those medieval stories about otherworldly creatures. Angels, cherubim, seraphim, tortured souls of the damned. Scare your parishioners with old-wives' tales and every sicko in the congregation thinks he's got demons in the attic."

She got up to nudge the empty boxes to one side and to slide other containers close to the mattress, sitting down to take out more items: crackers, peanut butter, bread, instant coffee, plastic "silverware," cups, paper plates, and toilet tissue, organizing these necessities by grouping them in piles, on and off the mattress. "The church used to do a lot of exorcisms in the Middle Ages," she continued. She was a teacher, after all. "But that kind of mumbo jumbo's an embarrassment now. At least, in modern countries like the United States.

"Finding out that I did paranormal work for the city, a couple of church biggies got in touch with me. Since then, I get the first call to go check out any 'spiritual presence' that's reported in KCK -- except for statues that drip blood or crosses that appear mysteriously on church walls. The big stuff is still reserved for church officials. But your more routine ghostly manifestation, that's my beat. Viewed one way, my job is to keep a proper distance between church officials and the people they've brainwashed." She frowned. Then relaxed.

"As I look at it, my real mission is to convince troubled families that their rebellious teenagers are not possessed by the devil. Then recommend agencies where the whole family can get practical help." The girl shook her head defiantly, her corn-silk hair shimmering in the lamp light.

Finished with what she'd been doing, the ghost hunter glanced up at Z again. "I've got the basics unpacked. Always do that first. I won't know what electronics I'll need until I get a look at the rest of the house."

"I'll come."

"That's sweet." Again, the look. Again, the Mona Lisa smile. As to what she was thinking -- if anything -- Z didn't have a clue. But had he ever? With any woman? "Be assured that your presence is unnecessary. I'm a big girl. Even know some dirty tricks to use in the clinches, if you know what I mean."

"Nothing better to do."

Again, the mysterious smile. "No way to argue with that."

Scissoring her legs under her, the girl stood up, Z never tiring of watching young woman do "girl things" like that.

"OK. For starters, you can switch off the light." Saying that, she slipped her feet back into her "dockers."

Moving to obey, Z reach down to turn off the lamp, the room plunged into total darkness, Miss Stewart snapping on her penlight so they could see. (If being able to detect dark shapes from darker shadows could be called seeing.)

"I'd like to use a regular flashlight, but ...."

"Neighbors," Z agreed.

And they were off again, Z letting the girl pass him to take the lead, the ghost hunter clicking open the bedroom door, the two of them stepping into the hall.

After that, they went dead slow, the girl manipulating her narrow light like a dentist uses a steel pick, to probe -- each -- cranny as the two of them inched along.

What she was looking for, Z couldn't guess.

Finished with scrutinizing the short hall, Miss Stewart spent the same ridiculous amount of time in the living room.

As far as Z could tell, the only thing "spooky" about the house was that the girl's footsteps were all that could be heard. (On crepe soles, Z moved like the fleeting shadow of the "invisible man," no sound except the squeak of floorboards underfoot.)

The living room ... smelled like the rest of the house.

Dry.

Musty.

The odor ... of old-woman flesh.

And ... something else. .... An ... animal smell. Urine. Wet fur. ..... All smells of long ago.

Nor was there anything in the room they hadn't seen on first glance.

If you didn't count fuzz balls.

Here.

There.

Drifting out of corners on the air-puffs Z made by walking by .....

That's right! The crazy old woman who'd lived here had been called the "cat lady."

Using his own penlight, Z captured one of the strange "fuzzles," tearing it apart to find it to be mostly cat fur ...

Thud! ... the sound of the girl colliding with Z, Miss Stewart apparently unaware he was there and walking right into his back.

Not that Z minded. (It was something of a shock, though, to discover what she'd grabbed in order to keep herself upright!)

"Sorry," she said softly, smiling up at him.

"Dark," Z mumbled, letting her know he understood.

It was a little bit later that Z discovered what he wanted to know. With Miss Stewart across the room inspecting something by the arch, Z used his light to check the front door lock ... finding no signs of tampering. If someone was breaking in like the girl thought might be the case, it wasn't by the front door.

Finished with the living room, the girl motioned Z over, the two of them following the girl's slender beam through the arch, across the narrow hall, and into the kitchen at the back: a larger room than Z had imagined.

The strobing penlight showed: hook-ups for a gas stove; electric outlets at the back of the space where the refrigerator had stood; and faded, badly scarred linoleum counter tops. (Had the nutty, previous occupant been using a cleaver to chop up cats?)

Above the counters were old-fashioned cabinets, their heavy doors mostly open, barren shelves lined with cracked oilcloth.

As Z had figured from his "walk-around" that afternoon, access to the backyard was through the kitchen, Z crossing the room to discover that no matter what he did, he couldn't budge the back door. ... Not a fraction of an inch.

Why?

Using his light, Z discovered that the door had been nailed shut! Moreover, battened down by someone with no carpentry skill, round, hammer marks in the woodwork telling him that; bent nails adding their collaborative testimony.

But ... why?

The only reason Z could imagine was that the crazy old "cat" lady was afraid of prowlers.

Backing out of the kitchen, neither Z nor the girl speaking in the empty old house, the two of them took a couple of steps down the hall, the girl stopping to twist the scratched-glass knob on another door, shoving the door in to reveal the bathroom, the girl pausing in the doorway, Z coming up close enough behind her to see over her head.

Perfume.

Musky. As puzzling a scent on the fresh, young girl as her age-old smile.

Taking a step inside, the girl tripped the stool's handle, water gurgling from the tank, then hissing in slowly to fill the rust-streaked, narrow-throated bowl. "I asked the Vice Chancellor to have the water turned on in the house." In spite of her brave talk about the nonexistence of the spirit world, Z noticed she was speaking quietly. "I don't mind doing these jobs, and I don't mind doing them alone, but I try to get at least this modern convenience."

Z hadn't thought about the empty house's water being turned off. Or what that meant to someone stuck in the house overnight.

Off again down the hall, they explored the larger bedroom. Which was ... larger. Nothing else.

Backtracking, Miss Stewart stopped at a thick-painted hallway door located between the kitchen and the bath.

"Basement," she said. "On the floor plan, anyway."

Jamie Stewart was still using her "quiet" voice. Perhaps, because louder noises in the hollow house sounded so ... ugly.

Trying to unlatch the door's simple, old-fashioned bolt -- but failing -- she gave way to Z, Z using his strength to squeak the rusty bolt from its keeper, the girl turning the wobbly, tin doorknob and pulling, the warped door shrilling open to reveal the basement's black throat.

Starting her descent without a word, all Z could do was follow, the two of them tramping down steps that were dirty, concave, splintered, narrow, and steep.

Down ten steps only, the girl stopping on the final riser, Z coming to a halt on the step behind her, the basement at their feet not the kind of space a clean person wished to enter. Z didn't like the place's smell, either. An odor, less of age than of ... death ... prompting him to wonder if the loony Bateman prof had buried her cleaver-killed cats down here? (More realistically, the cellar smelled of ... long-dead rats.)

Z watching, the girl gave the black pit a quick once-over with the light, the basement turning out to be the root cellar Z had thought likely.

Opposite the stairs, concrete steps trudged up a steeply slanted cinder-block shaft, those risers ending at the underside of the padlocked, overlapping backyard doors.

The girl continuing to slash the light -- here -- there -- Z saw that the ceiling of this crypt-like hole was so low the open crossbeams would barely clear his head, the ceiling nothing but exposed, angle-braced floor joists.

Rickety shelves hugged the walls, the shelving for canned goods back in the days when people still did canning, the ledging now empty, looking like it could barely hold its own rotted weight.

The floor was ... powdered dirt ... as uneven as wind-waves on a lake ... the dirt's dryness a testimony to the effectiveness of drainage around the outside of the house. Here and there, but mostly to the right, flattened pieces of cardboard boxes covered the bare dirt.

Near the top of the old cellar's concrete walls were narrow windows, the wavy glass in them sometimes cracked but everywhere intact.

Spider webs sagged between the ceiling's open floor joists. ... Old webs. Ragged. Dirty.

The only positive thing to say about this ... hole ... was that, since it was below ground, it was cooler than the house above.

As the girl continued to carve up the gloom with her little light, Z saw that decrepit tools had been left leaning against an open space along the far right wall. A cankerous sharpshooter spade. A rusty garden rake. A thick-handled, old-fashioned pick. An ancient manure-fork, minus a middle tine.

To sum it up, this was a small, decrepit basement -- under a small, decrepit house.

Making sure the little flashlight's knife-edged beam didn't cut its way out a basement window, the girl directed the light up and around Z as best she could to show the way out of the pit.

Finally up and in the hall, Miss Stewart beside him, Z creaked the door shut, the two of them scurrying back to their bedroom sanctuary.

After Z shut the sleeping room door behind them, the young woman switched on the lamp, at the same time pocketing the penlight.

"Now, what?" Z muttered, blinking rapidly to get his eyes adjusted to the sudden light. In this unpleasant house, he was almost pleased his voice was shot.

"Now, we rig the place."

Squatting like a duck, knees impossibly wide, the girl began searching in a box again to drag out an old-fashioned, gooseneck office lamp, the bulb inside the beat-up metal shade a purple color instead of white, something Z thought curious. The lamp's cord ended in electric jacks: no doubt because of its conversion to DC current.

The lamp clear of the box, Miss Stewart got up to place the fixture on the mattress, bulb up.

Back to the cardboard box, coming out next was something that looked like a box of salt, the kind with a metal, pullout pouring spout near the top -- the box going on the floor beside the mattress.

After that, she took a fat, wide roll of masking tape from a smaller carton; put the tape on the floor.

Another container contributed look-alike, electronic devices -- microphones and foot-square speakers. Three sets of them. Equipment that definitely deserved the mattress.

Still squatted down, the ghost hunter swivelled to look up at Z, knees rotating in Z's direction. "Want to help?"

"OK."

"Here's what we'll do first." She pivoted away from Z again to point to the electronics. "These are nursery monitors. Battery-powered. In normal use, you put the mike in the baby's room and the speaker in the mother's room. When the baby makes a sound, it registers on the mother's speaker." The girl pointed again at the mike-speaker gear. "I want to put the transmitters in three places. Two, up here. One in the basement.

"OK."

"The corresponding speakers go in here."

"Yeah."

"I'll want to know which speaker is coming from which microphone, of course. So we do them one at a time, labeling the speakers as we go. We can use a piece of tape. After we get the mike set, write its location on the tape, then stick the tape to the proper speaker." She pointed to the roll of masking tape at her feet. "The point is that, if there's a noise anywhere in the house, I want to hear it on one of the speakers, which speaker telling me the room the noise comes from." She paused to think, dragging the fingers of one hand through her hair standing up at last. "Let's say, for now, that we set them up in the living room, back bedroom, and basement.

"It's also a good idea to put the mikes somewhere out of the way where they won't be noticed." She hesitated once more. "And that may take some doing, given the lack of furniture." She looked at Z, frowning prettily. "I could use another one or two of these units, but they cost fifty bucks apiece." She frowned even more, her blue eyes cloudy; then, relaxed. "Though three should do it in a house this small."

It took half an hour to place the microphones and speakers. (They tucked the basement mike into a split on the last riser of the stairs, and to hell with it!)

Simple to do if you didn't mind breaking your back.

Not that Miss Stewart didn't do her part. She did -- in a way.

As it turned out, the girl's contribution was to bounce back and forth between the latest microphone placement and the bedroom where she listened to the speaker as Z made a variety of soft sounds: breathing, walking, humming. She would then return to order Z to move the mike to another spot where she hoped it would do a better job.

"This is really helpful, having you along," she enthused as the "project" continued. "Alone, I have to arrange for something to make a noise. I've got a kitchen, wind-up timer with me for that purpose, but having you make just the right sound is great!"

"Great," Z said, back aching but trying to fake a matching enthusiasm

"The next installation's a little tricky," Miss Stewart said on their last trip to the bedroom, the three mikes in place to her satisfaction, the corresponding receivers labeled and placed at intervals along the inside bedroom wall. "I wish I had a camera for each room. But I don't. Being -- what did you call it, a ghost hunter? -- doesn't pay all that much. Neither does teaching in a girl's school, believe me." Again, the adorable pout. Though Z hadn't liked her much as a man, she was so cute as a girl she was practically irresistible.

About her pay, Z believed her. Everyone seemed upset that teacher's salaries were so low. (Unfortunately, no one was at all concerned about a detective's wages. To Z's knowledge, no politician had ever made a promise to raise a P.I.s. hourly rate.)

Kicking empty boxes out of the way, the girl crouched over a square, wood container, taking out parcels wrapped in bubble-wrap, laying the protected items carefully on the mattress.

Sitting down once more -- the young woman's double-jointed knees allowing her to sit on both, back-bent calves -- Miss Stewart unwrapped each package, taking out what looked like a couple of collapsed tripods and two small cameras. That is, the cameras were small. What was considerably larger was a device attached to each camera. A piece of equipment that seemed familiar.

Lumpy.

Electronic.

"Motion sensor," she explained, tapping the add-on electronics of one camera. "These come apart to form a 'shooter' and a 'target.' Once I rig one of these, any substantial movement in front of the lens trips an infrared signal being sent out, setting off a quick-release electric motor that, in turn, trips the camera's flash. The result: a photo of what disturbed the beam in front of the camera."

Z knew all about infrared systems like that. As a security installer, he'd put in similar devices when burglar-proofing homes. In his case, the beam was generally hooked to an automatic dialer that summoned the police.

"These are so sensitive," she added, "I've had them go off, only to find that the camera took a picture of a fly buzzing past." Z knew they could be set up that way, though in the security business, you didn't need that kind of discrimination. Adjust them too fine and something harmless like blowing dust could trip them off, giving you a false alarm.

So -- Z helped her place the cameras. One, so it scanned practically the entire living room. The other at the back of the large bedroom, covering that room. "If what we've got is a ghost whose sins have chained him to the kitchen or basement, we're out of luck," the girl said, her face expressionless.

Not entirely sure the girl was kidding, Z tried an all-purpose smile.

"Still, most of the house is covered. Enough to pick up whoever's haunting the place."

"The ghost?"

"Hardly. It always turns out to be a homeless person who's found a way of getting in. Or maybe a relative of the lady who used to live here." The young lady gave an I've-seen-it-all-before kind of nod. "Could be a friend of the former occupant, someone who doesn't want to be caught snooping."

"Child?"

"Maybe. But I doubt it. This house is at least five blocks from the nearest home -- not counting the one next door, Ashlock saying that house had only old people in it. And you don't find children wandering that far. Particularly at night. No. I'd bet the store it's an adult, walking in from some distance so he won't be noticed doing whatever he's doing inside the house."

"That's why I'm here." Z had always felt he was at his best protecting pretty girls. That was how he'd met Susan, after all, defending her from her ex-husband, the maniac.

"Someone harmless, I would think," the girl continued, still downplaying Z's role. "No sign this is a drug house. Nobody wrecking the place. Just somebody with a pathetic delusion, would be my guess. A person who thinks he has a reason to get in at night. No broken windows. The front lock's not been jimmied. So it's probably someone with a key."

So, she had checked the lock, too. ... Impressive. For a girl.

"Our cars?" Z said, having a thought he should have had earlier.

"Cars?"

"Out front. A tipoff?"

"If so," the girl said, grinning, "nobody shows. And I certify the house to be unhaunted."

Which, Z knew, was the idea.

"And now for the final 'ghost trap.'"

Thinking he'd already "done the deed," Z groaned inwardly.

"You'll need the masking tape again. I want lines taped on the floor down all the halls, about a foot and a half in front of both sides. Another, approximately two feet back of the front door. And finally, a path marked out, starting at the front door line, coming through the hall. About two feet wide but taking a zigzag course from the front door through the arch. What I want is to mark off 'safe' places for us to walk. Since the tape is close to the color of these old wood floors, you'd have to be looking for it to notice it at all, giving us the advantage. Once the tape's down, I'm going to sprinkle fluorescing powder on either side of the lines." She pointed at the "soap" box. "It's invisible to the naked eye in the amount I'm going to use. Looks just like the rest of the dust that's everywhere in the place. But under black light," -- she indicated the blue-bulb light fixture -- "it'll glow like the mouth of hell."

"A lot of taping," Z found himself saying, regretting immediately such a wimpy complaint. Could only comfort himself with the thought that a similar comment might slip out of any man who'd done a week's worth of peon labor in a single night.

"I can help," she said, looking over at him. "We just stretch out the tape, each of us sticking down an end. We can walk on the middle of the tape to make it stick."

So that was what they did.

After lining out the masking tape, they returned to the bedroom when Jamie unplugged the lamp and patched the gooseneck, black light into the batteries, the girl holding the light and box, Z wheeling the battery pack down the hall, the girl sprinkled fluorescing powder on the inside of the taped lines, the light making the powder glow ... "like the mouth of hell."

No doubt about it. Not knowing the powder was there -- unable to see it except when a black light had turned the powder a flaming blue -- anyone walking around in the house would get the fluorescing dust on his feet and track it all over.

"Done," the young woman said at last, arriving at the front door, snapping the metal spout into the narrow side of the box, the thin steel pouring "lip" flush with the cardboard end of the box to seal in the "ghostly" granules. "Now all we've got to do is keep from wandering into the powder ourselves. Keep close to the walls. That, plus remembering to keep out of the way of the cameras. As for picking up a noise, since we'll be in the bedroom, the only sounds coming through the speakers will be made by someone else."

Her preparations blessedly complete, Miss Stewart led Z back to the little bedroom for the final time, the two of them stopping just inside to close the door, Z tipping the dolly forward, the black light still on, making them the house's ghostly presence.

Accepting the light from the girl, Z set the goose neck lamp on the top battery of the dolly. "Ah ... how long do we have to ...?"

The girl pivoted to face Z. Was again close enough for him to smell her dark perfume. Close enough for him to look into her black light eyes. "All night for at least a week," she answered, correctly guessing his question. Though it had to be an illusion, her voice seemed hushed by the flickery, violet glow. "Maybe longer. From what the Vice Chancellor said, the ghost lights have been seen on something like one-week intervals for the last couple of months."

"All ... night?"

"Yes. There's no pattern about when the light appears, except late at night." Z wondered if the girl knew about the other phenomena the Devaux woman had reported.

"Do you know about the noises?"

"Noises? No."

Ha! Something Z knew that she didn't! "This afternoon, I checked with the old woman next door. The one who reported the light. And she also heard noises. A small truck engine."

"That's interesting. Did she see a truck?"

"No."

"Just lights. ....... And a motor."

Once more, the girl produced her black-light grin. "By the way, good work, talking to the woman."

Z felt ashamed. Here he was, so proud of having gone her one better when Miss Stewart felt nothing but satisfaction in his achievement. "My job," Z muttered, unworthy of her praise.

"Oh?"

"Detective work."

All the girl did was smile: teeth, shark-white in the phantom light. If it was news to her that Z was a P.I., she didn't show it.

"But now, it's about time for bed, don't you think?" Shifting her weight to one foot, the girl scissored her other leg across until she was standing with her feet on the reverse sides of her body, her flexible legs crossed into an impossible, but totally fascinating X. "Want some coffee first?" Z shook his head. "Something to eat? Something fixed on the hot plate, maybe?" Z shook his head. "Well, then ...?"

"Ah ... I ...."

"Yes?"

"I ... that is ...." Z stopped to gather his scattered thoughts. Found he was warmer than the temperature of the room. "That is ... with one camera in the other bedroom and a camera in the living room ...."

"What you're trying to ask is, where are you going to sleep?"

"Could sleep in my car, but ...."

"You couldn't protect me from there."

Z could see her faint smile, even in the unearthly glow of black light. "Look. You're a regular guy, right?" Z nodded. "A straight guy?" Z nodded again, hoping, in the generalized darkness of the pulsing, blue light that she couldn't see him blush. Young and fresh as she was, how could she know that her question about him being "straight" sounded like .....? "And I agree. This bedroom is the only place for both of us to sleep if you're to do your job."

Turning, she pointed. "The mattress is dirty, but that won't matter. I'm used to spending time in places like this so I brought my sleeping bag to have a clean place to lie down. Opened up and spread out, the bag's big enough for two to sleep on. But I'm afraid its so padded it's a little hot for summer. Even when you leave it unzipped and use it for bedding, you still sink into it. So hot, we'd have to strip to get any sleep at all."

Jamie Stewart turned back to Z; paused as if waiting for him to say something. Which, as usual, he didn't. "The way I see it, the first night, we'll start off with me lying on my half of the bag, you on yours. That's after you promise not to take advantage of me, of course. But sometime during the week, while you're dreaming of your girl, you'll roll over and bump into me. Thinking I'm Susan, you'll nestle close, put your arm around me and ....." Again, that unfathomable look. "What I'm thinking is that, since it's going to happen anyway ....."

And Jamie Stewart, girl ghost hunter, was in Z's arms, loving Z with her full lips and flashing tongue above and with her very clever hands below!

* * * * *

Chapter 6

Something had made him wake up. ... The phone. ... Still ringing.

He tried to move and groaned.

Without having to think about it, Z reached over to the night stand to get the aspirin he always kept there. By feel, shook some into his hand, palmed them into his mouth, and chewed them, the sour taste helping to wake him up a little more.

Good!

The phone had stopped ringing. Good, in the sense Z couldn't have answered it if he'd tried. Bad, because it was probably someone he'd want to talk to.

Z didn't get many calls at home, an unlisted number necessary for someone in an occupation that made enemies. An additional benefit to a silent number was it cut down calls from aluminum siding people, the lawn care folks, the "free" dance lessons people, insurance salesmen, banks with a credit card offer, stock salesmen, the window replacement company, or the latest charity asking for the latest donation for the latest worthy cause.

What time was it? Z tried to focus his eyes on the single window by the bathroom door. Saw it was light outside. Morning or afternoon, he couldn't tell.

He tried to move again. ... Was a little better, though his body felt like he'd been in a fight. Battered. Bruised. But ... why? ......

Oh ... yes. Oh, yes!

Z groaned again, this time from remembered pleasure. Contrary to expectation, Z's physical labors had not been finished after helping Jamie set up her ghost traps.

Funny. "No pain, no gain," didn't apply to lovemaking like it did to other physical activity, Z never feeling a twinge during the act itself.

Lovemaking. And lovemaking. And more lovemaking. A little of this and a lot of that.

Thinking about last night, Z was still shocked by what that young woman knew, to say nothing of what she'd wanted him to attempt.

And like sex after the prom, it hadn't happened by accident, the whole "affair" planned by Miss Jamie Stewart.

When had young girls started carrying rubbers, for instance? In Z's day, that was what the guys did -- but just one; in its foil wrap; in the back of your billfold. What was he to think of a girl who carried ... dozens?! In different brands? In different colors?

Shocking. No other word for it.

But, my God, that girl was cute. Even with her clothes on. Without them ... my God!

Z took a deep breath and moaned it out. Given the night he'd had, it could be afternoon. Early afternoon, he speculated after raising his head to get another look at the window.

Jamie Stewart. A teacher at a Catholic girls' school, no less. Maybe there was some truth to the rumor Z had heard from his high school buddies, that being repressed too long by an over-strict religion made Catholic girls hot stuff, a line of thought leading to the punch line of a joke about the promiscuous Sunday school teacher telling her class that, from her own experience, she could assure them they didn't have to smoke or drink to have fun.

Z was feeling ... better.

Cautiously, he sat up, pulled off the sheet, swung his legs over the side of the bed, put his feet on the floor.

Linoleum. Though an ice-cold hell in winter, pleasantly cool in summer. Sleeping naked also suited the heat of summer more than the cold of winter. (Z had considered wearing pajamas, but could never get himself to do something that unnatural.)

Gathering his courage, Z stood, then set out on the twelve-foot trek to the bathroom (able to limp as much as he wanted in his own apartment,) eventually making it, pausing there for every morning's necessities.

What had Jamie said? They would be spending every night together for at least a week? Perhaps Z should give his unlisted number to the funeral home.

Out of the bathroom, Z felt ... warm.

Taking another fuzzy look at his watch, it seemed to him that both the big and little hands were lurking near the twelve, a reading that fit the temperature.

Time to turn on the twin window-mounted air conditioners on either side of the front door and get the day's fire going in the fireplace.

As for breakfast, Z wasn't sure. To be more accurate, his stomach wasn't sure.

Z's mind now functioning well enough to give the day its early direction, he shuffled into the living room, veering left to snap on the air conditioners, the old machines lumbering into life, the stiff breeze through the buzz of their directional vents feeling good on Z's bare body.

The phone rang. The same caller as before?

No one around to see him in the buff, Z sagged down on the butt-sprung divan and picked up the receiver.

"Z."

"It's Susan. I tried to call you last night. And again this morning."

"Case."

"Something that keeps you out all night?" Z thought of black-haired, long-legged, dark-eyed, full-figured Susan and felt a flash of guilt that he had ... no desire for her at all.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry I got you up. I know, after being out all night, you need your rest." She didn't know how much rest -- and, with luck, never would. "But you can go back to sleep. Should, go to sleep." Susan's voice was at its sexy best, a fact, given Z's anemic condition, that did nothing but make him hurt in all the wrong places. "I called because I learned yesterday that American Insurance is in financial trouble." A lie, if ever Z heard one. Since when did insurance agency's have financial trouble? And if so, good! Ever since "Swindle Insurance" reneged on his father's policy, Z had been quits with all of them. "I don't think it's anything serious," Susan continued. "What's really wrong is fear that something might go wrong. But anyway, the top officials decided they needed to get together with the branch managers. As you know, we're heavily into health insurance. With the government looking into ways to regulate the cost of health care, that's got everyone worried. So, there's an emergency meeting called for all executives for next week. At Tantara." Typical, Z thought. When having money troubles, do your worrying at an expensive resort at the Lake of the Ozarks. "And that means that working stiffs like me get some time off. Oh, we've got to stay at our desks during the day. But there won't be any night work with the big boys out of town. I might even be able to slip away for an afternoon. So I thought we could get together tonight and tomorrow. And maybe a couple of afternoons next week."

Z almost groaned into the phone -- a reflex Susan was certain to have taken wrong, a reflex, under the circumstances, impossible to explain. Of all times for Susan to suggest "getting together," this wasn't one of them.

Z and Susan generally saw each other on weekends, either Saturday or Sunday; sometimes not even then. Susan had work commitments. Then, there was the time-consuming college class she'd taken last winter.

Normally, Z would have been delighted at the prospect of seeing more of her -- figuratively and literally -- but not now."

"Love to, but can't," Z said. "Got to work tonight. Every night. Days, too." The "days, too" was fiction, of course, the Zapolska code allowing Z to lie in matters of life or death. In this case, his life or death.

"That's ... too bad. I've been missing you, Z."

"Me, too."

"No way you can take a break?"

"Not this time. Could be two weeks."

"Two weeks? Can you tell me about it?" Susan always wanted to hear about Z's cases. But what was there to tell? Even this time, when interesting things had been happening, there was nothing to tell. Especially this time.

"Later."

"OK. Take care, Z."

"Yeah."

After Susan hung up, Z felt guilty -- not that he had any reason to. What had happened with the ghost hunter wasn't his fault. (Which wouldn't be the case if he'd been a girl -- girls having less sex drive than men.) Screwing a good-looking girl in the circumstances in which he'd found himself was something a real man had to do. The code of the hills said that, when a good-looking girl came on to you like that, you had to prove yourself or be called a queer.

Viewed that way, Susan should be happy that Z was all man. (Best not to mention the incident to her, though, women tending to be irrational about unimportant things like an occasional piece on the side.)

Then, too, the first time (the first few times) he'd had sex with the ghost girl was because she'd taken him by surprise. Now that he'd been warned about her sexual appetites, he could say with certainty he would never make love to that girl again. Z's exclusive love for Susan was safe once more.

Finding the solution to last night's problem, Z was feeling virtuous once more, virtuous but ... cold. ... Because the air conditioners were rumbling at full power; because he hadn't built his usual fire to counteract their blast; because he was sitting on the divan buck-naked.

Taking the need to get warm as his motivation, Z dragged himself up; even managed to steer both halves of him to the bedroom and into some gray summer slacks and a blue dress shirt.

Not that he was feeling well enough to make a fire or to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Thinking about his lack of appetite, could the fact that he hadn't eaten be contributing to the empty feeling in his stomach?

After he'd put in an appearance at his office to see if he had anything on his answering machine, he'd go out for something. (He used to be able to dial his office answering machine from his home -- just another phone feature that no longer worked.)

If he could only remember where he'd put his shoes ......

* * * * *

Driving the Cavalier with all the windows down, everything between his apartment and the office a blur, Z rallied his forces to get the car lined up in its slot in the gravel lot behind the overpass.

Outside his car and into the patched-up building, he keyed himself into his ratty office at the back of the first floor.

Closing the flimsy door behind him, Z flipped on the wall switch -- to no avail -- and not for the first time.

Leaning over the secretarial desk, Z jiggled the loose lamp cord where it went into the base of the table lamp; heard it sputter as the wires made solid connection, the lamp then coming on.

Z sighed. From now on, he'd leave the switch on at the wall; turn the light on and off by playing with the wire coming out of the lamp's base. Not a perfect solution to the lighting problem, but one that would have to do until he could think of something better.

Bingo!

As it might happen to anyone at any time, Z had a flash of insight, a perception so startling Z was at his desk in the other room and leaning back in the squeaky chair without remembering how he got there.

Strange, how the mind worked. How you'd see something, but not really see it, suddenly coming to understand what, at the time, went unnoticed. Or you'd hear a noise, even be aware that the sound was the trigger to an important memory ... but not be able to connect the dots until much later.

With Z, odors often dredged up the "long forgotten," probably because, since his temporary loss of smell as a teenager, he no longer took smell for granted.

But ... not this time.

Something had happened last night, something he'd heard but hadn't "registered" until -- this -- very -- moment. He couldn't even tell what it was that had made his mind "cough up" what it had "swallowed." Even stranger, it hadn't clicked when he'd been talking to Susan -- like it should have.

For Susan was the issue. Not Susan in the "flesh," but Susan in the "name."

Z tried to think back to last night.

Could he be wrong? Could it have happened after he and Jamie had made love? The first time? The second? The third? The ......

No.

Well then, what about during the deed?

As image after shocking image of last night's activities flicked through Z's mind -- even in his condition, beginning to get a physical response to those lewd thoughts .......

No!

Not while making acrobatic love.

It had happened before they started breaking all the rules. Leading him on, Jamie's pitch was that, sometime in the night, Z would be dreaming of his girl, that he'd mistake Jamie for Susan, begun to cuddle, put his arm around her ......

It was at that precise point in the conversation that Jamie Stewart threw herself into his arms, Z not having a rational thought for the rest of the night.

Just before dawn -- the girl a lot younger that he and so rational enough to set an alarm clock (to say nothing of having the energy to do it) -- they'd sneaked out of the house, both of them driving home. (To their respective homes, thank God!)

Since then, he'd been sleeping like the dead man he nearly was.

Now more alert, he had to ask himself something he should have tumbled to last night.

The question? How did the ghost hunter -- a girl he'd never met, a girl who obviously hadn't met him -- know that Z had a girl named Susan?

Z hadn't used Susan's name, he was sure of that. Not while carrying in boxes; not while exploring the house; not while setting up the electronics; not while laying masking tape. Why would he?

And yet, the ghost hunter knew Susan's name.

How?

Z thought it all through again.

And thought it through again, this time with shivers toying with his spine.

Where had the ghost hunter said she'd gone to college? Duke? And what was it that psychologists studied there?

Unusual manifestations of the mind.

Odd mental capacities.

Psychic abilities the girl said were all false.

All false?

Maybe.

On the other hand, the girl could have told him a white lie to mask her own strange powers. Fibbing to protect yourself permissible, even in the code Big Bob Zapolska lived by.

* * * * *

It was four in the afternoon before Z got back to the office from a very late lunch: a personal pan pizza and a Diet Coke at Pizza Hut -- a bargain even without his discount card.

While waiting for an individual pan, double pepperoni, he'd started another detective novel, this one by Lawrence Block, "A Ticket to the Boneyard," featuring a detective named Scudder.

Now there was a real detective, an ex-New York cop who knew what to do under any circumstance. Knew who to call when he needed something; had an honest-to-God friend on the N.Y.P.D. instead of a mostly worthless high school buddy like Ted Newbold, Gladstone's not-so-finest.

New York City.

What a place that must be: a big-time, big-crime city instead of a sleepy, Midwest town. Not that there wasn't sin in Kansas City -- just not enough of it North-of-the-River to enable a stumble bum, unlicensed private dick like Z to earn a decent living. The only thing Z had in common with Block's detective was that Scudder wasn't licensed either.

Back at his desk, Z was still reading about Scudder's exploits -- Z lost in the wonderful corruption of New York City -- when there was a knock on the door, always and forever a startling sound.

Could it be Susan? A welcome surprise, normally .... Today, however ....

Launching himself from his chair, Z fast-hobbled to the door.

Opened it.

Saw ... Ted Newbold. ..................

"You going to invite me in?" Ted, already taking offense.

"Sure."

Z leading, they went to the back office, Z to sit behind his desk, Ted to lounge in the "client" chair.

Z always though of Ted as ... brown. Wore a brown suit. Had brown shoes, eyes, and bottled brown hair. In short, nothing the cops called "distinguishing marks." Nothing at all "distinguished" about Teddy Newbold, if the truth were known.

"I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop in to see my old buddy," Ted lied, Teddy wanting something bad enough to venture into an area of the city he thought beneath the dignity of a Gladstone Dick.

To be fair, that was the Z-Ted relationship. If Z needed a cop-fact, he called Ted; if Ted needed a favor, he got in touch with his "old buddy."

What Teddy showing up in the Ludlow building really meant, was that Ted wanted something ... bad!

"Now that I'm here in this beautiful office," Ted continued, even though needing a favor, unable to resist poking Z in his unemployed ribs, "there is a little something you could do for me. After all, you owe me."

Better at remembering favors he'd done for others than those done for him, Ted probably believed he was "owed."

Though it could take a while to find out what Ted wanted, all Z had to do was wait. Ted couldn't keep any secret for long.

"I know you did me some good, too. Now and then. But I figure you're ahead."

"Yeah." No sense arguing.

"There's this matter that the K.C. cops have referred to our department. You know how Gladstone ends just before the Antioch Shopping Center? How from there on, it's Kansas City, Missouri? And you know the I-35 overpass about ten blocks further down Antioch?"

"Yeah."

Well, if you've been driving past that location lately, you've noticed some bums hanging out there. Or close to there. They're generally on the Kansas City side of the line."

"'Work For Food.'"

"That's right. With signs like that. What's going down is that K.C.'s been getting complaints. And here's the kicker -- from the bums themselves. Saying that, now and then, one of them turns up missing. In fact, we got a couple of calls on that from the K.C. fuzz

"Now my captain says, so what? So they're bums and bums bum around. And that could be right. Probably is. But when the K.C. cops bother to call on something like that, I got to figure there may be more to it than meets the eye.

"The truth is ... I could use something positive on my record about now."

Oh, oh. That had to mean Ted had screwed up something else, Captain Scherer breathing down Ted's neck, Ted desperate to counter his foul-up with a home run. Normally, Ted kept what he called a low profile. (What Z called covering his ass.) Or to put it another way, if Ted had been a turtle, he'd have been the hide-in-his-shell kind, not the "snapping" variety.

"So I asked myself," Ted continued, hooting like the wise old owl, "what if somebody was picking up these work-for-food bums for illegal purposes? Using them to run drugs-for-food is what came to mind. Or to bring up greaser labor from the border. So I said to myself, what I needed was a plant.

"Now the K.C. cops, they got undercover narco-types up the old wazzoo. But we don't.

"So I got me this idea." Ted stopped. Took a breath. "Now don't take offense at what I'm going to say, but I thought of you mostly because you've got the clothes to make it work. What I mean is, you could do me a favor -- do the department a favor. Hell, do the K.C. cops a favor by doing a little undercover work. Which would consist of just dressing up in your normal grubbies, fixing yourself up a cardboard sign saying 'Work For Food,' and standing near the overpass. There's no pay in it, but it's not as if I was asking you to do something hard. You'd just be standing there part-time. Maybe for a couple of hours for a few days. See if someone wants to pick you up and what they want from you. I'm not expecting you to go with anybody. Just find out who's shopping for that kind of labor. License number -- all that.

"It's not as if you'd be interrupting anything important in your life, I figure," Ted blundered on, "because, what have you got going for you that's all that important?" Z had to give it to Ted. Ted was being as tactful as he knew how.

"I got a case. At night."

"Hell. I wasn't asking you to do any night work. Just to spare me a couple of hours in the morning. Say for a week."

A couple of hours a day. For a week. For nothing.

On the other hand, Ted was a friend from high school, Z not having so many friends he could afford to lose even one like Teddy Newbold.

"OK," Z said -- completely against his better judgment. "Could be a day or two before I start."

"Well ... if that's the best you can do."

Ted stood up, Z walking him to the front door, where Ted seemed to ... "stick."

"Z." Ted had turned serious. "Watch yourself by the overpass."

"Something I should know?"

"Nothing for sure. But from the mood of the captain -- he don't want to touch this with a ten-foot pole -- I got a bad feeling."

"What?"

"Don't know. Maybe Scherer knows something. But he didn't tell me. And since it's nobody's case, I can't ask. Just watch yourself, that's all."

"You could call K.C. and ask."

"I don't got good contacts with K.C. I'm too far down the totem pole." The simple truth, said with genuine regret.

The message delivered, Ted was out of there.

Leaving Z feeling something was wrong with this whole deal. Z might not have many sources, but he knew the ones he had. Ted, for instance. Not only had Ted suckered him into one of Ted's self-promotion schemes, but one that even Teddy thought could be dangerous. (Not that Ted was so afraid for Z's safety that Teddy would pass up an opportunity to use Z for Ted's advancement.) Still, when a numb nuts like Ted Newbold smelled a rat ....

And something else wasn't right. Thinking about it, Z had been wrong about his short list of friends. Figured correctly, there were more people he could consult, depending on the crisis. For intellectual help, for instance, he could call Dr. Calder, the pudgy psychologist at Bateman. Z also had an acquaintance who was a detective on the K.C.M.O force, Willis Addison. (Addison had even come North-of-the-River to consult Z about a case.)

Though not believing as strongly in a favor-for-a-favor as Ted -- but adding in the fact that this was actually a K.C. case -- Z thought he wouldn't be out of line to ring up Addison in hopes of learning what Ted's favor meant to Z's health.

