No, La Mancha had already indicated he wasn't with the department. Okay. A blackmailer could be handled, paid off in more ways than one.

"Perhaps, uh, if you filled me in on the details..."

Before Smalley could finish the sentence, he heard the hissing sound of a tape in motion, and over all the sound of two familiar voices.

One voice belonged to his caller, the man named La Mancha.

The other belonged to Thomas Gilman.

". . . broke down under questioning and... he confessed... to rape and murder."

"You got a phone call."

Silence. Smalley could picture Gilman's head bobbing in assent.

"From a lieutenant named Fawcett?" "Who? No, I don't recognize the name. I was called by Assistant Commiss..."

Mercifully, the tape ended, cut off in mid-syllable.

Roger Smalley sat dumbly in his chair, feeling numb, shaken to the very fiber of his being. For an instant he almost panicked at the thought of those recorded words coming over an open line, but he calmed himself. No one could tap his phone without his learning about it in short order. He was the Assistant Police Commissioner, for Christ's sake!

The voice of the man called La Mancha was back on the line, demanding Smalley's attention, calling him out of himself.

"Heard enough, Commissioner?"

There was, surprisingly, no mocking tone in the words. The man seemed almost... well, almost sad, somehow.

Smalley's answering voice was low, taut.

"What is it that you want?"

La Mancha's answer came back at him without hesitation.

"Toni Blancanales, safe and sound."

And that was all.

Smalley risked everything on another stall.

"What makes you think..."

He never got it out. La Mancha's voice was a razor slicing across his words, terminating them in mid-sentence.

"I also had a talk with Benny Copa. He was cooperative to the last." Smalley's mind flashed back to his unanswered phone call of some time earlier. He guessed that Benny C. wouldn't be answering any more calls for a while — if ever.

"I see." It was all the commissioner could manage at the moment.

"Here's the deal," La Mancha said briskly, not waiting for any questions. "Deliver the lady in good working order, and I'll give you an hour's head start before I start making calls."

Smalley saw red for an instant, his hands clenched into tight fists before him. He imagined the smell of something burning in his nostrils.

"You can't be serious!" he snapped, when he recovered himself enough to speak.

"Is that your answer?" La Mancha asked.

"What?"

Smalley was suddenly confused, his anger blunted, thrown off stride by the simple question.

La Mancha's voice came back at him, this time with a note of resignation in it.

"Goodbye, Commissioner."

Suddenly desperate, Smalley clutched at the desktop speaker with palsied hands, as if to forcibly stop the other man from hanging up.

"Wait, dammit!" he blurted. Then he felt, tickling the back of his mind, the germ of an idea. "All right," he said reluctantly, "you've got a deal."

"Where and when?"

And suddenly Smalley knew the answer. Hell, he knew allthe answers.

"You know Phalen Park?" he asked slowly, fighting to keep the new excitement out of his voice.

"I'll find it," La Mancha told him.

"Okay. Meet me on West Shore Drive, let's say in an hour."

There was no immediate answer, and Smalley assumed the guy was thinking it over.

"Safe and sound, Commissioner," La Mancha said at last. "Otherwise, all bets are off."

"How do I know I can trust you?" Smalley countered.

"What choice do you have?" the stranger asked simply.

Roger Smalley had no ready answer for that one, but it didn't matter, because the line was already dead, an obnoxious dial tone filling the room until he hit the speaker switch and silenced it.

The assistant commissioner sat quietly, thinking and cursing to himself, laying the last of his battle plans that warm morning. This La Mancha, whoever the hell he was, appeared to have him by the balls, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling.

Well, let the bastard think that way. Just let him.

Roger Smalley wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot. And Mr. Smart-ass La Mancha would wind up wearing his own balls for a bow tie before the afternoon was out.

You could take that to the bank.

La Mancha had gained the early advantage in their conversation via the element of surprise, but the shoe was on the other foot now. When the guy kept their appointment in the park, he would meet with asurprise arranged by Assistant Police Commissioner Roger Smalley, no less. A fatal surprise.

Smalley lifted the telephone receiver, thought better of it, then cradled it again.

No, it wasn't likely that his phones were tapped, or his office bugged, but he hadn't survived this long on the force with the wise guys on one side and the headhunters from Internal Affairs on the other by being careless.

It might be a sign of paranoia, but what the hell. These were paranoid times he lived in, after all. A grin crossed Smalley's face as he thought of a psychedelic poster that had seen brief popularity in the head shops a number of years earlier: "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!"

And amen to that.

Well, "they" could be surprised right alongside Mr. La Mancha.

Smalley rose from his desk and made ready to leave the office. He had plans to finalize and a surprise party to orchestrate. When it was over, he just might come back and take his attractive secretary out to lunch.

In an hour he would be home free. Free and clear.

The automobile bearing Fran Traynor, blindfolded, to her unknown destination slid smoothly to a stop. Throughout the ride, of which she remembered very little, she had been primarily conscious of the throbbing pain in her skull where Smalley had struck her, and of the moist, threatening palm that rested heavily on her right thigh.

But now the car had stopped, and the hot hand was withdrawn. She felt cool air upon her face as the doors opened on both sides, and the seat lurched as her unseen companions exited. Immediately, a hand was groping for her, fingertips trailing deliberately across the curve of one breast before locking onto her arm in a painful grip. Fran tried to pull away from that imprisoning hand, but there was nowhere to go, no place to hide.

She let herself be pulled from the car and led along a concrete drive, then over grass to another walkway.

"This way, babe," a male voice prodded from her left. "Watch your step."

She felt gingerly ahead of her with one foot, locating steps and taking them carefully, one at a time. She both heard and felt a door open in front of her, and then she was propelled through it, into the cool interior of a building. From the sounds and smells of the place, and the carpeting beneath her feet, she knew she was inside a house.

There were hands on both her arms now, guiding her left and right through what felt like a maze of corridors. Fran was becoming disoriented, cursing silently to herself as she realized that in her present condition, a simple living room filled with furniture could be made to feel like a winding labyrinth.

She recognized the feeling of a corridor, and had begun to count her paces when the guiding hands suddenly brought her up short, turning her sharply to the left. Keys rattled in a lock, and another door was opened for her, another hand shoving her inside.

Behind her head, blunt fingers tugged at the knot of her blindfold, and suddenly it came free, whisking across her face and disappearing behind her.

"Sit tight, doll," the leering voice said. "Maybe we can have some laughs later."