It took an hour or so, during which Mike called frequently to report that Laszlo hadn’t done anything yet and ask us what we’d found.

I was getting dragged by the mess, my tiny respect for Laszlo was clear gone, when Sean yelled from the bathroom, “Hey, what’s this?”

And Mike tinned, “Chester, are you there?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” to Mike and, “Hold it,” to Sean.

“He’s gone!” Mike shrilled, buzzing the speaker.

“Where’d he go?”

“Dunno.” The fidelity was poor, but good enough to carry the embarrassed tone of Michael’s voice.

“You lost him?” Considering Mike, this was hard to believe.

“There was this ChicK, you understand?”

“Chick?”

“Yeah. She asked me for a light, and when I turned around again, he was gone.”

“Oh. A ChicK.” I thought it over, then, “Pretty?”

“Wow!”

“Figures. Well, we’ll cut out like now, okay?”

“You better.” Pause. “Oh, find anything?”

“Not particularly. Agent 002’s got something in the John, but I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Hmm. Right. Anyhow, get out as fast as you can. He may be heading back, you know. See you at the pad.”

“Roger. Keep in touch.”

Well. That was interesting, I supposed. “What’ve you got?” I yelled at Sean.

“C’mere an’ see. I cain’t tell.”

Laszlo’s john couldn’t surprise me anymore, not after the rest of the pad, but it certainly was unusual. Yeah, unusual. It looked like a cross between an explosion in a pharmacy and a condemned abattoir, just what I expected but more than I could take. Nevertheless, I took it. I’m a dedicated man now and then.

Sean was standing in the middle of all this, skitterishly shying away from anything. He was holding a medium-size brown paper sack, well-filled, over his head.

“What seems to be the matter here?”

“Dig.” He handed me the bag. It was full of crushed, dry green leaves. For a moment I felt a thrill course through me, but then I remembered Laszlo’s slimy practices.

“It’s probably oregano,” I regretted.

“Don’t smell like it,” he offered.

He was right. “Step into my office,” I suggested, and we moved back into the big room.

“I happen to have with me,” I said, pulling my trusty little pipe from my pocket, “an extremely sensitive testing device.”

“Groovy,” my faithful assistant exclaimed.

I dipped up a pipeful of Laszlo’s unknown green stuff, lit it, and inhaled deeply. “Nope,” I said after a while, “it’s not oregano.”

“What is it?”

I dropped my voice to a solemn whisper and said, “Marijuana, baby. Loathsome Laszlo’s private stash.”

“Hey, man, what a gas! Let’s cop it.”

“You want to steal Laszlo’s grass?” The idea had an appalling charm.

“Why not, man?”

“Well — he’d notice. Mike doesn’t want him to know we’ve been here.”

“Oh, man, like you know bards can’t count.”

Years ago, before we knew what Laszlo was, I’d innocently paid him twenty bucks for prime spaghetti seasoning, so, “Okay, but leave some for Laszlo,” there being a kind of honor in every minority group.

“Right.”

And so we split, Sean carrying our share of Laszlo’s treasure. I closed the metal door silently, carefully relocking all five locks, and we started to tiptoe down the stairs.

Halfway down we stopped dead. There was a strange noise below us, a familiar strange noise, an absolutely Laszlo kind of noise.

“Trapped!” I cursed.

We turned and tiptoed double time back up the stairs, past Laszlo’s pad and two flights farther, all the way up to the door to the roof, which was locked from the other side.

“Yeah,” Sean whispered while I swore inventively, “trapped.” Meanwhile Laszlo loudly climbed the stairs below us. He seemed to consider each step a personal offense, and kept it no secret. He wasn’t a happy Laszlo, not at all.

He reached his landing and the Laszlo noise abated. Then there were crisp metallic noises, four sets of them: the Bard of MacDougal Street unlocking his door. This developed into a furious muffled rattling, punctuated by spurts of amateurish profanity. The rattling grew louder, and there were vigorous percussive sounds most likely made by kicking.

Under cover of this racket Sean whispered, “Hey, man, did you do something to that other lock?”

Clatter bang.

“Other lock?”

“You know, man. They was five locks, only one of ’em didn’t work. Remember?”

Thunderbash clamorbang cuss!

“Oh Christ,” I admitted. “You’re right.”

“You locked it?”

“I locked it.”

Sean and I huddled at the top of the stairs, waiting. It didn’t seem likely that Laszlo’d come upstairs and find us, but considering Laszlo, that wasn’t much security. I became acutely conscious of the rustling paper bag in Sean’s hand. That could take some explanation. It might be easier just to slug him, but Mike wouldn’t approve. Too inelegant, he’d say. Too crude.

Suddenly Laszlo fell silent, except for a thin low mutter that was probably his detailed opinion of the situation. Sean and I held our breaths. Laszlo’s muttering grew louder, and there were footsteps approaching. Complications threatened to set in.

Laszlo climbed up two flights, to the landing half a flight below where we were huddled in the insufficient darkness. He stopped before a door in plain sight of us, stood fuming for a moment, then rapped abstract invectives on the door.

Sean and I were paralyzed. This was clearly a situation out of which no good could come. All Laszlo had to do was turn around and we’d be had. He was bound to wonder why we were lurking around his pad, and we could count on him to think the worst — especially since he’d be right.

He rapped again. No answer.

“Why me?” he wondered bitterly. “What have I done? Why do these things have to happen to me?”

I could’ve told him, but it didn’t seem wise.

“It’s a plot, that’s what it is. They’re out to get me, that damn Anderson and all his stinkin’ crew. I know what’s going on here. Oh yeah, I know where it’s at, baby.” Louder rapping. “I’ll show them bastards.” Further rapping.

I felt better already, but, “Hello there,” said the wrist radio into one of Laszlo’s silences: transistorized instant traitor I squelched the gadget before it could say any more, but too late.

“Who’s there?” Laszlo panicked in anger, revolving like a paranoid top. “Who said that?”

Sweating foolishly, I pretended to be invisible. Doubtless Sean played some such desperate game as well.

Laszlo stopped twirling, his silly-putty nose aimed straight at us. “All right,” he snapped in a scared falsetto, “I see you. Come down here. Come on.”

“Okay,” whispered something in me that was half stubbornness and half humiliation, “I’ve been caught by Laszlo Scott, fair and square, but I’ll be damned if I’ll cooperate. If he wants me, let him come and get me.” So I sat rock-still and didn’t make a sound. Being pretty much stuck behind me, Sean had no choice but to do the same.

“Quit stalling,” Laszlo said with less conviction than before. “Come on down here.”

We didn’t move. Presently Laszlo said something commonplace and foul and stomped ungracefully away. We heard his cloddish feet descend two flights; we heard him rattling his door again; we heard him clomp the rest of the way downstairs to the ground floor, and we heard him slam the front door, hopefully behind him.

Still we did not move. Very gradually we realized that somehow Laszlo hadn’t really seen us after all. This was very strange, for Sean was wearing a white shirt and the stairwell wasn’t really all that dark.

But we didn’t hang around to work it out. As soon as we understood that Laszlo’d actually split for someplace, we tiptoed cautiously but swiftly down the stairs. (I was getting sick of all this tiptoeing. My green suede boots weren’t made for it, and my feet were starting to hurt.)