That decided, Z limped into his own part of the office to look in one of the old, mostly empty file cabinet drawers, the file where he kept his detective paperbacks. (He had to keep something in the warped wood cabinets, after all, his business seeming to generate less paperwork than other occupations.)

Hire Bob Zapolska. Save a tree.

And sure enough, the card he was looking for was in the badly sticking third drawer, a card with Addison's direct dial number on it. (Z would normally have the number in his head. It was just that, because he never intended dialing it, he'd never ever looked at it.)

Kicking the file drawer shut -- instantly regretting his decision to do that -- taking the card, Z limped back to his secretary's desk. (Sometime soon, Z had to get a repairman out to fix the phone on his own desk.)

In the front part of the office again, Z eased down on the table top, turned, and dialed the number.

One ring. Two ....

It would be a miracle if Addison was at his desk, the man ....

"Addison, here." Proving, like Z's Mom used to say, that miracles never cease.

Addison. Short of six-foot tall. Voice, the rumble of a lion. Cat-quick fingers. A bright guy who also had a sense of humor and more than the normal ability to sniff out clues. Plus, surprise of all surprises, a man who was black as the ace of spades, with teeth like crooked ivory -- the shine of his teeth (Addison being so black) not a surprise.

The big jolt was having Addison come to Z's office last winter and talk like a white man. No jive. No street hustle. Talked like an educated white man; like Professor Calder talked, for God's sake!

"Z," Z finally answered, realizing instantly that a simple "Z" wouldn't do. He and Addison hadn't had that much contact with each other. "I mean, this is Bob Zapolska. Detective. North. The Nelson art theft."

"I know a Z when I hear one."

Smart.

Like a lot of guys, what Z knew about blacks was what he saw on TV. Shooting each other; talking some kind of shit-language. On the other hand, you'd have to be way stupider than Z to believe what you saw on the tube.

"I got an interest in something you might know about," Z started.

Addison didn't say anything -- a trait Z liked. The man was patient. Didn't run off at the mouth until there was something to say.

"In K.C. North, I hear you got some ...." Ted's word was bums. "... guys looking for work. Guys ... disappearing."

"Right."

"So, what's the story?"

"It's someone else's bust. But I know about it. What's your interest?"

"Just interested."

Addison laughed, a sound like icicles falling off a roof. "Seems to me that when you take an 'interest,' all hell breaks loose." A reference to last winter's case.

"Well ......"

"I don't want to pry. But, Z, if you're looking into this, go easy."

"Something to it?"

"That's the trouble. There's too little to it to say for sure. But there's a lot of smoke building on this one, so much smoke that, if you start walking into it blind, you could fall into the fire."

"Yeah."

"Friend of mine's on this one. Mostly, on his free time. And he's not happy. He thinks we're taking it too lightly."

"Why?"

"Some homeless men have been reported missing. All from your area. Maybe all from one place in your area."

"Overpass. Antioch and I-35."

"You've been doing your homework, I see." -- said with approval, Addison a "homework" kind of cop.

"And that's not all. The worst of it is that this other cop's got a theory about what's been happening. Got to digging. Got lucky. You know how it goes?" Z did.

"Anyway, here's the story. It seems that a couple of years ago, a Kansas City native attracted local attention by bragging that he had a machete taped to the inside door of his car so he could 'help' the police collar criminals. Got our attention by charging out of his car in downtown Kansas City and cutting some people. His lawyer pleaded insanity which actually seems to have been the case, for once. So the nut gets sent to one of those institutions they've got in New York for the criminally insane."

Z thought he remembered reading something about that in the Star.

"The thing is, a couple of months ago, he broke out.

"The name's Dale Ruble -- though names seem to change a lot these days. Always have in our business."

Our business. Though Z had never been a cop, he was pleased that Addison was talking to him like he was family.

"Just walked away," Addison continued, "if you can believe it. He was doing better, you see. That's what his doctors said. So he had 'grounds privileges.' Meaning, doing supervised yard work.

"A couple of his doctors won't be making any more bleeding heart observations like that, believe me. And bleeding hearts is what I'm talking about.

"So this Ruble guy gets away. What my friend discovered was that, on a straight line to K.C., there's been a string of murders. Stabbings. All, street people.

"What my friend figures is that it's our chicken, coming home to roost -- an idea with substance since Ruble told one of his victims -- the one who lived -- that he was headed home."

"Could have arrived already."

"Could have." Addison hesitated. Caught a quiet breath. "He's crazy, Z. Something the matter with his head."

"With crazy, you got to figure that."

"I mean, something physical. Vietnam. Got shot up. Steel plate in his head. That's how you can recognize him. The plate's down below the hairline on his forehead, something you'd think would be easy to spot. But who looks at anybody anymore? Hell, you look hard at the wrong guy and you're apt to get shot for being rude." Again, a short silence on the line. "The trouble with crazy people is that they're hard to figure. It turns out that, even before the head injury in 'Nam, he liked to mutilate bodies. Skinned them -- and worse. Both ours and the enemy's. He was slated for execution by the South Vietnamese government but our State Department pried him out of a tiger cage and shipped him home to Kansas City." Z could almost hear Addison shaking his head. "To make it worse, he's big. Comes right at you is my understanding. Nothing subtle about him. But you never know with crazies."

"Kansas City's his home?"

"Parkville." Another town North-of-the-River. "But he's here and there. Has a cousin in Liberty."

"Name?"

"Name of Vivian Smith. Both Liberty and Gladstone police checked her out. Doesn't seem to be a connection with Ruble," Z not having much respect for either Liberty or Gladstone checking out the cousin.

"Got an address?"

"Ah ... on the Q.T., sure. Take me a minute to locate it. It's not my case."

"OK."

Nothing but air hum for maybe three minutes.

"You there?"

"Sure."

"The number is, Twenty-six ten, Pennsylvania, Liberty."

"So, the guess is, this Ruble might be robbing, then killing ... vagrants?" That was the word Z was looking for: vagrant.

"Seems a bad choice for getting rich: stealing from the poor." A long string of words for Z's battered voice to hiss out.

"No bad choices if you're crazy."

Bright. Willis Addison, Kansas City Missouri detective, was a bright man. And black as they came. Z had heard some skinhead jerk on TV say the only blacks who had any smarts were light-skinned "niggers" who got their intelligence from all that white blood in them. Proving that soldiers with steel plates in their heads weren't the only crazies.

"You going to look into this, Z?"

"Just stand around. By the overpass, most likely."

"Have a care. Remember. A big man. With a piece of steel for a forehead. At the V.A., they gave him some skin-tone material to cover the plate, but the word is, he lost it. Still, he could be covering the insert with a hat, or with a bandanna, or even have a wig pulled down low."

"Right."

"You find out something, I'll hear?"

"Got a conflict there."

"Your friend on the Gladstone force?" Addison had learned something of Z's situation on the winter case.

"Yeah."

"Play this the way you've got to. But it's a K.C. case.

"Do what I can."

And they hung up.

Unhappy from what he'd heard, Z felt ... worse! Rational murders had rational solutions; crazies were perilously unpredictable.

To say nothing of this nutcase skinning mutilating the dead, even before the metal plate had shorted out his wiring!

Two times crazy. Crazy, with a twist.

Z found that he was shuddering.

* * * * *

Chapter 7

So much had been happening, that the approach of the Fourth of July had slipped to the back of Z's mind. (Was it fireworks of another kind last night that had made him forget the 4th?)

But it wasn't too late, Z pulling himself together enough by early afternoon for his annual trip to Riverside to buy fireworks -- Riverside, one of the few places near Kansas City where you could still get them.

It was not like the old days, though. For Z's money, fireworks bans had spoiled the Fourth for today's youth, fireworks forbidden almost everywhere because a few, mostly stupid kids, had hurt themselves. If you were sensible about shooting them, fireworks were perfectly safe.

Letting his memory take him back as he drove to the fireworks stand in Riverside, Z thought fondly of the days of his childhood leading up to each Fourth, days in which he spent a considerable amount of time building things to blow up. Little bridges made of sticks. Sand castles. Model airplanes. (First squirting lighter fluid on the plane, it was a special triumph if the firecracker that blew the airplane out of the air also set fire to the fuselage!)

Z remembered nighttime fencing matches with his friends, each "armed" with a white-hot sparkler; savored the excitement of battles with Roman candles, trying to hit some other kid from a distance while dodging the flaming balls the other guy was lobbing down on you. He'd had cherry bomb battles with explosions so near your feet you could feel the concussion on your bare ankles.

Z chuckled as he remembered lighting firecrackers, then dropping them in kids' back pockets. Or you'd light TNT bombs, holding them until the last second so when you threw them, they'd go off just as they fell past your opponent's head. (Take a near hit like that and your ears would ring for a month of Sundays.)

Yes! Those were the good old days! The smell of gunpowder; the sting of smoke; the twinge of mercurochrome being wiped on powder burns.

Sure, kids got hurt. But Z had always figured that was part of the beneficial scheme of things, a warning to careless kids not to take up dangerous careers for their life's work.

Warm memories, indeed, taking him all the way to Mike's fireworks stand in the heart of what passed for class in Riverside -- a wide-bodied mobile park -- Z buying all the fireworks he could afford. Though Z never knew how he'd use the pyrotechnics he purchased each year (improvising so much a part of the P.I. business) experience had taught him that no items of this kind went to waste.

He bought pinwheels, Roman candles, sky rockets, snakes, sparklers, torpedoes, cherry bombs, whiz-bangs, flares, flowerpots, fountains, and punks.

Given his grownup connection to Jamie Stewart, it was nice to "play child" again.

* * * * *

Twenty-six-ten Pennsylvania, Liberty, Missouri. Also back of Bateman College, but to the east of the ghost house.

By a sultry, one o'clock in the afternoon, Z was coasting down Pennsylvania, the principal street through another old neighborhood behind the Bateman hill, the houses on the "Smith" side of the street backed up to what looked like park land.

Drifting along slowly, checking addresses, the heat rising inside the Cavalier, Z got his first glance of what had to be the Smith residence up ahead, a faded green cottage in the middle of a line of similar dwellings, all with grass and bushes and trees and garages on the right.

Approaching the boxy structure, Z could see no sign of life, on a day this hot, not meaning much.

Nuzzling to a stop in front of the house, Z pried his body from the cramped seat of the little car, Z rounding the front of the Cavalier to stumble across the tree-lined curbing, there to cross the brick sidewalk to go up the house's concrete walk (most of it mercifully under the shade of a big elm to the right-center of the postage-stamp yard).

To the other side of the yard was something Z could have done without: a peaked roof dog house. Dogs having never made Z's list of "favorite things," it was natural for Z to notice -- excellent detective that he was -- a healthy-sized stake driven in front of the little house, a substantial chain snaking from the iron peg to the inside blackness of the four-foot tall structure.

Large-sized kennel for a big dog. An old dog, was Z's hope. Inside in the shade. Too hot to want any part of Z.

No canine smell because the wind, what there was of it, was blowing in the opposite direction.

Swinging wide beyond what he hoped was the doggy-chain's length, Z reached the lady's house at last, the dog not yet showing himself.

Climbing three concrete steps to the narrow cement porch, Z pushed the door bell, faint chimes bringing their two-note announcement of a visitor. (Excellent deadbolt on the door. He'd installed a hundred of them. .... Ten, at least.)

Three rings -- followed by a white flash of face at the door's small, four-pane window, the door then opening ... just a little. "Yes?"

Z was tempted to say he was a cop, in spite of not having a cop's badge. (A man could get into too much trouble carrying one of those.) Instead, he flashed the detective card he'd had made up for himself.

"My name is Zapolska. Bob Zapolska."

"Are you from the police?" the woman asked in a frightened voice.

Good! She couldn't tell one badge from another. "This won't take long," Z said, doing his best to sound official, letting her believe her guess was right.

The door closed again to a chain lock rattle, the Smith woman swinging back the door and motioning Z in with quick waves of her free hand, Z entering, the woman hardly waiting for him to clear the door before slamming it shut behind him.

Eyes adjusting to the dark of the house, Z saw he was in a square living room, lamps on occasional tables, chairs, coffee table, an ultramarine divan, end table with white phone, heavy, midnight-blue drapes at all windows.

Oak-framed paintings decorated the room's smoky walls. Desert vistas; cactus below pink and purple buttes; rocky wastes. Z's eyes were not yet focused enough to tell if the pictures went beyond the "starving artist" kind.

No ... flowers in the room.

Z tested the air again.

No plants at all.

He sniffed once more, delicately. The lady had been eating out. Zero cooking odors.

The only fragrance Z could pick up was lemon-scented furniture polish. And ... sweat. Which Z thought ... an odd combination.

The living room had a picked-up, spotless look, the orderly appearance of the place typified by a low pile of magazines on a coffee table that fronted the blue cloth divan. Curiously, Z noticed that the magazines had been more than straightened; recognized they'd been sorted, so that the largest periodical was on the bottom, the smallest on top -- pyramid-style.

Compulsive. ... Anyone who would arrange magazines like that had to be compulsive.

"Sit down, please," the lady said in a high, worried voice, motioning Z toward a ladder-back chair opposite the coffee table and divan, the woman remaining in the middle of the room, kneading her fingers, the lady of medium height, slender more than fleshy. She wore a navy blue linen dress with a white blouse that looked like it could be silk. Her shoes matched her dress. Her small earrings and necklace featured regimental blue stones, jewelry that complimented her skirt and high-heel shoes.

In the room's twilight, Z could see that she was ... blond, her hair the color of honey. Soft-waved; shoulder-length. She was pretty, in a big-blond, broad-faced way. At least she would be pretty if she'd had some sleep. As it was, indigo circles ringed her light blue eyes, circles, of course, that matched her dress. She seemed ... shaky, skittish. If anyone could be said to be "pacing" while standing still, that was what she was doing.

"I wanted to ask about a Dale Ruble."

"I don't know him."

"A cousin?"

"Doesn't mean I know him."

"You've been questioned about the situation before?" She nodded. "No reason to believe he'd come here?"

"No."

"Did the cops talk to you about being careful?"

"Said Liberty police would watch the house when they could. ... Say, who are you? Not police!" Her eyes looked ... wild.

"You said that, I didn't. I'm official, though. I'm a detective. Private."

"A ... private detective?" She seemed relieved.

"Yes, ma'am."

"People ... hire you?"

"Yes, ma'am, though I'm asking about Ruble on my own."

"Could I hire you?"

"Sure." What was going on, here? Was the lady so scared she thought she needed a bodyguard?

"How much will it cost? He doesn't pay like he's supposed to."

Z had already heard enough. This had nothing to do with Ruble. The "he" who "doesn't pay" was a reference to the woman's wayward husband, Z to be hired to track down the miserable wretch. Or, if the husband's whereabouts were known, shake money out of him. It was the kind of case Z disliked most, nothing nastier than the mutual hatred of ex-husbands and ex-wives. Fortunately, Z's current job allowed him to turn the woman down.

Since he'd pushed his way into her house, however, the polite thing to do was listen to the lady's story.

Z now became aware that his eyes had stopped adjusting to the room's "light." Because ... there was no light in the room, except what leaked in around drawn curtains. The woman had traveled farther down fear road than he'd thought; even with the windows covered, she'd not turned on a light. And this was in the middle of the afternoon. ... Why? ... Not because of the cousin, apparently. ... For fear of the husband? Maybe Z ought to listen to her. Anyway, Z could always use the money another case would bring.

"Tell me."

"I don't know why I married him," she began, speaking slowly, hands twisting and twisting. "I don't think it was because of his money. I'm sure it wasn't. But how I could fall in love with that kind of man, I don't know."

It was the money, of course. Women didn't care much about a man's looks, or about his age. (Maybe they cared about the size of his dick, though Z would never have cause to worry there.) What turned women on was money and power (neither of those "turn ons" adding to Z's attractiveness.) "I guess he was nice to me in the beginning. All men are. In the beginning. Even my father ...." The woman stopped that line of thought. Fast. "I didn't know what he did for a living. And I never even asked. Do you believe that?" She looked across at Z, Z nodding encouragement.

Out of the corner of his eye, Z saw something he hadn't expected to see in the living room, particularly in the living room of an obsessively tidy woman: a set of weights on a rack, plus a gray padded lifting bench with barbell support, placed against the left wall. Lined up neatly, of course.

Her husband's set?

Z took another, longer look at the lady, trying to see her clearly in the dim light, finding her ... fit. Sleepless, but fit, with the "sculpted" shape of someone who worked out regularly. Making it was a good bet the barbell set was hers.

Furniture polish ... and sweat. Figured.

Continuing to observe the woman, Z decided that, though it might be something of an enigma why she'd married her husband, Z could see why men found her attractive.

"They say women marry their fathers." Starting up again, her voice was lower, softer. "And if there's any truth in that, that's what I did. My father was a ...." She stabbed a look in Z's direction; drew a quick, deep breath. "If you must know, he was a child molester." She shook her head; looked down at her fumbling hands. "Me."

Z hadn't wanted to know. Like other sensible men of his generation, he saw no reason to pick the scabs off sexually embarrassing incidents in the long-dead past.

Colored rubbers? .... That was last night. He had to concentrate on today.

"But I got away from him. They've got safe houses for women like me. Even North-of-the-River. Battered wives, they call us." If her old man had knocked her around, it must have been some time ago, Z thought, but didn't say, the woman without the usual facial bruises of marital abuse. "But you can't stay there forever. So I came out. Rented this house.

"Now, he's found me. At first he said he didn't care, as long as he didn't have to pay me one nickel. But when I started divorce proceedings, he threatened to kill me." She looked at Z. Hard. "I can see it in your face. You don't think he'd do it."

Of course Z didn't think her husband would kill her -- Susan's ex the lone exception that proved the rule. That was just the way men talked when they got angry. (It had been Z's experience that most of the trouble between men and women was caused by women refusing to understand the male point of view.) What bothered Z was how easily the woman had understood Z's skepticism, how quickly she'd figured out that Z didn't believe her. A poker face was more of an asset in the life and death games a P.I. played than in gambling.

She was just guessing. Had to be.

"He would, you know," the lady said, her voice going softer still. "In a minute. Oh, it wouldn't look like murder. It'd be an accident. Something going wrong with the brakes on my car. A truck jumping the curb as I stood on a corner. Hit and run. Or, as I'm shopping, I'd be struck by a stray bullet. Too bad. Just an accident. Happens to innocent bystanders all the time." Said bitterly.

Z could see a glisten of tears in the woman's eyes, tears that suddenly overflowed to be swiped away quickly by alternating palms.

She was either a good actress or in genuine terror.

Still, to claim her husband planned to do away with her by arranging an accident? What did she think she was, married to the mob?

"I know how this sounds," she said, shaking her head, her soft blond hair brushing her shoulders. "It sounds ... crazy." She tried smiling. "And this won't help. The reason I didn't know what his job was? The reason he didn't tell me? It's because he's ... a professional killer."

She stared at Z again. "Go ahead and laugh. But that's what he is."

As if absolved of a guilty secret, the woman sighed. "No one knows it, but the Mafia's come North-of-the-River. And he's part of it. Connected to it, anyway."

Z wasn't laughing. Nor was he one of the people who thought wise guy business stopped at the river's edge. Z knew Johnny Dosso.

Still, what were the odds that the lady's husband ....?

There was a noise to the right, Z flinching in that direction like a cat's ears twitch toward any sudden sound.

The door.

Opening! ......

To let in nothing but a child. A small boy. White-blond hair. Solemn, colorless eyes, standard issue uniform of jeans and shirt. Maybe seven. Eight.

Turning, the boy closed the door. Softly.

"Hi, honey," the woman said, smiling too much.

"'Lo," the boy answered in his high, child's voice, the boy cautiously turning to face the room.

"This is a friend of mine, Mr. ...."

"Zapolska."

"'Lo," the boy said.

"Hi," Z croaked, never knowing what to say to children. If Z had ever been that young, he didn't remember.

Introduction time over, the boy began walking slowly, almost carefully, into the room, making a wide circle around both Z and his mother to disappear through a center arch leading to the back of the house.

"Sammy's afraid of men," the woman whispered. "Because of his father." Or because his mother had scared him about his father, Z thought.

Still, the woman could be telling the truth. Though the "candle and blood" guys had been here for fifty years, few people North-of-the-River knew it. Or wanted to admit it if they did. Didn't fit the squeaky-clean image of the pastoral Northland. The simple fact that the woman knew that the wise guys were well-established in the north, gave her story a deadly kind of credibility.

Hit man. Contract killer. Bopper.

Z thought of what the woman was asking: that Z take on the baddest of the bad guys, a man certain to have survival skills superior to Z's own.

"Sorry, ma'am," Z said, all business about this business. "Not my kind of case."

The woman motioned him to keep his voice down, something no one had done since Z's vocal cords began to go. "Sammy's room is just behind that doorway," she whispered, pointing. "He can hear practically everything said in here. That's what's wrong with him. He heard his father and me. Heard his father say he was going to kill me. Heard his father say he'd kill us both."

Finally, something she'd said that made a difference. If a man threatens to kill his estranged wife, it's a common occurrence and no big deal. But for a man to make noises about killing his son ......

Z must have showed a change of heart.

"You'll try to help me?" Said eagerly.

"Two hundred a day." Blood money, given the small size of the woman's house. Blood money if the husband turned out really to be a hitter; in all likelihood, Z's blood.

"I could get Sammy to come out. Let you see the marks on his body where his father beat him." The lady was still being careful to keep her voice down.

"Not necessary."

"What I can't do is prove his father sexually molested him, like my father did me."

A man molesting his own son? Maybe. From watching nothing but the TV news, a person learned that anything was possible these days.

"What would you want done?"

"Find some way ... to stop him."

"I could talk to him." Z's voice was tiring.

Suddenly, the woman was standing close to Z's chair, bending down to whisper in his ear. "If you help me, I'll ... do anything. Anything."

And Z believed her. Particularly now that the woman was so close that he could see what she wasn't wearing under her silk blouse. She'd also put on perfume.

Z drew a breath of her rich scent -- his recent Jamie-bouts a help in maintaining the proper emotional distance from a soon-to-be client.

"I could find him?"

Z's voice was getting really thin -- not solely from overuse. Shaking his head to clear it, Z forced himself to remember that hassling a hit man was the last thing anyone should do. The last thing the hassler often did.

The lady stepped back. Straightened. "I know where he'll be tonight."

"Can't make tonight."

"Sunday?" Z nodded.

"When?" Nerves. A bad case.

Z thought it over. "Nine P.M." Little Miss Jamie Stewart would have to hold off the ghosts on her own Sunday night. At least until Z cleared up this ex-husband case.

"He'll be in his own kind of 'safe' house. In Gladstone. He doesn't realize I know the place, but I do. And he'll be alone."

"OK. Got to think. A lot to do." What Z was thinking was he'd have to take even more precautions than usual. In the real world, pros beat amateurs -- seven days a week. Z would have to be hooded. Use surprise. Hit fast. Hit hard. Hit low.

"Don't tell anyone," the woman whispered urgently. My husband's got ... contacts ... everywhere. Even in the police."

Just another thing Z had to think about. For starters, there weren't too many police in a small suburban town like Gladstone. At the top -- even though Z didn't like the ferret-faced captain -- Z had never suspected Scherer of Mafia connections. Didn't suspect him now. As for the lesser members of the department .... it was improbable that any were important enough to be on the mob's payroll. Ditto for Liberty. Ditto for Riverside. The lady was letting her paranoia get the better of her.

"You'll call when it's ... over?" Fear commanded the woman's face. Eyes wide. Mouth drawn at the corners.

Z nodded. "Got a piece of paper?"

Turning, she stumbled across the room to get a sheet and a ballpoint pen from a sideboard drawer. Came back; sagged down on the divan; put the paper on the coffee table; leaned over to write.

"Both your phone and your husband's address." She nodded, writing. Though Z had instant number memory, no sense letting her knew that.

Folding the paper, she handed it to Z.

"You'll hear from me."

Suddenly, tears were running down her cheeks again. "I can't let you go without telling you the truth. It's just that I need you so. When I found out I could hire you, it was a Godsend. So ..."

"Tell me."

"Do you have a gun?" Brushing the tears away.

"Sure." The Zapolska code let Z lie for the purpose of relieving a client's mind.

"Because ... Sam's got a gun. Taped to the inside of the door. He always does that."

Sam? ..... The boy's name was Sammy, so Sam had to be ......

"He's brilliant and he's fast," the lady continued hurriedly, her voice rising. "He shoots if there's any doubt. That's what he says. And I believe him."

"No way he could know I'm coming. That gives me an edge."

"Don't count on it. I don't know how he finds out what he knows, but don't take a single chance. Have your gun out when he opens the door. Remember, he'll shoot. He once boasted he's the fastest gun alive."

"Good advice."

The woman nodded. Tried on a pathetically brave smile.

And that was it.

At the door, all she said was a whispered, "Please." Then closed the door behind him.

Outside, in what now seemed to be depressingly bright light, Z walked as fast as possible past the dog and down the walk.

Then hurried across the decaying street to torture himself into his rotting car.

Quickly fumbling in his key, furiously resuscitating the inert engine, Z flogged the car into drive and set out on a quest for the Golden Corral on Oak, by this time, desperate for the narcotic of a steak and some forgetfulness of fries.

Even while trying to outrun fear -- which was what he was doing -- some unladed ghost was shadowing him. (In addition to the grinning death's head daring him to gamble his life for small change.)

Was it the lady's house that was haunting him? Was he bothered because it was ... too neat? Did he think that, in her agitated state of mind, the place should have looked ... neglected? Maybe. .... But he didn't think so. Women sometimes turned to housework -- their natural occupation -- to help them forget their troubles.

Could it be something about the house number that was troubling him? ...... He didn't see how.

Or was it a stray thought about the dog, the dog creeping out of its house to watch Z leave? (Z had been so preoccupied that seeing the dog had hardly registered.)

Thinking of dogs and the detective business, Z remembered a Sherlock Holmes story that had the dog not barking as the solution to the case.

Swinging around the far side of the Bateman campus, headed home to Gladstone, he tried to remember what he'd noticed about the dog.

Big dog. Shepherd mix. Big but .... sick. Coat dull. Ribs showing. Eyes vacant. No growl; no wag.

Looked like it was starving.

Not a lady's dog. Poodle. Cocker. Peek. Pomeranian.

The husband's dog, then? The boy's?

If sick, why not have it at the vet's?

Was it that the lady was too strapped for cash to care for the animal, the dog now doomed to die because its food money must be siphoned off to pay the woman's private eye?

Headed for what had become a guilty lunch, all Z could think of was that hungry-looking dog.

* * * * *

Chapter 8

A flash! Lightning!? Gunshot?! The only sound ringing through the hollow house was Z's yell of surprise.

Not a gunshot.

Z was fully awake, shaking in the dark, his penlight making only the feeblest of attempts to glow.

With Sunday's dawn on its way (it had been another long, Saturday night at the ghost house.)

Z had gotten up to go to the bathroom, on his return had been speared by the blinding, but silent, flash. Now, he was just standing there.

Where?

What Z thought he'd been about to do was enter the Ghost House bedroom in the hope of slipping over to his side of the open sleeping bag without waking the girl. Certainly without waking the girl! Another night of Jamie Stewart's kind of loving had just about finished him.

"What are you doing there?" It was Jamie's voice -- behind him -- Z swinging around to see her small light at the end of the hall, nothing about her visible in the total blackness back of the light.

"Just trying to get back to bed," he said. "Back to sleep," he added hopefully.

"What are you doing down there, then?" Down there? "The room's back this way."

Z tried to think -- which wasn't easy. He'd never been at his best while lost in the dark, naked, talking to a girl he couldn't see.

He'd gotten up, located the light where he'd put it beside the far side of the mattress and slipped out quietly to go to the bathroom.

On the way back .....

Then, it hit him. Instead of turning left after he'd used the stool, he'd turned right; had wandered into the wrong bedroom and tripped the infrared beam setting off one of the cameras.

"I must have gotten lost," he admitted.

"Well, come back to bed. We've got another hour before sunrise. No sense wasting it."

Oh, no. Not again.

Shakily, Z reversed direction, still sleepy but remembering to step outside the edge of the masking tape track they'd made down the hall floor. (At least he'd had the presence of mind to keep his bare feet out of the fluorescent powder on his ill-fated, late-night trip to shake the dewdrop off his lily.)

Backtracking, limping past the bathroom door, dragging by the kitchen, Z arrived at the other bedroom, the girl standing aside so he could enter.

Closing the door behind him, stepping past him, Jamie turned to put her arms about his neck. Stretching on tiptoe, she tilted back her angel face to kiss him with her usual passion while wriggling against him chest-to-thigh with her hot, naked body. .................

Nothing left. Drained dry.

Or it might be that the thought of tomorrow night's "games" with the contract killer was having a debilitating effect. (He'd already told Jamie not to expect him for "ghost hunting" until late, Sunday night.)

As a way to distract himself from tomorrow night's insanity, he'd decided to spend part of the day checking out the "work-for-food" overpass for Ted.

Still holding her small flashlight (as Z was hanging onto his,) Jamie untangled her arms and drew back, flashing the light to see how she was doing.

Not well, apparently.

"Hmmm," she said, in her low register purr, looking down at him again, shaking her blond head. "Not being critical, but a girl likes to think she's attractive."

"You're that, all right," Z said, doing his best to stifle a deep sigh. After their second night, Z would have traded sexy-looking, firm-breasted Jamie Stewart for a pig-ugly woman who'd bore him back to sleep.

Letting him go, the girl turned to sit on the edge of the mattress, motioning Z to sit beside her.

Z sat -- not that he had much choice in the matter, Z's Mother teaching him to defer to women -- gentle flowers that they were. "Is that the way it is with Susan? Can't get it up more than three or four times a night?" More of Jamie Stewart's "gentle flower" talk.

Z couldn't help it. He felt ashamed.

Damn women, anyway!

Susan. She'd used the name Susan, again.

Time to find out a few things. "How do you know about Susan?"

There was a pause, the girl looking over at him. Was she smiling? "How do you think I know?"

A challenge.

The girl was a challenge to Z's manhood -- in more ways than one.

"Telepathy?"

Z heard what he took to be a low chuckle. Or else a growl. With this girl, anything was possible.

Suddenly, Jamie was up and stepping across the short space between her side of the bed and the stacked boxes, there to switch on the DC lamp, the quick light causing both of them to blink.

After that, she just stood there, modeling for him, striking a seductive pose, hands brushing her thighs, then her breasts.

Looking down at him again, she sighed and stepped back to sit beside him on the mattress, both of them snapping off their little lights. Putting them on the mattress.

"Want me to read your fortune?" A question Z was unprepared for -- but something better than she might propose. Though what that had to do with knowing Susan's name, Z couldn't guess.

"OK."

"Give me your hand." Oh, oh. "Give it to me. The left hand first."

Reluctantly, Z did as she asked.

Taking his large hand in her small ones, the girl turned his hand over, bending down to look at his palm.

Letting go of that hand after a moment, she motioned for his other hand; stared into its palm.

"Your left hand is the hand of potential," she said, still looking at his right palm. "The right, the one of achievement. The right hand shows what you've done to modify your potential." Letting go, Z taking his hand back quickly, she looked up at Z, blue eyes sparkling in the lamp light. "Your left hand tells me it was possible for you to have achieved greatness, that you're bright, hard-working." She frowned her delightful scowl; full, multipurpose lips, pouting. "But your right hand shows that something's happened to you." She captured his right hand again, using her forefinger to trace the line that curved around the meaty part at the base of his thumb. "Good color," she said. "Pale. The line, deep."

She retraced the fold. "Now look at this." She tapped his hand near the wrist. "At the bottom, there's this sharp crossing line. Sickness. ... No, I would say accident."

Like someone smoothing a piece of wrinkled paper, the girl stroked his palm with her other hand. "A bad accident when you were a child. A teenager. An accident that I didn't see in your left, or potential, hand, meaning you could have prevented it by living a different kind of life. It's a misfortune you recover from, though the line's a little fuzzy after that. Not a complete recovery." Z thought about his knee and the Raytown game. She was doing all right so far. Still, a lot of people got hurt by the time they were Z's age; had nagging complaints. "As your life line moves along," she continued, "a series of small lines bisect it. Danger, but not death. A fairly long line. Ah ...."

"What?"

"This dark dot?" Z could barely see it, but then, he could barely see anything after he'd just woken up. He probably needed glasses, but .... "It generally means death. Everyone has one, but usually not this dark. Could mean a violent death."

She knew he was a detective, an occupation that made it reasonable to assume he wouldn't die in bed. Anyway, it was no test of her skill to tell him what might happen. Anyone could do that because anything could happen.

She was looking up at him again. "Think I'm a fraud, huh?"

"I didn't say ...."

"You wanted to know how I knew about Susan?" Z nodded. "It came to me in a flash. Suddenly, I saw her picture, right before my eyes." The girl smiled what Z had come to understand was her "I've got a secret" smile, Jamie Stewart more cat than woman. Liked to play with manly mice. "There's more to prophesy than the lines in a person's hand, you know. The lines are there to give you broad indications. It takes intuition to interpret them. That's why some of us are fakes, and some of us ......" Again, that smile.

Without a word, she took his hand again. Turned it over. Pointed. "This is your love line. It runs from the mount of Jupiter ...." She touched the fleshy place at the base of Z's index finger. "... to the mount of Mercury." She had stopped at the padded bump under his little finger. "What I see here is that you were married, but that the marriage didn't work. You were married to what looks like -- judging by this double, crossing line -- a short, black-haired girl. My insight tells me her name started with a ... P." She frowned suddenly. Closed her eyes. Tapped her forehead with a closed fist. "Pauline. ... Or Paula."

The roots of Z's hair had begun to tingle, his skin to chill. That was his ex-wife's name: Paula. Paula Perfect, as Z always thought of her since the break-up. Too bright. Too educated for a big dumb fuck like Z!

Opening her eyes, the ghost hunter continued, looking down at Z's open hand again. "This star represents your current girlfriend. Susan. Taller. Black hair and eyes. Pretty. About 30. You've been going with her for a couple of years." Jamie looked up at Z once more, grinning like the wolf-girl she very well might be. "You're too old for her, you know. That means you're much too old for me. But I think we've already established that."

The girl looked down at his hand again, smoothing and smoothing it, peering at it, bringing her head down close. "And here's a surprise. You don't even have a license to be a detective." Again, a direct hit! And in another, completely private area. "The length of the second finger, called the finger of Saturn, tells me that." She began touching each finger in turn, like playing "This little piggy goes to market."

"The third finger, the finger of Apollo, is shaped in such a way that it shows you're more than just a dick." She grinned. "For instance, you like art."

Z didn't know what to say. He hadn't liked art until Susan had dragged him to the Nelson Gallery, but he did now.

How could this slip of a ghost hunter possibly know the most intimate details of his life!? Z began to sweat in the close confines of the tiny room.

"You don't like to watch TV -- that I can tell that from the fourth finger, the one we call the TV finger. And the plain of Mars -- the center of the palm -- is shaped just right for holding a slice of pizza. This tells me that one of your favorite places to eat is the Pizza Hut on Oak."

Suddenly, Jamie laughed. Was delighted with herself. "And one more thing. Folks in the business of reading palms have got a name for people like you." She was still chuckling. "It's rube -- which translates, sucker."

"All a fraud." Z let his breath out with relief -- though he still didn't know how .....

"I told you that before."

"But how ....?

"Easy. I just did what any modern fortuneteller would have done. Did it last night, in fact. Did it because, in order to guard her virtue, a girl must know as much as possible about her gentleman friends."

"Did ... what?"

"Picked your pocket."

"What!?"

"Sure. Last night."

Putting both her arms above her head, she stretched, then folded her hands in her lap. "Remember in the living room? When I bumped into you? Remember how it felt?"

"Yes." In spite of what they'd been doing since, Z was still embarrassed at remembering where Jamie had put her hand. "I was doing more than checking the size of your dong, pal. I was slipping your wallet out of your back pocket. I put your billfold back later."

"But I didn't feel ...."

"Let's just say I distracted you -- the best way a woman can." Again, the confident grin. "I think I told you I was good? Well, I am." She nodded her agreement. "Normally, it takes two people. A diverter who bumps the mark, and a dip who light-fingers the goods." Again, the self-satisfied smile. "After that, while you were checking the front door, I was going through your billfold." She nodded wisely. Then shook her short, shiny blond hair.

"The most amazing thing about all this is what men keep in their billfolds. For instance, you have a picture in there of a sailboat." That was true. Z had once had a small sailboat, when he and Paula had first been married. Did him more good in the winter -- thinking about sailing -- than in the summer when he rarely had time to sail. "For all your tough guy image," the girl was saying, "you're a romantic at heart."

And what did Z say to that? He wasn't even sure what she meant by it. Didn't know whether or not he should feel insulted.

"Who else," she continued relentlessly, "goes to the trouble, of painting his wife's name on the prow of a crummy, 10-foot sailboat? Paula. To say nothing of having the little woman stand by the side of the boat, when your real interest was in taking a picture of the boat itself. Small, dark-haired woman. A little waspish-looking, if you ask me." That was Paula, all right. "In addition, though hard to see, the woman in the picture is wearing a cheap wedding ring.

"Susan? You've also got a picture of Susan in your wallet, dummy, with a loving message on the back, signed Susan. A picture that, considering it's still in good shape, can't have been in there more than a couple of years. Contrasted with the boat picture, which is falling apart. Want more?"

Z nodded, still a little stunned.

"If you had a ticket to be a detective, you'd carry it with you -- and don't think for a moment I was fooled by that fake badge."

"Don't need a detective's license. Unless I carry a gun."

"Swell. And just how were you going to protect me without a gun?"

Z shrugged. There were ... ways ... but she knew too much about him already.

"Not by kicking someone, that's for sure." She grinned, showing him she wasn't too worried about her safety. After all, she'd never thought she was in any danger. "Explaining your limp, is the scar around the kneecap." She grinned again. Shook her head in that defiant way. "There's more to learn from a naked man, my dear, than finding out if there's a chance his measurements will set a record.

"Back to the scar. They don't do it that way anymore. Modern knee surgery leaves pockmarks, each smaller than the size of a dime -- where they insert the orthoscope. What you've got there ...," she said, reaching across to trace the half-moon slash around Z's left kneecap, "... is ol' time butchery, my man. What did you do, hurt your knee in high school?" Z nodded. "Playing football?" Z nodded again. "Typical." She tossed her head. Figuring out something so elementary was clearly beneath her.

"And by the way, just how did you get a free pass to the Nelson Art gallery, anyway? And now that we're on that subject, I wouldn't mind having a discount card for Pizza Hut, either."

