"Dial nine to get an outside line," she said. "You'll find everything you need in the bathroom. I'll see you on the other side of the building."

Leland waved. First he found the office directory and dialed the main entrance.

The guard said hello.

"It's Leland, the fellow who just came in. The Jag took off."

"Yeah, well, I put the call in. It can't do any harm. He's probably still right here in the neighborhood, and they'll have an easy one. How's that party up there?"

"Deafening. Have a nice Christmas."

"Hell, I'll be here working."

Leland decided to try Kathi Logan tonight, after all — but not this minute. In the bathroom he saw that Steffie knew how to take her perks, too. The place was what you expected to find in milady's boudoir, including shower and fully equipped medicine cabinet. After he helped himself to two more aspirin, Leland took off his jacket and tie, opened his collar, and rolled up his sleeves. He got out of the harness and put the Browning over his jacket. For years he had been able to get away without having to carry a firearm, but then the word had come down. He was a menace to himself and others without a weapon and the practice that would make him effective with it. He had always been an excellent shot, but now, even at his age, because of the practice, he was better than he had ever been in his life.

Leland didn't want to see too much of the Browning with Ellis so close to his thoughts. The rolled-up dollar bill, evidence of cocaine, made the guy clear. An asshole. The LAPD called them assholes, guys who thought they could keep one step ahead of the system in pursuit of their own desperate satisfactions. Steffie was sleeping with him. Leland knew his daughter. She had something of her own to prove — to her mother, to him, to Gennaro, Ellis, and all the men.

In any event, Leland had to be careful. He had steered the conversation away from police work in Ellis's office because of the dollar bill. Marijuana was seen everywhere, especially in California, but cocaine carried very heavy time, and there was no telling how people reacted if they were faced with years in prison. Better Leland play as dumb as Ellis thought Rivers was. What disappointed Leland was that Steffie underestimated him, too — she had forgotten a lifetime of what Rivers thought was a "sixth sense."

Leland didn't like Rivers any more than Ellis, and not because of the old war buddies crap. Rivers was another hustler, like Ellis, only better. A lot of it was the down-home Texas cornpone. Some easterners never got on to that, and it always worked to the Texans' favor.

Texas was a different attitude, almost a different culture. Cleaning the other guy out wasn't enough: you were supposed to look him in the eye, smile, and squeeze his hand. That was Rivers, a sweet piece of work. One consolation: Ellis thought he was as good as Rivers, and he wasn't.

Leland was a traveler trying to wake up, and he washed accordingly, with cold water, deep into his hairline, careful around the Band-Aid over his brow, around the back of his neck, up to his elbows. Then he dried vigorously, rubbing to draw the blood up to his skin. He felt better, tired inside but not yet ready for sleep, good for hours more.

He took off his shoes and socks. In the sixties, the first time he went to Europe on business, he sat next to a German, an executive in the American branch of an optical firm who had crossed the Atlantic over seventy times, going back to the first quarter of the century. Leland said he was working for Ford, doing a study on the economics of shipping parts by air rather than by sea, to reduce the amount of the float tied up in inventory, and then let the old man talk from Virginia to Hamburg.

The old man had known Hitler, whom he called a peasant incapable of reshaping an opinion. The way to cross an ocean, he said, of all the methods he had been able to try, remained the dirigible. One hundred miles per hour at a height of a thousand feet, almost two days in the company of real ladies and gentlemen. A wonderful man, full of wisdom. Leland would have lied, if he had been asked what he had done in the war.

"Do you want to know a secret, Mr. Businessman? You can be wide awake at the end of the day if you wash your feet. Walk around barefoot for ten minutes. You'll feel terrific."

It was true. Wriggling his toes, his cuffs rolled up to his knees, Leland carried his daughter's telephone over to the windows, braced it on his knee, dialed nine, then one, as you had to do in Los Angeles to call long distance, the San Diego area code next, and finally, Kathi Logan's number, which he had already memorized.

It rang twice, then there was a mechanical pick-up.

"Hi, this is Kathi Logan. I'm not home right now, but if you'll leave your name and number after you hear the beep, I'll send you your dime back. Or maybe I'll call you. Who are you, anyway? Wipe that grin off your face and speak up."

Ah, California. Leland was laughing aloud when the tone sounded. Far below, thirty-two stories down, a truck turned from Wilshire into the side street, then just as quickly into the ramp down to the underground garage under the plaza that surrounded the building. Something turned over in Leland's mind. The truck had been going too fast, but that wasn't it.

"Kathi, this is Joe Leland, your friend from St. Louis today. Thank you. Tomorrow build yourself a perfect day. I'm going to call in the evening and ask to see you. I thought we could meet in San Francisco..."

Disconnect. The tape had run out — no, there was no dial tone. The telephone was dead. He tapped the cradle button. Nothing.

He looked at his watch: eight o'clock. Maybe the switchboard had an automatic cutoff. There was no point in going outside to call again; it would only add to her confusion. For a while he stood at the window, staring at the lights on the Hollywood Hills. Someone had once pointed out Laurel Canyon to him — he couldn't remember who it was, or when that had been.

That old German had left one problem unsolved: putting the socks on again. A change in pitch of the air coming through the ventilator made him look up. No, that wasn't it. The music had stopped. Abruptly. He wondered why he would take notice of it, and then realized what he had wanted to remember about that truck: it was the one he had seen parked on the side street facing Wilshire a half hour ago. No wonder the guy in the Jag had wanted to hide the microphone.

The telephone was dead?

Leland was going for the Browning when he heard the woman scream.

He was on his feet at once. His head was clear. He got into the harness, drew the gun, popped the safety, and snapped the first round into the firing chamber.

Leland extinguished the lights and opened the door slowly, as silently as possible. The corridor was empty, but now he could hear a man's voice, sharp, but too far away to be intelligible.

Leland had to decide what to do — now.His shoes were in the bathroom. If the voice was barking orders to partygoers, then it was only a matter of moments before his teammates made a search of the rooms on this floor. How many of them were there? The staircase was around on the other side of the elevator, bank. For a second Leland would be exposed as he crossed the main corridor, but if people were looking the other way, into the party room, he just might get away with it.

The Browning. If he were caught with it, there would I be shooting. If he left it behind and they found it, they would come looking for the owner. No time to hide it, either — no sense in giving them the chance to get closer to him at all, not when he was carrying an NYPD badge, whatever its gag origins. Barefoot, the Browning raised, Leland stepped onto the shaved surface of the industrial carpet in the corridor.

The voice became louder as Leland neared the elevator bank. He had to get a line on this, if he could, but he had to achieve safety — some measure of it, at least. He stopped five feet before he reached the corner.