"Well, the rust factor's what you got to worry over," said a genial man, identity and hometown unknown.

"Ain't rust just a royal pain in the butt!" chirped Estelle Oppers of Maggody, Arkansas.

They were heading in my direction. I let the door click shut, hesitated long enough to scratch my chin and frown, then scurried up to the next landing and waited.

I was gratified when the door below me opened and the two adventuresses began to descend. "All I can say is that it's a good thing he works for that magazine at night!" Ruby Bee said with a sniff. "Imagine not knowing your copper pipes from your lead pipes."

Estelle sounded equally disdainful as she said, "I doubt he knows his spigots from a hole in the ground! I'm glad we don't have to count on him when pipes start bursting in the winter."

"I should say so. Do you remember back in 'eighty-six when we had that hard freeze right before Christmas and-"

"It was 'eighty-seven, the same year my cousin Carmel was electrocuted in the bathtub. His wife said he always played the radio, but she was seen at a bar less than a week later and dressed in jeans so tight-"

The door banged closed on yet another diverting incident in the Chadwick Hotel.

"I told you to make sure you had the maps," Dahlia said, her tone as deflated as her chins. "Right before we got in the car at that horrible motel, I asked point-blank if you had the maps, and you said you did, even though the maps were in the room and your head was up your behind. I was gonna make sure, but then you had to go and drop my suitcase so everyone in the parking lot could see my underwear just a-flutterin' in the breeze. Right then and there I should have told you to take me home so I could call a lawyer and git myself a divorce."

Kevin tried not to whimper from under the chair where he'd gotten himself wedged more 'n an hour ago. Sweat was gathering in his eyes and leaking into his ears something awful, but there wasn't anything he could do on account of being tied up. "I guess I deserve it," he said, trying to be brave like a frontiersman surrounded by hostile Indians and down to his last bullet. "It's all my fault, my darling. I dun everything wrong from the minute we hit the highway leading out of Maggody."

"You're darn right it's all your fault," Dahlia said. "If someone like Ira was here, he'd know what to do about it. I keep asking myself why I had to be kidnapped with you instead of a real man who ain't afraid to protect his woman from danger."

Marvel, who was once again in the kitchen making sure the cops weren't getting ready to do something stupid, eased away from the window, and took the last piece of bread from the wrapper. Shit, he thought, they were running out of food. Big Mama wasn't much fun, but there'd be hell to pay if she found out they might have to make do on water and crackers. He could order another pizza, he supposed, but just remembering her reaction to the anchovies was enough to make his stomach go sour.

"Beloved," Kevin whined from the front room, "if I was a policeman or an FBI agent, I'd just gnaw my way out of these ropes and shoot that fellow until there weren't nothing left of him."

She responded to that, but Marvel wasn't listening. He was thinking, and after a minute, he hurried to the front room and picked up the telephone on the counter. He punched for the operator and said, "I want to talk to someone at the police station in whatever this hellhole is called. If you don't put me through, I'll kill one of the hostages and kick the body out the back door."

"Kevin," said Dahlia, although in a tone that suggested he engage in volunteerism rather than heroics, "do something."

Marvel pointed the gun at her until she subsided. "Okay, listen up real good," he said into the receiver.

"I'm fed up with this and ready to negotiate. Thing is, I don't trust you honky rednecks. I want you to get a dude from the FBI and send him in here to work out the details. What's more, my man, I don't want some local asshole putting on a three-piece suit and claiming to be a fed. The only man I'll deal with is gonna be a brother." He listened for a moment. "Yeah, a black man, and I don't care how you're going to get one. All I can say is that if he doesn't come up on the porch at precisely nine o'clock, his arms in the air and his credentials between his teeth so I can read 'em, I'll shove my gun up one of the hostages' noses and splatter brains and blood on the wall.

"Kevvie…" Dahlia wailed, covering her face (and nose) with her hands and slumping across the table. He couldn't see any of this, wedged as he was, but he could hear the distress in his beloved's voice and it was worse than being poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

"And while we wait," Marvel said, "why don't you send over a big bucket of fried chicken and some biscuits and gravy?"

To Kevin's relief Dahlia's wails dribbled off with a hiccup or two.

As I came out of the stairwell, the door of 215 opened and Frannie, after a hushed word over her shoulder, came into the hallway. "Catherine's resting," she said. "I thought I'd find out what we're supposed to do about food, since the kitchen's off-limits and we're not allowed to leave the hotel. I really don't know what to think about this whole thing. Brenda seemed like such a pleasant woman. Jerome was beastly, but I can't imagine her actually going so far as to…"

For some reason I couldn't define, I shot a quick frown at her door before I said, "He was brutal during the press reception, wasn't he?"

"But Geri certainly upstaged everyone," she said with a dry smile.

"She's worse than some of the teenaged girls back home. She doesn't have half the poise your daughter's shown these last few days, although Catherine did seem…excited last night. Whatever did she mean about the little piggies?"

Frannie eased me away from the door. "She's not accustomed to alcohol, and she was unable to handle it. This is our first visit to Manhattan, and what with the pressure of the contest and meeting the media, she was simply not herself. She told me afterward that she was trying to lighten everyone's mood with a silly joke."

"Oh," I said wisely. "Have you and she given statements to the police yet?"

"That lieutenant came to the room earlier. Catherine was sleeping, but I went to the lobby and talked with him for a few minutes. There was very little I could tell him about poor Brenda and Jerome, and Catherine's had almost no contact with them at all, beyond the few times Geri gathered all the contestants to discuss the schedule."

She headed for the elevator, forcing me to follow her. I still couldn't figure out what was bugging me about her room, which was apt to be as dingy and cramped as everyone else's. Not even in my wildest flights of whimsy could I hypothesize a majestic suite behind the peeling door.

"Catherine seems to spend a lot of time in the room," I said as Frannie pushed the elevator button.

"It's her allergies. There's something in the air that's giving her dreadful headaches, and she's hardly been able to sleep at night because of the noise outside the hotel. The horns never stop, do they? It doesn't do one bit of good, but they seem to enjoy leaning on their horns and shouting obscenities at each other."

"You're from Kansas, right?" I said, wily professional interrogator that I was. She nodded and, when the elevator door slid open, stepped inside. At the last second, I joined her with a witless chuckle, and continued. "I assume Catherine's in school. What do you do, Frannie?"

She gave me a narrow look, as if I'd asked her for the name of the madam who ran the whorehouse. "I work part-time in a little store. I think it's important that I be there when Catherine comes home from school. I drive her to all her lessons, and sometimes we go out to the mall to shop and have supper in the food pavilion. She's in the honors program, so she's always loaded with homework in the evenings. I sew or occasionally read a magazine. I've tried to watch television, but Catherine cannot concentrate unless the house is very quiet."