Z was ... disappointed. Impressed, but disappointed. "Sure," she added, picking up his mood. "It's fun to believe there's magic in the world. What takes the fun out is knowing how the magician does his tricks."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, like I said, I know all the scams. That's why I'm good at my job; why I'm hired to flush out "ghosts."

Z felt ... stupid. Because he'd been stupid.

"Don't take it so hard. This little lesson didn't cost you a bundle -- like it does a lot of people. That's what makes a con successful: it's hard to detect. Even by bright people." She grinned at Z again, took his hand in her small ones. Squeezed. "And finally, I can tell that you are bright. And believe me," she added, looking at him again, shaking her head, "I didn't find that out by anything you've told me: because you don't talk -- before, during, or after. No. In part, I can tell you're a bright guy because you don't watch all that junk on TV -- you don't have a video rental card. And partly because you buy books. Sure, paperbacks, but who buys any kind of books now days? What I can't figure is, why you put the sales slips in your billfold. And from three different bookstores, no less."

"Don't know," Z said. And ... he didn't. He'd never thought about it. Now that he did, it seemed that whenever he bought a book, the lady at the counter handed him the receipt with his change. He supposed that, now and then, he'd put the receipt in his billfold along with the bills he got back.

"OK," she said, falling back on the mattress, sweeping her legs up and over Z's head, stretching out behind him. "Come to bed. I won't bother you."

"I'm sorry if I ...." He turned; touched her shoulder gingerly.

"Forget it." She rolled over on her side, facing away from him. "And one more thing I can say, this time from experience." With her back to him, he had to strain to hear her. "Though you're too old for Susan and way too old for me, Susan's a lucky girl. You're a terrific fuck -- when you can get it up. Good night."

Suddenly, she turned back. Grinned her impish grin. "Good night. ....... For now."

* * * * *

Chapter 9

It was 10 o'clock in the morning on Sunday the 26th when Z began the miserable job he'd agreed to do for Ted. After a sleepless night -- his "talk" with the contract killer hanging over his head for later that night -- he decided to spend the afternoon with the "work for food" folks. (Something that might even be helpful to Addison.)

As Z stood under the overpass, leaden clouds weighting down a rainy sky, Z counted eight more days until he could celebrate the Fourth -- assuming he was still alive.

The sounds of tire-swish on damp pavement came and went, as did the squeal/slide of cars brought to heel by traffic lights turned unexpectedly red.

Green, prompted the occasional, impatient tapping of horns to nudge a granny driver forward, always too late to keep from sticking the last car in line with another change of light.

The wet air under the overpass was a halitosis of exhaust and scorched rubber.

Summer.

In the city.

Earlier that morning, Z had borrowed an empty medical supply box from his diabetic landlady, using the box's cardboard to make his hand-lettered "Work For Food" sign. Had nailed the two-proud-to-beg sign to a piece of lath he found in the garage.

Parking his car a couple of blocks down a side street, Z had walked ... here ... where he stood beneath the I-35 overpass, holding his crude placard.

Z had positioned himself on the east side of the intersection, near the traffic light that either slowed or stopped all cars winding down from I-35. As a bonus, he was in plain sight of everyone driving past on the extension of Antioch.

Since this was where two Northland arterials joined to have a coronary, it was no accident that destitute men had picked this spot to try to get a little help. No way anyone could miss seeing a pathetically dressed man like Z, holding up his even more pathetic sign.

Cars and more cars. Some American. Most Japanese. (If the Nips had today's industrial capacity in the 40s, they'd have won the war).

Z felt ... miserable.

To make matters worse, the climate was stuck in what TV weathermen said was a "tropical pattern": on again, off again showers. It seemed to Z -- and not for the first time -- that the universe was a mournful child, no longer remembering why it cried but powerless to stop.

In part, Z felt wretched because he hadn't slept much for several nights, activities associated with the ghost house continuing to drain his strength.

Mostly, though, Z felt heartsick just to be where he was; doing what he was doing.

Nor did it help that he was only pretending he'd been reduced to begging for table scraps. (Z's identification with the homeless was a natural outgrowth of his work, he supposed, his hand-to-mouth existence never leaving him more than a couple of hundred dollars short of ... this overpass. And that was scary.)

Z had been standing here for an hour, by this time feeling so weak he doubted he could do the easiest job a motorist might offer him, even the corrugated cardboard in his hand getting heavy.

Drifts of mist on his short, turning grey, hair condensed into drops that bumped down the grooves a hard life had chiseled in his forehead, his worst feeling was that he had become ... invisible. Cars came down the I-35 ramp to slow on green -- stop on red. Starting up again, they must turn directly in front of Z, either to hook back under the overpass to the shopping center or turn right on Antioch toward the only prominent places in that part of the Northland: North Kansas City Hospital and North Kansas City proper. Stop lights also halted cross traffic going both ways on Antioch.

Though Z was in plain view, drivers looked everywhere but at him. Looked under him. Over him. Around him. Through him.

No one -- no one ... noticed him.

Of course they saw him, just did their best to pretend he wasn't there -- Z the ghost of poverty present.

Only two emotions were possible when you'd lost everything. Feeling poor, and feeling too proud to admit to being poor, the latter reaction afflicting Z's Mom. After the insurance company defaulted on his Father's policy, his Mom had refused to seek aid of any kind. Not from the government. Not from the Red Cross. Nor from the Salvation Army. She'd done the most menial jobs instead, like sewing for people who took advantage of her helplessness, taking in wash for pennies, doing ironing for people's peanuts.

That was back in the supposedly "good old days" when shame was attached to being poor, even more shame heaped on those admitting they were poor. Back in the days when receiving aid made you "a charity case." Back when, on holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, the church group or the lady's sewing circle or the wealthy women's sorority practiced periodic charity by bringing turkeys to the run-down houses of the "less fortunate," the festiveness of the food sacks enhanced by packets of dry beans.

His Mom had a Sister who'd taken self-righteous help like that.

His Mother never would.

And that was what had killed her. Even when his Mom was sick, she'd refused to see a "charity doctor"; even at death's door, rejected the hospital's "charity ward." She'd died too soon because do-gooder benevolence had putrefied "good will toward men."

Z found he was breathing heavily. Felt ... shaky. ... Weak. If he was catching something, standing out here wouldn't help, Z's frayed cotton shirt so fog-damp it stuck to his chest and back. Water was also leaking through a hole in his shoe and wetting up his sock.

He'd had an early morning call from Susan, Susan trying to make a time they could be together. And once more, Z had fended her off with the excuse of working nights.

Though it might be his overtired imagination, Z thought he'd detected a note of desperation in Susan's voice. Or was it what Calder would have called repressed sexuality? (There was certainly no repressed anything in the excuse Z was using to beg off seeing her.) Thinking about how badly he'd been treating Susan, Z resolved to make time to take her out to lunch. (If he was still alive after tonight's brush with the button man.)

The truth was, Z was increasingly ashamed of himself for continuing to take advantage of the situation with Jamie; was also unhappy about letting Jamie make use of him. His mind wanted Susan, he had no doubt of that. It was his body that kept voting for the delightfully naked girl beside him on the turned-out sleeping bag.

Z was alerted by a car coming down Antioch from the south! Slowing, the driver leaned across the passenger's side to give Z the once over.

A woman?

Z bent down to get a better look. ... Could it be a man -- dressed like a woman? A man with a wig pulled low over his forehead ...?

Z didn't think so.

The person looked more like the Smith woman than a maniac with a magnetic skull, the "Smith look" to be attributed to Z's thinking about tonight's rendezvous with the woman's hitter husband.

There was a roar!, the car revving up, taking off, tires squealing, back end fish-tailing, Z too surprised to notice the car's make and model, to say nothing of the license number. All Z was left with was the impression that the car was American. Big, dark and ... disappearing like a dragster down the track. The only certainty, that the driver had slowed to get a look at Z.

The verdict?

That Z was too big and ugly to hire for the lowest of jobs.

Another half-hour of cursing Ted Newbold had Z deciding to gave up his "career" as poverty-stricken worker. Permanently!

Sign shoved in a storm sewer, slogging back to his car, Z could now concentrate on tonight's job, Z near the neighborhood where the Smith woman's husband was alleged to be holed up. Time for a little recon before going home.

Cranking up his little car, cleaning the windshield as best he could -- wipers outside, palm of his hand inside -- veering left at Antioch and Vivion, he was hot on the trail of the address Mrs. Smith had given him.

No risk-taking. No derring-do. All he wanted was to glide past the target house, mostly to make sure he'd be able to find a quiet parking spot tonight, the building coming up fast, the structure turning out to be an elderly, three-story apartment. Dark red brick. Substantial.

Good -- was Z's first thought. Good, because they built thick walls between apartments in those days, solid walls helping to damp down any noise Z's interrogation techniques might drag from the bopper. Z even thought he may have checked out an apartment in that building, a considerable while ago. If it was the same building, the place had a central stairwell with a short hall at the back of every landing -- apartment doors at either end of each hall, apartments too expensive for Z, but affordable for people with a steady income. (Could a professional killer's pay be described as steady?)

A single drive-by and Z was headed home, confident that the location of Smith's "safe house" would be the least of this evening's worries.

* * * * *

Chapter 10

Home at last from his debilitating hours under the overpass, shucking off his soggy clothes, taking a hot bath, sneezing once or twice, Z felt more ... human.

As alert as he was going to get, Z spent the next hour preparing, packing and repacking his satchel until he was sure he had what he needed, particularly his pyrotechnics.

Not the blowtorch.

No need for that -- yet.

Z had told the Smith woman he'd have a talk with her husband: technically, the truth. It was just that Z's "talks" were compelling; nothing as persuasive as fire, for Z's money.

Z thought again about having told Jamie Stewart he might not be at the "ghost house" tonight, Jamie clearly unhappy not to find her own priorities on Z's list.

Reviewing the conduct of young Jamie, while he couldn't keep his mind (body?) off her, the girl's kind of sex was too complicated for a man of Z's generation. She liked ... everything ... except the old standby, the "missionary position" -- Z's favorite. Then too, something else was wrong with the girl's approach. After the first few love/death struggles, (more than a few to be honest,) Z began to feel less ... loved ... than like a piece of ... meat, recalling a punch line from a joke that had a Swedish girl saying: "Ya, but ve put more meat into it!")

Considering Jamie-sex, Z thought that if a goat could address her unusual needs, a goat would do. When she made love, it was not so much to Z as to his body parts (part). And that wasn't all that ... satisfying.

Z might be ugly. And too old for her. But he was ... a person; more than the sum of all his ... part.

Susan understood that. Loved him for himself as well as for his body, Z just having to hope his girl would never discover the ins-and-outs of this ghost house business!

Z looked at his watch. Six o'clock. Time to eat a peanut butter sandwich. More importantly, build a fire in his fireplace to "settle" his mind before arriving at Mr. Smith's apartment by 9:00. (An honest, early Sunday evening knock would cause less suspicion than an unexpected noise at midnight.)

The trick was to get up the stairs unnoticed. Or, if he did run into someone, appear to be a recent tenant.

The target was on the top floor, apartment 302, the upper floor a benefit, the only "extra" people on third, those occupying that floor's other apartment.

Once in the third-floor hall, first listening at the corresponding apartment door to assure himself there'd be little likelihood a member of that family would be coming into the hall anytime soon, he'd pull on his black hood and knock on the husband's door. Mr. Smith opening up, Z would rush him, blackjacking him into oblivion before the hit man knew what hit him. Time enough when the hired gun woke, for them to have their "talk." On Z's terms.

The main event of the evening outlined, Z forced himself to stop what he'd been doing: pacing from the front of his living room where he had one of his air conditioners rumbling on low, past the pot-bellied fireplace at rear-center, through the narrow kitchenette, then back around the other side of the fireplace, and into the living room. A Z habit.

He also had his lighter out, flicking it: on, off; on, off -- another "agitated" addition.

Chagrined, he slipped the lighter back in his pants pocket.

Unable to keep from thinking about tonight's job, there'd been times -- and this was one of them -- when Z regretted not having a gun. (Realizing, in the same instant that, if he got one, he wouldn't be able to afford the firing range time to learn how to use it. Shoot the wrong person, like as not.)

No.

Guns were a crutch; and a dangerous one. Made you cock-sure. Gave you a false sense of security that could get in the way of detailed planning, firearms particularly bad for a man of Z's sudden temper, for a man subject to anger-blackouts.

Not often.

Hardly ever, anymore.

No. Z would use the old standard. Knock on the door then bust in like the Marines, sap at the ready.

And if the man already had his gun pointed at Z's chest? ......

Nothing was certain in this life ... except the illusion of certainty. Even giving it his best, what he was attempting ... was risky.

The idea was to rush the hitter. Not the best plan, maybe, but an uncomplicated one, it being Z's experience -- augmented by the "advanced education" of Jamie Stewart -- that simple plans, like simple love, worked best.

Now, to that peanut butter sandwich.

* * * * *

Wraithlike in black, case in hand, Z floated up the stairs, the dark tan stair runner muffling footsteps and squeaks, Z soon on the 3rd floor landing.

Where, he stopped.

Looked -- nothing to be seen by the light of a 40-watt bulb in an old-fashioned, single-bulb, ceiling fixture.

And listened. ........ No sounds in the musty-smelling hall.

To Z's left was 301, the neighbors.

To his right, 302, the objective.

Z squinted at his watch. A couple of minutes until 9:00. Time to snoop around a little.

Easing down the valise, Z side-stepped to 301 to press his ear to the brown, cracked varnish door, just below the gold metal numbers. ......

Heard nothing.

Full dusk coming fast, Z squatted to look for any gleam of light shining under the door.

No light.

By lucky circumstance, the neighbors weren't home.

Crossing to the other apartment, squatting down again, Z did see a light line beneath that apartment door.

Good. The quarry was home.

Retreating to the back of the hall, Z checked to make sure the padded lead sap was in the right hand pocket of his black, tight-fitting jacket, and ... it was time!

Dragging the black knit hood from his left pocket, Z slipped it over his head, adjusting it so he had no trouble seeing out the eye holes. Taking the sap from his other pocket, grasping it by its woven leather handle, he pulled it back into "cocked" position.

Was ready.

Creeping to the hitter's door, Z was about to knock ... when he noticed that the lock on the door was of the old-fashioned variety: the burglar's delight.

Seeing the lock, changed his plans.

Instead of knocking on the door, wouldn't it be better to pick the lock? (Assuming he could do it silently.) That way, it would be even more of a surprise to Mr. Smith when Z came charging in.

Z put the sap back in his pocket.

Bending down to open his carryall, fishing out his billfold, Z slipped out the plastic card he kept there for simple, lock-picking purposes. Fleetingly, he wondered what Jamie had made of a plain white plastic card in Z's wallet? Not much, apparently.

Leaving the case, moving to the door, he squatting before the lock where, using extreme caution to keep from making a sound, Z slipped the card in the door crack and eased back the lock-tongue until he was able to slide the card between the tongue and its keeper.

Leaving the card in the door, the door now unlocked, Z stood. Got out his blackjack again.

This time. just checking to be checking, Z assured himself the door opened in -- though all apartment doors did. Presumably, if a fire started in your own apartment, you would remember to pull open the door. (By contrast, street doors in large buildings opened out. Smelling smoke, crowds of panicky people had been known to fling themselves against an inward opening door, pushing and shoving to no purpose until the foremost of them died from crushed lungs.)

In addition to the spring lock, the door might have a chain lock. ........ No problem. Every chain lock Z had ever seen would rip off the doorframe at the first hint of his bulk.

Ready at last, right hand on the blackjack, the sap drawn back, left hand on the doorknob, Z was about to shoulder the door open and rush inside when ... he noticed something else about the light shining out from under the edge of the door.

Something ... unusual ......

Then, Z knew. It was that the width of light was not ... continuous ... two, black bands in the center of it. Six inch wide shadows, as far apart as a man's legs ... as if a men was standing just back of the door ... with a drawn gun!

In spite of Z's precautions, in spite of no one knowing Mrs. Smith had hired him, Mr. Smith -- the fastest gun in the west -- was waiting for him.

Z felt sweat pop out under the itchy hood.

What had gone wrong? Had the man been looking out the window when Z arrived; seen Z enter the building, valise in hand?

Maybe, though there should be nothing about a man coming into an apartment building that would alert Smith that Z was on his way to the top floor with deadly intent. (No way the man could have seen Z's car going by this afternoon. Certainly no way of knowing that the same car was parked around the block.)

The lady said she didn't know how Smith found out secret information; Z also mystified by the guy's ... intuition?

Since Z had been alerted to the trap, however, he had the chance to surprise the surpriser. But how?

For now, get the hell out of there!

Leaving his card in the door for the moment so the door stayed unlocked, picking up his case, Z backed off, being elaborately careful where he put his soft-soled shoes.

Safely away from the door, Z eased shut his carrying case and picked up the satchel to pad down the stairs, at the same time pulling off his hood, stuffing it in his pocket. Not a bad idea to get at least a floor between you and an alerted hit man.

Off the stairs on second and hooked to one side, Z lowered the traveling bag to the carpeted floor. Bent to snap the rubber-band-quieted catches.

Inside, he'd put an assortment of fireworks. Plus a jar of kerosene he'd poured from the larger jar he kept at home by the fireplace, coal-oil useful for firing too-green logs.

Lock-picks -- unnecessary on this job.

He'd left out assorted calling cards. (What would Jamie have thought if they'd been in his wallet when she'd rifled it?)

He had a hank of nylon cord, always handy for something.

Fireworks.

Straight razor. Good for cutting ... anything.

Cloth, for making gags.

Skin-tight leather gloves. (He hated wearing them in the summer time; he'd have to remember to wipe his prints off anything he touched.)

Jimmy -- useless; as was the siphon.

Athletic tape.

Duct tape.

Lighter fluid .....

Ah!

An inspiration; one causing Z to smile as he pictured what had to happen.

Taking out the thin plastic "tin" of lighter fluid, Z closed the case. Picked up the satchel.

This would be a little tricky. Three hands better for the job ahead, but .....

And Z was easing up the stairs again, bag in one hand, lighter fluid in the other, his bad knee never painful during adrenaline rushes.

On the top landing at last, Z crept quietly forward until he was again before the target door.

And sure enough, double shadows still interrupted the light at the door's bottom edge.

"The game," Sherlock Holmes would have said, "was afoot!"

First, stooping to put down the satchel and the yellow can of lighter fluid, Z rose to pull out his ski mask, dragging it on. Digging his disposable lighter out of his pants' pocket, Z bent to pick up the lighter fluid; flipped up the yellow plastic nipple on top the bottle, the nipple used both to open and close the can and to squirt fuel into old-fashioned, pre-butane, cotton-wick lighters.

These preparations made, Z squatted down before the apartment door.

Putting the cigarette lighter on the floor, getting out his sap, holding the blackjack in his right hand, Z picked up the lighter fluid container with his left hand.

Opening the can's nipple, he lowered the can so that the nipple was below the door crack.

In position, Z squirted a puddle of fluid in front of the door, then squeezed a generous amount of the volatile liquid under the door, directing it at the "shadows."

Setting down the container and picking up the lighter, Z sparked the flame, touching the tiny "torch" to the lighter fluid at the door's edge.

Whoosh!

A pause. .... Then a yell from inside, Z's cue to shoulder in the door, Z crashing in to find a small man there, gun in hand, the man bent over, batting at the flames that were engulfing his shoes.

Crack! The man going down like a pole-axed ox.

Lighter fluid: so volatile its vapors danced well above its liquid, the heat of its flames imparted to the air -- but making an impressive show when burning on your shoes and up your pants.

No trouble, really, to pick up a throw rug and pat out the flames on the hit man's legs.

Tonight's business concluded, Smith would hardly have a burn to claim as Z's "calling card."

The fire quickly out, stepping into the hall, Z picked up his plastic card where it had fallen on the hall carpet and retrieved the lighter fluid can.

Card slipped in his billfold, billfold in a pocket, closing the nipple on the can and putting the lighter fluid back in the case, he brought the satchel inside and gently shut the apartment door.

So much for the dangerous aspect of tonight's work.

As for the evening's entertainment, it was just about to start!

* * * * *

Chapter 11

Z could relax. At least until Smith woke up.

The apartment was much smaller than Z would have thought from what he'd seen of the building from the outside. (Perhaps there was a back entrance to the apartment house, stairs back there leading to units facing the other direction.) The faded wallpaper was ... brown. The Good Will furniture was brown. The wood floor was brown. Drawn draperies covered the narrow front windows, brown. The shade of a dilapidated, brass-colored, pot-metal floor lamp would have blended right in as a hat for Teddy Newbold.

No reason to expect elegance, though. Particularly since the wife had said this place was a "safe" house, a hiding place where a mob-type could go to avoid "heat." Mafiosi used to call hiding out, "going to the mattresses." What they called it today, Z had no idea.

The first thing Z had done was pick up the man's gun. (This wasn't the movies where some sucker leaves a gun near a thug who's "supposed" to be knocked out.)

Not much of a gun. A thirty-two, Z thought. Six-shooter, old, short-barrel, chrome, badly made, and cheap to buy, what any law enforcement agency would call a Saturday Night Special. (Though Z didn't know any more about firearms that what he'd learned that one time when he'd been tempted to buy one, this was the kind of "heater" the dealer said he always tried to sell to "niggers and Mexicans." To save lives, he'd said, "'Cause, it don't shoot straight.")

Z had put the "piece" in one of the elasticized pockets in his satchel.

If Smith owned a long-range zapper -- scope, night sight -- a quick toss of the place didn't turn it up.

Taking a page from Jamie's book, Z had then gone through Smith's billfold. But hadn't found anything that could be called incriminating. Like Z, Smith didn't have credit cards. What he did have was an "apartments for rent" realty card and another business card saying Sunrise Refinish: collision, spot/rust repair, color matching. An auto insurance card and a Missouri driver's license. Fifteen dollars. And some engraved business cards saying Smith worked at a supply store -- Theater Supplies.

Nothing incriminating. At least, that Z could see. If Z had been born with Jamie's "intuitive skills" ... but he hadn't been.

Putting the billfold back in the man's pocket, including the fifteen dollars -- Z was a detective, not a thief -- Z took his time to tie up the hitter. Time, and a lot of nylon cord.

First, he had to pick up the man and get him seated on the one, heavy piece of furniture in the room: a shabby divan. Z had then fastened the man's hands behind him, the spare cord stretched under the back cushions and tied to a rear leg of the sofa. Z had also looped the nylon cord around the bopper's chest and waist, then 'round and 'round the divan back, cinching the cord tight, the man held firmer than a three-point seatbelt grips a beer-bellied boozer doing seventy into a passing train.

Z had the man's left leg tied to the front leg of the couch. Had the other leg propped on a shaky chair, that leg secured through the chair to a leaky steam radiator near the wall.

All this effort taking a lot of line, Z always carrying plenty.

A piece of duct tape over the man's mouth and Z was finished

Tied as he was, there seemed to be nothing special about Mr. Smith: a thin man in a dark blue, short-sleeved shirt, head lolled back on the divan, brown hair thinning at the temples. No identifying marks.

Now that, the "immobilizing phase" was over, Z was ready to give the Smith "digs" a closer look.

One thing about the apartment that would have surprised the Mrs. was that it was more than a temporary hole to crawl into, Z having reason to believe Smith was actually living here. Why? Because Smith had put up pictures on the walls. (Though a woman might yearn to redecorate a public washroom, a man didn't "fix up" a place unless he planned to stay awhile.)

With nothing better to do for the moment, Z looked at the pictures, several of them framed collages, made up mostly of play bills from theatrical productions. Finding one of the "paste-ups" to be of "artfully" torn theater programs, Z ran his finger down one play list until he came to the name Smith. Ah! Both a Mr. Samuel and a Mrs. Vivian I. Smith were listed as being in the production. Mousetrap. An old standard.

In the same collage, Z found the Smiths listed as actors in other program fragments, including Arsenic and Old Lace.

Interesting.

Alerted to the Smith-theater connection, Z found other playbills used as decoration, some just pinned to the wall with straight pins. The Importance of Being Earnest. Oklahoma. Long Day's Journey into Night. Lysistrata. Bus Stop. Z had heard of most of them.

Z found big "glossies" on the walls that were blow-ups of Smith himself -- in what looked like costumes. No doubt, photos that were originally billboard stills.

So -- the man was an actor, making him good at "disappearing" into different characters, a useful skill for any hit man.

All this interest in theater gave credence to the possibility that Smith's "day job" was in theater supply. (On the other hand, given Z's mix of "business cards," unsupported identification never impressed him.)

Against the back wall was a hamper exploding with dirty clothes, Z picking through the soiled items, gingerly, before dumping them on the floor.

A small closet to the right contained clean clothes, a quick check showing that Smith's apparel had the same designer-labels as Z's clothes. J.C. Penney. Sears. Wards.

The clothes were all men's garments: short and long-sleeved shirts, light-weight slacks. (If Smith had lived the life of a swinger since his marriage fell apart, there was no evidence of it. A certainty, that there was no live-in girlfriend.)

To the right front of what was hardly more than a cramped, one-room apartment, was a white pine chest of drawers -- stained brown -- the top drawer partially out and sagging down.

Going through all four drawers, Z found nothing but underwear and socks. (No rubbers, colored or plain.)

Partially hidden between the side of the bureau and the wall were three pairs of shoes. Neatly lined up. Chinese imports.

The only interesting thing all this "detecting" had told Z so far, was that Smith was not a snappy dresser ... Z thinking this odd for someone in the high-priced bopper business. Then again, maybe Smith wasn't that good at killing people. (He'd told his wife he was the fastest gun around -- but that didn't mean much.) The sad reality was that many people were stuck in the wrong profession.

Smith's bed was of the Murphy variety -- currently swung up into the wall.

At the left was a hint of kitchen: hardly more than a counter space and a couple of pull-out drawers on either side of a chipped, enamel sink. Nothing but stamped-out, beaten-up steel utensils in the drawers, "cafeteria-ware" that not even a kleptomaniac would steal.

The place didn't have a stove, providing an explanation for the hot plate on a counter.

Z opened the fridge, finding: beer, olives, milk, fake orange juice, half a loaf of bread, small can of mystery meat, tall bottle of maraschino cherries, eggs, and margarine. (No peanut butter. No jelly. But then, there was no accounting for taste.)

Beyond the "kitchen" was a draped closet and a space that turned out to be a curtained-off bathroom.

Parting the bathroom drapes, Z reached inside and pulled the beaded chain that turned on an off-center ceiling fixture; entered to find a rust-stained lavatory to the left, backed by a small "travel" mirror somebody had nailed to the wall. Plus a toilet.

Across from the stool were a couple of scabrous-chrome towel bars, a damp towel and a wet wash cloth draped over them. On a bare wood shelf to the left of the lavatory was a piece of soap (soft) a toothbrush in a ceramic stand, an electric razor, big bottle of cheap aspirin, and a partially-used roll of Tums. No sign of drugs. Like other precision jobs -- watchmaker, bomb defuser, high-priced call girl -- boppers were sober men with steady hands.

Beyond the stool was a shower curtain of daisy-embossed plastic, bunched open on its dented ceiling rod.

No tub.

The floor of the shower was damp, the smell of the place, musty, the way most bathrooms smelled.

At least Smith was a clean killer.

Without regret, Z pulled the light's rusty chain again and backtracked to the living room, to be impressed again by the job he'd done on the hitter. If by doing a job you meant having him trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. (The gag in Smith's mouth could represent the stuffing.)

Ah.

Signs that Smith was waking up.

If there was one thing Z prided himself on, it was his use of the sap. Done right, a sharp tap just behind the ear put out any man's lights, effects guaranteed to last long enough for Z to get the subject tied up. Hardly a headache for the "tapee" upon awakening.

Yes.

Smith was wiggling around. Eyes fluttering. About to open.

Not wanting to present himself until Smith was in a receptive frame of mind, Z moved behind the divan to wait for the man to do all the "coming to" things. Blinking. Moving his head back and forth. Trying to say something, only to find that a wad of cloth was stuffed in his mouth. After that -- again predictably -- Smith tried to wrench himself free, only to discover he wasn't going anywhere.

Time for that talk.

Z prowled around the divan to give Smith his first look at Z, Z in his "night fighter" gear, the all black outfit topped with a "terrorist's" hood.

Frightening. Menacing. ... At least, Z hoped so.

"I'm a business associate," Z rasped, following the principle of, "A lie in time, saves nine. "And the situation with your wife is bad for business. You must stop threatening her. Also your child." Z paused to let that sink in. "I do not care, personally. It is that others in the organization -- do."

Z was trying to convey the impression that some godfather, hearing of Smith's threats to kill Smith's wife and child, had become annoyed. Better this approach than something laughable like threatening Smith with the police.

"My only wish," Z continued, his voice hissing like a wounded snake, "is that you allow the divorce and pay the proper sum. For a man to gain respect, he must protect his family." Z hesitated again, but could tell nothing from the man's staring brown eyes. Surely, the sheen of sweat on the hitter's washed-out face was an indication Z was having some effect.

"So I will do a small thing. To avoid a greater violence." Z wondered if the man could hear at all, as soft as Z's voice had become.

The speech delivered, Z reached down to unfasten the satchel; stooped over in a way that prevented Smith from seeing that Z's knee refused to bend as it should. (Z wanted no personal detail about himself to give the man a clue to Z's identity.)

From the case, took out a piece of fireworks punk, the roll of white athletic tape, and a standard six-ball Roman candle.

Letting the man watch, Z positioned the punk parallel to the top end of the colorful, cardboard tube, taping the "business end" of the punk a short distance above the candle's fuse. After taping the bottom of the punk to the candle tube, Z tore off another, smaller piece of tape that he used to attach the candle's fuse to the side of the punk.

After that, fishing out his lighter, Z fired up the end of the punk.

The punk end smoldering nicely, Z pocketed his lighter, then blew on the punk's white ash until the end glowed a dull, orange-red. Leaning down beside the man's leg, the one Z had stretched out on the chair, Z pulled out the pant leg.

Carefully following the in seam, Z inserted the glowing punk and top of the Roman candle inside the man's pants.

Z stood. Now, all business. "By the time the punk burns down enough to light the fuse of the candle," Z said matter-of-factly, "I'll be headed for the airport." A nice touch, Z thought. Encouraging the man to believe Z was "out of town" talent.

"When the punk burns down enough to light the fuse, the candle will shoot six flaming balls at your balls, so to speak.

"Eventually, you'll free yourself and seek treatment. I only wish I could hear your explanation of this "accident."

Z allowed himself a pleasant chuckle.

"I say again. This, I do to avoid violence. It is my way of persuading you to mend your ways. Reform, and we will never meet again. Persist, and our next encounter will be ... brief." Z thought a bopper would appreciate that threat.

With that, turning his back, stooping, Z fumbled with his case as if preparing to make his exit.

Meanwhile, there was considerable wiggling on the couch behind him. Interesting humming sounds also coming from that direction.

Z couldn't go yet, of course. Because of the Zapolska code. The part requiring Z to give any man -- even slime -- a chance to plead his case. (After all, having the opportunity to defend yourself was the American way.) It didn't hurt to let Smith sweat, however. Practically a prerequisite for a change of heart in hardened criminals.

Z rose. Turned. "You have something to say?" The man nodded frantically, sweat trickling down the man's forehead. "You can say it quietly?" Again, the desperate nod.

"I am nothing if not reasonable," Z said, purring like a leopard on a branch above a watering hole. "My only wish is that you agree with me that violence is to be avoided whenever possible." The man nodded eagerly.

Stepping over to Smith, Z scratched up an edge of tape on the side of Smith's face, then ripped the tape from the man's mouth.

The man groaned.

It didn't do a man's face any good to have a couple layers of skin stripped off.

"Speak," Z snarled, looming over Smith like the harbinger of doom.

"I ... don't know what you're talking about," the man squealed. For what it was worth, he sounded sincere -- as only a practiced liar, can.

"Pardon me if I have not been clear," Z said sarcastically. "You must stop threatening your wife. Threatening to kill your child."

"But I didn't!" Z ignored the hit man's high-pitched denial.

"Could it be that I am in the wrong apartment?" Z hissed, cynically. "And that you are not Mr. Samuel Smith, married to Vivian Smith? With a son, Sammy?"

"I am, but ...."

"But?"

"I don't know who told you I threatened my wife, but it's not true. It's the other way around. My wife's sick. Crazy!" On a graph, the man's voice could be plotted as moving steadily toward falsetto. "She's taken everything I have. Wants more. She hates me. Because of her father." The hit man was babbling now. "She's getting worse. Something happened to her so that she hates men. She seems loving -- but isn't. She even blames me. Says I'm trying to rape her. She's that way about all men. Even though I was her husband. She'd come on to me, then accuse me of trying to violate her. She's scary." Nearly out of control, a thin line of drool seeped down one corner of the hitter's mouth. "She said she'd kill Sammy if I didn't pay more support. I've been giving her everything I have. Sold everything. Moved here."

"Mothers don't hurt their children," Z said, offended that the hitter would take that tack.

"I hope to God you're right!" Said with some heat. "But I couldn't take the chance. That's why I've just filed papers asking for custody of Sammy." Suddenly, he stopped. Looked up at Z. "Is that what this is all about? Has she hired you to kill me?"

Interesting. At least the man was making this interesting, not that Z believed a word he said. He must be lying because Z made it a rule never to take a case where he had any doubt about his client being in the right. That was the crucial part of the Zapolska code, the part that allowed Z to take ... extraordinary measures ... to see that his client's received justice.

Z had a sobering thought. He'd been ... tired ... lately, as only a "gentleman friend" of Jamie Stewart's could be. Courting exhaustion, he just realized he'd left out the most important safeguard in the code: making an independent check of a prospective client. Instead, he'd taken Mrs. Smith at her word that her husband was as guilty as the lady charged.

Sloppy. Inexcusable.

The question was, what could Z do to remedy the situation at this late date?

He didn't know ... but still had time to think it over. Surely, the punk inside the man's pants had a ways to burn before it set off the candle's six colorful balls.

Red!

Green!

Z thought fondly of the swishing sound, followed by a hollow thuck as a Roman candle's tube shot another beautiful, fiery globe, high into the midnight sky .......

Time for a few, clarifying questions. "When I arrived, you were waiting for me. Explain."

"I don't know, myself." Though seeming to have gotten control of himself, Smith kept looking at his outstretched leg as if trying to see through the cloth to the glowing punk inside his pants. "I got a phone call. Saying someone was coming to kill me. At 9:00."

"What!?" It seemed impossible since only Z and the woman knew Z's plan.

"That was just before 9:00," Smith said, nodding. "I was about to call the police when I looked around the edge of the drapes and saw you coming into the building. Even three floors down, you looked ... dangerous." The man attempted to lick his lips with a dust-dry tongue. Was trying to hurry. "I knew it would take the police a long time to get here, so all I could do was get the gun out of the drawer and try to scare you off."

"You had a gun in the drawer?" Was the Pope Catholic? Does a wild bear shit in the woods? Does a fool piss into the wind? Of course a hitter would have a gun. Z just wanted to see what he would say.

"Everybody's got a gun!" .......

And that made sense, too. This was America, after all, where more people had guns than health insurance to pay for gun related tragedies.

But to return to the problem, how could someone have warned Smith? Z hadn't told anyone he was coming. And as cautious as the woman was, surely she hadn't confided in anyone else. Yet, Z and the woman were the only two who could have known about Z's plans. Who called?"

"I ... don't know."

"Don't know?"

"It was a voice I didn't recognize. High. A high voice."

"Disguised?"

"I ... don't know."

"The exact words?"

The man thought about that as best he could in his agitated state. (Grudgingly, Z had to admire Smith's fortitude. Some people Z had "talked to" had become completely incoherent by this stage in the process.)

"I think the words were, 'A man is coming to kill you. Tonight. At 9:00.'"

"A high voice?"

"Yes."

"Could be a woman?"

The man would have shrugged -- if he hadn't been tied so tight.

"Your wife?"

"Maybe."

Who else? And yet, why would Mrs. Smith warn her husband?

Z shook his head. Whatever had gone wrong, it was Z's own fault. If he'd been more careful to check on his client, he wouldn't be so uncertain at this stage of the game.

That being the case ....

Z stepped over to Smith. Bent down. And carefully removed the Roman candle from the man's pant leg.

Smith sighed. Sagged into the lumpy divan, seeming even smaller than he'd looked before.

Seeing that quick work was necessary, Z hurriedly untaped the fuse from the punk's rapidly approaching ember, then unfastened the punk from the candle.

Glancing about the small room, finding a glass of what looked like water on a shaky end table, Z sizzled out the punk in the water, then returned the shortened stick and candle to the case. Waste not, want not.

All the while, the man sat there, following Z with frightened eyes. As if Smith was afraid of saying something that would give offense.

Embarrassing.

All Z's fault.

Moving quickly to the case again, Z got out the straight razor and, with a flick of the wrist, snicked it open, the whetted blade glittering wickedly in the apartment's subdued light.

Approaching the man -- who, for some reason, was again showing signs of extreme agitation, a thin scream ululating from the man's scrawny throat -- Z reached behind the man and cut one of the nylon cords.

There. With that line cut, the man would be able to free himself eventually. In about ten minutes, Z estimated. Plenty of time for Z to make an unseen exit.

Retrieving the gag/tape from where he'd tossed it on the divan, Z pressed the tape back on Smith's reddened cheeks. Smith could also remove the tape when he got free.

Without another word, Z folded the razor and put it in the satchel, at the same time taking out a soft black cloth to wipe the doorknob free of prints.

After listening at the door for possible sounds outside in the hall, Z returned to his case. Shutting the satchel, grabbing up its handle, using the cloth to ease open the apartment door, Z stepped out into the hall and eased the door shut behind him.

In the dimly lit hallway, Z pulled off the hood, pocketed it, wiped the door knob, pocketed the cloth, and trotted down the stairs.

Driving through scattered, Sunday evening traffic, headed for the Antioch Shopping Center to phone Mrs. Smith, Z thought this whole business through.

The man had gotten a call. Seeing Z enter the building, Smith had retrieved his gun from the drawer to wait for Z's arrival. At least, that was the man's story.

A poor excuse for a gun: the sort of handgun a macho-man kept by the bedside to defend his family, good for little except the panic shooting of a "prowler", the imagined "cutthroat" turning out to be the he-man's son or daughter, home from a late night date.

Too many facts were drifting through Z's brain. All, as yet, unrelated.

