Parked in front of Rosalie’s home was an L.A. black-and-white, and a second vehicle, which, while not-marked, was plainly a cop car, was parked in the driveway. A uniformed policeman was in the squad car scanning the street.

My lovely Rosalie had finked on me.

I went back to the bike and pedaled off in the opposite direction. When I reached the downtown district, I parked the bike and caught a cab to the Los Angeles airport. Within thirty minutes I was in the air, returning to San Francisco. I was plagued with a feeling I couldn’t identify the entire trip, and the nebulous emotion stayed with me as I packed, paid my motel bill and returned to the airport. I bought a ticket to Las Vegas, using the name James Franklin, and I left the Barracuda in the airport parking lot, the keys in the ignition. It was the first of many cars I purchased and abandoned.

I was still possessed by the odd feeling during the flight to Las Vegas. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t guilt. I couldn’t put my finger on it until I stepped off the plane in Nevada. Then I identified the emotion.

It was relief. I was happy to have Rosalie out of my life! The knowledge astonished me, for not six hours past I’d been desperately seeking a way to make her my wife. Astonished or not, I was still relieved.

It was my first trip to Las Vegas and the city was everything and more than I’d imagined. There was a frantic, electric aura about the whole city, and the people, visitors and residents alike, seemed to be rushing around in a state of frenetic expectation. New York was a city of leisurely calm in comparison. “Gambling fever,” explained a cabbie when I mentioned the dynamic atmosphere.

“Everybody’s got it. Everybody’s out to make a killing, especially the Johns. They fly in on jets or driving big wheels and leave on their thumbs. The only winners in this town are the houses. Everybody else is a loser. Take my advice-if you’re gonna play, play the dolls. A lot of them are hungry.”

I took a suite at a motel and paid two weeks’ rent in advance. The registration clerk wasn’t impressed at all by the wad of $100 bills from which I peeled the hotel charge. A big roll in Vegas is like pocket change in Peoria, I soon learned.

I intended Las Vegas to be just an R amp; R stop. I followed the cabbie’s advice and played the chicks. He was right about the girls. Most of them were hungry. Actually hungry. Famished, in fact. After a week with some of the more ravenous ones, I felt like Moses feeding the multitudes.

However, as the Good Book sayeth: He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack.

I am feeding a famished gamin poolside. She has been living on casino free lunches for three days while trying to contact a brother in Phoenix to ask for bus fare home. “I blew everything,” she said ruefully while devouring a huge steak with all the trimmings. “All the money I brought with me, all the money in my checking account, all I could raise on my jewelry. I even cashed in my return airline ticket. It’s a good thing my room was paid in advance or I’d be sleeping on lobby couches.”

She grinned cheerfully. “Serves me right. I’ve never gambled before, and I didn’t intend to gamble when I came here. But the damned place gets to you.”

She looked at me quizzically. “I hope you’re just being nice, buying me dinner. I know there’re ways a girl can get things in this burg, but that ain’t my style, man.”

I laughed. “Relax. I like your style. Are you going back to a job in Phoenix?”

She nodded. “I am if I can get hold of Bud. But I may not have a job if I’m not back by Monday.”

“What do you do?” I asked. She looked the secretary type.

“I’m a check designer for a firm that designs and prints checks,” she said. “A commercial artist, really. It’s a small firm, but we do work for a couple of big banks and a lot of business firms.”

I was astonished. “Well, I’ll be darned,” I ventured. “That’s interesting. What do you do when you design and print a check?”

“Oh, it depends on whether we’re making up plain checks or fancy ones; you know, the kind with pictures, landscapes and different colors. It’s a simple operation for just plain checks. I just lay it out on a big paste-up board however the customer wants it, and then we photograph it with an I-Tek camera, reducing it to size, and the camera produces an engraving. We just put the engraving on a little offset press and print up the check in blocks or sheets. Anybody could do it, really, with a little training.”

Her name was Pixie. I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Pixie, how’d you like to go home tonight, by air?” I asked.

“You’re kidding me?” she accused, her eyes wary.

“No, I’m not,” I assured her. “I’m an airline pilot for Pan Am. We don’t fly out of here, but I have deadhead privileges. I can get you a seat to Phoenix on any airline that serves Vegas from there. All it’ll cost is a little white lie. I’ll say you’re my sister. No other strings attached, okay?”

“Hey, all right!” she said delightedly and gave me a big bear hug.

While she packed, I bought her a ticket, paying for it in cash. I took her to the airport and pressed a $100 bill in her hand as she boarded the plane. “No arguments,” I said. “That’s a loan. I’ll be around to collect one of these days.”

I did get to Phoenix, but I made no effort to contact her. If I had, it wouldn’t have been to collect but to pay off, for Pixie let me into the mint.

The next day I sought out a stationery printing supply firm. “I’m thinking of starting a little stationery store and job printing shop,” I told a salesman.

“I’ve been advised that an I-Tek camera and a small offset press would probably meet my initial needs, and that good used equipment might prove just as feasible from an economic standpoint.”

The salesman nodded. “That’s true,” he agreed. “Trouble is, used I-Tek cameras are hard to come by. We don’t have one. We do have a fine little offset press that’s seen very limited service, and I’ll make you a good deal on the press if you take it along with a new I-Tek. Let you have both for $8,000.”

I was somewhat surprised by the price, but after he showed me the machines and demonstrated the operating procedure of both, I felt $8,000 was a paltry sum to invest in such gems. An I-Tek camera is simply a photoelectric engraver. It photographically produces an engraving of the original copy to be reproduced. The lightweight, flexible plate is then wrapped around the cylinder of an offset press, and the plate prints directly on the blanket of the press, which in turn offsets the image onto whatever paper stock is used. As Pixie said, anybody could do it with a little training, and I acquired my training on the spot.

The I-Tek camera and the small press, while not overly heavy, were large and bulky, not objects to be carted around the country as part of one’s luggage. But I planned only a limited ownership of the machines.

I located a warehouse storage firm and rented a well-lighted cubicle for a month, paying in advance. I then obtained a cashier’s check for $8,000 and bought the I-Tek camera and the press and had them delivered to the storage room. The same day I made a round of stationery stores and purchased all the supplies I needed-a drawing board, pens and pencils, rulers, a paper cutter, press-on letters and numerals, a quantity of safety paper in both blue and green card stock of the type used for the real expense checks and other items.

The next day I closeted myself in my makeshift workshop and, using the various materials, created a 16-by-24-inch facsimile of the sham Pan Am expense check I’d been reproducing by hand. Finished, I positioned my artwork under the camera, set the reduction scale for a 2›V2-by-7V2-inch engraving and pushed the button. Within minutes I was fitting the plate around the drum of the press and printing sample copies of my invention.