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red as slices of raw liver. “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Calvin,” he finally said. “I owe you nothing. It seems that you stole the wrong makeup case…”
    “What?”
    Calvin said hoarsely.
    “It’s all in the
    Times, dear boy. Oh, don’t blame yourself. I don’t. It was a mistake made by some hopeless idiot at the museum. Jean Harlow’s makeup case was switched with one from the Chamber of Horrors. Her case is ebony with diamonds stitched into a red silk lining, supposedly to signify her love affairs. The one you took belonged to a horror-film actor named Orion Kronsteen, who was quite famous in the late thirties and forties for his monster makeups. He was murdered… oh, ten or eleven years ago, in a Hungarian castle he had rebuilt in the Hollywood hills. Poor devil: I recall his headless body was found dangling from a chandelier. So. Mistakes will happen, won’t they? Now, if you’ll forgive me…“
    “Please!” Cal said, desperation almost choking him. “Maybe… maybe you can sell this horror guy’s makeup case?”
    “A possibility. Some of his better films--Dracula Rises, Revenge of the Wolf, London
    Screams--are still dredged up for late-night television. But it would take time to find a collector, Calvin, and that makeup case is very hot indeed.
    You’re hot, Calvin, and I suspect you will be cooling off shortly up at the
    Chino prison.“
    “I… I need that three thousand dollars, Mr. Marco! I’ve got plans!”
    “Do you? As I say, I owe you nothing. But take a word of warning, Calvin: go far away, and keep your lips sealed about my… uh… activities. I’m sure you’re familiar with Mr. Crawley’s methods?”
    “Yeah,” Calvin said. “Yes, sir.” His heart and head were pounding in unison. Mr. Crawley was Marco’s “enforcer,” a six-foot-five skeleton of a man whose eyes blazed with bloodlust whenever he saw Calvin. “But… what am I going to do?”
    “I’m afraid you’re a little man, dear boy, and what little men do is not my concern. I’ll tell you instead what you aren’t going to do. You aren’t going to call this office again. You aren’t going to come here again. You aren’t ever going to mention my name as long as you live… which, if it were up to Mr. Crawley, who is standing just outside my door at this moment, would be less than the time it takes for you to hang up the phone. Which is precisely what I am about to do.” There was a last chuckle of cold laughter and the phone went dead.
    Calvin stared at the receiver for a moment, hoping it might reawaken. It buzzed at him like a Bronx cheer. Slowly he put it back on its cradle, then walked like a zombie toward his room. He heard sirens, and panic exploded within him, but they were far in the distance and receding. What am I going to do? he thought, his brain ticking like a broken record.
    What am
    I
    going to do? He closed and bolted his door and then turned toward the makeup case there on the table.
    Its lid was open, and Calvin thought that was odd, because he remembered--or thought he remembered-- closing it last night. The silver claw was licked with dusty light. Of all the stupid screwups! he thought, anger welling up inside. Stupid, stupid, stupid! He crossed the room in two strides and lifted the case over his head to smash it to pieces on the floor. Suddenly something seemed to bite his fingers and he howled in pain, dropping the case back onto the table; it overturned, spilling jars and crayons.
    There was a red welt across Calvin’s fingers where the lid had snapped down like a lobster’s claw. It bit me! he thought, backing away from the thing.
    The silver claw gleamed, one finger crooked as if in invitation.
    “I’ve got to get rid of you!” Calvin said, startled by the sound of his own voice. “If the cops find you here, I’m up the creek!” He stuffed all the spilled makeups back into it, closed the lid, and tentatively poked at it for a minute before picking it up. Then he