1. Someone had warned Smith. Someone with a high voice, leading Z to ask himself who, but a woman, had a high voice?

2. The top drawer of the man's bureau was open when Z arrived.

3. There was no tape on the inside of the man's door.

4. The man was an actor -- making everything about him -- what he said, what he did, his emotional outbursts -- suspect. If actors could cry on command, they could also babble when they wished.

5. The wife had said her husband was a bopper -- no confirming evidence in the hubby's digs.

Facts? Fictions? Exaggerations? Down right lies? All leading somewhere, if only Z could sort them out.

* * * * *

Chapter 12

It was nine forty-five, the Antioch Shopping Center staying open until ten on weekends to see if a later closing hour would attract more business. Late shoppers were hurrying past him as Z headed for the black metal phone cylinder at the south end of the shopping center: an older couple in matching, flowered shirts; a blond-haired boy and a pretty, black-haired girl, the boy carrying a small brown sack from Nuts-a-Plenty. Around the trade center's perimeter, two sets of hardened oldsters in expensive tennis shoes were race-walking each other to see which team would win the last "mall circuit" of the day. Farther down the red-tiled corridor, past the fountain, to this side of the "feeding frenzy" eateries, a black-garbed security officer fiddled with the walkie-talkie on his belt.

Z was here on the outside chance the hitter had bugged his wife's phone -- maybe using sophisticated electronics that could trace incoming calls -- Z deciding to play it safe by calling her from a shopping center pay phone.

As people bustled past to disappear thorough the double glass doors leading to the parking lot, Z thought about what had happened to public phones lately. From what Z had been reading (mostly detective fiction set in New York City,) gangs had just about put pay phones out of business. And not by a little, innocent stealing of phone books, either. But by smashing into coin boxes. Swiping receivers.

It hadn't come to that in Kansas City.

Yet.

Here, the phone company was ripping off the public by going in for cutesy, open-air phone stations, placed in the middle of shopping malls where it was impossible to have a private conversation.

The pay phone in the south T of the shopping center was one of these, a two-foot in diameter, five-foot-tall cylinder of flat black metal, the phone recessed into the kind of whitened wedge an offended lumberjack might ax out of a spotted owl-producing tree.

Z unhooked the receiver. Fed in a quarter. Poked the buttons.

Ring.

"Yes?" Mrs. Smith, breathless with anticipation.

"Me."

"Oh. ... You. ..... Is he dead?"

A totally unexpected question!

"I believe ... he won't ... threaten you again," Z stammered.

"I'm eager to hear all about it. But I know you don't want to say too much over the phone. I also got to pay you. Not much in money, but ....

"Can you come over right away?"

"No."

"I understand. Tomorrow night? I'll make it worth your while. I promise."

"I'll ... call."

"Do that. And until I can thank you ... properly .... " The smacking noise that followed had to be a kiss blown at the phone. "Goodbye for now."

Click.

Leaving Z feeling like a robot with its steel umbilical not yet severed from the metal mother-pole.

Realizing he still held the receiver, Z replaced it, the phone clicking its satisfaction with Z's digested quarter.

And still, Z continued to hide behind the metallic tree; as if needing the protection of what, in the old days, would have been an enclosed booth.

The lady had asked if her husband was dead. (A question many woman would like answered in the affirmative.) After that -- probably mistaking Z's answer for yes -- had given Z an unmistakable "come-on."

Funny, how the rules of the "dating game" had changed ... but for men only. Today's women still believed sex to be adequate payment for services rendered. (Z guessed, because men were as glad as ever to accept that kind of reimbursement.) What would happen, though, if a modern man, wanting some work from a woman, would say that, to pay her, he'd be glad to screw her? In the old days, he risked a slap. Today, a charge of sexual harassment.

It was a "funny" world.

And getting "funnier."

Had the lady's voice carried a hint of surprise that Z was still alive? Had she thought that, in spite of her warning about her hubby being a hitter, Mr. Smith would make short work of Mr. Z? (An outcome that might very well have happened, Smith waiting for Z with a loaded, leveled gun.) She'd even cautioned Z to have his own "gat" at the ready -- a suggestion Z had allowed her to believe he'd follow.

The only thing Z could say for certain was that the evening hadn't gone as the lady said it would. First and foremost, was that Z had found no tape on the inside of the husband's door, making a liar out of the wife who'd said a gun was always taped there. It was more the case that the bureau drawer, left open, was where a panicky man might go to get his gun.

The third "mess-up" was that Smith had been tipped off that Z was coming (the warning timed so that an adrenalin pumped Smith must choose fight over flight,) Smith alerted by someone with a noticeably high voice.

Somewhere between Smith's apartment and the shopping center -- maybe at the long wait for the left turn light at Vivion and Antioch -- it had occurred to Z that children had elfin voices, a thought that triggered a memory of Mrs. Smith saying it was possible for little Sammy, snug in his beddy-bye, to hear what was going on in the living room. If Sammy had heard ... too much ... it could have been the child who'd called his father. Leaving the question, would Smith fail to recognize his own son's voice? Maybe. Maybe not, depending on how often he saw little Sammy. Identification was also contingent on the quality of Smith's telephone reception. Also on the "fear factor," it surely not doing Smith's nerves any good to be warned his life was in imminent danger.

Rethinking the child-possibility, Z realized he'd only brought it forward to explain a call Mrs. Smith could not have made.

The trouble was, the lady's question, "Is he dead?" had thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into Z's "child-call" mechanism.

For starters, Z could think of many more sensible questions Mrs. Smith could have asked, all of them boiling down to, "What happened?"

Thinking about it, the only reason Z could imagine for "Is he dead?" was that the woman expected a whispered, "Yes."

Which would have been the case if Z had been so frightened of her husband's "hitter" reputation that Z had entered the man's apartment, trigger finger twitching. Or if Z was a cold-blooded killer, the kind who left no witnesses. Or if her husband, alerted to Z's visit, was ready with his gun, Z shooting first in "self defense."

An ugly possibility was coming into focus; that Mrs. Smith had deliberately tried to frighten Z with that story of her husband, the hitter. After that, believing Z to be armed, knowing the time Z would arrive at her husband's apartment, she could have dialed her husband, using a disguised voice (according to the playbills, she was an actor, too) to warn him Z was coming so that hubby goes for his gun. The result? A possible double homicide, acceptable to a woman trying to get everyone off her back. Desirable if -- as the husband said -- the woman hated men.

So far, the possibility that both Z and the husband had been set up was nothing but mental gymnastics on Z's part. And would remain so until Z made another call.

But not tonight.

Finished with the Smiths, it was time Z was back on the spook case with Jamie Stewart.

Z groaned.

Found himself longing for the ghost of Abraham Lincoln to appear and set him free!

* * * * *

It was late Monday morning before Z won another desperate struggle to get himself together and out of bed. (Z thought he knew, at last, how tinker toys must feel in the hands of a precocious child.)

But he'd made it, gotten up and into a faded, short-sleeved shirt and worn cotton pants. Had the air conditioners on; had the fire started in his tin fireplace. Too late for breakfast, he'd gone outside under a cloudy, cooler, but dust-dry sky to get the morning/evening paper, now jokingly called the Star.

A quick check of the headlines and Z was ready to go to the office.

"If you don't like Missouri weather, wait ten minutes," was the saying Z thought of when he emerged from his apartment into an unexpected shower, the weather always and forever a surprise since the twin air conditioners plugged up both living room windows. He hadn't heard the rain begin, of course, the chugging of the coolers able to trump the roar of a charging cyclone.)

A welcome sprinkle for the cool of it. Though it made the air so water-thick you needed gills to breath.

Into the car and out on the street, Z noticed that the cloud burst was keeping the traffic down, not that much of an advantage in the Gladstone backwater.

A drawback to the shower was that the wet of it made Z's knee feel worse. Either that, or Z was still suffering last night's strain from the proper positioning of an inert Sam Smith. (Or, possibly, from the improper positioning of a lively Jamie Stewart!) He'd developed a sore throat, too. Also not helped by rainy weather.

As for Mrs. Smith's story -- forget it! Some badly needed sleep plus a slug of aspirin had sunk the lady's claim that her husband was a killer. (For one thing, the Mr. didn't have a single tool of the professional bopper's trade. That, plus the man's cheap apartment and cheaper clothes had Z placing the hubby-hitter notion in the dead-end file under: "woman scorned.")

Ridding himself of the hit-man scam by the time Z had driven past an assortment of Antioch gasoline stations, private houses, and mini-shopping centers, Z turned left on Chouteau, his windshield wipers keeping him company along the north flank of the Antioch center where, just beyond Boatman bank, he caught an uncommon green light at Vivion and Chouteau.

Quickly through the light and past the K-Mart complex to the south, it was time to settle back and drift by houses and more houses; past churches and kiddie parks, Z so relaxed he almost failed to brake in time to avoid a shark-white Cadillac on the prowl for bottom-of-the-food chain Cavaliers.)

Arriving at his rehabbed office building, he slanted to a stop in the lot by what Z always thought of as the Worlds of Fun overpass.

Squeezed out of his sardine can of a car, Z splashed down the walk and through the added-as-an-afterthought glass doors fronting the building.

On the first floor were accounting firms, insurance agencies, an income tax lady and the dilapidated office of a seedy detective. The second floor was divided between a beauty "college" and an equally nonaccredited secretarial school.

Down the hall to the very back, Z quick-keyed himself into No. 16.

Pushing shut the hollow, plywood door, pausing to squeegee water from his hair, drying his hands on his shirt as best he could, Z leaned over his "secretary's" desk to jiggle the loose, table lamp wire, the lamp bulb finally sparking to life.

Circling the work space, Z eased down into his "secretary's" narrow chair and pulled the phone to him. Dialed.

"Gladstone Public Safety," said a female voice, "Gladstone Public Safety," the city's euphemism for police department.

"Detective Newbold."

"May I say who's calling?"

"Confidential."

"May I say in reference to what?"

"Something confidential."

An irritated pause at the other end of the line was followed by a couple of clicks. Then a phone ringing. And ringing some more.

Was the operator jerking Z around because he'd refused to "share confidences." Or was Teddy in the bathroom? Either way, Z could try Ted later.

Time -- past time -- to put in another call he'd been meaning to make.

Z dialed the number.

"American Insurance. Here only to serve you."

More bullshit on a bullshit kind of day. "Susan Halliwell"

"One moment, please."

A couple of rings. "Correspondence."

"Z."

"I was just thinking about you," Susan said, speaking quietly like she always did when talking to Z from her office. As rich as the owners of the insurance company had grown off devising clever schemes to keep from paying claims, they frowned on their peons using the phone for anything but company business.

"Lunch?"

"Have to be something quick. It's a madhouse here today."

"OK."

"I've been hearing about a Mediterranean place. East of Oak. It's in the Englewood Strip Mall. I hear it's good." A big girl, Susan didn't "pick at" her food, Z approving of all her appetites. "It's called something like Cafe Mediterranean. Something like that."

"Yeah."

"To save time, let's take separate cars."

"OK."

"How about meeting me there at twelve-fifteen?"

"Fine."

After hanging up, Z felt guilty about not being able to do more for Susan than take her to lunch. The ghost house job had to end soon, though, no matter what the outcome.

* * * * *

Z almost missed the restaurant, first, because Susan had gotten the name wrong, secondly, because the entire establishment was nothing but a 15-foot-wide slot tucked between other, more impressive businesses: an insurance office to the left; a barber shop to the right, wedging the eatery between two places that clipped you.

Arriving first, stepping inside, Z had to jam on the brakes to keep from hitting the restaurant's back wall.

No place to go -- literally -- Z seated himself in a small, bent wood chair at one of the miniature square tables crowding the tiny dining room.

Small though it was, the place was interesting, high shelves at the back displaying eastern Mediterranean memorabilia: slender-spouted teapots, small brass palm trees, daggers in showy, curving, glass-jeweled scabbards. Hookahs.

A framed aerial photograph on the left wall was labeled: Beirut. A painting featured the cliff-carved city of long-dead Petra.

Another wall sported a tacked up "flying" carpet: its design of toy camels and their drivers woven by the Arabic equivalent of Grandma Moses.

The dining -- closet's?? -- miniature tables were decorated with white lace cloths overlaid by thick, clear, easy-to-wipe plastic.

The music was "jumpy eastern." Disco -- but whined in Arabic to the tune of twanged rubber bands, buzzing kazoos, and jingled junk.

Two other tables were occupied, one, by three businessmen from the shopping center, the other by a young Greek?? couple, the lady with the kind of tan that cost George Hamilton a million bucks.

The door opening, a most American Susan Halliwell came in: black, bedroom-tousled hair, generous lips, a no-need-for-implants-figure, and rapier legs. She wore a beige linen suit with an understated silver broach, and silver circle earrings.

A waiter wearing a white apron appeared, a handsome, dark-skinned young man with curly black hair and a golden smile for Susan.

Susan slid into her chair, like Z, finding the table too low for tall folks.

"Good morning," said the waiter, handing them each a fold out menu. "The special, it is gyros sandwich for $5.80. Come with salad: olive, goat cheese, and cucumber dressing."

"Sounds good," Susan said, scanning the menu quickly, tapping the elegant fingers of her other hand on the table. Just arrived, she was as flighty as a butterfly in a strong wind. "Make mine a beef and lamb gyro. And I'll have ice tea."

"Me too," Z said. The food that is. "Got Coke?"

"Sure."

"Diet Coke?"

"Sure."

"OK."

The young man tearing himself from lovely Susan's side, five steps took him behind a screen of white wood lattice, Z hearing him chatter Arabic at the cook. The restaurant had authentic personnel, at least.

Susan looked at her watch; seemed to settle down a little.

"Busy?" Z asked, stifling a sudden urge to cough.

"Craziness squared," Susan said, shaking her head. "No one knows what the government's going to do on health care. And until we do, we don't know where we stand." Susan always spoke like she owned the company.

Z knew where insurance companies, drug companies -- the lot -- stood on government health care. In the way!

While Z sympathized with Susan, he had difficulty caring about insurance companies in general, health insurers in particular. People needed health care and those who provided it -- doctors, nurses, hospitals. Also new pills for pale people. What benefits a "middleman" insurance company provided was the mystery.

Z wished Susan had a more useful job. It embarrassed him to have her using her skills to benefit leeches.

Susan was staring at him, looking like she did when about to accuse him of dropping his end of the conversation.

"You look ... terrible."

"Thanks."

"I mean it. You look sick. Have you got a fever?" She reached across the narrow table to put her cool hand on his forehead. "You most certainly do! You're pale, too. Bags under your eyes. Have you been getting any sleep?"

A topic Z definitely couldn't share with Susan.

"Just a cold."

"Looks like more than a cold to me. You look really sick." Susan took his big hand in both of hers. "You've got to promise me you'll see a doctor. This very afternoon."

"OK." Easy for Susan to say. At least the bastards she worked for carried health care on their slaves. Without insurance, Z had to pony up the full tab to see a doctor.

The salad came.

A good salad.

The sandwiches came. Messy -- with cucumber dressing dripping out of the pita bread pouch -- but hot and tasty.

As for the check, Susan insisted they go dutch.

There were a lot of things Z liked about Susan, it just seemed they could never get together anymore.

"Do you mind waiting on the change by yourself?" The waiter had taken their money and disappeared. "I hate to run, Z, but I've got to get back."

"OK."

Z should have said something else, like, "I love you." And would have if he hadn't said the same thing to Paula (The Poisonous) Perfect; words like "I love you" cheapened by overuse.

"And remember your promise," Susan said, uncoiling her legs, standing up. "To see your doctor?"

"I'll remember it."

What Z meant was that, if he got worse, he'd consider doing just that. A doctor couldn't do anything for a cold, anyway.

The lunch was good.

Any time spent with gorgeous Susan was good.

Why, then, didn't Z feel better? (Maybe he was sicker than he thought.)

* * * * *

"Detective Newbold." Ted, using his inspector's voice.

"Z." Back in the Ludlow, Z had finally reached Ted at Ted's office.

"Just a second, Sir. My door's open and it's a little noisy in here." Meaning that Ted didn't want to take the chance that Captain Scherer might walk past the open door and catch Ted talking to Z. Ted wasn't that bright, but he wasn't that dumb, either.

"OK, Z," Ted said, returning to the line, more relaxed now that he'd shut his coffin-of-an-office door. While Z wouldn't put it past Scherer to bug the phones of his own men, it was evident Ted didn't think Scherer had.

"Need a favor."

"Now that you're doing me a little favor, you got to get ahead again, is that it?" Ted, on his high horse. "But ... friends should help friends." Ted, stepping down from the saddle. "So, what can I do you for?"

Z could picture Ted, leaning back now, highly polished shoes on his brand new Formica desk in his sleazily modern "orifice" in Gladstone's updated police building. Suspiciously brown receding hair. Jellifyed middle.

"I need to know if a man filed custody papers."

"Don't you have any other sources, but me? Surely, there's a county clerk who could find that for you?"

"Nobody but you." And that was true. Z wasn't a real detective; hadn't taken any detective courses. About all Z had for sources was Ted-with-the-Cops ... and Johnny-with-the-Robbers.

Considered right, Z had only three things going for him as a detective; big-and-ugly, a couple of well-placed friends, and a lot of dumb-ass luck.

Ted sighed his overworked detective sigh. "I guess I could make a call, in my official capacity." Ted loved bludgeoning civilians with the baton of his official capacity. "Give me the details."

Z did: about Mr. Smith claiming to have filed for custody of his son.

Z left out the hitter part.

"Got it," Ted said, his voice a flourish of officiousness. "But, Z, maybe you better let me call you back on this one. The captain don't ... doesn't like you. Doesn't want anyone here giving you the time of day."

"Right."

"So I got to do you this favor on the sly."

"Thanks."

Z hung up the phone, knowing that when Ted would get back to him depended on how eager Ted was for the "homeless bum's" favor Z was doing for him.

On the other hand, a man who had the right to insist on perfection in his friends -- needed to be perfect himself.

* * * * *

It was almost two before Z got Ted's callback. Figuring it might be Teddy, Z had launched himself out of his chair at the first ring to pick up before sexy Susan's recorded voice finished the spiel about leaving a message.

"Bob Zapolska."

"Detective Newbold, speaking." Ted loved that title, a title they both knew was earned with tips Z fed him. On his own, Teddy would still be in his blues, directing traffic while the fire department untangled cats from trees. "On that matter of information you wanted, I was able, through my contacts at the county courthouse, to find out."

"Great."

Ted sighed. "OK. What you said was true. It's confidential, but a Samuel Smith did file for custody of his boy. Last week."

"Thanks."

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"You doing what I asked? About the bums?"

"Yes." Z had stood out at the overpass. Once. And once, was enough.

"Anything come of it?"

"No."

"Keep at it."

"Sure."

They hung up, Z uncrossing his fingers.

So, where was he on the Smith case, Z had to ask? For one thing, on the wrong side of it, Z representing a client who was a proven liar, the quarry now seen as having told the truth -- a firm rule of Z's code, that he didn't work for double-dealing clients.

Z sighed. Quitting Mrs. Smith would cost him a day's pay. (And whatever else the lady had to offer.)

Fortunately, Z had this ghost house business to keep him going, assuming he didn't "catch his death" by being kept "up" half the night.

* * * * *

Chapter 13

After troubling dreams, Z was awake.

Dark.

Still the middle of the night.

Though his dream was fading, he remembered lightning flashes.

What had probably awakened him was Jamie Stewart getting up to go to the bathroom. Cautiously, not wanting to wake her if she was there beside him, Z reached to the side, stretching out his hand to touch only the fleecy inside of the sleeping bag on the other side of the old mattress ....

She'd soon be back. (After that first night when he'd lost his way, even he'd been able to orient himself on midnight jaunts down the hall of the ghost house.)

Widely spaced lightning flashes ........... all other impressions about the dream vanishing like the men allegedly disappearing from the overpass.

Z heard a quiet noise outside the bedroom door. Jamie, coming back.

Seeing the glow of her light under the door edge, Z closed his eyes and willed his body to be still. It had never been so true that what he needed most was sleep.

For a moment, Z felt the furriness of hibernation drift over him .....

"Z." ........ "Z, wake up." A hand was shaking him.

Z groaned, but felt fortunate. Sometimes, the only warning he got that Jamie felt "frolicsome" was when she jumped on his stomach.

"What time is it?" he muttered.

"Time for you to wake up. And be quiet about it."

"What?"

"I said, 'Be quiet.'" Though shaking his shoulder energetically, the girl was speaking in a whisper.

"Something ... wrong?"

"Depends on how you look at it."

"What ....?"

"Noises."

"What?"

"Noises, that's all."

"I ... don't hear anything."

"That's because you're a deaf old man. Now wake up."

Even half-asleep, Z didn't like her calling him old.

Though Z could see nothing in the total dark of the sealed bedroom, he rolled in her direction. Moaned again.

Vindictively, Jamie snapped on her pencil-thin light and glared it at his eyes, then switched off as he threw up his arm to shut out the dazzle.

Lightning. He'd dreamed of lightning ......

"Z. Don't go back to sleep."

"Not asleep. ... What's wrong?"

"I was coming back down the hall when I first heard it. Noises. But I can't tell where they're coming from. Sounded like out back."

"An ... engine?" At last, Z's mind was ticking over fast enough to remember the motor sound the neighbor said came from the direction of the ghost house. A light truck, she thought. In the night.

"No."

"What, then?"

"I don't know. Like a metal sound. Like clicking. I got back to check the monitors, but they're not picking up anything."

"Had to be outside."

"What do you think I've been trying to tell you? I heard something outside. But it sounded to me as if that 'something' was trying to get in."

Fully awake now, Z sat up in the dark to listen. ...... Also thought he heard .... whatever that was.

"There," she said, still whispering with emphasis. "Now, it's on the monitors."

With a sharp click, the girl flooded the cave-black room with the narrow beam of her tiny light.

Turning away, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress, Z got up, too -- not an easy task when the "bed" was flat on the floor.

For a moment, he stood there woozily, looking over at the naked, blond-haired girl.

Adam and Eve -- alone in Eden. Until now.

The familiar clutter of boxes looked ... normal, the battery-operated grill and coffee maker standing on separate cartons on the other side of the room. Perched atop the uppermost battery on the "parked" dolly was the unlit table lamp. The big box in the far corner held the usual trash -- potato chip sacks, soggy bags of "instant" coffee, wadded-up paper napkins, wrappings from fast food hamburgers, and shriveled up (but colorful) rubbers. The garbage needed to be taken out.

Though the tightly zipped room was too warm to make it necessary, Jamie put down the small light to swirl on the fetchingly transparent dressing gown she'd worn earlier, stepping into sensible slippers while cinching the peignoir's tie-belt, the belt molding the gauzy material to her breasts. "Dressed," Jamie picked up the penlight and walked purposely to the speakers by the wall, the robe's gauzy material floating behind her.

At the wall, she squatted down; bend over to put her ear to each speaker in turn.

Cloned by fifty, she was every man's vision of a Turkish harem.

Embarrassed to be the only naked person in the room, unable to find even the fig-leaf of his briefs, Z got his pants from where he'd dumped them on his side of the mattress. Put them on. Fastened his belt.

From another box, Z picked up a shirt, shouldering that on, buttoning with one hand, stuffing the shirt tail in his pants with the other.

Bending down, Z located, then put on his socks and shoes.

By now, there could be no mistake. Sounds were coming from one of the speakers, a sort of ... crunching noise ... like footsteps on gravel, the sound through the speaker not ... frightening ... though any strange noise was reason for caution.

"The basement," Jamie said, turning to look up at Z, her face in shadow behind the narrow beam of the penlight. "If we labeled the speakers correctly, it's the mike at the bottom of the basement steps that's piping in the sounds." She pointed her light at the speaker lined up to the right.

"Somebody down there?" At times like these, Z's "sizzle" of a voice was an asset.

"Or a mouse the size of a horse," she whispered.

"If someone's in the basement, we've got to walk carefully." Z was thinking as he spoke. "The floors squeak."

There was a technique that sometimes worked with creaking floors. When walking, hug the wall, floors generally quieter near walls than in the center of rooms and hallways. The taped off area -- fortunately -- where there was no fluorescing powder.

As Z was hissing his caution about floor noise, the sounds on the speaker had gotten louder. What was making them, he couldn't tell, though it sounded like rugs being dragged over sandpaper. "Not a ... ghost?" He knew better, but had to ask.

"I'd like to think it was."

Now that Z's eyes were finally adjusted to the penlight, he caught the girl's feeble grin as she turned back to him. "Finding a ghost that substantial would make me famous."

While Jamie could still joke, she wasn't happy; for all her experience in the "ghost business," it was apparent she'd never heard noises like these.

Z, on the other hand, was ... grateful, grateful because he'd suddenly become more than the toy who kept the genuine ghost hunter amused. At last, he'd get to perform the task he'd blackmailed the Vice Chancellor into assigning him: the protection of Jamie Stewart.

Mostly, Z was happy they'd found the foreign presence so he could wind up this case. Put this ectoplasmic baby to bed and Z just might recuperate.

Not that he was taking the intruder lightly. Given the lack of anything in the house worth stealing, though, he thought there wasn't much chance the person who'd broken in was dangerous.

Who was it that Jamie had speculated might be getting in? Someone knowing the previous owner? Possibly a homeless person, wanting a safe place to sleep?

Probably.

Unless, what looked like just another empty house was a drug drop.

Motioning Jamie to put on real clothes, Z turned his back while Jamie dressed -- why he did that, he didn't know, their relationship going way past modesty. (If anyone knew why people did half the things they did, Z wished that person would explain it to him.)

Waiting for Jamie to finish dressing, Z remembered that his detective satchel was outside, locked in his car -- an uncomfortable thought. (A few ghostless vigils with Jamie Stewart had made him sloppy.) Z didn't mind confronting whoever might be making those interesting, basement sounds; he just didn't want to do it barehanded.

"Got to get my case," he muttered, turning to find that Jamie had poured herself into a pair of old slacks and a worn, but well-filled, work shirt. She even looked good ... dressed.

"What do I do?"

"Nothing. Stay here."

"I'm going with you."

"No." As an afterthought, Z pointed to the speaker. "Listen."

"You'll come back before you ... do anything?"

"Yes." Z hadn't planned to, but it might be a good idea to return to the bedroom speaker to check out the latest sounds before trying the basement stairs.

That settled, taking out his own penlight, switching it on, Z edged around the mattress to step softly past a worried-looking Jamie.

At the wall, Z eased open the door and peeked through the crack.

Nothing to be seen in the hall, Z swung the solid door open so he could get a better look. ......

To find that all was sable-black as far as he could see.

Next, he tried flashing his little light down the passageway, this done in an effort to see past the kitchen door, basement door, bathroom door, and through the half-opened door of the other bedroom, his rational mind telling him it was an impossible distance for the tiny penlight. ... And it was.

Everything he did see, however, was the same.

With nothing else to be tried -- with Jamie's unnecessary warning about the powder, Z stepped through the doorframe into the hall, determined to keep close to the wall to stay within their taped-down walking path.

Turning, he signaled OK to Jamie, then gentled the door shut behind him.

Taking his time, controlling his adrenaline-enhanced breathing so he could hear the faintest sounds, Z edged along the plaster-cracked wall, feeling his weight into each footstep, ready to take off pressure at the first sign of a creak of floor joists.

Inch by shaky inch, Z made the turn through the hallway arch and into the front hall. There, using the light as sparingly as he could, Z continued to soft-foot his way back and forth within the zigzag course they'd taped, stopping frequently to listen.

One thing he had going for him was that the person (persons?) in the basement was (were) making enough sounds to mask any small, floor squeaks, Z able to hear plenty from down there, even without amplification.

Reaching the door after what seemed forever, Z moved the lock-lever while silently twisting the door handle, Z quickly through into the night, pausing to close the door behind him.

Still using the little light, now without fear of being heard, Z quick-walked down the tile path, through the gate, and across the crumbling street.

At his car, keying open the door, Z leaned across the driver's seat and hooked out his satchel.

No sense looking through it now.

Better to return to the house where he'd be in position to protect Jamie if something went wrong.

Recrossing the street, entering the ghost house, Z retraced his steps through the front hall, then toe-danced along the wall of the crossing corridor, eventually reaching the bedroom hideaway.

Thinking it better to announce himself than let Jamie wonder if "the big, bad wolf" was at the door, Z rapped. Twice. Whispered, "Z."

Receiving a soft, answering knock, Z opened the door, slid inside, and pushed the door closed with a single motion.

"You were gone a long time," Jamie accused, fussing at him but in a relieved tone.

Good! In some ways, Z was pleased to see that the girl could be upset. ...... What it didn't mean was that Z was afraid of overly confident, aggressive women like some men, only .......

No time for that kind of introspection. "Had to go slow to be quiet."

"I suppose. It's just that waiting here, listening to those ... basement sounds ....."

"The time to worry is when they became upstairs sounds."

"I thought of that," she said, typically taking Z's helpful suggestion as a put down, shaking it off.

Smiling inwardly at the girl's irritation, Z asked, "Anything new?" at the same time nodding toward the speakers.

The girl shook her head.

That settled, turning, Z set the case on top a stack of boxes.

Putting his light away, motioning for Jamie to hold her penlight so he could see, Z unlatched the case, opened it and glanced over the contents from the prospective of what he'd need to fight ... a ghost??

The sap, of course (just in case Z ran into something solid down there,) Z slipping it from the elastic band that held it, stuffing the lead and leather blackjack -- head down -- in his right pants pocket, Z already feeling more in command of what was still an unusual situation.

What else would he need?

The normal variety of items were in the case, as wide a selection as possible since most of a detective's stock-in-trade would prove useless on any given job.

Uncertain about what he must face, Z closed his eyes to imagine creeping down the hall; cautiously opening the basement door, creeping down the warped cellar steps ....

The steps were a problem. Though walls flanked the top of the stairs, the stairs broke free from cover about two-thirds of the way down, someone walking down the stairs at that point coming into full view of the basement trespasser. No way Z could traipse down the lower stairs, then rush the intruder, without whoever lay in wait having time to prepare an unpleasant reception. What Z needed was ... something ... to cloak that final onslaught. A light. Or sound .....

Perhaps both.

And that was the answer! Thank God for American Independence!

Slipping a package of firecrackers from its restraining band, Z shucked off the pack's crisp paper.

Working carefully, Jamie doing a good job anticipating where he wanted her to hold her light, Z found the center fuse that was, in turn, threaded down the middle of the pack so that it went past the interwoven tips of all the individual firecracker fuses; carefully pulled the fuse away from the side of the pack so he could find it in the dark.

What about ... something more ... lethal?

What he'd just noticed was the outline of Smith's gun bulging through the elasticized cloth of the soft pouch where he'd put it ... a temptation ... an evil allurement ....

No! Z's manhood made it possible -- but just barely -- to resist the feel and heft of the coldly solid pistol in his hand.

He had to get rid of that gun! ....

Ah. The short punk, the one he'd used as a fuse for the Roman candle at Smith's apartment.

Z pulled out what was left of the punk -- finding enough spongy, tan material above the bamboo stick handle to do the job.

Sufficient dry-out time passing since he'd doused the punk, Z dragged out his lighter. Snapped it on.

Twisting the touchwood in the lighter's golden flame for a moment, he fired up the tinder-stick, its gray ash tip glowing yellow-red when he blew on it.

Holding the lit punk and the package of firecrackers in the same hand, careful they didn't "meet" before he was ready, Z slipped the lighter back in his pocket. Took out his penlight. Snapped it on.

"What are you going to do?" Jamie whispered.

So -- it was the girl's turn to feel like the proverbial fifth wheel, Z finding that ... satisfying.

"See who's there."

"And then?"

"Plan a surprise."

"I'm going, too."

"No."

"Yes."

"Too much noise."

"No. If you can get your incredible hunk of a body all the way through the house, outside, then back again without making enough noise to tip off ....." She pointed her finger at the floor. "Then delicate little me can follow you without snapping twigs." For Jamie to define herself as "delicate" -- in any sense of the word -- was pushing it. Still .....

She was probably right. Anyway, Z decided it wouldn't do his (somewhat) bruised ego any harm to have Jamie trailing along behind him, taking his orders for a change.

"OK."

Jamie's presence agreed to, holding up his hand to reinforce the necessity for quiet, Z opened the bedroom door again and led the girl into the hall.

Jamie shutting the door behind her, Z crept forward (practically oozing down the "basement stairs" side of the narrow corridor,) the girl following.

An extended, heart-pounding period followed as they slid past the kitchen to pull up at the warped, paint-thick basement door, the sounds below, louder still.

Scraping sounds ... as if someone was using a large, metal tool.

Surely, with all that racket going on, if Z was careful ....

Taking hold of the wiggly doorknob, turning it, Z eased back on the old door, swinging the heavy barrier open so slowly that its creaking hinges registered at too low a volume to alert the greater "noisemaker" in the pit at the bottom of the stairs.

As the door came back, not only did the noise below increase, but Z could see light reflecting up the splintered wood steps, considerably more radiance than the combined illumination of Z's and the girl's tiny flashlights.

Flicking off his light, motioning to Jamie to do the same with hers, Z slid his penlight back into his pocket.

Careful to keep from dragging the tiny light out again -- or his car keys -- or loose change -- Z extracted his blackjack.

Motioning Jamie to give him room, sap in one hand, firecracker pack and punk in the other, Z slipped through the cellar doorway to take the first, cautious step -- down, hoping this was not the time his knee gave out. (While immunity to pain was a beneficial result of adrenaline shock, it also added the danger that his knee might collapse without a shriek of warning.)

Z took another step down, then another -- the cellar swallowing him step-by-wary-step, Z continuing his controlled descent, the light below coming from the right side of the basement, the ... rooting? ... sounds, making it a certainty the housebreaker was on that side of the cramped cellar.

The enclosed upper stairs hiding Z most of the way, he was careful to sit back just before his feet came into view as the steps broke free of the side panels.

From his position three-quarters of the way down, the basement -- what he could see of it -- appeared to be undisturbed. Decrepit, wooden shelving continued to climb the walls, the slanted tunnel of cracked concrete steps rising across the way to the nearly flat, overlapping, barn-wide doors leading outback.

Not ... quite the same.

Something was different about the basement.

Z shut his eyes. Tried to concentrate.

Something different about ... the smell, the odor somehow more foul ... at the same time, perfumed with late-night air.

Making no sense.

Z opened his eyes; thought he knew at least part of the solution to the apparent contradiction. Bending down a little, he could see past the top of the stairs leading to the backyard, past them because the outside doors had been laid back, the back stairs open to the sky!

Jigsaw puzzle pieces snapped together.

Someone was in the basement, someone who'd gotten in -- not through the front door of the house; not through the nailed-shut back door; but through the cellar doors in back.

The answer to the "entry problem" was so simple Z wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

What had blocked his consideration of the cellar doors had been the padlock shackled through the hasp out back. Not a key lock. A combination lock, Z ... intimidated ... by combination locks. With a key lock, he had a chance. With a combination lock, the only solution was a lock breaker.

On the other hand, the lock outside hadn't presented the "basement man" with a problem.

Why? Because the padlock was the intruder's lock!

An answer posing other questions, Z possessing the necessary "skills" to get the housebreaker to explain them to him.

But first, Z had to jump the man. ... Men?

What Z needed was a quick look at whoever was in the cellar, Z preparing to do that by reaching behind him to set the firecracker pack-and-punk on a higher step, making sure the glowing punk-end was over the edge. It wouldn't do to have the tinder go out as it tried to burn along the cold length of the thick wood step.

Next, Z put his blackjack in his pocket.

Having the use of all his "limbs" again, Z backed up the steps, then reversed his position so he could crawl down, doggy-style; the idea, to have his head be the first part of his anatomy to become visible from below. With luck, the person in the basement -- who appeared to be taking no precautions whatsoever against discovery -- would not be looking at the stairs at the precise moment Z's head came into view.

Following the plan, Z "walked" his right arm down a step. Then his left arm, his knees alternating behind him, this kind of "travel" hard on both Z's arms and knees.

Until -- doing a shaky pushup to bob his head down, then back up -- Z got a look to the right.

Shifting so he could sit back on a step high enough so his feet didn't show, Z had no trouble reconstructing the scene below. In the first place, the light that was being generated down there came from an old-fashioned kerosene lantern sitting on the floor. Or maybe it was a modern camping lamp. In any case, it was the kind of glass-enclosed lantern whose small flame excites a mesh mantle of luminous material, causing the lamp to put out a surprising amount of stark, white light.

A canvas backpack had been dumped beside the light; both light and carryall at the feet of ... a man. One man, Z was glad to see.

Put together with Z's initial impression of the basement, it seemed the man had been pulling the large pieces of cardboard off the sandy floor to stack them against an open space in the wall. Nor was it difficult to tell why he'd taken up the cardboard. He'd done that so he could dig.

Yes, dig.

The man had picked up the old spade that Z had seen leaning against the wall; was using it to turn over the dust-dry dirt that comprised the basement's floor.

Z needed another look.

Once again, crawling headlong down the stairs, Z took a second peek at the man.

Dragging his head back quickly because Z had to sneeze! Found, to his horror, that with both hands holding him up, he was helpless even to press a finger against the base of his nose to stifle the paroxysm.

So there he was. Fighting desperately to keep from sneezing, closing his eyes to avoid seeing the slightest ray of sneeze-summoning light.

And there he stayed, delicately balanced between sneezing and not sneezing ................

Until the urgent need to sneeze had passed, leaving only a tickle in the end of his nose.

Shakily, Z turned; climbed back up so he could sit down and rub his nose.

So -- what had Z learned this time? Primarily, that "cellar man" was young, looking more like an older teenager than an adult.

Stranger still, between the time Z had taken his first and second looks, the man had stopped shoveling to do something truly eccentric! He was now on his knees beside the shallow trough he'd made, dabbing at the dirt with what looked like a small paintbrush.

Enough of this! For Z to learn anything useful, he and the man had to have a heart-to-heart.

Jamie now making whimpering sounds at the top of the stairs, Z turned to see her motioning for an explanation of events.

Waving her off, Z turned back to ... the problem.

Something at the edge of Z's consciousness was bothering him. Was it the basement's smell again? If so, it was just a reinforcement of the reaction he'd had before, Z not liking the smell of this cellar the last time he and Jamie had come down here.

Time for direct action!

Looking above and behind him, Z found the firecracker pack, the glowing end of the punk beside it guiding him right to it, Z reaching back behind his head to pick up both punk and firecrackers.

Turning, edging down the stairs again, hunching up his knees to make himself into a ball, Z stopped at the place the stairs came free from the wall.

