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club's anonymity unnecessarily. And the attention we'd get as individuals would be most unwelcome, too."
    "For most of you," I said. "Ray Gruliow probably thinks 'unwelcome attention' is a contradiction in terms. Still, you've got a tough call to make. The fastest way to get a full-scale investigation under way is to sit down with a reporter and tell him the same story you just told me. My guess is you'd have national media coverage within twenty-four hours and a police task force assigned inside of forty-eight. With dead men in several states, plus the serial-killer element, you might even see the FBI come in on it if the publicity heats up enough."
    "It's beginning to sound like a circus."
    "Well, if you hired me you'd get a much lower profile. I don't even have a PI license, let alone influence in high places. Any investigation I might mount would have to proceed at a relatively slow pace, and I don't know how much of a factor time might turn out to be. Have you discussed this with any of your fellow members?"
    "I haven't said a word to anybody."
    "Really? That's a surprise. I would have thought... Oh."
    He gave a long slow nod. "The club's not a true secret society, but we've certainly kept it a secret from the world. Nobody else knows we exist." He took hold of the glass of brandy. "So if there's a killer," he said evenly, "it would almost have to be one of us."

5
    "God, it's such a guy thing," Elaine said. "Thirty-one grown men sitting around wooden tables eating meat and checking for chest pains. You can just about smell the testosterone, can't you?"
    "I'm beginning to understand why they didn't tell their wives about it."
    "I'm not putting it down," she insisted. "I'm just pointing out how intrinsically masculine the whole thing is. Keeping it all a secret, only seeing each other once a year, talking solemnly about Important Subjects. Can you imagine the same club composed of women?"
    "It would drive the restaurant crazy," I said. "Thirty-one separate checks."
    "One check, but we'll make sure it gets split fairly. 'Let's see, Mary Beth had the apple pie a la mode, so she owes an extra dollar, and Rosalie, you had the Roquefort dressing, which is an additional seventy-five cents.' Why do they do that, anyway?"
    "Splitchecks item by item? I've often wondered."
    "No, charge extra for a tablespoon of Roquefort. When you're paying twenty or thirty dollars for a meal it ought to include whatever salad dressing you want. Why are you looking at me like that?"
    "Because I find you fascinating."
    "After all these years?"
    "It's probably abnormal," I said, "but I can't help it."
     
* * *
     
    It had been late afternoon by the time I left the Addison Club. I walked home and took a shower, then sat down and went over my notes. She'd called around six to say she wouldn't be getting home for dinner. "I've got an artist coming at seven to show me his slides," she said, "and I've got my class tonight, unless you want me to skip it."
    "Don't do that."
    "There's some leftover Chinese in the fridge, but you'd probably rather go out. Don't throw out the leftovers, I'll have them when I get home."
    "I've got a better idea," I said. "I want to get to a meeting. You go to your class, and meet me afterward at Paris Green."
    "Deal."
    I went to the 8:30 meeting at St. Paul's, then walked down Ninth Avenue and got to Paris Green around a quarter after ten. Elaine was on a stool at the bar, chatting with Gary and nursing a tall glass of cranberry juice and seltzer. I went to collect her and he laid a hand on my arm.
    "Thank God you're here," he said archly. "That's her third one of those, and you know how she gets."
    Bryce gave us a window table, and over dinner she told me about the artist who'd come around earlier, a West Indian black who was the superintendent of a small apartment house in Murray Hill and a self-taught painter.
    "He does these village scenes in oil on masonite," she said, "and they have a nice folk-art look to them, but they