At a quarter to twelve Harvey Geddes called from Los Angeles. He'd spent most of the night, he said, trying to track down someone with a current address for Kurt Zinsser of the FFF, and after driving from West Hollywood to Santa Monica to Venice and back to Hollywood again, he'd found it. I wrote down the phone number and the building and apartment number on a street in Denver. I told Harvey I owed him one, and he agreed.

I trekked up Central to Elmo's in search of nourishment to gird myself for a visit with the Stuart Blounts, of State Street and Saratoga.

16

"Another thousand?" blount said, "well—i suppose.

You know your business, Mr. Strachey. Of course, I will be needing an itemized statement of expenses at some future point in time. For tax purposes, you understand."

We were seated in our customary places in the Blount salon, the missus sucking daintily on her long white weed, Blount pere eyeing me gravely across his early-American checkbook. I'd thought about asking for twenty-five thousand but concluded that that would be pushing it. He forked over the grand, and I snatched it up.

"May I ask," he said, "where you'll be flying to tomorrow, Mr. Strachey?"

I said, "Caracas."

His eyebrows went up. Hers did not. She said, "We're being taken for a ride."

"I beg your pardon?""

"Stuart, he's playing us for a fool, and you're not stopping him."

I said, "I have the address where your son is staying. I received it from a contact in Los Angeles an hour and twenty minutes ago. I'll be with Billy tomorrow night."

"Billy's not in Argentina!" she snapped. "What do you take us for?"

I said, "Venezuela. Caracas is in Venezuela."

Blount said, "Mr. Strachey, really—how on earth could Billy have—"

"Who is Eddie?" I said.

She gave Blount an I-told-you-so look. He sighed, not so much at my question, I guessed, as at her look.

"Mr. Strachey," Jane Blount said, "have you ever heard it said that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail?"

"I've heard it said, yes. Henry Stimson is usually credited with the line, or is it Liz Smith? Anyway, who is Eddie? Billy will tell me when I see him, I expect, so why don't you save me a small expenditure of energy and yourself the financial expense of my remaining an additional ten minutes in—Caracas. Okay?"

"Why must you know about Eddie, Mr. Strachey?" Blount said. "It is, I'm sorry to say, a private family matter."

"Because Eddie is a part of the puzzle. I'll know which part when I know who or what he is. The safety of three or more people could depend on my knowing."

Jane Blount shot smoke in the air. Her husband shifted in his chair and made an impatient face. "Eddie is a separate matter, Mr. Strachey. Truly, he is. You must believe that. He's got nothing to do with this situation Billy's gotten himself into. You have my personal assurance on that. Can you accept that? Can you?" He looked at me imploringly.

I said, "I might have if it weren't for the fact that Eddie's name has cropped up elsewhere in my travels."

They looked at me. Jane Blount said, "Where?"

"Does the name Frank Zimka mean anything to you?"

He said, "No."

She said, "Lord, no! Zim-ka? It sounds Polish!"

I said, "He's a friend of Billy's. An acquaintance."

"And he knows Eddie?" she said, looking queasy.

I said, "I'm one of the few people left in Albany who knows nothing about Eddie—next to nothing. Now, who the bloody hell is Eddie?"

I startled them.

She said, "He's—he's Billy's favorite uncle."

What shit. I said, "Tell me more."

"Stuart's brother Eddie—Billy and he were so close when Billy was young, it was quite touching, really. And then Eddie went away. He's in shipping, you see." Mistah Kurtz. "Uncle Eddie lived in the Levantine for many years, but recently he returned to this country, and Stuart and I thought he might exert his good influence with Billy so that Billy could finally be straightened out. So to speak. Don't you think there's good sense in that, Mr. Strachey? Some sound counsel from a wise and sophisticated and much-loved uncle?"

Straightened out. I thought about dropping the Sewickley Oaks business on them, but that would have been showing off, and in any case I had my own plans for that particular side of the equation.

"Well, why didn't you just tell me that in the first place? Is Uncle Eddie a leper? a syphilitic? a Pole? What's the big secret?"

Blount was sitting with his head back and his eyes squeezed shut. I'd have felt sorry for him if I hadn't known what a dangerous man he was.

Jane Blount said, "Uncle Eddie is—a socialist."

"In shipping?"

"Yes."

"Well, he's no idealogue."

"No," she said. "At least he's not that."

They were hopeless. I'd find out what I had to from my own sources, including their son, for whom there was evidence of sanity, even good sense. That sometimes happened in families.

I said, "When I see Billy tomorrow, I'm sure he'll be happy to hear about Uncle Eddie's being back. The news should make my job that much easier."

She took on a confused look. Her husband appeared as if,

while his wife and I chatted, he'd slipped on his death mask. I waited.

In her embarrassment Jane Blount turned surly. "Just bring Billy back here to Albany, Mr. Strachey. That's what Stuart's paid you a good deal of money to do. Bring Billy to this house—our home and his—and you'll be paid a cash bonus. You haven't asked for that, I know, but I feel confident that you will accept it." She looked at me as if I were the Lindbergh kidnapper.

I got up to leave, and Stuart Blount sprang to life. The missus excused herself, swooped into the foyer, deposited her ashtray in the maid's waiting mitt, and ascended the stairs. Blount walked me to the front door and out onto the stoop. He closed the door behind us.

He breathed deeply and said, "Eddie is an old school friend of Billy's. From the Elwell School. They were quite close." I guessed what that meant. "The boys have been out of touch for a number of years, and now Eddie is back in the area and Jane and I thought Billy might be more eager to come back to us if he knew we would reunite him with Eddie. Call it blackmail if you like, Mr. Strachey, but remember that we're doing it for our only son, whom we love very much. Is it all right now? Have I reassured you?

"You have," I said. "I'd like to meet Eddie. Could you arrange it? He might be able to clear some things up for me in connection with the killing."

He put his arm on my shoulder and spoke in a fatherly way. "Mr. Strachey, I appreciate the special interest you've taken in this matter, I sincerely do. But, truth to tell, don't you feel that that end of the situation would best be left to our police department? There are detectives who are paid good salaries to carry out the work that you seem to have taken on— at my expense!" He shook with mirth and waited for me to join him.

"I've been in touch with one of those highly paid detectives," I said, "and although the man does, I suppose, have his virtues—dedication, cleanliness, perhaps thrift—he definitely is on the wrong track on this case. My sorting through this Eddie business just might point us all in the right direction, the