There, he fished out his blackjack, putting it carefully beside him on a step. After that, feeling the firecracker pack with his fingers until he found the right place, Z touched the hot spot of the punk to the end of the package's braided fuse.

A pause ... then a spit of sparks as the fuse caught, a fuse long enough to provide Z with time to underhand the firecracker pack beneath the stair partition, Z using enough force to frisbee the package over the kneeling man and into the far corner of the cellar.

A space of time ...............

Then, World War II in miniature!

The harsh echo of firecracker explosions covering any squeak of stairs. Sap picked up, Z vaulted down the rest of the way, past the microphone to one side of the bottom step, to find that the young man below had scrambled to his feet; was turned away from Z, the man seemingly in epileptic seizure as he stared at the incredible sight of firecrackers going off in the far corner.

Z's careful preparation presenting him with a stationary target, it was easy for him to zap the guy in just the right spot behind the ear, the man crumpling softly into the trench he'd been digging, a shallow ditch that looked suspiciously like ... the outline of a grave!

* * * * *

Chapter 14

Z's throat hurt, and the rank basement air didn't help. On top of that, Z missed his underwear, the seams in the crotch of his pants chafing him.

At least Z could see into the corners of the underground room with Jamie's big flashlight, its beam set on wide.

Standing, Z sighed as he shifted position in an attempt to find a comfortable spot to lean against on the rough basement wall. It was going to be another long night.

After zapping the housebreaker, Z had to talk fast to keep Jamie Stewart from staying in the cellar for the "awakening." (Nothing could have kept her from coming down after Z made his charge.) What about your reputation as a teacher, he'd asked? What happens to that if it gets out that you and a big dumb fuck like Bob Zapolska had spent night after night together, a story that would certainly break if the trespasser discovered she was in the house? What if the man who'd broken in was some kind of drug dealer? Inquiring minds would suspect Jamie Stewart of being in the house to buy drugs. What would happen to Jamie Stewart, respected teacher of impressionable young Catholic girls, if she got fired?

Z doubted that any of these outcomes was at all likely; which was beside the point. The point was that he'd been able to convince Jamie that such things might happen; persuade her that, the less she knew about the break-in, the better. The thing for Jamie to do was bring him her big flashlight, then let Z -- professional detective that he was -- handle this. Her job tomorrow, was to report to Vice Chancellor Ashlock that illegal entry was responsible for the "ghost" lights, collect her fee, and get back to her life.

Amazingly, these appeals to "reason" had worked, after bringing him her regular sized flashlight, Jamie remembering to pick up the basement mike before going back upstairs, the noises above him in the little bedroom the result of Jamie unplugging the grill and coffee pot, folding the sleeping bag, stripping the blackout cloth from the window, collecting the cameras and sound equipment, and get everything boxed up to be carried out to her truck.

At long last, the ghost house case was coming to an end -- at least, that's what he'd made Jamie believe.

For his part, Z was still stuck in the basement, waiting for the kid to wake up, a process that was taking awhile. Thinking about Sleeping Beauty in the fairy tale, a kiss from the prince had awakened Beauty from a long, long sleep. The trouble was that Z had "kissed" this "beauty" a little too hard, making him sleep longer than Z desired. (Z had to wonder if Jamie was thinking about another fairy tale as she bustled around upstairs. Could she be thinking that she'd kissed a frog who didn't turn into a prince?)

Z sighed.

The only thing he could do now, was wait, not that Z had anything better to do.

A more positive way to look at this "waiting game" was that the longer he stayed in the basement, the more he stuck Jamie Stewart with the crating up. She'd been fond of pointing out that he was an old man? Fine. Time to let someone younger do the heavy lifting.

Z sighed again, wrinkling up his face at having to breathe such disgusting air. As a disciplined detective, one used to stakeouts, Z could stay down in this hole forever ... if it wasn't for the smell.

The boy groaned.

After thumping the kid (and for all the thumpee's bulk, that's what he'd turned out to be -- a kid,) Z had wrestled him out of the boy's, self-dug trench, then dragged him across the basement floor, the adolescent's heels making scuff lines in the loose dirt floor from there to here.

Z now had the boy propped up against an open space in the wall.

Next, Z had brought over the lantern and the tubby teenager's khaki knapsack, Z going through the boy's pack to see what he could learn. Found the most interesting things inside: like a number of sharpened wood stakes. Stakes? Stakes didn't go with ghosts, they "fit" vampires .....

A silly thought.

Z also discovered a ball of twine in the bag, a directional compass, hammer, blank notebook, a foot-long ruler, and a cloth tape measure. Another pouch in the "old kit bag" contained a small garden trowel, an icepick, and a putty knife.

After pawing through the boy's gear, Z had collected the small paintbrush from where the kid had dropped it near the trench, adding that to the carryall's collection of seemingly unrelated components.

No doubt a common purpose required these items, Z having to wait until the boy woke up to discover what it was. (Thinking about the diverse articles Z carried in his case, Z wondered what unifying principle someone would make of them.)

Z had also gone through the kid's billfold first thing; to learn some facts about him that Z could check against the young man's story.

Just a baby. Nineteen. Fat. Soft. No threat to anyone except people peddling diet books.

Chubby cheeks groaned again, eyelids fluttering.

In one way, Z wished the boy would wake up so Z could get on with it -- at the same time dreading the completion of this part of the puzzle; for, make no mistake about it, talking to the kid would produce nothing more than the final piece in the puzzle's "border." What followed would be working with the jigsaw's messy middle.

The boy's eyes opened, eyes that were surprisingly red in the lantern light. (The pupils, not the whites.) Fearful eyes that showed the disorientation of the recently "blackjacked." It didn't matter if you'd been sapped, had emerged from a drug overdose, were sobering up following an alcoholic bender, or coming out from under anesthesia, it wasn't fun waking up unable to remember who you were.

"What .....?"

"What's your name, son?"

"I ...." The kid needed time to think, there being no easy answers after a rap on the head.

Brightening suddenly, the boy dredged up a name. "Cliff Marlatt."

Bingo. That squared with the teenager's driver's license.

"Clifford, you're where you're not supposed to be," Z whispered, his voice truly shot after all that "Jamie persuasion."

The kid looked around. Seemed to recognize his surroundings. "I ... know."

"Why?"

"I ....."

Glancing about wildly, the boy was now awake enough to be frightened -- as anyone with any brains would be. If you can't be scared when an ugly mountain of meat is staring down at you from the stratosphere, you're a hard case. "I wouldn't say you were in difficulty -- yet. But I got to know why you're here."

"I didn't mean to cause trouble," the boy said, looking up at Z, trying to focus on Z's face. "I thought the house was deserted. Going to be torn down."

An OK kid, was Z's early assessment, bearing up as well as could be expected. "Right. But the neighbors reported seeing a light."

"Oh. I guess I didn't think about that, all the houses already torn down around here and all."

"I was sent to find out."

"You're from the college?" Like the rest of him, the boy's face was pudgy, his features not improved by limp blond hair, dark red eyes, faded-to-non-existent brows, and pasty skin. In a dress, he could pass for a fat girl with a fix on face powder.

The boy's question about the college was the tip-off -- that, plus his college "uniform" of jeans and light blue, short-sleeved shirt, to say nothing of having a college cafeteria meal card in his wallet, a stub from a football game, and a student I.D. good for cut-rate tickets at the movies. He was a college boy from Bateman.

"Campus security."

"Oh." The boy touched his head. Winced. "I heard ... fireworks ...?"

"Thinking you were dangerous, I had to pop you. You saw stars."

"Yeah." That satisfied him.

"So what are you doing here?" Z prodded.

"An archaeology project."

If Z remembered right, archaeology had to do with digging up Egyptian mummies.

"Tell me about it."

Squatting down, bracing himself with his hands, Z sat back in the dirt, his stiff leg out in front of him. It was time to appear as friendly as big-and-ugly would allow. When questioning the innocent, first try playing good cop. The Zapolska code. If that failed, you could always switch to ....

"There's a dig this August in Arizona." The boy was settling down; smart kid that he was, had figured that if Z was going to kill him, he'd have done it by now. "Professor Quint's co-leader. And, as usual, there's not much money, so only a few of his students get to go. It's like a competition to see who goes."

"They got mummies in Arizona?" It was Clifford's turn to look puzzled. "That's what archaeologists do, isn't it? Dig up mummies?"

The boy nodded that he'd understood. "Partly. But a whole lot more. Archaeology is the study of ancient cultures. Artifacts. People. In the Arizona dig, Professor Quint's on the trail of the Anasazi."

"So, what's that got to do with here?"

"Oh. Well, I knew the school owned these houses. That the whole area was going to be soccer fields. And that would ruin it for a dig. So I went ... on an expedition of my own. Found this house was empty. Found the back doors to the basement open."

"What about the lock?"

"What?"

"The combination lock?"

"I put that on. So no one else with the same idea could get in."

Nodding solemnly, the boy reached up with predictably fat fingers to touch the swelling over his right ear. Winced. Made a face. "I used the lock from my gym locker."

Figured.

"So last week, just before the first round of exams, I came back. I didn't have time to do anything then, but that was when I brought the padlock with me." Z nodded encouragement. Though it was taking awhile, he was getting the story bit by bit. "I also brought a probe."

"Probe?"

"A sharp, iron pole. Thin. Like a seven-foot long nail." Z nodded as if he understood. "I got down here and began probing, to see if I would hit anything solid under the dirt. Like maybe someone tossed out an old jar that got buried. Or, maybe there'd be the ruins of an older house under this one.

"That's all I had with me, the probe. Because I couldn't do anything else since I had to study for the first round of summer exams." The boy took a deep breath. "And I found ... places, like broken foundations. Except, located differently than I expected. Not in a continuous line, like a foundation of concrete. Just long places. Here and there. But definitely something."

"Go on."

"Then I had to study for exams. Tonight was the first time I could come back." He seemed, suddenly, to have run dry.

"In your pack?"

"Everything I needed for the dig." When he saw Z didn't follow him, he explained. "The string and stakes are for laying out a grid. Like graph paper, so anything you find can be charted. Just where and at what depth it was found. The trouble with archaeology is, it's the only science that destroys the evidence as you find it. So you only have one chance to get it right. That's why you keep such exact records. The compass tells you direction."

"The brush?"

"When you think you're close to something, you use delicate tools. Sometimes, a soft brush to remove dirt around an artifact. Even a tiny pick."

"And all this leads .....?"

"I was going to write a paper on what I found. Lay out how I'd planned the dig. The records I'd kept. Show that I knew my business as an archaeologist. I hoped my paper would impress Professor Quint so he'd recommend me for the Arizona dig in August. I thought, since this place is going to be torn down anyway ....." He shrugged, the motion hurting his head.

Maybe this made sense and maybe it didn't. Still, to dig for something in an old basement? "Do archaeologists actually dig in basements?"

"Urban archaeologists do it all the time. But that's not the point. I really didn't expect to find anything down here, not anything important. I did think I might find more than if I just dug outside somewhere. Maybe something someone living in the house dropped. Or threw away. That then got buried. Like an old coffee can. An early toothbrush, maybe. You need to find something so you can show you know how to record discoveries."

It could also be that the kid was digging in a basement so no one would see him, just in case what he was doing wasn't all that legal. "No harm done," Z said. "Yet."

Z meant exactly that -- "No harm done. Yet." It was just that Z didn't know how to keep the boy away from here before damage was done. Damage to the boy.

The problem for Z was to find a way to make the kid clear out of here without telling him the truth. ........

All Z could do was try. Might work. Might not. "This house has been condemned. If you got hurt here, the college, not the college's insurance, would be liable."

"I see."

"So you must leave immediately and not come back. You would be arrested."

The threat of arrest didn't have the impact Z thought it should. Maybe, if he tried ..... "Expelled."

That did it, the boy turning even whiter than normal, the kid wanting nothing so much as to shine academically. While he might risk arrest, he'd do anything to keep from getting kicked out of college before the August project. Z had guessed right (modesty making him admit it was easy to do). It didn't take much in the brains department to figure out that Archaeology was Cliffy's life.

"You won't tell .....?" Z shut him off with a shake of his head. "I'm out of here!" A teenager's solemn pledge. "And you don't have to worry; I won't be back."

"Good."

Moving as quickly as a thundering head would allow, the boy packed up his stuff and took a hike, remembering at the top of the concrete stairs to pick up his padlock. "Thanks!" the kid called back before slamming shut the overlapping doors. And was gone, never to be seen again. Not in these parts, anyhow.

As for thanks, the boy had no idea how grateful he ought to be. No way a nice kid like that should get tangled up with the nastiness to follow. The kid was studying to be an archaeologist, Z now understanding archeology to be the understanding of all kinds of long dead things.

No way a college kid wanted to get tied to the recently dead past .........

The kid gone for good, it was time for Z to ........

Upstairs, Jamie was still thumping around, still boxing things up, Z longing to join her now that he'd sent the kid packing. And would ... after he'd gotten up the courage to confirm what he knew he'd find a little lower in the boy's hole. Knew what was there because, as Z stepped into the cellar to rush the kid, the meaning of the basement's stronger smell had finally clicked in.

A certainty that caused a reluctant Z to pick up the old shovel and continue the boy's dig, Z finally striking what the boy's probe had discovered to be there, the "solid" something buried underground. One of ... many ... long, solid somethings the probe had indicated were beneath the cellar floor. Long, solid somethings that would have smelled worse if the dryness of the dirt hadn't absorbed the ... liquid ......

Longing for the kid's brush, having to use the big, blunt shovel instead, Z began to scrape as gently as possible with such an inappropriate tool, until he'd cleaned away the remaining dirt to get a clear look at what he'd struck.

It was Z's misfortune that the first thing his shovel hit was the head. A ghastly gray and slimy head -- with a severed penis in its mouth!

* * * * *

Chapter 15

Getting maybe an hour's sleep, waking up with the sweaty impression he'd been having nightmares (glad he couldn't remember what they were,) Z holed up in his house for the rest of Tuesday morning. (Seeing man's handiwork had killed what small desire he had to mingle with the human race.)

After Z had chased off the boy last night and covered up the ... head ... he'd used the flat of the shovel and a piece of cardboard to dust out his and the boy's tracks, going on to smudge any prints on the cellar's digging tools. These precautions completed, he'd gone upstairs -- arriving in time to do some of the heavy lifting; mostly, carrying boxes to finish loading the truck.

The eastern horizon a bloody red by the time he and Jamie were ready to leave for good (the sun unable, once again, to keep from starting another depressing day.)

Jamie had kissed him as they stood in the empty street in front of the empty house in the empty neighborhood. Kissed him in her usually deep way, apparently unconcerned that he was still a frog.

The question was, what to say to Jamie, particularly since Detective Addison's prediction was about to come true. That when Z took an interest in a case, all hell broke loose.

Recovering from the kiss, Z flashed on what she should do. "Can you report to Ashlock today? Get your money?"

"If it mattered."

"Do it."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Not happy to be kept in the dark, but seeing that Z meant business, she nodded.

There was no need for the girl to know about the bodies in the basement; who needed to be haunted by that kind of ghost?

Sure, she'd also noticed the odor; but how many people knew what that smell meant? (Z did because he'd discovered the dead girl in that field, plus the missing prof.) In its faint form, death smelled like poisoned rats, crawled off to die within the walls -- Z's guess when he'd picked up that smell on his first visit to the cellar. As the boy had begun to dig, however, the odor had grown stronger until .....

Z and Jamie had gone on to agree to coordinate money matters; had exchanged phone numbers, Z giving her his office number. The deal was that Jamie would figure out what they should charge the Vice Chancellor, but hold up her report until both bills were paid; if she had to, hint that the report's conclusion might be influenced in favor of ghosts should there be the slightest delay in payment.

If Z was right to think that Ashlock was running this whole "ghost house" operation out of his hip pocket, Z had the feeling the Vice Chancellor would give them their money willingly, thinking he would get to bulldoze the property right away.

Z's task was to alert the cops, but not until the shifty little administrator had paid up. (Z's first pleasant thought of the day was about how surprised Ashlock would be to learn that his problems with the ghost house were just beginning; that the police would seal up the property for the foreseeable future.)

After the goodbye kiss, little Jamie in the truck and hunched over the steering wheel, Z had bent down to whisper through the window that he wished he could see her again. "Pillow talk" that was and wasn't true -- Z not knowing himself how he felt about their relationship.

And that's how they'd left it at dawn.

The rest of the morning had been for a nap, then for heavy thinking. (And to give Jamie time to get their money.) Z had built a fire; left the apartment to eat lunch; all the while trying to line up the facts.

The first thing Z had wondered about was how many bodies lay buried in that grave-of-a-cellar. No way he could know, but a number of them -- if he could trust the kid's interpretation of what the probe had indicated.

A number of bodies, meant a number of people missing, the TV news curiously silent about these disappearances.

Z's conclusion? The bodies in the cellar weren't missed, not by relatives, not by friends.

Why?

Because they were Ted's "bums," men who had no family and no friends. "Bums" who didn't turn up AWOL until other "bums" reported there was something fishy about the way men of their community had been vanishing.

The other thing Z couldn't help but think about was the way the man he'd found had been mutilated, most of Z's pondering getting him nowhere, of course, Z reminding himself that, in criminal work, solutions to every problem took time. Assuming a solution could be found at all.

Z's final conclusion was that, since the murders were not his responsibility, he should dump this dirty business in someone else's lap.

The sky was a cheerful blue as Z drove to the office that afternoon, heaven at is best when ignoring human horror.

Inside the Ludlow, sitting on the outer office desk, Z dialed Ted, Z routed through to be put on hold, Ted undoubtedly in the bathroom, his favorite place to hide out at work.

"This is Detective Ted Newbold, speaking."

"Z."

"You again? Don't tell me you've rounded up the missing bums already?"

Z didn't know what to say for, in a matter of speaking, he thought he might have done just that. "I may be onto something."

"Yeah?" Ted, being skeptical and eager at the same time, contradictory attitudes not easy to portray with a single word.

"But in some other guy's jurisdiction."

"Hell. I'm nothing if not cooperative. I can share with other law enforcement." As long as Ted got credit for the initial discovery, was what he meant.

"Could be you'd need Addison."

"Who?"

"The black, K.C. dick."

"Oh, yeah." Teddy, being less than pleased. "I don't know, Z. I don't trust him."

Normally, you'd think that kind of comment about not trusting a black would mean Ted was prejudiced, except that Ted wasn't a racist. (Unless the term racist could include someone who considered himself superior to everyone else.) It wasn't Addison's race that bothered Ted; it was the K.C. cop's competence, Ted wanting nothing to do with anyone who might show Teddy up.

"I better call Addison."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I didn't say no, did I?" Z waited. "As long as I'm in on this first, I could see my way clear to cutting him in. You probably found out that the bums are the black guy's case, right?" Though Z knew the "bums" were someone else's case, Z said nothing, on the grounds that real detectives like Ted didn't want everything spelled out for them.

"Got to call in Clay County, too."

"Hell, Z. Where'd you sniff this out, anyway?"

Z didn't want to think about "sniffing it out."

"In Liberty. I'll get back to you."

"Hey, Z. What you got for me? Don't leave me hanging on this."

"Got to."

"Well ..... OK. We've been friends for a long time, right?"

"Yeah."

"And I've done you a considerable number of favors in the past, right?"

"Yeah."

"So I trust you not to freeze me out." If Ted really trusted Z, Ted wouldn't have had to remind Z of their long friendship. But Z let that pass.

After hanging up, Z rolled his wrist. Checked his old, stem-winder.

Almost eleven.

Hanging up his "secretary's" phone, Z picked it up again and dialed Willis Addison, direct.

Got nothing but a bunch of rings.

Dialed the K.C. police.

Got referred here and there, only to learn that Detective Addison was out, but was expected back some time today.

So Z called later.

And later still.

No luck.

Filled in the time by reading some more about Lawrence Block's New York City, where there was a difference between payoffs a cop could take and still be "clean" and "dirty" money a clean cop couldn't take.

What a town!

Called Addison again at 5:00. ....... Not there.

Read some more. Called Addison at 5:30 ....

"Addison, here." The black man's voice, while still "snowman" white, sounded tired.

"Z. Been working you hard?"

"Helping homicide. Today, it's suicides."

"The weather?"

"Sometimes it seems to be. Or a full moon."

Even law enforcement officers -- and Z put himself in that category -- passed some conversation between them before getting down to business.

"Right. About those missing ... vagrants?"

"Still missing."

"I don't think so."

"You found them?" Tired though Addison was, Z heard him chuckle.

"If so, it's not good."

"Didn't think it would be."

"Dead and buried."

"Where?"

"I ... got this problem. My friend, Ted."

"The Gladstone cop?"

"Yeah. You're in, and agreed to by Ted. It's just that the remains are not in either jurisdiction. The Clay County sheriff is the man to call."

"Let me fix that. I know Larry Overfelt. Worked with him before."

"Good. But then there's Ted. Ted wants to make the discovery. Do him some good."

"That's agreeable with me. And I also speak for my friend, whose case it is. We're so jammed up here, he just wants it off his back the quickest way."

"OK. The thing is, Ted's story about how he discovered the bodies? It'll be pretty thin."

"I see."

"Any decent cop, if he started to ask questions, could ....."

"Break it down."

"Yeah."

"Decent cops know when not to ask."

Thinking about it, Addison could be one of New York's finest. He had that kind of savvy.

"Appreciate it."

Another thing about decent cops, was they didn't bring up favors. Z had done Addison a good turn in the painting case; they both knew it; and both could let the other forget it.

"Expect a call from Ted."

"What's his last name, again?"

"Newbold."

"Right. Probably a good idea to have him leave a message that I'm to call him. I'm going to be in and out tonight. Be better to have me notified so I can call him back."

"Good."

How much should Z tell bright, black Willis Addison, a detective good enough to be one of New York's finest? Maybe, a little more.

"Another thing."

"Always."

"It was accidental, how I found the bodies." Addison chuckled again at having it confirmed that Z was the sort of man Addison thought he was, the kind who stumbled into trouble. "I only turned up one, but got a strong suspicion there's more." Z paused; caught his breath; sneezed without warning.

Just how was Z going to tell this in a civilized manner? ... Decided there was no good way. "The man I found had a cut-off dick in his mouth."

"Christ!"

"Been dead awhile."

"Get on this, Z! We got to get this stopped!"

"Expect a call. Soon."

After hanging up, Z dialed Ted. "Detective Ted Newbold, speaking."

"Z."

"It's all set up?"

"Yeah. You discover, then call Addison. He fixes things with the Clay County sheriff."

"It took you long enough."

"Yeah. Anyway. You go to Liberty. The address is 2609 East Franklin. Behind Bateman College, this side of some soccer fields. Just two houses there. Looks like the rest of the block's been atomic-bombed."

"And what were you doing there?" Ted had to feel he was contributing something.

"My case. At night."

"OK. I won't ask."

"Anyway, go around to the back. Probably best to do it late tonight. The cellar doors are open. Pull them back. Go down. There's a shallow pit dug. A little further down and you find a body."

"Jesus! I wonder if I could get one of the blues to do that. That's what blues are for, stupid bastards that they are."

"And share the credit?"

"Yeah -- better do it myself." Ted didn't like dirty work; but liked it better than having someone standing in his light.

"Been thinking up a story. Why you got onto this."

"OK."

"Somebody -- say, an old lady -- tipped you, by phone, that there were ghosts in that house. You don't believe that. But your detective's instinct is aroused. Something strange going on. Needs investigating. Still, not enough smoke to yell fire at Clay County. So, on your own time, at night, being the public-spirited citizen that you are, you check."

"Yeah!" Ted liked the part about him being a public-spirited citizen. If Z knew Ted, that part would get a big play in Ted's explanation of how he found the bodies.

"You got 'probable cause' because, walking around back, you smell this smell. The smell of death."

"Yeah."

"Not 'breaking and entering,' because the cellar doors are open."

"That'll play."

"You go down and, smelling the smell even worse, decide to dig. Some tools are in the cellar."

"That's great, Z. And believe me, I really appreciate this favor. I needed this because ....." For a moment, Ted had reverted to his high school self, when all he wanted was to walk in the shadow of Northtown's football star -- a thankful mood that evaporated fast, Ted long ago "maturing" into an asshole of an adult. "What I mean is, I'll investigate to see if there's anything to this fantastic story of yours. Let you know what I find."

"First thing after discovery, call Addison. You don't do that right away and Addison drops a brick on your head."

"Yeah. I'll do that, for sure." Teddy, again being a scared little boy in grade school.

"And Ted, one more thing." While the only kick Z got out of this sorry business was Ted having to do something on his own, Z wanted to be fair. "Don't eat supper before exploring."

The rest of the evening was a blur. Though Z didn't do it often, he went to Bud's Tavern on Oak to get a six-pack, bald Bud a hulking, square-shaped man with the friendly warmth of any successful tavern owner. A year older than Z, Bud played a good right guard. Many a time, it was Bud Izard's hole that Z had looked good squirming through.

More out of courtesy than anything, Z had a couple of drinks in the cool dark of the bar, talking over old times with Bud, Bud's barman taking up the slack of what was a quiet Tuesday night. It was always a little embarrassing, though, to have Bud go through the games play-by-play, Bud remembering Z's high school glory more than his own. The offensive line. Big men, doomed to be ignored for the major contributions that they made.

At home, trying for inner warmth to match the heat of the fireplace, Z downed the other beers.

The only reason Z sometimes took a drink was when his view of the world had been disproved, Z's normal belief that the world was a bad place upset by events showing the world to be a terrible place.

Since Z usually drank Diet Coke, he didn't recall going to bed -- but couldn't help remember getting up, a coke-drinker ill-prepared for fur growing on his tongue, to say nothing of his skull morphed into a big bass drum!

Unable to eat a breakfast sandwich -- not even peanut butter straight from the jar! -- Z was still sitting morosely at his junky table when the phone rang.

Stumbling over to fumble up the receiver, at the same time turning to sag into the pitifully sprung divan, he whispered, "Z."

"Addison. I tried your office. Then used a little magic to produce your home number." The kind of "cop magic" Z sometimes needed.

Z tried to see what time it was, but found his watch to be ... unfocused.

"Your man Ted called last night at midnight and we've been at it ever since. Sheriff Overfelt's a good man, but getting old, so he was grateful for any Metro help coming his way. Unofficially, he's turned the investigation over to us, seeing that several of the men lived in K.C.

"The only break we caught so far is that the site's almost undisturbed. No footprints in the dirt except your cop friend, some others wiped out, maybe, by having squares of cardboard dragged over them. So I guess that locks it up that your friend was the one who actually found the bodies."

"Looks like."

"Otherwise, who would believe a cockamamie story like he told about how public-spirited he was to have discovered the bodies. Something about being in line for a presidential medal because of it." Addison paused to make disbelieving clicking sounds. "To be fair, he might have come up with a better story if he hadn't been so weak from puking up his guts."

Though it hurt Z's face to stretch the skin of any part of it, Z smiled.

"No usable fingerprints on the shovel. The handle was too rough to take prints. The lab boys will give a few smudged ones a try, but the print man says, no way.

"The photog used a lot of film on this one."

"How many?"

"Eight. Hell, that's one more than Jack the Ripper got. With a difference. Jack did women. This guy does men. Another difference from the Ripper -- these were all shot in the temple. Looks like small caliber. Forensics will give us more, but it's a good bet the same gun was used."

"They the missing vagrants?"

"That's right. Prints collected from the stiffs show six of the eight were the missing men. The others were too deteriorated to print. Bodies go bad fast in the heat.

"I don't much like the arrogance of the FBI, but they've got a hell of a facility for classifying fingerprints. Didn't take them five hours to fax identifications back to us. What made it easy was that all these men had been printed when they were in the service."

"Too early, yet, to know the perp?"

"Yeah. But both of us have got a guess. And Z. The thing we're holding back, is about the mutilation. So we can get rid of the sickos who'll come in and confess. Also to help us distinguish copycat killers who won't know that mangling is a must; dear God, spare us from them!"

"You found the one with the ... you know ... in his mouth?"

"They were all like that." A pause. "And worse."

"Worse!?"

"A couple of the stiffs contribute a new definition to what's generally meant by eyeballs."

* * * * *

Chapter 16

Though Z had been certain he'd feel better after getting off the ghost house case, he felt worse. In addition to sneezing and being tired, he now had a tight and scratchy throat.

Damn Ted, anyway! With Z not feeling well to start with, standing out in the rain for Ted's benefit had about done Z in.

Still, colds were a fact of life. As was murder. As was mutilation.

Refusing to give in to illness, Z had tidied up by burning the breakfast crumbs, paper plate, and morning paper; after dousing the fire, had headed out that late Thursday afternoon, bound for his office.

As Z pulled out of the dilapidated garage into the narrow alley, he realized he wasn't seeing very well -- hardly a recent phenomena. When rich people's eyes began to go, they bought contacts; when people like Z needed help, they had to settle for glasses, no matter that having to wear a pair of specs made you look old.

Though the summer was doing its best to lighten Z's mood, the sky bright, the sun a glittering gold ball, it wasn't working. In part, because you had to add steamy to the summer's heat, Z's shirt, his pants -- the Cavalier itself -- wilting before he'd gone a block.

Inside his office, now an expert at wiggling the desk lamp's wires to make the light come on, Z pushed the rewind button on his answering machine, the hiss of tape promising a message. More trouble, probably.

It could be Ted wanting another favor. Or more likely, blaming Z for putting Ted through such a squeamish night. (One thing it would not be was Ted ringing up to thank Z for helping to promote Teddy's career.)

It might be Detective Addison, saying that the K.C. cops had solved the case of the murdered vagrants. Again, improbable, given the way police procedures worked -- s-l-o-w-l-y.

Or maybe the message was from Susan. Leggy Susan. Rich, black haired, startlingly blue-eyed Susan. The Susan, who was altogether too good for a rough and tumble, dumb 'ol guy like him.

Odds said the message wasn't from Professor Calder. And not from Mr. Smith. If, in spite of knowing nothing about Z -- Z's name, how Z looked, what car Z drove -- Sam Smith had located him, Smith was a better detective than Big Bob Zapolska would ever be. (A stupid speculation to begin with, Smith no hit man and certainly not one with the kind of connections it would take to track Z down.)

The message could be from Mrs. Smith, the woman wondering what was keeping Z from telling her the gory details of how Z had murdered her husband.

Or it might be new business, except at the moment, Z didn't want new business.

His mind unable to stop "squirrel caging," Z put his hand to his forehead.

Feverish. That's what Susan had said. And that's the way he felt. Big time.

Vaguely, Z wondered how he'd feel if he hadn't bolted down a handful of aspirin that morning.

Whatever was wrong with him, one of the symptoms was having trouble taking action, even something simple like pushing the play button on his outdated answering machine.

Forcing himself, Z reached out a shaky finger; managed to get the button pushed.

A blank spot. Then the muffled voice. "I've been trying to get you but I guess you're not coming into work today. Oldsters need their sleep. Ha. Ha. Seriously, call me. In case you've lost my number, it's ...."

Z pushed the stop button. Then rewind.

Z had not forgotten her number; he never forgot numbers.

Going around to the small chair, Z sat down. Picked up. Dialed Jamie, the phone at the other end ringing. And ringing again. "Hi."

"Z."

"So, you just get to work?"

"Yes."

"In the dark of a winter night, I'm up at six and at school before seven every morning. I teach six classes. And have papers to grade at night. That's in the winter, of course. In summer -- do entirely to my generous teacher's salary -- I sit on my broad veranda with a frosty glass of julep in my hand, watching my happy darkies do the work." Z didn't know what to say. Didn't know what he was expected to say. Never knew what any woman expected him to say. "So, that's my life. Getting back to small change, I got in to see the Vice Chancellor. Got to Bateman College with the birds. Had to wait until his excellency breezed in just after nine.

"Did you know there was once a study that showed that the number of keys a person carries indicates his social status? The janitor has all the keys, the president of the company -- coming to work after everything has been unlocked -- has only one. The key to the executive washroom?"

On that scale to determine social class, Z must rate right up there with doctors and lawyers. For Z had only three keys. One to the ignition on the Cavalier. (He'd lost the key to the trunk, the trunk lock broken anyway.) One to his apartment. And one to his office.

Going the company executive one better, Z's lock-picking skills meant he didn't need a single key. Z not saying that because it was never a good idea to contradict a woman.

"And though I almost had to promise to sleep with the slimy little bastard -- in fact, he may have gotten the impression I'm going to sleep with him -- I got our money. He liked my report enough to lick his lips while reading it, the report saying, definitely no ghost. I was able to squeeze out fifteen-hundred apiece from him. That's five-hundred more bucks for each of us than I thought I could get. This was probably because I figured out that he doesn't want anything about his hiring a "ghost hunter" to leak out to the press. Thinks the fact that he went to all that trouble might make reporters start to salivate. What he wants is to flatten the house, then show my report to the TV people if they jump him for knocking down a possible TV story."

It sounded to Z as if Jamie had the Vice Chancellor figured out about right. "Nor can I imagine where he got the idea that I have a boyfriend who's a TV reporter. It must have been when I mumbled something about how I'd always admired anchormen. Men are funny that way. They can get the wrong ideas about a girl."

Yes, Z thought. Particularly when the girl was Jamie Stewart.

"It seems he also came to believe that if he paid up quick, I'd be so happy about receiving the money I'd forget all about anything connected with that old house." Translated: Jamie had coerced the money out of Ashlock. "But you remember the old commercial? 'Promise her anything but give her the shaft?' Men are always making promises they don't intend to keep. In fact, one of the things I like about you, Z, is that you didn't make me any promises. Of course, you hardly talk at all, not that talking is the only thing I like about a man. But anyway, not being as trusting as I was before you spoiled my virginity, I plopped my bottom in Ashlock's chair until he called someone in the business office and explained that he needed two checks cut pronto.

"Then, just to make sure, I wandered over to the comptroller and confirmed that our checks were in the works. It might take a few days for them to blunder through the college system, but you'll be getting your $1,500."

"Thanks."

"I knew you'd be full of flowery praise like that." Z heard her cocky laugh. "That's it for now. It's been fun. Bye."

Z hung up.

About the money, he was satisfied. More than satisfied. About Jamie saying, "That's it for now," Z wasn't so sure. Something every man learns about women is that they have trouble telling the difference between sex-for-fun and what women are always calling love.

Z coughed, his throat feeling stretched like the head of a calfskin drum. Except ... for a "soft" spot of pain on one side at the back of his pallet. Not a good sign.

No more messages on the machine, he'd conduct one more bit of business and go home.

Not feeling that well at all, Z even had to think a moment before he could come up with Mrs. Smith's home number.

"Hello," said the shaky voice.

"Z."

"Thank God you called! It's been days! I've been worried sick that you didn't call! When can you come over?"

"Got to talk to you about that."

"Oh?"

"As you know, I talked to your husband."

"Talked??"

"And decided he's harmless."

The line went as silent as if severed with an ax.

"Harmless?"

"He won't bother you again. I'm sure."

"You talked to him once, and you can tell that!?" Put that way, it did sound silly. What she couldn't know was that the "language" of Z's "talks" got results. "Did you know he's an actor?"

"Yes." And so are you, Z reminded himself, to keep the seesaw balanced.

"Of course, he can seem perfectly fine. It's his job to be convincing in any part he wants to play." Z thought of the man sitting on the divan with a soon-to-be-fired-up Roman candle up his pants; heard again, the man's explanation of what was going on. If Smith was an actor, he was the best one Z had run across.

"That's how I see it."

"And that's it? You're going to do nothing? What about me? You're going to do nothing and I'm going to wake up murdered in my bed!"

"I don't think so. Anyway, there will be no charge."

"You're working for him, now! He's bought you off! Has he hired you to kill me?" And what would be Z's answer to that? The facts, he supposed, for he had nothing better to offer.

"No. He told me the truth. You lied to me."

"Lied to you? How?"

"To start with, you didn't tell me he'd filed to get custody of your son."

"I ... didn't see that making a difference. If he kills me, I'm just as dead, no matter what else he's done."

"And you lied to me when you said he was a hit man." Z wasn't certain about that, though the poverty in which the man was living argued that way.

Another silence over the phone. "I understand the kind of man he is. But getting people who don't know him to believe how violent he can be, isn't easy. So to get you to take this seriously, I ... made up that story. About my husband being a killer. Which, if he kills me, he will be! For all I know, he could have murdered a lot of other people." Z waited. "But don't you see? I had to get you to realize how serious this is."

"You set me up to kill him."

"No! ... Maybe. ... I don't know. To defend their lives, people do desperate things."

"Yeah."

"But now, I can prove it to you! Now, I've got the proof what a beast my husband is!"

"What?"

"I can't ... tell you over the phone. I have to show you.

"Listen," she continued, in a softer tone. "It's been a terrible week. My dog died." Z had seen the dog. Could believe it. "Please, I'm begging you! Come over one more time. Just one more time. And look at what I've got to show you. Then, if it's nothing, you can drop me and go on about your business. I think it's too late for me to get anyone else, but you be the judge. I'm tired of living like a bat in a cave. With the blinds pulled down. Afraid of staying home. Afraid of going out. I want an end to this one way or the other. You can't blame me for fighting for my life, can you? For my boy's life?" Z noted that this was the first time the lady mentioned her son. Could mean something. Maybe not.

"OK."

"Tonight. Late."

"Eleven?"

"Midnight."

Z sighed. Was he ever going to get any rest? No wonder he was catching a cold. "All right."

"Thank you! Oh, thank you!"

"Yeah."

After Z had hung up, he wondered what good this midnight trip would do, the lady's lies cutting his connection with her for all time. On the other hand, Z knew he was as much a sucker for a woman's wiles as any man. For let a woman claim be in trouble, and it was Z to the rescue.

Join the patsies of the world, Mr. Z. No recommendation needed. No references called for. No need, even, to fill out a form.

* * * * *

Chapter 17

Judging the car's speed about right, Z switched off the engine and parking lights to coast quietly down the raven dark street toward the modest home of Vivian Smith. The only remaining sound in the lukewarm, late-night air was tire crunch on a scattering of road sand as Z angled toward the curb. That, and a sleepy insect scraping its shrill call to its equally sleepy mate.

It was the witching hour when sensible people signed the cross to counteract the spells of sorceresses. Specifically, an uncomfortably empty spot in Z's stomach warned him to be ready for whatever unpleasant surprises the attractive-and-decidedly-unpredictable Mrs. Smith might have in store.

As susceptible as Z was to any woman's charms, there was no sense in buzzing into a Venus flytrap unprepared, particularly since the woman had stung him once before, the lady admitting she'd told him that "hit man story" to make Z trigger-happy. Nor could there be a doubt that, using a disguised voice, it was the woman herself who'd warned her husband about Z's approach; done that to panic hubby into going for his gun.

Finding the husband armed, believing him to be a hitter, Z was supposed to have shot him in self defense.

Since Z was also in the business of playing-dangerous-games, he could admire both the woman's plan and the diabolical way she'd set the plot in motion.

Z sighed. It was at times like these he wished he was still a child. At home in bed. Guarded by the hoary Scottish prayer: "From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!"

Returning to the Smith woman -- Z's mind easily distracted for some reason -- what did she think she was going to reveal to him that would convince an already skeptical Z that her husband was a "beast"? A threatening letter sent by the mister? If so, how did she propose to make Z believe she hadn't doctored the letter for Z's benefit? (Z didn't even think he'd be impressed by a cut-off dog's head nestled in the lady's bed.) Once someone lied to him in any fundamental way, it was next to impossible for that person to cozy up to Z again.

Of course, the lady didn't know Z well enough to realize that, for him, the detective/client relationship called for absolute trust at the minimum. Z had to believe in the innocence of his clients in order to justify using an occasional extralegal procedure to get justice. Shatter that confidence, and Z's methods became no more than those of a thug, Z reduced to the level of heavy hitter hired to break a rival's thumbs.

And what was this nonsense about Z needing to come to the lady's house at midnight? Did she think her husband was watching the place until then, that if she came to the door before twelve he'd Uzi a scarlet letter on her chest?

More likely, she believed that late-night disorientation set the proper mood to sell her histrionics as the truth.

These were the thoughts jumbling Z's brain as he coasted to a stop beyond the dark of the lady's house, the house set in the greater blackness behind the Bateman College hill.

What was she doing, hiding inside, afraid a light might scare her with her own dark shadow?

Increasingly, Z had come to believe Mr. Smith's views of his wife's behavior, that the lady was some kind of kook. A man-hater, the hubby had maintained -- a charge, yet to be disproved.

She was certainly a waste of a beautiful woman; a sterile lady living in an arid house, no comfortable cooking smells in there, no scent but furniture polish and the odor of the lady's self-indulgent sweat.

Z stared out the open window of his little car to see that the night was shadow-thick in spite of a distant sheen of stars.

Nothing moved along the street.

Not cats.

Not rats.

Shrinking into the distance were other shadows on that midnight street, smaller and ever smaller doll house-homes, seeming to have been lined along the road by giant children who'd since been trundled off to bed.

Parked, observing his surroundings, an ominous sensation seized Z each time he looked across the street, the Smith house beckoning like a blackened maw, Z cast as "fly" in the age-old web/fly game.

Knock on the front door and step into the lady's parlor? ... "Not bloody likely!" as the Brits would say. ........

Z felt ... sick. So weak, even his case would weight him down. Shook his head to clear it.

When expected in the front, Z had extended his P.I. career -- to say nothing of his life -- by appearing around the back.

Turning to click open his detective satchel, by feel, Z removed his lock-picks, slipping the soft leather packet in his right hip pocket.

What else -- keeping in mind his limited carrying capacity? (When preparing for this evening's "jaunt," Z had debated whether or not to put on his "night fighter" jacket, but in the end, had let the heat make up his mind to leave it behind. The consequence of that decision giving him his pants pockets for carrying what he needed.)

Z took out his sap, of course, stuffing it in his right pants pocket.

Since Z had no idea what entertaining experiences the lady might have prepared for him, the next decision was difficult. He felt he should have something else with him, just in case, but ......

Just in case of what?

Z dug out his cigarette lighter, cupped it with his hand and snapped on the flame, using the flickering light to examine the other items in the case. (When possible, Z much preferred the soft, warm waver of a lighter flame to the cold glare of a soulless penlight.)

Again, Smith's gun was a temptation. He had to get rid of that piece!

Z felt chilly. Shivered. Willed himself to stop shaking.

From the rest of the contents, Z finally selected a couple of cherry bombs -- always good for a distraction. Made to be thrown, they'd explode on contact with any hard surface, producing a satisfying bang ... a long ways away from Z. He put them in his pocket.

What else?

For inspiration, Z turned to look across the street at the shadowy house.

Was the lady even there? ............

Back to ... the problem ............

The one thing Z didn't want to do when entering the blacked-out house was switch on a light, the sudden glare blinding him to possible disaster.

Preferring to dazzle someone else if necessary, an alternative source of illumination might come in handy.

Z considered taking the small fireworks fountain he had in the traveling bag. Set off the fountain and its sparkling fire spray would light up any house.

The negative of that idea was that a fountain might really light up the house, fountains, like their directions said, to be used out of doors, well away from flammable material.

Compromising, Z picked up a couple of medium-sized sparklers -- their draw back that they were awkwardly long and thin -- an obstacle Z overcame by pulling up one pant leg and sticking the fat ends of the sparklers down the inside top of one sock.

Brushing down his pant's cuff to hide the wire handles, he hoped he'd get used to the powder-encrusted wires sticking up the groin-side of his calf.

Next, Z pocketed the can of lighter fluid ... and that was about all he could carry, dressed as he was, in a flimsy short-sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of worn-out jeans.

Before setting out tonight, Z had put some folded Kleenex in his back pocket, the same pocket where he had the lock-picks, unnecessary since the prospect of danger was all it took to dry up nasal drip, Z feeling as good right now as he had all day.

Releasing the lighter's gas valve, the flame winking out, Z slipped the warm cylinder back in his pocket.

As ready as he was going to get, closing the valise, leaving it on the passenger's seat, Z popped the catch on the car door and eased himself into the street, a street that, in spite of a heavenly banner of spangled stars and a hook of golden moon, was little more than shadow.

In hushed reverence for the world in dark perfection, Z pushed the door shut softly, finding himself in the still of night, the air not even stirred by the gentle passage of a midnight ghost. Standing by the Cavalier -- Z gave in to the temptation to lean forward and press his hot forehead on the car's cool steel roof.

Closing his eyes, imagining his walk to the house, Z remembered he didn't have to worry about the dog. Poor dog. Still, if you were going to be that sick, better to be out of the world than in it, infirmity and age the "reaper's" calling card -- creation's sardonic invitation to embrace the certainty of death. ..........................

Able to think of no good reason for remaining in the street, Z straightened with a sigh; turning, limped slowly across the asphalt divide.

A twinge of pain saw him over the curb where, going up the walk, he slipped past the mournful doghouse.

Detouring around the windowless, closed garage, arriving at the corner of the house, Z began to slide down the house's right side, the ground soft underfoot.

At the back of the house, Z turned the corner to find .....

Unable to see through the night's impenetrable gloom, what Z was sensing was an empty territory back there, rather like the area surrounding the ghost house ... though an extensive garden accounted for part of this open ground ... Z smelling fresh-plowed earth, chemical fertilizer, and insecticide.

A garden? An odd hobby, Z thought, for the Smith woman, particularly since his clear impression of the lady was that she was the indoors type.

Bang!

Funny, how the brightest bolts of insight come in the dark of night, the picture that had just flashed into Z's mind one of himself standing in that miserable mist, under that miserable overpass, holding that miserable, "Work for Food" sign. As if in a vision, he again saw the big, four-door American car slow down, Z having the thought that the driver could be Mrs. Smith. Dismissing that notion because he'd just been thinking about the lady, his mind projecting the woman's image on the driver.

The car had then burned rubber getting out of there; an extreme reaction, no matter how ugly the driver found Z to be.

The idea that had just occurred to Z was that the lady in the car might actually have been the Smith woman. Could she have been shopping for cheap labor to work this very garden, gunning off when she'd recognized Z?

Pretty bizarre, but hardly the most freakish of coincidences in an increasingly crazy world.

Assuming -- just assuming -- that it was the Smith woman at the overpass, Z wondered what she'd thought when she recognized that Z, the man she'd hired to murder her husband, was standing there beside the road as she drove by? As paranoid as the lady was, she could even have thought Z was shadowing her.

Another idea. Could having seen Z under the overpass be the reason she'd accused him of working for her husband?

Following that line of conjecture a little farther, might the lady's house now be dark because the woman had panicked as the time neared for Z's arrival, that the lady had "peeled out" again because, in her mind, Z was coming to murder her?

All speculation. All wild speculation.

Z shook his head. Regretted that quick move when his brain began to throb.

He was spending far too much time ruminating -- not enough acting.

Breaking the chains of conjecture, Z shuffled forward, located, then crept up the low concrete steps to the back door, as he did so, fishing out his disposable plastic lighter and snapping it on.

Was shocked by what he saw!

More accurately, Z was surprised by what he didn't see. Though a deadbolt protected the lady's front door, the back door was barred with nothing but the original spring lock the house's builder had installed, the cheapest, most easily picked lock there was.

Numbly, Z released the lighter-tab to push the butane match back in his pocket.

How could the lady, fearful as she was, have failed to put a real lock on the back door?

It simply made no sense -- long and painful experience with the nonsensical, teaching Z it was time to back off.

To listen.

To sniff the air like a wild dog on the scent of an intriguing, but mysterious, prey.

On the other hand, the only manly thing to do was crack the lock; get in there and face down whatever challenge lay within.

Was she in there?

Sitting in the dark?

Waiting for him with yet another gun?

Z had already confiscated one Smith revolver. ... But this was America. The land of the free and the home of the NRA. For all Z knew, the lady could, at this very moment, be loading a bazooka.

Fresh out of new ideas -- these "insights" little more than an excuse for delaying entry -- Z dragged out his billfold, by feel, thumbed out the plastic card he used for defeating spring locks.

Silently, taking elaborate care, Z inserted the card in the door crack, after a moment, slipped back the lock-tongue and pushed the door in, just a little. ...........

Laundry room.

That's what that wet, soapy smell seeping through the door crack meant.

Good.

If the house was set up on a conventional pattern, the kitchen would be to the right.

Z replaced the card in his wallet, then the billfold in his back pocket. Quickly, before additional speculation paralyzed him, he was through the door and inside in the even greater blackness of the house.

After easing the outside door shut behind him so there was no chance of it banging if a breeze came up, Z paused.

Laundry room. No mistake.

Z invited into the living room, now standing in the laundry room, he could imagine that the rest of the home was rather like a larger version of the ghost house, the two structures roughly in the same neighborhood, similar in style (though perhaps reversed on the lot,) because they'd been built at approximately the same time.

His eyes refusing to adjust to the almost total blackness of the laundry, his ears ringing with the clanging stillness of the room, Z slid his hand along the right wall ... until he located the inside door.

Slowly twisting the door knob, opening the door with the same fluid motion, he was through into the next, even darker, pool of space.

Reaching behind him to ease shut the utility room door, Z knew he was in the kitchen ......

Where something stopped him cold!

It was ... the air. Still that furniture polish odor, but something more .......

The only word Z could think of to describe the complex mix of odors that had been added to the polish's "lemony" smell was ... man.

So, how do men smell? Z wasn't sure. Only that there was a Y chromosome of difference between a man's smell and a woman's.

Mr. Smith? Could the Smith woman have lied to Z in reverse, her husband a contract killer after all? Could Mr. Smith have shouldered his way in earlier that evening to learn that Mr. Z was due at midnight, Smith the killer, skulking about in the dark to pay Z back for that little fright Z had caused him?

Too many questions.

All Z knew was that the minute Z made a sound or switched on a light, Z would become a perfect target for anyone still in the dark.

Z was sweating up a summer storm! If he had any sense, he'd back out now while he could; return when least expected; show up by the light of day.

Damn! Z had tried to quit this case. But by agreeing to see Mrs. Smith tonight, hadn't yet resigned, and so owed the woman his best efforts.

Results Guaranteed.

Settling himself so he could think, Z was comforted by the knowledge that whoever was in hiding would figure Z -- since he'd been invited -- would come to the front door. With the ambush -- if that's what this was -- set for the front, Z should be able to ease himself across the kitchen floor in back, remaining undetected until he was opposite the inside entrance to the kitchen. There, he'd be in position to hurl one of the cherry bombs down the hallway, making an explosion somewhere Z wasn't.

The reason for deliberately making such a noise, of course, was to cause whoever was in the house to reveal his location, perhaps by firing at the sound.

The plan had a possibly fatal flaw, however. If the other person didn't take the bait, Z would have lost whatever surprise he'd achieved by gaining entrance to the house.

What Z really needed was a way of lighting up the other person's position -- something the single flash of a cherry bomb wouldn't do.

A compromise might be to produce a light -- but one that didn't come on until Z had vamoosed -- a light designed to draw the woman/man to it; one right there in the kitchen, perhaps.

Considering how to time a light to come on after Z had left the kitchen, Z had an idea: a thought that bubbled up from childhood memories.

At least Z now had a plan.

Carefully, Z began moving about the small kitchen, feeling his way until he found the stove.

Patting in the dark, he touched the burners on the top.

Good.

A gas stove.

Brushing his hands over the stove top again, Z found what he'd hoped for, a spot of warmth in the metal near the center, making this an old stove, old stoves equipped with ever-burning pilot lights!

If Z could just lift off one of the grates over the burners, he could reach the flame buried deep inside.

Yes.

At least what he had in mind was now a possibility.

Z's plan formulated, cautiously, he floated off an iron burner grate, setting it carefully on the cabinet top running along the right side of the stove.

And there, glowing feebly in the recessed center of the stove, was the small, blue flame of the gas pilot.

Squatting slowly, scuffing up his pant leg, Z pulled one of the sparklers out of the band of his sock.

What he'd remembered from his youth was how hard it was to light the Fourth's first sparkler, needing to hold its blunt, gray head in the strong flame of a wooden kitchen match for what seemed like forever. (Sometimes, it took two matches to get the job done.) Once a sparkler was lit, however, the best way to light another was to touch the second sparkler's head to the dying sparkler's welder-hot blaze of crackling light -- lighting the next sparkler before the first one sizzled out to an incandescent glow of red-hot, almost-molten wire.

A slow-to-light sparkler giving him his time-delay, Z bent the soft wire handle of the sparkler into a loop, circling it around one of the other front burners in such a way that the business end of the sparkler could reach the pilot light. Adjusting the handle further, Z angled the malleable iron wire until the tip of the sparkler touched the small flame of the pilot light.

With the tiny pilot slowly heating the end of the sparkler, Z estimated he had from ten to fifteen seconds to get out of the kitchen, down the short hall, and into either the bathroom or one of the bedrooms -- before the sparkler caught.

And Z was quietly, but quickly, out of the kitchen into the hall, touching his way along the wall of that narrow corridor as best he could, hoping to find a door in the dark. (Z's preference was the bathroom; less chance of an assassin lying in wait for him there, he thought.)

And ... there was a door, Z fumbling for the handle, getting it turned, pushing the door open, slipping quickly inside, pushing shut the door.

Gently caressing the space inside, Z felt ... a sink. He was in the bathroom; his luck was holding!

All was quiet in the rest of the house, all dark, but not for long! When the sparkler caught like a psychedelic blowtorch . ............

Again, Z longed to have Smith's gun. ...........

If not a gun ... why not a sword?

Bending over quickly to extract the second sparkler from his sock, Z dug out his lighter one more time, snapped it on and applied the flame to the sparkler's tip, willing the sparkler to catch in all its glowing splendor!

It was then that Z heard thuds out there, someone with large feet charging, blundering down the corridor into the kitchen.

The kitchen sparkler had begun to flare!

At the same instant, Z's own sparkler caught in a blaze of white-hot glory!

No gunshots.

Instead, a kind of crashing about in the kitchen.

Now or never!

Lighter replaced, sap out and in his right hand, sparkler in his left, Z was out of the bathroom and loping down the hall to swing into the kitchen, the cook room eerily transformed by the glittery, larger than life outline of a man, his back to Z, the man having Z's coiled-up, still guttering, stove-sparkler in one hand, a knife in the other.

Hearing Z enter, the big man whirled, extending his arm to slash at Z with the knife.

Not the best move the man could have made.

With the cool advantage of surprise, Z easily avoided the knife, in turn, branded the man across the back of his knife hand with Z's own, blazing sparkler, the man screaming as he dropped the blade, the knife clattering to the tile floor.

Since this was to be a "long-range" fight, Z quickly switched the sparkler to his right hand, the sap to his left.

Rallying, the man stabbed at Z with the coiled-handled shorter sparkler -- missing as Z floated back like a butterfly in preparation to sting like a bee.

Countering, Z lunged forward to sear the man between the eyes, the man screaming again, throwing up one hand, not only burned but also blinded by the sudden intensity of the blistering light.

Trying to rally, all the man could do was make a clumsy throw of his sparkler, Z ducking successfully.

Unarmed, the big man took the only option available to him: to blunder out the kitchen's back door, stumble through the laundry room, and slam out the back to pound off over the soft grass yard, moving at a pace Z couldn't match.

End of the fight.

A decision in 30 seconds of the first round.

As for the post-fight color coverage, Z would have to mention the new, almost Hindu, caste mark blazed between his opponent's eyes -- not forgetting the facial feature that had previously identified his adversary -- the metal plate installed above his brows!

* * * * *

Chapter 18

The fight was over so quickly Z hardly had time to be afraid -- but he was scared now!

Both sparklers sputtered out by this time, the kitchen was devil-dark again. Slipping his blackjack into his pants pocket, Z put his "dead" sparkler on the stove so he could use both hands to wipe sweat from his face and forehead. He was damp all over, shirt sweated through ....

What did Detective Addison say was the madman's name? .........

Z must be sicker than he thought; he'd never had trouble recalling names, or numbers. ..............

Ruble.

Dale Ruble.

It was not that Z could no longer think, it was just that there seemed to be a delay inside his brain.

Dale Ruble, the crazy with a steel-topped head.

Z continued to stand in the middle of the blackly silent room.

Weak.

Trembling.

Almost paralyzed.

But able to think again, the middle pieces of the jigsaw beginning to arrange themselves into a pattern.

An earlier part of the puzzle was finding the bodies of the missing men; tonight's piece, the recognition that it was the maniac who'd been lying in wait for him.

Ruble. The guy Detective Addison suspected of snuffing the missing vagrants, the loony who'd been bumming cross country, with access to desperate men because he was one.

Somehow linked to the Smith house -- had Addison said the mad man was the Smith woman's cousin?? -- it was a good bet the crazy had been burying his K.C. victims in the basement of the "ghost house." The mutilations said so. Also that the Smith and the "ghost" house were roughly in the same neighborhood.

Exactly how these pieces fit, Z didn't know, only that, with thought, he felt he could nudge them closer together.

More settled, Z's strength returning, he dug out his penlight, by its shine, did a little house cleaning; first putting the burned-out (but still hot) sparkler wires in the stainless steel sink. You had to watch out for hot sparkler wires; couldn't just throw them in the yard; not if you were running around in the dark with bare feet ..........

Z wrenched his mind from the past -- made himself concentrate on the job at hand: corralling the hot wires and reassembling the stove.

The kitchen returned to good order, Z snapped off the little light to save its batteries while he tried, once more, to get a grip on what had happened here.

First -- Z more and more certain it was Mrs. Smith at the overpass -- it looked like the woman was in the habit of picking up "Work For Food" labor to tend her garden. Why a garden at all, was the problem. Was the lady so poverty-stricken she had to grow her own vegetables to stretch the family budget?

What about alimony? Child support?

Judging by the lifestyle of her ex, she wouldn't be receiving much.

What she couldn't be doing was supplementing her income by acting. Not in an off, off, off-Broadway place like Kansas City.

But ... gardening!? It was simply impossible to imagine the less-than-domesticated Smith woman canning peas. (On the other hand, fewer sayings were as true as, "Desperate people do desperate things.")

A second point. The woman an admitted liar, it was easy to believe she'd "stretched the truth" when saying she didn't know Ruble, the lady not only acquainted with her cousin, but apparently welcoming him to her home.

It was at that moment, Z standing by the stove, starting to shake again in the dark, that Z had a horrible thought!

While it was Mrs. Smith who'd made the appointment to see Z tonight, it was Ruble who was here as the "greeter," raising the possibility that the distraught lady was .......

Dreading what he might find, Z snapped on his penlight to guide him out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Reaching the closed master bedroom, he forced himself to lift his hand; to place it on the glass-crystal handle; to turn the knob.

Slowly, pushing in the creaking door, reluctantly raising the feeble light ........ he was relieved to see that the room was empty, the bed made, everything in place.

With renewed hope, Z stepped inside, stooped to look under the woman's bed.

After that, fearful the family skeleton would rattle out, Z eased open the closet door ... finding clothing on hangers, shoes on the floor.

The explosion of Z's long-held breath made the loudest sound in the silent house since the loony's exit.

One down. .... More to go.

Walking back down the hall past the bathroom, past the kitchen, Z flashed his small light around the other bedroom; was thankful to find it had the same, settled look.

This was the boy's room, a football on the child's bare desk, also a radio the boy had built from a kit. Mostly though, Z knew it was the boy's room because of the small size of the bed and dresser.

Going back down the hall, turning right through the arch into the living room, Z gave that sanitized space the same, low-light, once-over.

Chair, divan, end tables, drapes, pictures, weights. Nothing disturbed.

Nor -- retracing his steps to the hall, locating the door to the basement -- did horrors await him in the house's half-cellar, a flash of his light showing him a basement with a solid cement floor, thank God!

Down, then back up the basement stairs, backtracking through the kitchen, no terror lurked in the far end of the utility room.

Discovering the door to the garage on the other side of the laundry room, Z went through it -- to find no evidence of what any respectable TV cop would call "foul play."

No car, either, the missing woman off somewhere.

A disappointment -- though considering the luck Z had been having lately, a minor one.

In addition to the woman's cultivating tools along the wall, she'd parked her garden tractor at the back; near the tractor, its attachments: mower, tiller, utility hauler.

His search over, Z let the penlight's bouncing ball lead him back to the kitchen, the room of his recent triumph having, somehow, chosen itself as his base of operations.

Remembered Ruble's knife, seeing it on the floor by the sink where Ruble dropped it, Z squatted for a closer look ... to find nothing special about the blade ... if you discounted all the people it had slashed.

Deciding to leave the cutlery where it was in the forlorn hope that usable fingerprints might be found on it, Z stood; snapped off the penlight.

Funny, about the knife. If Z's picture of Ruble-the-Vagrant-Killer was accurate, Ruble ought to have had a small caliber weapon on him, the gun Addison said the sicko used to shoot the missing men. (If he'd been carrying the gun, he'd have used it on Z.)

Taken all together, it had been a good night's work, capped off by Z being wrong about what might have happened to the Mrs. and her son.

Thank God all evil thoughts didn't materialize!

Hitting a logical dead-end, all Z could do was back up and start again.

Z was to meet the Smith woman here at midnight -- midnight (Z consulted his watch) 20 minutes ago.

She and her son were not here, however.

Why?

Adding the lady's disappearing act to the knowledge that her car had also "fled," meant she'd driven off with the boy .... taken a powder, scrammed, bugged out, moseyed off. .... Skipped, skedaddled. (Once Z's fevered brain got to echoing like that, it was hard to get it stopped.)

Instead of the woman waiting for him, the wacko had been here, clearly alerted to the prospect of Z's visit.

Conclusion: the woman had told Ruble Z was coming ... before deliberately leaving the house herself .........

Sick as Z was, the truth forced itself on his misfiring brain! The lovely lady had arranged for Ruble to murder Z, much in the same manner she'd hired Z to kill her husband.

But ... why? What good would Z's death do her?

Only one benefit. The elimination of the man who knew of her plans to dispose of Mr. Smith.

Simple.

Nor could there be a doubt that, after Z was dead, her husband would be next.

Instead of 'kissin' cousin's, the Rubles were crazy cousins, causing Z to wonder if Ruble and Mrs. Smith were of the same blood, insanity sometimes running in ....

Z had another thought. Was it possible the woman had planned both murders for the same night, that the psycho had killed Mr. Smith earlier in the evening?

Or ... might it be the other way around, the lunatic planning to murder Z first, then the husband?

Didn't it make sense that, if the husband was not already dead, he was on the way to being dead?

Z had to get out of there!

* * * * *

It had been top speed all the way from the Smith home in Liberty to Mr. Smith's apartment on Vivion.

Gasping for air as he started to ascend the last flight of stairs to third, Z was so exhausted he thought about dropping to all fours to crawl up the last few, carpeted steps. Would have done it if he hadn't had to use one hand to drag along his satchel.

Then, too, a nagging pain had begun in his chest ... none of those things mattering. If Smith was still alive, the least Z could do was warn him, maybe get him out of there.

Off the top step at last, pausing on the dimly lighted landing to pant back some strength, Z wondered how he was going to warn Smith. (Smith could hardly be expected to open his door to a post-midnight knock.)

No choice. Z would have to break in again, a relatively easy task since the cracked-varnish door had the same old lock Z had finessed before.

The plastic card trick working again, Z and his traveling bag were quickly inside, Z pushing the door shut behind him.

Waiting for one of his "shivers" to pass, Z snapped on his penlight; saw that the Murphy bed had been pulled down at the back of the living room, a sheet covering a body that sagged down in the bed's center.

Edging around the divan, approaching hesitantly, Z saw a figure beneath the sheet. Saw it ... breathe.

Smith.

Sound asleep.

Z's strength somewhat returned, the pain in his chest easing, Z returned to the door to snap on the predictable wall switch beside the jamb, the switch lighting the floor lamp to one side of the shabby sofa.

Smith stirred but didn't wake.

Circling the moldy, brown couch, stopping at the side of the bed, Z shook the man by the shoulder, gently.

Slowly, Smith opened his eyes; looked as confused as he was rumpled.

"Shuuuu," Z said, putting his forefinger before his lips in the time-honored gesture for silence.

"What ...?"

"I've come to warn you."

"Warn me ...?"

Z thought the best wake-up call might be to tell Smith the building was on fire, the ploy you were supposed to use when attacked by a mugger. You didn't yell, "Police!" You yelled, "Fire!" Yell for the police and public-spirited citizens fled in all directions; yell fire, and people came running, nothing Americans like better than gathering in large numbers to impede the fire department!

"Remember the Roman candle?" Z could see that revelation sink in, the man waking up at last, eyebrows rising, eyes going wide. The fellow didn't like the look of Z without the black hood any better than with it. "Your wife sold me a bill of goods." Even Z's apology didn't seem to help ... much. "She's trying to kill you."

At last, Z had said something the man could agree with, Smith nodding soberly.

Smith sat up.

Braced himself with his arms.

"So ...," the Mister started, Z cutting him off.

"No time."

"What?"

"She's sending somebody."

"To kill me?" Z nodded. "And I should believe ... you?"

The fellow had a point. The last time they'd met hadn't been a triumph for the spirit of brotherhood, making it difficult for Z to convince the man that, this time, Z was one of the good guys.

Ah! Two birds with one .....

Z squatted down to put his case beside the bed; snapped it open; got out Smith's gun.

Again, Smith's brown eyes dilated in fear.

"Here," Z said, handing the gun to Smith, butt first. "Check it."

Clumsily, the small man took the gun, then fumbled to release the catch that allowed the revolver to "break"; finally managed it; saw that bullets were in the cylinder; then had to struggle to get the gun clicked back together.

This man was a hitter? Smith knew less about guns that Z.

Still, holding his gun ought to make Smith feel better about Z being in the room. "Get dressed. Maybe it's tonight."

The man seeming to understand that Z wasn't the killer, Smith swept his legs out from under the sheet and slipped out of bed.

The fact that the guy slept in his underwear would make it easier for him to get dressed in a hurry.

First putting the gun on the end table, Smith began struggling into the shirt, pants, and shoes he'd laid out for the morning.

Was moving quickly, at last, but not fast enough!

For while the man was throwing on his clothes, Z had gone to the window to edge back the thick curtain. Seeing what he'd feared most: a big four-door American car pulling up under a giraffe-like mercury-vapor street lamp, the car stopping in a bus zone, just back of the fireplug that had reserved a similar space for Z's Cavalier. If the Smith woman -- stashed somewhere -- had loaned Ruble her car ...?

Z had to get Smith out. Now!

But by some other means than the front stairs, if possible. For the odds were, by the time Smith was going down, the maniac would be climbing up.

Not very hopefully, Z asked, "You got a back way out?" Turning, Z saw that Smith was ready -- not presentable, but ready.

"Sure."

"Yeah?" Z was surprised. He hadn't seen a second door when he'd been here the last time. Today's building codes said you had to have at least two exits to an apartment, but this was an old building .....

"There." Smith was pointing to a curtain at the back of the room, Z previously taking that drapery to be covering a clothes closet.

Limping across the room, Z slid the curtain back on its rod; saw that the space was a closet, a rack of Smith's clothes down one side, but also that there was a narrow door in the back wall. "It connects to a hall leading to the stairs coming up to the apartments faced the other way," Smith explained.

Z nodded; had even speculated that might be the building's arrangement.

"Got a car?"

"No."

Z fished out the ring with his car key, apartment, and office key; crossed the room again to hand the keys to Smith who pocketed them without asking questions. Good. "Got paper?"

From a small drawer in the shaky end table, Smith provided a piece of typing paper and ball point, Smith bending over the table to write, Z dictating Z's address. "That's my apartment in Gladstone. Go out the back way. Take the Cavalier down at the curb. Drive there. Wait for me."

"But ....." His back now turned to Z, Smith was obediently folding up the paper, putting it in his shirt pocket.

"No time. Go!"

And Smith ... went ... the man on his way to safety, at least for now.

As swiftly as he could manage, Z crossed between the divan and the old-fashioned, free-standing steam radiator by the front wall; stopped there to peek out the window again, every fast move causing him chest pain and shortness of breath.

To see a man getting out of the car down below; the guy apparently needing time to look over the apartment building.

The question of the moment was, did Mrs. Smith have detailed knowledge of her husband's apartment? If so, had she told Ruble about that back door? If Ruble hadn't learned of the closet exit, Z could slip out that way. Live to run away another day.

If Ruble knew about the back way out, however .......

Putting himself in Ruble's place, once the big man was inside the apartment -- and that flimsy hallway door wouldn't hold him for a moment -- he'd recognize the signs of recent occupancy. (A touch on the lumpy mattress of the pull down bed would show it was still warm.) Since no one had passed him on the front stairs, Ruble would try the back stairs, Z feeling so woozy he didn't figure he could duck out the back fast enough to keep Ruble from catching him. Barely a match for Mr. Crazy when Z had the advantage of surprise, another fight would be no contest. Then, too, the missing, small-caliber gun the sicko had used to kill the vagrants was apt to show up -- this time in Ruble's murderous hand.

Enough was enough! Z would have to forget that nonsense about never using a gun! He'd seen Smith lay his piece on the end table. Z would use it to plug .....

No gun ........

For a long moment, Z stared numbly at the empty tabletop. ...... Smith had picked up the gun and taken it with him.

Z shook his head; paid the price with throbs of pain, the angry pulses in his brain hammering him back to reality.

In the glory days of high school football, if your offense wasn't getting the job done, you had to call on your defense. Hold the other team, and you could catch a break.

What was that old saying? The best offense was a good defense?

Or was it that the best defense was a good offense?

Z couldn't remember .......

Exerting all his remaining will, Z made himself concentrate. No matter how bad he felt, he had to.

With nothing he could use to fight the lunatic, what Z needed was something to slow Ruble down.

But what? .............

Z knew! He'd go into the semi-kitchen and blow out the stove's pilot light. Then turn on the gas burners, still plenty of time to fill the tiny apartment with natural gas. All he'd have to do then was to rig some kind of detonator .....

No!

There was no gas stove in this apartment, Z remembered. No stove of any kind. Z had seen the hot plate Smith used to warm his gruel.

No gas stove.

But maybe there was another way to make ... gas ........

As for the detonator .......

Running out of time, Z limped to the wall switch and snapped off the floor lamp, the room plunged into darkness. Getting out his penlight again, switching it on, he returned to the non-kitchen.

The maniac probably trudging up the lower stairs by now, Z got to work.

Slipping the lighter fluid can out of his left pants pocket, finding a sharp kitchen knife in the first of the two pullout drawers, Z laid the can on the counter, stabbing into the can's plastic side a number of times, each time twisting the knife to make a wide, ragged hole. Satisfied that his butchery of the can rivaled any wounds the loony had inflicted on his victims, Z turned the can over, shaking out the lighter fluid through the rips.

After dumping it all, three, quick swipes of Z's hand spread the volatile liquid over the counter top, the highly refined petroleum immediately evaporating over the width of the area, the pungent smell of the gas permeating the tiny apartment.

Wanting to give his plan as much chance to succeed as possible, Z fished out his cigarette lighter and laid it on the counter; used the knife handle to smash the lighter's butane reserve, the butane also bubbling into flammable vapor.

Z would just have to hope he'd released enough fumes to do the trick.

Trying to breathe as little as possible of the room's stupefying, gas-oxygen mix, still using his penlight, knife in the other hand, Z went to the lamp.

Reaching up under the shade, again using the knife handle, Z carefully cracked off the glass of the light bulb -- at the same time careful to preserve the tungsten filament inside. The idea was that, if the killer flipped on the wall switch after breaking in, there'd be a hot time in the old house tonight as the white hot filament burned in two. (Provided there was enough gas trapped in the room for the flaming steel to set it off.)

If the light bulb trick failed, a second possible detonator would be the madman himself. After ramming his way in, snapping off a shot at Smith-in-bed, the first spurt of fire from his gun barrel setting off the room's vapor. (To give his "alternate detonator" a better chance, Z invested the 5 seconds it took to create a "sleeping Smith" out of a pillow and wadded-up blanket under Smith's sheet.)

As satisfied as Z could be under the circumstances, beginning to choke in the polluted air, he picked up his carryall, headed into the closet, and went through the rear door to creep down the narrow access hall, soon entering a wider corridor leading to the back apartments' stairs.

Arriving at the broad reverse stairway at last, breathing hard, Z started to stagger down, leaning heavily on the bannister, barely having the strength to keep from falling.

Z knew he was in bad shape: partly from his exertion while setting the trap for Mr. Wrong; mostly because he was as sick as he could remember, his breath a wheeze, the pain in his chest tearing at him with each, small sip of air.

But not in such sad shape he couldn't hear the blast! Quite a noise! Particularly since the blowup occurred on the other side of the building and, without a doubt, way up on third.

* * * * *

Chapter 19

One of the things Z liked about the Northland was that all-night convenience stores were scattered through the "bedroom" community of Gladstone. You could get anything you needed, any time you needed it.

Even with the abundance of midnight establishments available to him, he'd never know how he managed to stumble through the dark until he found a 24-Hours store. (Maybe he was kept moving by the harsh wail of sirens and by flashing red and white lights as police and fire trucks roared by on Vivion to whine down somewhere beyond him.)

At last arriving at the gaudily lit, but customer deserted 24-Hours, he had two calls to make.

First, though, Z wandered through the usual rows of metal shelves pimping girly magazines, cans of corn, baby peas, jars of olives, coke, beef jerky sticks, potato chips, corn chips, and cow chips. Until he found what he was looking for: a replacement lighter.

As Z came up to the counter, a nervous-looking young man in a white shirt and black string tie was cowering in the middle of the elevated, 24-Hours service island, hunkered down where he was, Z guessed, to be within hugging distance of a prominent sign pleading that the night clerk had no key to the store's safe.

Z plunked down the lighter with a couple of bucks.

"Anything else, sir," the youth chirped as he pecked up the bills and clawed at the cash register's keys. "Milk, bread ... beer?" Because Z shook his head, the machine stuck its rectangular tongue out at him, Z pocketing the offered change to the clerk's memorized invitation to, "Come back soon." To be loosely translated, as: "I'm glad you didn't shoot me."

Z didn't know what all-night clerks were paid, but was sure it wasn't enough.

Plastic lighter comfortably in his pocket, Z went outside to one end of the store's "porch" to find the pay phone. Rattled in a quarter. Dialed.

Rings. ... And more rings.

It was so late that the night's breeze was almost cool as Z sagged against the phone's lighted shelf; leaned his cheek against the .......

"Whatdayawan'?"

"Z."

"Who?"

"Ted. It's Z."

"Somabitch. What 'a tim'?" A pause. "You know wa' time it is!?"

"Yeah."

"You gone crazy!?" Though Teddy's voice was still saliva-string thick, at least he was awake.

"Want to catch the killer?" The dead space over the line was Ted's brain trying to overtake his mouth.

"Of the bums in the basement?"

"Yeah."

"Well ... sure. Who wouldn't?" Z could hear the tone of "promotion" creep into Ted's voice.

"Been an explosion. Might be a body. The killer."

"How do you know?"

"Look for a gun. Small-caliber. Ask Addison to check a firing against the slugs that killed the vagrants."

"Think he'll find a match?"

"Yes."

"What'll I say about why I'm interested? I'm off-duty. Have been for hours."

"Couldn't sleep. Listening to a police scanner, you heard about the bang. The gun, you connected with the bodies you found."

"Yeah. OK."

After Z had mumbled Mr. Smith's address and hung up, Z made the other call, to the Gladstone Taxi company.

Waiting for the cab, leaning against the brick building, Z tried to listen to the night noises but was uncertain if what he heard was bug-song or his head buzzing.

Maybe all he needed was sleep; maybe being tired was the largest part of feeling rotten. He'd get home. Smith should be there. Z would hold the cab and send Smith to a motel; then get some sleep himself. Have Smith call him in the morning. By then, Ted should have found out something. If the explosion had blown the last puzzle piece into place like Z thought, the case of the vagrant killer should be closed.

What Z would do about Mrs. Smith -- he'd figure out later, when he wasn't so ... tired.

* * * * *

It must have been the incessant ringing of the phone that had awakened Z.

Still sleepy, but feeling better, he got out of bed.

Rounding the corner into the small front room, Z sank into the creaky divan, its plastic "cloth" feeling smooth on his bare backside.

"Z."

"It's about time you answered!" Ted on the other end. Not in the best of moods.

"What'd you find?"

"Not a God-damned thing, is what I found! I get out to that firetrap, and there's cops and firemen all over. And lights flashing and kids bawling and every friggin' weirdo in the world come out to gawk -- like it always is when some damn thing happens in the middle of the night. So I got to beat a blue over the head with my shield before the dumb bastard lets me past. And I go up a million stairs and ask some stupid questions of the blues on top. And what did I get for it? I got standing there with shit all over my face!" Ted meant egg on his face. ...... On the other hand, brown-noser that Ted was ...............

"No ... bang?"

"Oh, there was a blast all right. Some God-damned, lousy shack-up about blew apart. But I didn't get any credit for finding that out. Hell, everybody had been there an hour before I showed. And no one believed that crummy story you said to use, about being up and on the scanner. So I had to take some sass from shit heads not good enough to lick my boots." Ted probably meant shine his shoes.

"Nothing else?"

"That's what I'm tryin' to tell you!"

"Body?"

"Not only no, but hell no!"

"Gun?"

"Nothin'."

Z was sorry to hear it. He'd hoped this "ghost house" murder mess was over. "So, what's the read?"

"Nobody knows, far as I could figure. Bayliss caught the incoming. It's his case." Paul Bayliss was another of Gladstone's finest -- and he wasn't too bad. Tall. Almost jolly enough to be a funeral director. "And that's the only good thing about this whole, God-damned mess. Detective Bayliss, who thinks he's better 'en God hisself, don't know any more about this than a monkey at the zoo." Z waited. "'Cause there was this blast all right, except nobody knows how that could be. It was like a gas connection leaked, except there turns out to be no stove. No gas in the place at all. Had steam heat, even. Could be a bomb, but there's nothing left of it if that's it. Techs was still going over the place when I got there, sniffin' like dogs after a bitch in heat, tryin' to smell cordite. But they weren't finding nothing. So somehow, Bayliss don't know how, he thinks gas must have seeped in. Maybe a backed-up sewer. Sewer gas. And a spark set it off. Wrecked the place. No fire, though, and that left them holier-than-thou fire department meat-beaters standin' around holding their dicks, waitin' for somethin' to piss on." Teddy took a strangled breath. "The guy who owns the place ....."

"Owns?"

"Rents, I guess. Guy who rents it is named -- get this -- Sam Smith. If that ain't an alias, I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground." When Ted got excited, his English reverted to what it had been before somebody told him detectives talked classy. As for not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground ...... But Z let it pass. "Anyway, the guy wasn't there at the time, which if he had been, his ears would still be ringing -- if they could have found enough of 'em by scrapin' 'em off the walls. The big bang woke a lot of folks thereabouts, and Bayliss had questioned some before I showed. Seems Smith has a job somewhere in Waldo -- though nobody knew what." Waldo was another old-time perimeter town, now fully digested by the K.C. amoeba. "The blues assigned to do it will run him down tomorrow. If they ever find him. A guy with a suspicious-sounding name like that. Could be in Buena Vista, by now." Ted probably meant Buenos Aires, Z wondering if there were still extradition problems between Argentina and the U.S. "So what I'm saying is, don't do me no more big favors in the middle of the night!"

"Sorry."

"It's bad enough to be sitting at my desk like the living dead. Being smirked at by Bayliss who's got to think I'm the world's biggest prick for showin' up off-duty in the middle of the night. And my wife's mad at me 'cause the phone got her awake." Z had met Teddy's wife. Once.

"Thought you'd find more."

"Yeah. Well, I'm not even askin' how you knew about this. 'Cause I don't want to testify at your trial." Ted -- pretty much run-down but still sulking. "So here's the word. You got some little something for me in the daytime, call. If not ....."

"Right."

"Well, OK, then."

By the time Z hung up, the heat was beginning to build, Z getting himself up and twisting on the dials of the air coolers. After that, Z laid the makings of a small fire in the living room/kitchenette fireplace: kindling and a wedge of oak log from the basket under the table. Plus a splash of kerosene.

Trying his new lighter for the first time, Z was pleased to see it worked. More and more, things ... didn't.

After that, Z fixed himself a sandwich, all the while feeling better.

His nose had stopped dripping.

And he didn't seem to have the headache he'd developed after getting home last night.

His throat was sore, but not much worse than usual.

All and all, Z believed he was on the mend, except it was still taking him hours of rest to buy ten minutes of feeling human.

Considering his condition, it was something other than the "tired" he used to get from a day's worth of lifting boxes as a warehouse man. Nor was it the "after the big game" weariness when he played football. When you could hardly lift a finger. No. This was an inner tiredness.

Z had only eaten half the sandwich -- all he wanted anyway -- when the phone rang again.

Getting up from the less-than-steady chair he always sat in at the wobbly table, Z circled the popping metal firebox to pick up the phone, Z turning to sit down and let the worn-out old divan absorb him. Vaguely, he thought he should have returned to the bedroom to put on his light, summer robe. But as long as it was the phone, not the doorbell ..........."Z."

"Sam Smith." Z put a finger in his free ear to damp down the chugging of the air coolers.

"Where are you?" When Z had gotten home last night, he'd directed Smith to take Z's cab, with instructions to find a motel and stay there the rest of the night; to call in the morning.

"I'm at the Holiday on I-35." Z knew where that was.

"Go home. The place is a mess. Cops, probably. You had a visitor, but I didn't get him."

"Cops?"

"There was an explosion."

"Oh."

"They'll ask where you were last night. Say you slept at your job. Will that work?"

"We got theatrical period pieces. Couches for rent. I've slept on them before."

"Good. When the cops are through with you, go to a different motel. Stay away from home. Stay away from work. Don't tell anyone, even me, where you are. Call me from time-to-time to check."

"OK. You think all that's necessary?"

"Just to be sure."

"Right. And listen, about my wife ....."

"Nothing there, yet."

"Are you still ... working for her?"

"Been tryin' to quit."

"Would you work for me? I can't pay much, but ....."

"I figure I've been working for you already."

"About your fee?"

"Shouldn't be much."

"Good." Smith paused. "I can tell you ... things?"

"Sure." Z found that even holding the phone to his ear was tiring, Z shifting around on the divan so the phone was between his ear and one of the back cushions. "I don't know if I told you before, but my wife's ... dangerous."

"Yeah."

"I mean, really dangerous. She's got a gun."

"Doesn't everybody."

"She used to get it out. Wave it around. That's why I slept at Theater Supply sometimes. To let her cool down."

"Yeah."

"And she's getting worse."

"Yeah."

"I'm afraid. Not for myself," Smith finished hurriedly. "But for my boy. He's all I've got. That's why I filed for custody. I'm afraid for him. She ... beats him. Treats him like a dog. Says he reminds her of me." Z thought of the lady's rundown dog, the one that died. "She wanted a girl instead of a boy. Never seemed to get over it. Blamed me. Blamed Sammy. When he was younger, she used to dress him up like a girl. Anyway, I'm afraid for him. If you could ... get him away from her ... I could hide him somewhere. I could leave town. Leave the country. Start fresh somewhere else. Just Sammy and me." The man's voice suddenly broke. "If anything happened to Sammy ....." He faltered to a stop. Tried to continue. "I ... couldn't ....."

"Yeah."

There was a long space as the man got control of himself.

"She ... actually shot at me, once. I was on the tractor ...."

"Tractor?"

"I do some gardening."

"Your wife like gardening?"

"She hates gardening."

"Yeah." Z was beginning to get the uneasy feeling that, while he was putting the puzzle together -- slowly, methodically -- pieces were still missing. Nothing he could put his finger on. Just a ... feeling ......

"So ... you'll see to Sammy? ..... Please!"

"Yeah. Meanwhile, hide out. I don't know when this'll be over. Maybe a couple of days."

"I don't know how to thank you. I ....."

"Yeah."

Smith was actually a nice guy. Quiet. But then, Z's bias was toward quiet people rather than noisy ones.

After hanging up, Z continued to sit on the divan, more in the divan than on it. He was ... played out. Didn't feel like moving.

Normally, his breakfast sandwich picked him up. Peanut butter was good for you; invented, he'd heard, by some doctor trying to discover a cheap source of protein to improve the diet of the poor.

Another phone call and, if he was lucky, Z could get back to bed...............

But he wasn't lucky. Still, he'd left a message; would be getting a call.

Meanwhile, the little divan by the phone wouldn't make such a bad place to bed down. If he curled up. Particularly, since he was really ... bushed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The phone.

Drawing himself up, yawning, Z reached for the receiver. "Z."

"Addison."

"Right. Why I called is, I saw Ruble." Now that Z had started this, how much should he tell Addison? Z didn't want Addison calling Liberty; didn't want Liberty cops charging over to the Smith house before Z could have another talk with the Smith woman. "Near the house of the bodies."

"Great!" Addison at least trying to sound positive. "It helps to know he's likely to be our man. Saves a lot of time worrying about who else it could be. Where near the bodies?"

"Nothing definite. Just saw him close. Couldn't catch him, though."

"Your football injury slow you down?" It was OK with Z if Addison got that impression.

"Sometimes." Z paused to get this right. "Another thing is ... he may look ... different ....."

"Wig covering the plate?"

"Maybe. But that's not it. I think his face is ... burned."

"Burned?"

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Best guess."

"You have something to do with the burning?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe yes? Maybe no?"

"Maybe."

The silence crackling over the line was the sound of bright, black Detective Addison, thinking. "I'm giving you some slack here, Z," Addison purred, his voice the thrum of a lurking panther. Black panther, naturally. "Because I've got reason to think you're on the side of the angels."

"Appreciate it."

"But there's a limit to the safety line I'm reeling out to you." Safety line? Addison meant rope -- also used for hangings. Z didn't miss the implication. "This is a murder case. My friend in homicide's case. But everybody, including me, has a low tolerance for murder, and in particular, something like this. With the likelihood of another killing, then another, we got to get this stopped."

"The way I'm positioned, I can do that quicker."

"That's why you got all this latitude."

"Appreciate it."

Basically, there were two kinds of cop: the good kind, like Addison, who tried to go along with his snitches; and most cops who, when they got frustrated, would haul in Mother Teresa to "sweat the truth" out of her.

Addison didn't like to throw his weight around; one reason Z was dealing with him.

True, you could sometimes make progress with a rubber hose -- and Z had to use that approach himself, from time to time. But it was equally the case that violence had its limits.

As for Ruble, Z wasn't worried about him for the time being. Though Teddy hadn't found a body, that didn't mean Ruble would be feeling up to murdering people any time soon, Z calling Addison to put Addison's mind at rest on that score. "You might check hospitals. Burns hurt."

"I'll put out the word."

"If the crazy's holed up, I know someone who, if talked to right, can maybe direct me to him."

"If you need back-up ....."

"When tracking a scent, one bloodhound'll do. Quieter, that way."

"OK."

"I'll get back to you."

Another space in time as Addison considered the situation. Cops didn't like sitting on the sidelines or they wouldn't have gone into the cop business.

"Z. Don't take any chances on this one. Like the good, law-abiding citizens we are, we'd all like to catch the sick bastard without giving him so much as a bruise. After that, put him on a bus for New York -- for more rehabilitation -- so he can get back on the street tomorrow." Again, the pause. Then, a lowering of voice to a rough whisper. "But if you have to, don't hesitate to punch his ticket for China -- send him off the quickest way." Z could almost see Addison's thick, black finger -- pointing 6 feet down.

"Right."

After Z hung up, he tried to plan out what he was going to do. (Nothing for the rest of this day.)

Z didn't feel too bad, actually, except when he moved around -- at all. It was like he had the flu, but not the kind where you threw up your guts. Or the sort where you couldn't get two feet away from the pot. Certainly not the variety where you had both ends going at once. He'd had those kinds of flu: Hong Kong, Asian. Everybody had. This time, he felt he'd caught something where the only symptom was exhaustion. As long as he stayed perfectly still, he felt OK. But when he moved about, even a little, he wore out fast.

As weak as he was, the only thing he could do at the moment was brain work: not all that much of a limitation at this stage of the game since brain work ought to precede legwork.

So Z lay back on the divan; pulled the moldy Afghan off the back and over him for modesty's sake; and thought about the past week. About the ghost house. About the Smith house. About the people he'd been dealing with.

It was while going over it all again that the numbers clicked into the proper combination. Numbers that added up to houses; both homes in Liberty; both houses to be found behind the Bateman College hill, the big revelation, that the ghost house was 2609 Franklin; the Smith house, 2610 Pennsylvania.

That was the connection that had been eluding him! That the two house numbers were so similar, a fact that could have no other meaning than that the houses were lined up exactly behind one another!

The question was, how far behind each other?

Z remembered that out back of the ghost house, there was ... nothing. Nothing but open space, because that was where the extra soccer fields were to be put in. Behind the Smith house? Again, just country, only part of it used for a garden, the rest, an extensive space similar to that back of the ghost house ... because ... it was the same tract of ground! The two houses were lined up, back-to-back, on opposite sides of soon-to-be soccer fields.

Z was beginning to get the picture. The wacko had been killing the vagrants that Mrs. Smith brought home to tend her garden. To get rid of the bodies, he'd found a way to take them across the open, soccer area and down into the basement of the ghost house on the other side.

All making another kind of sense.

It was this grizzly image of "body trundling" that had switched on the second light. The old lady who still lived in the house next door to the ghost house? She'd said she'd not only seen lights -- no doubt the light the madman needed to plant his victims -- but also had heard noises. Like the sound of a small truck. Except that, looking out her front windows at the bombed-out street, she'd never been able to see a vehicle.

It was remembrance of her observations about engine sounds that had Z snapping the last piece of the serial killer puzzle into place, the puzzle piece of the garden tractor in the Smith garage -- the tractor with a carryall for an attachment.

At that moment, Z would have bet his life there'd be traces of blood on the tractor's "trailer" -- A and B and AB and O -- that would type out to match the blood of the corpses buried in the ghost house basement!

* * * * *

Chapter 20

The Smith house was dark and quiet.

It was in the depths of another night, the outside air thick and moist and cool. At least, it seemed that way to Z whose face was pale and dry and hot.

It had taken a lot out of him just to get into the Cavalier and drive the fifteen minutes to Liberty, the walk around the side of the house to the garden-edged backyard exhausting him, Z still stymied in the laundry room like a rundown robot.

His breathing slowing, the pulse of pain in his chest subsiding, Z eased open the door between the laundry room and the kitchen to stick his penlight inside. Flashing it on, he used the thin beam to carve up the kitchen, his first find, that the knife the madman had dropped ... was gone.

Damn! He'd forgotten about Ruble's fingerprints on the knife. ... Not that it mattered when you had a steel plate for identification. Z had also forgotten to put on his gloves -- another thing that made no difference. Z had been invited; his fingerprints should be in the house.

No doubt about it. In the twenty-four-hour period between last night and tonight, someone had been back to the Smith house, probably Mrs. Smith herself, women having a genetic need to tidy up.

Alert to any sound, any motion in the house, Z slipped into the kitchen, satchel in hand. In his detective case the usual, including cloth he could fashion into a gag. What he hoped, was to find the Smith woman asleep in her bed at one end of the hall, the boy, Sammy, snoozing away in his half-sized bed at the hall's other end.

First, Z planned on zapping the woman -- lightly -- then tying and gagging her so she couldn't wake the boy. After she came around, he was going to reason with her by explaining in ways she couldn't help but understand how unhappy Z was with her plot to eliminate her husband, to say nothing of her plan to murder Z! After that -- leaving her tied loosely enough to eventually wiggle free -- Z would pick up the boy and take him home. Z could imagine the tearful reunion of father and son before they set out to make a new life for themselves. (It was at times like these that being a detective brought him the greatest joy. In addition, Z's Mother would have been proud of him for taking advantage of this chance to do good for someone else.)

As for Addison wanting Z to locate Ruble, as long as the madman didn't get in the way, Z didn't care. Z had not been hired to find Ruble. Crazies were police business.

Switching off the light, standing in the total dark of the house, cautiously, Z sniffed the air. Failed to pick up either the odor of burned flesh or of the medication someone might apply to a burn. Good. Z had enough of being jumped by maniacs!

Z tested the air again, delicately; thought he caught the lingering odor of Mrs. Smith's perfume.

Guided by the knowledge of how the house was set up, reaching out to touch a counter, a wall, the doorframe, Z slipped through the blacked-out kitchen and into the crossing hall.

Feeling his way by trailing his fingers along the wall, he glided past the bathroom.

Sap out of his "night fighter" jacket and bunched with his penlight in his "case hand" -- the light still switched off -- Z was about to feel for the doorknob on the woman's bedroom when he stopped to test the air again.

Perfume. Stronger here. And ... something else ....... A smell he associated with grocery stores. .......... With ... meat counters .......

Blood!

His hands beginning to shake, Z set down the case. Transferring the penlight and sap to his right hand, he twisted the doorknob with his left. Pushed the door open gently.

Releasing the knob to cover the dark head of the light with his free hand, Z flicked the switch, the light glowing red through his tightly closed fingers. Gradually relaxing his fingers, Z allowed a faint shadow of light to escape into the room, saw ... a shape on the bed, a woman's shape.

Letting a little more light shine through, Z recognized the shape as Mrs. Smith, lying at an unnatural angle.

By this time fully alert to what he was condemned to see, Z uncovered the light to shine it on the woman's statuesque body.

Clothed.

Sprawled to one side, the too-white skin of her blond head turned his way.

Throat slashed.

Blood gushed out on the upper bed where she'd fallen.

A lot of blood.

Jugular cut, a third of her blood leaked from the wound: a quart and a half at least -- so much blood some had dripped into a thickening puddle on the floor.

Idly -- Z's mind shying away from the reality of what his eyes were seeing -- he speculated that a gunshot wound bled so little because the swelling of abused tissue quickly closed a bullet hole: the violated body's sad attempt to keep the victim's life from leaking out. A gash, however, bled a person out.

Picking up the case, pocketing his sap, stepping into the room, Z quickly turned the light away -- but much too late -- his mind's eye condemned to witness, for all time, the wide, red grin of the woman's neck.

Z played the light around the rest of the room, finding suitcases on the floor beside the bed. Three of them -- from the way they were standing side by side, already packed.

Shuffling forward, careful not to step in the congealed blood pool, three, quick taps of his foot told him he was right. All three suitcases were ... heavy.

Stepping around the bed, Z looked in the closet to see fewer clothes than he had the last time -- saw spaces in what was left of the line of shoes on the floor.

Desperately needing to be alone, Z snapped off the light as a way of switching on the dark.

So what had happened here?

From what Z already knew, the woman, giving her cousin the sanctuary of her home, had sicked Ruble on Z and then on her husband, tasks the madman had done his crazy best to accomplish, but failed to do. (Speaking of failure, though the nutcase had to have been burned by the blast Z rigged, Z hadn't done him major damage, either -- the woman on the bed the irrefutable proof.)

Meanwhile on that murderous night -- figuring both Z and her husband were dead -- the woman had returned to her house to clear out, except that something had gone wrong with her plans, that "something" as clear as sunlight shining on a chrome-dome forehead. It didn't take a detective to figure out that the lunatic -- wounded by the explosion, enraged -- had returned to do in Mrs. Smith before she could get away. (However hurt Ruble might have been, he still had the strength to slaughter women.)

Z's Mother, quoting the Bible, would have explained the woman's murder by reciting: "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Or, thinking of Ruble, she'd have said: "Play with fire and you're bound to get burned."

Thinking about his Mother was another way for Z to contain the horror on the bed.

Z stepped back to the bedroom door, hesitated.

He needed to take another look, just to make sure he had it right.

Turning back to the room, swinging up the light ... he saw something he hadn't seen the first time -- a gleam of metal on the bed beside the hideously grinning corpse.

A step closer told him what it was, a gun, small-caliber, nickel-plated. Had to be the madman's gun, the same gun the sicko had used to shoot the vagrants, the gun Z had expected Ted to find in Mr. Smith's apartment along with the body of the loony.

Yet, here it was.

Of course! Ruble had brought it here.

Trading hands, swapping the penlight for the increasingly heavy satchel, Z drove himself a step closer to the bed. Leaning over, he picked up the gun by hooking a finger through its trigger guard and smelled the barrel. His verdict? Fired recently, Z dropping the gun where he'd found it.

Collecting himself at last, Z retreated to the hall where he put down the case and slumped against a wall. To catch his breath. To think.

Snapping off the light, Z shut his eyes to get a better mental image of the situation ... in his mind's eye, "saw" Mrs. Smith cruising the area of the underpass, stopping to hire day labor. Driving men to her house. Paying them -- maybe only feeding them -- to work in the garden.

Ruble, lurking about for weeks, had been killing these workers, mutilating them, burying them. ... With the Smith woman's knowledge?

Z started over in an attempt to streamline his understanding of the killings.

Ruble was insane.

Mrs. Smith was afflicted with hate and fear.

Hate for her husband.

Fear that Z (knowing of her hate) would turn her in for planning her husband's death.

To that point, everything seemed clear. It was how the actions of Ruble and of Mrs. Smith intertwined that was the problem. ............

No matter. ......... At least for now.

Suddenly, Z realized he'd done only half his job that night.

Besides "reasoning" with Mrs. Smith -- no longer necessary -- the other thing he had to do was spirit off the boy.

At the thought of the maniac knifing Mrs. Smith, Z began to shake. If Ruble had killed the lady, had he .........?

In the sable darkness of the narrow hall, Z's heart raced! Breathing hard, he felt the increasingly familiar pain start in his chest, the deeper the breath, the sharper the pain.

No matter. All that was important was finding the boy.

Detaching himself from the hall wall, leaving the useless valise where it was for the time being, light on, Z moved again, the small circle of light wavering before him, Z making for the hall's end where he opened the boy's bedroom door.

Stepped inside to flash the light .....

Found himself backing out before he quite digested what he'd seen.

Was turning.

Was struggling to get down the hall to the bathroom!

In time to vomit in the stool. And throw up again. And again, dry retching until he hardly had the strength to flush; to lean against the wash stand; to twist on the tap; to cuff cold water on his face and neck; to rinse his mouth.

His heaving stomach settling slowly, Z gradually gained control of himself. Shaky control, but control.

Propping his penlight on the sink, Z ran a half-bowl of water. Finding a towel, soaked it in the lavatory and wiped off his mouth. Located some toothpaste, swallowed some to quiet vomit burn.

There'd been little blood this time, because the victim ... was a child. Because the boy had been shot instead of knifed, a small hole in the child's temple.

Z needed to think. Needed to be rational as a way of clinging to mind and body.

What had the crazy done? Slashed the woman to death, then shot the boy, after that returning to place the gun beside the dead mother?

As much as a more detailed examination of the bodies might help clarify what had happened, Z couldn't go back to the bedrooms; could barely muster the strength of will to pick up the light and zombie his way from the bathroom, through the passageway and into the barren living room, somehow taking comfort in the front room's onyx-black sterility

Switching off, Z wondered what he should do, specifically, about the boy's father, the father who so obviously had his life mortgaged to the boy's.

Though Z's agreement to work for the Smith woman was canceled for all time, Z was now working for the husband! If Z only hadn't said he'd work for Smith, Z could walk away. Just ... walk away.

But he couldn't do that. Because of the Zapolska code, saying that, once Z took on a client, he did his best.

No matter what.

It was just that, in this circumstance, Z didn't know what was best for his client.

Standing there in the dark, Z finally had an idea, but .......

Allowing himself another minute to stop shaking, Z knew what he had to do.

All that remained was to figure out the proper sequence.

First, Z had to pack a bag with the boy's clothing.

After that, carry the boy, the bloody bedclothes, and the boy's suitcase out behind the house, to the center of the open space. Find a low spot, probably in one of the ripped-open basements -- a place where bulldozers wouldn't be digging dirt out, but pushing more dirt in to level the soccer fields. Get the shovel from the ghost house basement .....

It would make a long night of it, a long, grizzly, horrible night. Longer because of Z's weakened condition. It was just that Z couldn't see anything else to do. Not, and follow the Zapolska code.

Get through tonight, though, and a couple of calls tomorrow morning would wrap up the Smith part of the ghost house case.

* * * * *

"You say you saw the gun?"

It was the following afternoon in Z's office, Friday, the first of July. Detective Addison poised in the client chair, black suit coat on, revolver in its holster in the hollow under his armpit, notebook in hand, teeth flashing when he talked. The burly black detective was balanced in his chair as if ready to spring, his sense of humor noticeably missing.

Z had called 911 late last night to report the murder, called from a phone booth, giving no name. After that, he'd left an emergency message for Addison. (This was too important to have Ted mess up.) Awakened by Addison's call early this morning, Z had already given Addison the main facts.

Now late afternoon, the Metro squad's investigation of the murder scene was apparently completed.

Z hadn't been all that surprised to have Addison banging on Z's office door. Had expected it, in fact.

"Yeah. Beside her body."

"And you said you were working for the woman?"

"Yeah. After you put me onto the fact that she was the crazy's cousin, I checked her out. She denied knowing Ruble. At that time, finding I was a detective, saying she was having divorce problems with her husband, she hired me." Z's throat hurt. More than usual.

"So you got it figured that the lady gave room and board to her cousin Ruble and he killed the others and took them out back, across some fields to plant them in the other house's basement?"

"Looks like."

"Then killed the woman."

"Yeah. ... And another thing."

"Yes?"

"The loony's apt to be driving the Smith car, American, four doors, dark brown, maybe black."

"You sure?"

"I think."

"We already got a make, model, and number." But not the car itself -- Z in no mood to be charitable. Still, they'd find it. Unlike missing people, missing cars got quick attention from the fuzz.

"You said the woman had a child?" By this time, Addison would know that; wanted to confirm what Z knew.

"A boy."

"And that he's missing?"

"He wasn't in the house when I went to see the lady last night."

"You had an appointment to see her? In the middle of the night? Getting no answer, you went inside? Is that your story?"

"I was expected. Worried."

"Had probable cause to enter the home. ... If you were a cop."

"Or concerned citizen, like smelling smoke and breaking in to rescue the family."

Z could hear the scratch of Addison's ballpoint as he jotted notes in his flip-top, leather notebook. "Back to the boy. Could he be staying with a friend? Overnight?"

"I don't know."

"Relative?"

"The lady just hired me a couple of days ago so I don't know anything personal about her."

"What else did you see?"

"Suitcases."

"Go on."

"Just suitcases. In the woman's bedroom. Packed."

"You search them?"

"No."

"Then how do you know they were packed?"

"I kicked all three. Heavy."

Addison nodded. Made a note. "Find suitcases in the boy's room?"

"No."

"What about the boy's clothing? Was any missing?"

"I ... didn't search for any." Again, jotting -- quick, bold strokes.

"You touch anything?"

"No." Just the gun, Z thought cynically, but didn't say. "Except I used a wet towel in the bathroom." Addison, jotting that down.

"Carry off anything?"

"No."

"Knife?"

"No." Z hadn't seen the knife Ruble used on the woman, figured Ruble had carried it off with him. The police hadn't found the knife either, apparently.

Anything else?"

"Just that there's a tractor in the garage over there."

"So?"

"And a kind of metal wagon attachment for it. Kind called a carryall."

"And that means ...?"

"I'd bet anything there's bloodstains on the carryall; that they match those of the buried men."

"You figure Ruble used the tractor hookup to transport the bodies he killed?"

"Would tie things together."

"It would. Transported the men, but not the woman? Left her in the house?"

"You'd discovered the burial place by then. He could have found that out, someway." Z was sweating. This was not going well at all.

"You're saying that the Gladstone cops messed up, that the woman was helping her cousin after all?"

"Yeah."

"So I guess that's the way it could have gone down."

"Looks that way."

"If you're right, all we got to do is what we had to do at the start," Addison said dryly. "Catch Ruble."

"Piece of cake," Z said, tired of being questioned.

"One more thing," Addison added quickly, not taking too kindly to the "piece of cake" comment -- probably seeing it as a slur on the K.C. department's ability to catch the criminal, "you're not planning any summer vacations, are you?"

"No."

"So I can reach you, should I want to ask another couple of questions."

"Told you all I know." Z didn't like lying to the law. But when a client's interests had to be protected .....

"And Z?"

"Yes?"

"You been working minor miracles here, particularly if the bullets in the gun match those in the bodies in the basement, certainly if the gun can be traced to Ruble. No fingerprints on the gun, though. Somebody seems to have wiped it clean." Not a surprise to Z.

A flick, and the detective's notebook and pen had disappeared into his jacket pocket. Looking up at Z, there was not a glimmer of smile on Addison's solid black face. "I'd appreciate your help even more if people didn't keep getting killed." Addison's voice had turned deadly. "You could have told me about being hired by the Smith woman. Did you ever once think it wasn't the husband, but the cousin, who was making the woman nervous?" Z hadn't, but felt it unwise to tell the detective why. "You could have told Liberty. They could have pulled her in. Staked out the place. Maybe have prevented what happened to her. Maybe had a chance to question her before she turned up conveniently dead."

Addison didn't like what had happened; blamed Z for bitching things up -- and maybe he had.

"She was a client. She didn't want me bringing in anybody else. Anyway, I couldn't be sure."

"Sure." Addison didn't sound persuaded, not an easy task to sway others if you couldn't convince yourself. "Anyway, my advice now is to walk the straight and narrow."

"Yeah."

"No more rope."

"Yeah."

"Until we find Ruble."

And that was that. As for Z's enthusiasm for seeing Ruble caught, Z now longed for that day more than anyone, if for no other reason than Z liked to have smart, black cops like Addison with him, rather than against him.

* * * * *

"Z." It was later that night -- the phone again -- Z lying on the short couch at home.

"It's Sam Smith."

"Got some news." There was a flinch of silence over the line. "The man who was after you? The man your wife sent?"

"Yes."

"He killed her."

"Killed ... my wife?"

"Yes."

"My God!" Said with appropriate reverence, but without feeling. "What about Sammy?" Sudden panic. "Where's Sammy!?"

"I don't know. I went to your house -- your wife's house. Found her dead. She was packing bags. It seems she knew she was in danger; which served her right for dealing with murderers. My guess is she'd already sent your son away where he'd be safe."

"Thank God he's out of there! But ... where is he? Where did she send him?"

"That's the bad news. I don't know. Friends? Relatives?"

"I can't think of any."

"The important thing is he's safe."

"You're ... right. When I think what could have happened to Sammy -- in that house ...! Well, just knowing he's safe means everything to me."

"Right."

"Surely, he'll be found."

"Yeah."

"And I want to thank you, Mr. Zapolska. Just let me know what I owe you."

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Didn't do anything I want to be paid for."

At long last, Z had told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; he hadn't done anything ... for which he should be paid.

* * * * *

Chapter 21

Going home to sleep the rest of that afternoon and the following night had earned Z the twenty "feeling good" minutes he used to drive down the Antioch-Chouteau corridor. Past the south side of the Antioch Shopping Center, across Vivion, beyond the small K-mart shopping area, past houses, parks, churches, and finally under the "Worlds of Fun" viaduct and into the sandy parking lot of his low-rise of an office building. (Although the payment from Bateman College would be coming, it wouldn't keep Z in peanut butter forever. At the very least, he needed to check his answering machine for the possibility of new business.)

His office nearly twenty minutes away from his apartment, Z was beginning to tire as he entered the badly refurbished old complex to limp down the left hall to the International Headquarters of the Zapolska Detective Agency at the back. All two rooms of it.

Thank God he'd gotten out of this recent business so cleanly. The Smith business -- husband and wife.

A chill swept over him. What Z could never forget was what, to him, would always be the night of the little child.

He'd seen too much of death in his life. Too much.

Continuing down the hall, he also had to shudder at the thought of what had been buried in the basement, all those nights he and Jamie had .....

Fortunately, Z had prevented that college kid from making the grisly discovery of the bodies. Some sights should not be seen -- especially by the young.

Though the ghost house had produced its earthly delights, Z was glad to be rid of Jamie Stewart, too. Hoped that his little fling with her (and that was all it had been) didn't come back to haunt him.

Soon, the cops would do something on their own, for a change, and catch Ruble. Then, if Z could just get well, he'd call Susan and get his life back together. If Z's condition was something that could be cured. He was still tired and short of breath, still got that "funny" pain in his chest when he overtaxed himself.

He'd been tired before. He'd been short of breath from time to time. But chest pain was something new to him.

Paused before the thin-ply door of his office, Z debated whether or not he'd get in faster by using his key or the plastic card he kept for slipping old locks. Decided that -- should someone exit an adjoining office while he was doing it -- it would look better to be opening his door with a key.

That settled -- in spite of the difficulty of fitting an unsteady key into a shaky lock -- Z was soon inside, Z shutting the flimsy door behind him.

Looking down at the floor beneath the letter slot, he saw an official looking envelope with Bateman College's return address -- the fifteen-hundred for his work on the ghost house case. Too dizzy to do it now, he'd bend down and pick up his check on the way out.

Since he didn't plan on staying, he wouldn't need to fiddle with the table lamp wires. All he had to do was play back any messages left on the grumbling old answering machine, then .....

Without warning, Z was hit from behind, so hard that, for a moment, he was jolted back to high school football! Back to the times when enraged defensive backs had blind-sided him, Z knowing the same, hollow agony that meant he'd had the breath knocked out of him, that interminably long moment of suspension between life and death ......................... before he could even think of breathing.

Gasping in a little air at last, turning, Z saw a big, beefy man on his hands and knees at Z's feet, even Z's oxygen-starved brain able to register the fact that the man had broken into the office, had waited for Z to enter, then thrown his bulk into Z's back, Z slammed forward on the desk, the man bounced to the floor.

It also seemed clear that the man on the floor was in as bad a shape as Z, something Z couldn't understand.

It was only when the man looked up -- the guy's face burned to a scalded-scarlet, cracked skin laced with yellow pus-patches of infection -- that Z realized who he was. Knew him even before a further shift of the man's head caused light to reflect from his metal forehead.

Ruble!

Z's mind still cloudy, he was only vaguely aware that madmen were said to have supernatural strength, something that didn't seem to be the case here. Still on the floor, the loony was panting as heavily as Z, Z able to do nothing but lean back on the small secretarial desk, bracing himself there with his elbows.

After what seemed forever, Ruble struggled to his feet, the big man teetering for a moment before launching another charge.

For his part, Z was too enfeebled to do anything, the fellow plowing forward to fall on Z again, Z bent backwards over the small desk by the sheer weight of the man's body.

If the psycho hadn't been desperately ill himself, the fight would already be over. As it was -- wheezing, panting -- Ruble managed to get his large hands around Z's throat. Began to choke.

Not having much breath to begin with, still suffering from the madman's first attack, Z could only beat ineffectively at the man's broad back.

The world quickly turning gray, Z's next "strategy" was to flail about, trying to lay his hands on something he could use to pound the crazy man loose.

In the half-world of almost blacking out, grasping for anything, Z felt his hand strike the metal desk lamp, knocking it over.

Desperate now, Z swept his hand over the desktop, his last chance to use the heavy metal fixture to club the man's head, stunning the crazy enough for Z to pry loose from those strangling fingers.

Finding the cord, jerking on it frantically ... Z felt the wire pull out of the lamp's base, his chance of dragging the lamp to him, gone.

But maybe not his final hope. With his last, desperate burst, Z grabbed the electric cord and brought up his arm. If he could bring his hands together behind the crazy's head, get the wire around the lunatic's neck .....

But ... Z couldn't, Z's other arm pinned beneath the man's body, the wire flailing uselessly.

It was at the far end of consciousness that Z heard a ... sizzling sound; felt Ruble's fingers stiffen, then relax, the big man slumping to the floor at Z's feet.

Z still couldn't catch his breath, even to cough, making it impossible to do anything but flop over on his stomach and clutch at the desk while trying to gasp in enough air to keep himself alive.

Only the knife-edged agony in his chest was keeping Z from blacking out, that terrible, sharp stab he felt whenever he tried to breathe.

Beside Z's head, looming large because of its nearness to Z's staring eyes, was the telephone receiver, knocked off its cradle; the phone base overturned in the struggle, lying on its side facing him.

Painfully, laboriously, Z concentrated on sliding his nearest hand along the smooth surface of the small desk. In show motion, dialed 9. ...... dialed 1. ..... dialed ......

Though he must have dialed another 1, Z couldn't remember doing that.

Later, the shattering of his office door had roused him to semi-consciousness, Z also hearing shouts and running feet ... before drifting back again toward death.

* * * * *

Chapter 22

The ceiling came into focus slowly, its thinly spaced rows of fluorescents lighting the room, a white ceiling with a brown, water stain of South America directly overhead. Metal tracks were looped above him and to the side. Ceiling-to-floor waterfalls of sheeting.

Not the lavender-painted ceiling in Z's bedroom.

Not the cracked lath-and-plaster ceiling in Z's office.

Z turned his head to feel ... something press against his nose ... to feel a hand on his cheek.

Looking up, Z saw a blurry image of a person leaning over him ..... Susan. ... Reaching out to stroke his forehead.

Rolling his head from side to side, Z saw he was in a large rectangular room, a room with ... beds ... other people in them, some of the "bed spaces" curtained off.

Floating up his hand from someplace far away, Z touched his face; found that plastic tubes ran from his nose to his cheeks, to hook around his ears. "They're giving you oxygen," said Susan's husky voice. "You're in the hospital, but you're going to be OK."

Being in the hospital was the way Z had gotten to know Susan. She'd called his office to hire him as a bodyguard, saying that her maniac of an ex was threatening her. It wasn't until after the husband had put a slug in Z's lung, however, that Z had actually gotten "hooked-up" with Susan, Susan coming frequently to visit Z in the hospital. (He'd been in a charity ward that time: and probably was again. Without insurance, that's where you landed if you had a serious problem with your health.)

The last time Z was flat on his back in a place like this he'd been slow to heal -- bleeding problems -- Susan helping him continue his post-hospital recovery by walking with Z until he got back his strength. That was when Z had learned to like art, on their "comeback" walks through the Nelson gallery.

Now, it seemed, he was back in the hospital with Susan beside him once again.

But why was he here?

In spite of fog masking his memory, Z recalled breathing troubles; remembered chest pain.

Twisting his head on the pillow, he found Susan's face in better focus now that she'd settled back in a straight chair near the side of the elevated bed. "Heart attack?" he whispered.

"Pneumonia," Susan countered, trumping that idea. "Now that you're getting antibiotics at long, long last, you're doing fine."

Pneumonia.

"It's just like you, Z," Susan continued, growling her worried disapproval, "not to see a doctor when you're sick. Playing Mr. Macho." Susan was more frightened than lecturing. "Why didn't you tell me that being deathly ill was the reason you couldn't see me?" She paused, her voice now soft as summer showers. "And all this time, I thought I'd lost you, that you'd fallen for another woman."

Another woman? Somewhere at the base of Z's skull, Susan's accusation seemed to ring a bell .... but not enough of one to keep Z from falling back to sleep.

* * * * *

Not his heart. Z woke to the memory of what Susan said. Not his heart. He might yet live long enough to die in a dark alley.

Z's throat hurt, touching it here -- there -- only making it worse.

Was it night? Was it day? ..... From his bed in the center of the dimly lighted room, he couldn't tell.

Trying to think back, Z wondered how long he'd been in the hospital, recalled being awakened for shots; had a clear impression of coughing and wheezing.

On the other hand, he couldn't remember eating or drinking, probably what the IV drip was doing in his left arm.

Nurses were also putting him through a periodic routine to help him breathe, making Z take deep breaths through a machine's plastic mouthpiece, the idea, to get him to suck air into his lower lungs: medicated air.

As Z continued to wake up, he realized Susan had been coming to visit in the evenings -- though Z had been sleeping through much of her time with him.

He remembered asking about the date, Susan saying it was the 6th of July.

Damn!

He'd missed the 4th. ... But was too sick to care.

He recalled getting Susan to promise to have a phone put in as soon as the hospital personnel allowed it. Z had money to pay for the phone, he'd assured her, Susan shushing him. What Z didn't have was money for all this care. His Mom had refused to take charity; that kind of "po' folks pride" eventually killing her.

Z didn't like handouts, either.

* * * * *

Every time Z woke up, now, he felt stronger.

Another proof of his improved health was that the hospital people had finally put in a phone, not that he had the strength to use it. Anyway, who would he call? That, plus the fact that, during the night -- night was when most light tubes were switched off -- the IV drip had magically disappeared from his arm, a healthy-sized Band-Aid replacing it. Though Z was still sleeping much of the time, a dangerous-looking old nurse provided a moment of excitement by coercing him into taking a few bites of whatever passed for food here.

Yesterday morning, he'd also been thought strong enough for a strapping young orderly to get him into a wheelchair and trundle him off down a long, long corridor, then take him, by elevator, to X-ray. Any day now, someone would remember to tell him what the X-rays showed.

Z was still coughing ... but not as much, his throat continuing to be sore ... though not as painful as it used to be.

What there could be no doubt about was that they were still working him over with that plastic breathing machine, waking him at all hours to try to get him to breathe deeper.

The most positive indication that Z was getting well, was that he was sleeping peacefully enough to be awakened by other sick people's gurgling sounds. That, and having difficulty getting back to sleep because of being tangled in those bare-ass-to-the-world, impossible-to-tie-on hospital gowns everyone had to wear. Being strangled by a twisted piece of cloth was particularly hard on a man used to sleeping in the all-together.

* * * * *

The phone rang, Z waking up and managing to fumble the receiver off the medicine stand and over the steel-barred side rails of his bed to the thin, hard hospital mattress. Another struggle got the receiver propped between his ear and the pillow. Everything -- bed controls, signal button, Susan's flowers on the movable food stand, telephone -- seemed to be put just out of reach. Maybe that was the hospital's subtle way of getting patients to do more exercise.

Arranging the sheet, he was ready.

"Z." Z's voice sounded thin, even to him. Cautiously, he tried a deep breath ... managed it without coughing. Figured, from the brightness overhead, it must be daylight outside.

"I wish I had time to laze around the hospital, pinching good-looking nurses on the butt." Ted.

"Yeah."

"Though I practically had to arrest her to find out where you were, your high-falutin' girlfriend says you're goin' to live, news that wasn't particularly well-received here at the station." Not, "in particular," by rat-faced Captain Scherer. "What I called for was, not only to hear for myself that you weren't going to croak, but to tell you that I'm in line for making Detective Second. I guess discoverin' the bodies like I did, didn't hurt. So I thought it might raise your spirits to hear about me going up in the world."

"Yeah."

"Sometime, you got to tell me how you stumbled onto all those stiffs. I always said you were one of the lucky ones. Some guys just get all the breaks and others has got to earn everything they get in this life."

"Yeah. Lucky."

"I don't want to keep you on the phone too long, 'cause I don't want your girl to have a go at my balls with a pair of pliers -- which she threatened to do if I called at all -- but I wanted to ask how that nigger dick from K.C. caught the killer."

"Don't know." Nigger. A word you didn't hear much anymore. ... Except from black comedians.

It wasn't that Ted disliked blacks any more than he disliked everyone else. It was just that, even though he tried to do better, he often fell back to talking like everybody did in the old days. There was a lot of truth to the notion that, after high school, Teddy's world had ... stopped.

As for Addison, Z also wanted to know how he'd caught the crazy.

Memories of what had happened between Z and the madman had begun to filter back, Ruble, lying in wait for Z at the office, the slow-motion fight, like two punch-drunk heavyweights in the fifteenth round.

"OK, then. Give me a call if you find out. You'll probably be home by the time I could get out to see you. Anyway, hospitals give me the creeps. It's that smell, you know? The smell of Lysol mixed with death, if you know what I mean. Sick people ain't -- isn't -- healthy to be around. But you remember. Anything I can do for you, just ask. We been friends for a long time and that's what friends are for, to help one another."

"Thanks, Ted."

Z got the phone hung up. And that -- plus trying to eat a little something, then having to play S.O.S. on his call button before a nurse came to help him to the bathroom down the hall -- was the sum of that day's activities.

* * * * *

Another morning of being examined by nurses, interns, and one overworked doctor (at least Z was on pills, now, instead of shots) had left Z with enough energy to make a phone call of his own. Followed by Addison's "comeback" that afternoon.

"Z."

"Addison, here. How you doing?"

"Better."

"It's a bitch to be in the hospital."

"Yeah."

"But it's the best place to be if you're sick. When I couldn't reach you either at home or at your office -- using my police connections, don't you know -- I got in touch with a Miss Susan Halliwell. Rumored to be your steady. Nice girl, by the way."

"Yeah."

"You're sick of being sick, would be my guess, but doing a lot better."

"You think so?"

"I know so. Again, using police privileges, I finally got in touch with someone who actually knew about your condition. And you're doing just fine. You'll be getting your mail on Saturday -- your girl has been shielding you from any outside disturbances -- and be going home on Sunday." Addison was one hell of a detective, as Z had always thought. Who else could find out anything about anyone in a charity ward in any hospital? And Addison was right about Z being tired of this room. Around Z were people who were really sick, folks with tubes and more tubes stuck into them. Skin-and-bones people. People so ancient they had yellowed, tissue-paper skin. To make things worse, none of these poor old folks had anything to look forward to but their withered friends hobbling in to see them -- maybe for the last time. It was sad. Especially because poverty wards like this had been banished from every civilized country in the world ... except the United States of America. Scenes like this stripped a man of the pride he ought to feel for his country! ......... But Z couldn't think about that now.

"I got some questions." Z could ask Addison and get straight answers.

"Shoot."

"You get Ruble?"

"You got Ruble."

"I remember a fight."

"Like I keep saying, Ruble was not my case. Since I had the hot source -- you -- I got included. As for Ruble, somebody, who shall be nameless, roasted him like peanuts at the park. But first things first. When we discovered that the Smith woman was the wife of the Smith who had his apartment blown apart up north in Gladstone, and when we learned that the Gladstone fuzz couldn't figure out how the explosion happened, I began to get some idea about what had really happened. That, plus the fact that you'd warned me that Ruble might have gotten himself burned. Anyway, all of this is still a mystery to most folks hereabouts, so there's no danger of your getting pulled downtown to answer a lot of questions."

"Appreciate it."

"As a cop, I got my methods. You got yours. No reason a cop and a P.I. can't work together in the interests of law enforcement."

"No reason."

"So, what happened is still pretty dim, huh?"

"Right."

"The long and short of it is that Ruble had been holed up with the Smith woman. After he killed her, it seems like he used your office as a hideout. Anyone could get past the cheap lock you got on your office door. Seems to me somebody like you would know better."

"Nothing inside to steal."

"The Smith woman must have spilled the beans about where your office was located. She knew, I suppose?"

"Could have looked it up in the Yellow Pages."

"Anyway, here's how I figure it," Addison said, in a voice that told Z this was official, not just Addison's personal opinion. "What happened that morning was, you're sick, but you go to your office anyway. Ruble is already there, but since he hasn't seen a doctor, is also in bad shape. The two of you struggle. From the marks I heard were on your throat -- and I, myself, questioned the emergency squad -- it looks like you were about gone. Smart thing, you did."

"Smart .....?"

"That trick with the wire. Jerked it right out of the lamp. Touched the ends of the live wires to the metal plate in Ruble's forehead. Pretty fast thinking."

Though it took a moment, Z made the tie-in. So that was the sizzling sound Z had heard toward the end of consciousness. "Kill him?"

"No. It did knock him for a loop, though. He was dead-to-the-world when the paramedics showed up, but woke up later to be the same old raving loony he'd always been. He should be back in the New York asylum by this time. Probably due for early release next Wednesday."

"How'd I get found?"

"It must have been you who called 911."

"Maybe." Dialing the phone was still more like a dream to Z than a reality. "I didn't talk to anyone ....."

"Don't have to. Just pushing 911 gets police and medics out. First they call back to see if you mis-dialed. When they don't get anyone, they don't take chances. They fire out the team. The way I heard it, by the time the paras got there, a small crowd had gathered in the hall outside your office. Just standing there with their thumbs up their ... mouths ... like bystanders do. Said they'd heard noises coming from your office, like animals roaring in the zoo. So the rescue team busted in and the rest is history."

"Yeah."

"Like I said, I'm impressed. Who'd a thought of zapping Ruble that way?"

"Yeah." It never hurt to have a big city cop like Addison think Z was better than he was. "Ruble the killer?"

"He's admitted to everything. Of course, he's so nuts he'd admit to killing Hitler if you asked him. In fact, that's his goal in life, he told us. Wants to make a more peaceful world by killing all the people in it."

"Environmentalist."

"What? ... Oh. I see what you mean."

"Killed the woman?"

"The Smith woman. We're sure of that. We found a knife in the Smith woman's car, her car parked across the street from your office. Looks like the knife dropped out of Ruble's pocket. Between the seats. Lucky for you he was in such bad shape he'd lost his knife."

"That's me. Lucky."

"Anyway, the lab boys say the knife fits the slash in the woman's neck. He killed the men, too. Same markings on all those slugs plus a test firing from the gun."

"Talking about the gun you found on the bed?"

"Right."

"Find any other guns in the home?"

"No."

"Blood on the carryall?"

"You called that, too. Seems that's how he took the bodies off for burial. At night, probably. A lot of engine noise, though."

"Hardly anybody around to hear it." Except for a sharp old lady named Dr. Devaux, Z thought. "The good thing is, it's over."

"Except for one thing. The boy. We haven't turned him up."

"That so?"

"I don't want to tire you, but I thought you might have a guess about the kid's whereabouts."

"Guess?"

"It's ... odd. Some of the boy's clothes seem to be missing. But not his toothbrush in the bathroom. There was no pillow on the child's bed. No sheets. Blankets. Like the bed had been stripped clean. There was a smear of blood on the mattress. Could be the kind of spot that would soak through bedding. It wasn't the mother's blood. Could have been the boy's blood -- if we had the boy for comparison. ... But what I want to say is that it's going to take a lot of time to hunt for the boy. The father is after everybody to do that, naturally. Gladstone. Liberty. KCMO." There was a long, thoughtful pause. "What I'd like a guess on is -- manpower being in short supply to fight the baddies -- should we devote a lot of personnel to finding the child?"

"Just a guess?"

"Just a guess."

"My guess is, no."

"The father will keep on looking if we don't bring this to a conclusion."

"Do him good to believe his boy is still ... out there."

"I get your thinking."

"One more thing?" Z was tiring now, but wanted to get as much wrap-up on this nasty business as he could.

"Always."

Z paused to figure out just how he wanted to ask the question. "Anything else about the gun?"

"No prints on it, that we could read."

"I mean the serial numbers. Show up as used in another crime?"

"You don't catch breaks like that. Not in this world."

"Yeah."

* * * * *

Saturday proved that Addison was the kind of heads-up detective Z had always thought him to be.

First, Susan came to see him -- not a surprise. Nor was it a wonder that, every time she came, she looked better; loose, finger-combed hair all black and shiny, smooth dark skin, eyes, the fiery blue of cobalt-colored marbles in the sun. Today, she was dressed in a white outfit; had on a short cotton skirt and a thin silk, see-through, no-bra blouse whose top two buttons had come undone from all that bounteous pressure underneath. Considering his deep breathing therapy, Susan was getting more results than that damned plastic breath-o-lator!

Compared to the older company everyone else was getting, long-stemmed Susan was a lush and dewy rose, new-opened to the world!

Back to Addison. What showed the K.C. detective's ability to ferret out the truth was that Addison was right in his Saturday prediction of mail, something one of the candy-stripers had just brought in.

Not that there was much of it.

Just two pieces.

First, a card from Ted. (Ted must really have been grateful for the tip about the bodies, Z thought. No way, otherwise, he'd have spring for a seventy-cent card.) Z getting the envelop open, the card saying: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Z passed Ted's small, non-Hallmark card to Susan, who laughed a little -- cynic that she was. (Susan didn't like Ted; always called him, "That fascist friend of yours.")

The other piece of mail was another card, but with no return address. A fat card.

Never able to get the top-half of his motorized bed up high enough to get comfortable, Z was having "slippage" problems as he worked a finger under one end of the envelope flap. (At least he no longer had to have those oxygen vents up his noise.)

Getting the stubborn envelope ripped open, Z tugged out the card, the card having several sheets of heavy paper inside.

Holding the card up, Z saw that the front of it featured a grinning alligator with the caption, "See 'ya later, Alligator."

Careful not to fumble out the inserts, Z opened the card to find two alligators inside, grinning at each other, the print at the top saying, "At my domicile, Crocodile."

Tucked inside the card were three small photographs ... the first ... of Z ...

standing somewhere ... stark, staring naked!

How!?? .......

Then, Z knew.

The picture was taken at the other end of the ghost house hallway, in the unused bedroom, snapped one night after he'd gotten up to go to the john. Coming out of the bathroom, confused, he'd turned right instead of left; only discovered his error when there'd been a blinding flash -- followed by Jamie at the other end of the hall calling him back to bed. What Z had failed to appreciate was the consequence of his tripping the infrared beam operating the camera, the flash meaning the camera was taking a picture.

The camera had caught a ghost, all right, a big and ugly, buck-naked "ghost."

Quickly fingering through the other two pictures, he found he was featured prominently in them, as well. This time, asleep; stretched out on his back on Jamie's opened-up sleeping bag, Jamie lying beside him -- also in her birthday suit -- a wide awake and grinning Jamie Stewart.

After Z had gone to sleep one night, fun-loving little Jamie must have set up a camera with a timing device to take those pictures of the both of them.

Thinking back, Z remembered having dreamed of lightning, those dream-flashes probably caused by the camera strobing these pictures.

"Who's that from?"

Oh, God! Susan ... wanting to see the other card!

Now Z might not be the best-educated man in town, or the brightest. On the other hand, he hadn't stayed alive this long in the detective game by being entirely stupid -- this background serving to explain his sudden coughing fit, his hacking giving him the cover he needed to deep-six those incriminating photos under the sheet!

"Poor baby," Susan sympathized, stroking her seductive fingers along his bare arm. "Are you sure you're ready to go home tomorrow?"

"I'll be all right," Z said weakly, favoring her with a determinedly brave smile.

His throat miraculously recovered, he handed Susan the empty card.

"No writing on it," Susan said, turning the card every which way.

"Good!" Z hadn't thought to check the card for the sort of obscene message Jamie might very well have penned! Thank God that seductive little ... witch ... had figured the pictures were enough encouragement to get him off his bed of pain!

"Good?"

"Good ... to have a secret admirer."

"Better not have," Susan grumped, Z hoping so, as well.

On the other hand, something might be worked out with Miss Stewart, should she continue to show interest. If so, he must take extreme measures to keep that kind of "interest" as the deepest, darkest secret in the land. No man -- Z least of all -- wanted Susan coming at him with a pair of pliers!

* * * * *

Chapter 23

Susan hadn't been sure Z was ready to leave the hospital last Sunday and, to tell the strict truth, Z wasn't either. But there was no help for it. In these days, hospital stays lasted no longer than your insurance. And they practically kicked you out in the street when you had no money. Fortunately, Z could continue to take it easy, a non-job allowing Z to do nothing but eat, sleep, and lie around the house sucking on the plastic breathing machine they'd given him to take home. He guessed the hospital personnel had let him have the portable breath-o-lator because, once someone used the device -- no more than a quarter's worth of plastic in it anyway -- it was too contaminated to sell to a "paying customer" for a hundred dollars.

So went the week, with Z sleeping and breathing and talking to low-voiced Susan on the phone.

Then, almost overnight, Z was ... well. He could breath without hurting. Walk without coughing.

So he and Susan had decided to celebrate by going to the Nelson gallery this hot Sunday afternoon.

Susan, spectacular as usual, wore a bought-new-for-the-occasion, silky, cherry-colored skirt that showed off her long, naturally-tan legs, Z also pleased to detect a hidden zipper down the back. Complimenting her skirt, she'd put on a white, pleated, form-fitting blouse with shiny black buttons -- that he'd be able to slip off easily. Three-inch heels on black pumps brought her nearly to Z's height.

Red and white. Black and blue -- shiny black, shoulder-length hair framing her rich blue eyes. Inside her generous mouth were lovably uneven teeth and the sweetest tongue .........

Normally, Sunday wasn't a good day to go to the gallery. Too many elegantly dressed people there, showing off expensive wardrobes while pretending to look at the Nelson's collection, too crowded for a hard-scrabble guy like Z to get more than a peek at what he needed most in his weary life: beauty! Still, the day had less to do with drinking in art than it did with drinking ... life.

A disappointment was that the ancient room was closed to the public, a sigh saying that a major renovation was going on, the "renovation" posting called for when a new director needed to shift the collection to justify his job. Z did recall an article in the "Arts" section of the Star. A piece saying the 4th-century, life-sized Athenian lion that, to the delight of children, padded about the Ancient room on marble-soft paws, was in need of restoration. Something about its iron skeleton eroding; the beast needing a new, titanium core. (Z wished his old bones could be swapped that easily. As well as the flesh that dripped from them.)

A crowd. Young and old. ...... But mostly old.

The smells were of eternity and cleaning polish, leather shoes and dignified perfumes.

Because "Antiquities" was closed, Z and Susan went straight through Kirkwood's twin rows of widely spaced, sixty-foot-tall, highly polished, black granite columns, pillars whose six feet in diameter cylinders soared like a sable forest, each streaked with veins of purest white. Standing close, the columns reminded Z of wild summer nights, when chain lightning laced through rainy skies.

At hall's end, they passed empty suits of antique armor; ghost-knights the appropriate guardians of the long dead past.

In the South Vestibule, they turned left to flank the Loan Exhibition room. Hooking left again at the end of the long hall, they drifted through the Georgian and French Regency rooms, then angled left once more; were now about to enter a room displaying European painting.

As for their location in the vastness that was the Nelson, they'd U-turned back to the front of the 30's building -- the massive, multiple-storied structure built with the fortune willed for that purpose by William Rockhill Nelson, the Kansas City Star's turn-of-the-century newspaper mogul. At least Z had always taken the north expanse of the Nelson to be the front of the building since it was the side that art-goers entered. Others, might consider the front of the gallery to be beyond Kirkwood Hall, a sweeping width of steps outside the building overlooking a grassy vista where the Kansas City symphony gave "pop" concerts on summer nights.

It was then, strolling hand in hand like the lovers they would soon be again, that Susan asked the question he'd hoped never to hear. "Who's Jamie Stewart?"

Turning her head, Susan arched an elegant eyebrow.

"Who?"

"Jamie Stewart."

"I know a number of ...."

"Do you? Since when do you know a number of Jamie Stewarts?"

Mistake!

Z had spoken before thinking, something he rarely did. (A constant complaint of Susan's was that Z kept his feelings to himself; refused to talk to her about his work, about his life.)

Blundering into saying something off the top of his head, it was a time for thinking not for talking.

"Jamie? I thought you said Jimmy."

"Jamie." For emphasis, Susan squeezed Z's hand. "She called a week ago last Wednesday. I didn't want to bother you while you were sick."

"Oh."

"So -- who is she?"

In spite of the forever-chill of the thick-stoned gallery, Z had begun to sweat. Could it be he wasn't as well as he'd thought? Could he even have a little fever? Z put the palm of his free hand on his forehead ... felt ... nothing.

"A ... girl."

"I figured that out for myself."

As a general rule, one of the things Z liked about Susan was her wit, but ......

"Called?" To the unnatural heat rising in his neck and face, Z could add chills, fingering his spine.

"That's right. She called to ask how to get in touch with you." Since he and Susan were in a public place -- Kansas City's gentility sauntering past -- Susan was speaking more quietly than she might have in private. Another thing Z liked about Susan was her passion. ... Ordinarily

"I don't know why she'd want to do that."

"She said to see if you got your money. She said she'd been working on a case with you."

"That's it? That's all she said?"

"Yes."

Major relief!

"So I told her," Susan continued, with that relentlessness she sometimes showed, "that you were in the hospital."

"Right." Z swallowed hard. Plunged on. "Now I remember. She did have something to do with a case. A long time ago." It certainly seemed a long time ago, anyway. While Z's personal code was always to tell the truth, it did allow him to "bend the facts" in matters of survival. "So long ago I'd forgotten all about it." To his other symptoms, Z now had to add a sore throat from all this talk.

As for Susan, she didn't seem to be as pleased as he'd hoped she'd be with Jamie's teleportation to the remote past. "What I want to know is how she got my home phone number."

"What?"

"My home number. It's unlisted, you know." Although time seemed to be passing slowly, Z's mind -- like a frantic rat dashes this way and that to escape a maze -- was scurrying furiously. "She had to have gotten it from you."

"Oh."

"Oh, what?"

If Susan had a fault, it was being so damned bright, Z feeling that, in girlfriends, a little dumbness was acceptable.

Fortunately for Z, they now had to pause so two well-heeled matrons could cross the corridor in front of them, each with identical white hair, styled just so, one dressed in black, one draped in blue, silk crepe. A single strand of genuine pearls graced the black. A gold chain on the blue. Both with sensible, but expensive, shoes. The kind made for tramping through the alpine woods or ambling down the long halls of the gallery.

Never, had Z been so appreciative of just how many cultured folks the city could cough up at the Nelson on a Sunday afternoon!

Barely inside another painting-hung room, Susan stopped. Turned. "I'm waiting."

Z noticed that somewhere back there in the corridor, Susan had stopped holding his hand. Not a good sign.

"Waiting?"

"Waiting to hear how this Jamie Stewart person knew my private phone number."

How had that little minx gotten Susan's number? Z surely hadn't given it to her; you didn't give your girl's phone number to another girl -- even big, ugly, and assuredly dumb Bob Zapolska wouldn't do that.

Thinking back, remembering -- hoping Susan wouldn't notice him blush -- Z had the kind of revelation symbolized in comic strips by a light bulb switching on!

Jamie must have found Susan's phone number the time Jamie -- in her role as dip -- had picked Z's wallet. That had to be it. Rifling Z's billfold was how Jamie found Susan's picture. The question was, did that photo have Susan's phone number on the back? .... Yes! As a kind of joke, Susan had put her phone number below her signature -- to remind Z to call her. A gentle hint in the days when they'd just started "dating," that he didn't call her often enough.

"I didn't give her your number. She must have seen it when I showed her your picture."

"You ... what!?" Though much too polite to raise her voice in the gallery, Susan was clearly shocked.

Nothing to do but ride it out.

"Showed her your photo." By this time, Z's voice had been reduced to its whisper-purr. If this interrogation kept up much longer, he might lose his voice entirely.

On reflex, Z dug out the small aspirin bottle he always carried; crunched down a few pills just for luck.

"Why would you do that? Show my picture to someone you claim you didn't even know very well?"

I good question. Why would Z flash a picture of Z's girl at someone he didn't know? ....... Ah! ...... "I guess, because I show your photograph to ... everyone. I can't help it. You're so ... beautiful.

Funny, how the feeblest of lies could make the greatest impact on a woman, this fib impressive enough to get Susan to smile and take Z's hand again.

So they were off. Around that room, then down the hall into the less-crowded 18th-century area: one of the gallery's smaller rooms, few people looking at what were actually pretty boring paintings. (No one said "boring" in the Nelson, of course. Except children. The old Latin saying about "Truth being in the wine" paled before truth as told by an innocent.)

Z and Susan were now looking at, "Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland." (1656-1746.)

Portrayed in shiny armor, a pleased look on the Elector's well-fed face, Mr. Strong was pointing at a smoldering city he'd just had his troops raze. Another ho-hum day at the office, king-wise.

Z and Susan moved on. To, "Portrait of a Lady Holding a Dog."

Z liked the dog.

Side-stepping, they viewed what was called, "Jupiter in the Guise of Diana and the Nymph Callisto." A favorite of Z's, this was a picture of Jupiter preparing to ravish a lush and very naked nymph, the painting causing Z to return to thoughts of Jamie Stewart.

Z hoped he'd heard the last of her, in particular, hoped she'd sent him all the photographs she'd taken. (Whoever said, "You can't get too much of a good thing," hadn't met Jamie Stewart, girl ghost hunter!)

If the Jamie-genie could just be coaxed into its bottle, this whole, mostly horrible, episode would end ..... except for one thread of "ghost house" fabric that wouldn't ... tie off.

Could Z be having uneasy thoughts because he and Susan had paused again, this time in front of a painting titled: "The Beheading of St. John the Baptist -- Terbrugghen -- (1622?) -- northern follower of the Italian painter, Caravaggio."?

Terbrugghen? Interesting. ..... But in another time -- in another case.

The painting was of a young girl (the dancer Salome) silver tray in hand, ready to receive the hacked-off head of John the Baptist, her spiteful mother requesting the Baptist's head from King Herod Antipas. Disgusting!

Staring at the outlandish scene, Z had the feeling the painting's theme was compelling him to snap in the remaining puzzle-facts of the Smith-Ruble picture.

Moving on, Z and Susan now stood before a big oil titled: "Judith with the Head of Holofernes -- Simon Vouet -- (1590-1649?)

In the painting, the Jewish widow, Judith, had just chopped off the head of the Babylonian general, Holofernes.

What was this fascination with beheadings?

Seeing two too many severed heads got Z to thinking about Ruble's tendency to kill people by knifing them.

Another free floating bit of information now entered Z's mind: Addison saying Ruble had escaped from a New York Asylum no more than a month ago.

Z's instinct was now telling him something was wrong about the timing of Ruble's escape. ..... But what?

As Z and Susan left the Baroque room, continuing to sift through murmuring gallery-goers, Z's next thought was about ... guns. About how practically everybody in the U.S.A. was armed like old time pirates. Men had guns. Women had guns. Children had guns. Criminals had guns. Lunatics had guns.

Z realized he'd gotten tired, his mind pinwheeling like it did when he was feverish.

So many people had weapons that everyone else wanted a gun for self-defense from people who already had one. And what had all that "self-protection" accomplished? A higher murder rate than any civilized nation on the face of the earth! It seemed, sometimes, that Americans were about to "defend" themselves to death.

Mr. Smith had a gun. Still did, Z giving it back to him. Smith had said Mrs. Smith had a pistol, one he claimed she used to shoot at him when he was gardening.

A gun had been found in the Smith house, on the bed beside the slain woman.

Thinking of the latter gun (the police typing it to be the piece used on the vagrants,) Z was certain it was also the small-bore weapon that killed the boy.

Of course, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Wrong!

Guns and people don't kill people -- bullets kill people, any idiot from the N.R.A. eager to testify to that in court. (Surely, Z thought, shoveling dirt into a child's grave would change the outlook of the most rabid gun-nut. ... On reflection, decided that it wouldn't.)

Viewing the severed heads of these unfortunate ancients -- a result of something more than what was normally considered to be "woman's work" -- Z thought of Mrs. Smith. That she had murder on her mind was a certainty since she'd attempted to get Z to kill her husband. Nor could there be a doubt that she'd set up Ruble to kill Z. Why? Maybe because her husband was right when he said she was filled with hatred for all men. She hated her husband. Hated things that reminded her of her husband. The dog. Z. Men in general? Her ... son?

Mr. Smith had said his wife owned a gun. If so, where was it? Since the only gun the cops found was the one beside her on the bed, didn't that indicate the gun on the bed was hers?

There was another way to look at all this, starting with the question: why would a woman who hated gardening ... garden? Could the answer be found in the old saying, "Build a better mouse trap and ....."

An early piece of information that had been rattling around inside Z's skull now settled into place. A question about who a certain V.I. Smith might be, V.I. Smith, the name of the chairman (on Dean Ashlock's list) of the committee of citizens concerned about preserving the "historic" ghost house.

Though Z still didn't want to consider the implication of the answer, he had to ask himself if this house-loving V.I. Smith could possibly be a certain Vivian Smith, recently of 2610 Pennsylvania. If so, might there be a connection between the Smith woman wanting to keep the ghost house standing and the fact that bodies were buried in that house's basement?

Speaking of bodies decaying under the basement soil, Addison had speculated that the corpses were in such bad shape because of the summer's heat -- that conjecture not making that much sense.

Heat?

Basements were cool, so much so that, in the days before refrigeration, you kept vegetables underground in the summer time, basements in those days called "root cellars." Didn't this mean that bodies in an advanced state of decomposition in the basement's "cool," must have been buried for some months?

"Are you tired? You look tired." Susan, being concerned about him.

"A little."

"Want to get something to eat?"

"Sure."

It was a ritual. After ambling around the gallery, they stopped in the Nelson's Rozzelle Court, a space at the gallery's heart that had been made into a high class (and high-priced) cafeteria. Rozzelle Court was a beautiful, two-story, sky-lighted room of aged limestone, a large, splashing fountain in the room's center, the fountain ringed by twelve evenly spaced bronze medallions set in the room's terrazzo floor, each medal a two-feet-in-diameter, low-relief celebration of a sign of the zodiac.

Entering the court, they found the usual glass-topped, black steel luncheon tables, a scattering of late afternoon patrons seated at them. The cafeteria line was to the right, the cuisine featuring upscale entrees, plus soup, salads, breads, teas of one kind or the other, and wine.

"Sit," ordered Susan, Z pulling out the nearest wire-legged chair and sitting down. "I'll pick out something for both of us." Not too hard a call since Z always had the same thing: Diet Coke and a blueberry muffin.

With Susan gone to stand in line, Z felt, not only tired, but also ... uneasy ... unhappy with the police version of the Ruble affair.

Maybe, he thought, if he arranged the clues of the "vagrant murder" case in chronological order he'd find an explanation that satisfied him.

A checklist was in order.

The whole thing started with Ruble's escape from a New York asylum no more than a month ago.

Picking up a flier from the tastefully designed metal rack in the table's center, the folded sheet advertising a coming exhibition, Z slipped his pen from the pocket of his Sunday-go-to-meeting shirt to jot notes on the leaflet's margin.

Starting with -- Ruble was crazy. A slasher. Had a reputation for mutilating corpses in the war. Was on his way to Kansas City.

Mrs. Smith was Ruble's cousin. She'd lied when she said she didn't know Ruble, knowing him well enough let him hide in her house.

The Smith woman was also mentally unstable. (Did psychological problems run in the family?) She hated her Husband, hated men in general, her Husband said. She'd tried to get Z to kill her Husband, at the same time hoping "the Mister" would kill Z. (The more Z thought about it, the more he was certain the woman had mutual-mayhem in mind for Z and the Mr. Smith.)

Both Z and the Husband surviving their first encounter, the Mrs. had then tried to get Ruble to kill both Z and her Husband, a plan that hadn't worked either. Maddened by the blast-burns Z had inflicted on him, Ruble had returned to the Smith house and killed the woman -- slashed her, a Ruble specialty. (Cut, but not mutilated.) Z tried to remember what Addison had said about Ruble. Did the K.C. detective say Ruble had hacked up the men he'd killed on his way from the New York funny farm to Kansas City? In Vietnam, yes. But in K.C.? Z didn't think so. Surely, if Ruble had carved up his American victims in interesting ways, Addison would have mentioned it. You don't overlook something like that.

For a moment, Z listened to the gushing fountain; was caught up in the froth and foam of it ... before returning to reality.

There were other facts to be put in context.

Someone (Addison thought Ruble) had killed the K.C. vagrants -- no doubt at the Smith house -- using the garden tractor's carryall to transport the bodies across the soon-to-be-soccer field to the "ghost house" basement, just across the way.

Someone (though no one but Z knew it) had also killed the boy, shot him in the head with the gun found beside the dead mother.

Then, there was the marked decomposition of the deceased, Addison believing they'd rotted quickly because of the summer's heat -- Addison taking that to mean Ruble could have killed them all within the space of his return to Kansas City.

Z noticing that the basement was cool -- maybe not. Didn't a cool basement mean that those bodies in an advanced state of rot had to have been killed and buried over a period of months -- meaning they'd been murdered long before Ruble arrived on the scene?

Throw in the dead dog.

Toss in the gallery paintings that had struck Z so forcefully.

And what did you have? ...................

Mrs. Smith, as vagrant killer!

As the Jewish widow, Judith, had chopped off the head of the Babylonian general, as the Biblical woman had been responsible for the execution of John the Baptist, so had the Smith woman murdered the vagrants. Though Z hadn't wanted to face it, women could commit the ultimate crime.

Mentally unstable herself, hating her Husband -- a hate she had generalized to all men -- Mrs. Smith had lured destitute workmen to her garden. There, strengthened by hate and exercise, she'd paid them with death and emasculation. Month - after - murderous - month!

The garden was the twisted woman's battleground; the place she'd slaughtered her hated Husband's surrogates in her own sick war. (Z found himself shivering. Willed himself to stop.)

Zeroing in on Ruble's appearance at the Smith house, Z was certain Ruble had come there only recently. Narrowing the man's arrival time even further, Ruble had not showed up until after Z had made his first trip to question Mrs. Smith. How did Z know that? Like the case of the dog that didn't bark, the first time Z had spoken to the Smith woman there'd been no smell of Ruble in the lady's sterile living room. Furniture polish and the woman's sweat. But no smell of man at all.

With cousin Ruble showing up toward the end of June, Mrs. Smith -- knowing her relative had been put away because of violent tendencies -- had gotten him to make attempts on Z's life and on her Husband's life. Injured as a result of the last murderous outburst, Ruble had returned to the Smith house where he found the woman packed up, ready to leave.

Hurt and feeling deserted, he'd killed her, too.

It had to be that way. No other way the puzzle pieces fit. Except for ....

The wild card -- the "card" no one know about because Z had it hidden "up his sleeve."

The murdered boy.

Shot.

The gun found beside the mother.

The mother's gun.

The same gun she'd used to shoot the vagrants.

No suitcases packed for the boy. ........ Because ... he wasn't going anywhere.

The reason for Z's resistance to the obvious conclusion was his horror of it! Impossible. A mother couldn't ..........

Surfacing through the sludge of Z's tiring mind came a repressed memory of something that happened several years ago. Right here in Kansas City. A tragedy in which, after losing a custody battle, a divorcee had stabbed her young children to death rather than let the children's father rear them.

So in the end, the case of the murdered vagrants came down to simplicity itself.

Mrs. Smith, a crazed man-hater, had been luring unfortunate "food for work" men to her house; murdering them on her home ground. Not so insane she wanted to be caught, she'd killed only men who wouldn't be missed, burying them in the basement of an abandoned house across the field behind her own home. (Butchering the dead also seemed to run in the family.)

When she learned the vacant death-house was to be razed to construct soccer fields, she'd organized a committee to stop the soccer project until she could make a "clean sweep" of her life by killing her Husband, the dog, and ... the boy. Following which, she planned to vanish.

Meanwhile, the cousin had shown up, the Misses trading him sanctuary for his homicidal skills -- this logical progression taking Z to the last fateful night. Taking her boy somewhere else, Mrs. Smith had let Ruble have her car so he could do his slasher act, first on Z, then on her husband, the woman using other transportation to return home later that night. Assuming her murderous cousin had disposed of Z's body, then knifed her Husband, Mrs. Smith had gone for the triple-play by shooting her son, after that, packing her bags.

Given her phobic nature, there was not a doubt in Z's mind that she'd have shot Ruble too, had she not been surprised by the enraged madman.

As horrible as this scenario was, that was what had happened, the grizzly details to be known ... by Z alone. Z had then taken the little boy, plus some of his clothes to make it look like he still lived, to the soccer field for burial.

"Penny for your thoughts," Susan said, rattling down the laden food tray, Z's girl sliding gracefully into her chair across from him.

"Overpriced at a penny," Z replied.

###

Author's Note

While Good Lord, Deliver Us is set in Kansas City, Missouri (largely in Kansas City North), the book is a work of fiction -- all the way. Fiction in this book also means that, in addition to the characters being fictitious, so are many aspects of the city. While major roads, shopping centers, theaters, restaurants, etc., appear in the books, the reader will find that little is "as it should be." The roads don't go where they should; buildings that don't exist have been "created"; actual buildings sometimes changed and/or relocated. (One of the joys of fiction-writing is that you're not bound by the truth.) Besides "manufacturing" locales where I needed them, I also "rearranged" the city to keep readers with nothing better to do from trying to find the detective's home or his office, or the homes and businesses of friends. (People are still writing to Sherlock Holmes at Number 221 B Baker Street -- because it is an actual address!) What this means is that no one will be annoying you by showing up at your house or place of business to ask stupid questions about your connection to Big Bob Zapolska.

* * * * *

About the Author

John G. Stockmyer is an individual whose irrepressible creativity has manifested itself in many ways: as a poet, teacher, produced playwright, author, co-owner of an educational materials business, creator of a time-machine simulator, and, more recently, as a podcaster and producer of eBooks. During his career he has received awards for scholarship, numerous teaching awards and, as a writer, was a Thorpe Menn finalist.

He is the co-author of three non-fiction books: Unleashing the Right Side of the Brain - The Stephen Greene Press, Life Trek: The Odyssey of Adult Development - Humanics, and Right Brain Romance - Ginn Press. He is also the author of over 20 works of fiction, including the Crime/Hard-Boiled "Z-Detective" Series, and the Science-Fiction/Fantasy "Under The Stairs" Series. He has also written a quirky vampire novel titled, The Gentleman Vampire.

John G. Stockmyer is now semi-retired from a 40+ year career as an Ancient/European History Professor at Maple Woods Community College, but still teaches and writes part-time. He currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri with his wife Connie.

For more information about the author, and to download or purchase Print Books, eBooks and Audio-Books from the "collection," please visit the John G. Stockmyer "Books" Web site at: www.johnstockmyer.com/books

If you enjoyed Good Lord, Deliver Us, you'll probably also like Book #3 in the Z Series: Murder by Candlelight. Book #3 (eBook) is currently free to download. . . so why not check it out?

To send questions or comments to the author, send an e-mail to: mail@johnstockmyer.com (all e-mails are screened/forwarded by the author's son: John L. Stockmyer)

Table of Contents

Good Lord, Deliver Us