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treatment, you know,” I said mildly.
    “Now.”
    I got up, and we walked abreast to a side door just fonvard of the right-hand seating area. I decided Giant was pushing six feet seven and maybe three hundred pounds. Giant used a key on the door. I moved before he could shove me through it. We entered a narrow corridor with PRIVATE stenciled on the painted walls. We made a sharp left and walked into a small outer office with a striking brunette secretary behind the reception desk. She gave me a quick look, as if she didn’t want to be able to say later on that she recognized the body. Giant rapped a knuckle twice on the heavy-looking inner door and then pushed it open and motioned me in ahead of him. I walked in and glimpsed reddish hair behind the cloud of light blue cigar smoke hanging over a big desk. Then I was whirled around against the wall. I heard the door slam, and Giant said, “Assume the position.”
    I did so, with my hands outstretched on the wall, and Giant spread my legs a little wider. He locked one foot inside my right one and gave me a rough upper-body patdown.
    When I was in army officer training, a military-police major always said to be sure to check a man’s crotch for a weapon. When I was actually in the field, a military-police sergeant showed me how to bring the frisking hand up just right to ring the friskee’s chimes without any abrupt motion being apparent to an onlooker. I looked down as Giant started his hand up the inside of my right calf, saw the telltale turning of his wrist, and shifted my weight to the left just in time to catch most of his goose on my inner right thigh. Nevertheless, I heard a gentle tinkle of bells.
    Giant snickered and moved back from me as I straightened up.
    “He’s clean, Your Honor,” he said—“and smart.”
    “Please be seated, Mr. Cuddy.”
    No surprise there. Giant had probably read my plates when I pulled out of the judge’s driveway yesterday. One call to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, one call to the Boston police, and one call by them to the Copley Square rent-a-car would have produced the information. Still, I had a feeling that Mrs. Kinnington would be disappointed in me. I also didn’t like being roughhoused, even a little, by Giant. But I liked the judge’s style sufficiently less that I maintained my composure and dignity. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I sat.
    “Why were you visiting my mother yesterday?”
    “Does Baby Huey have to hear all this?” I asked. I heard Giant suck in his breath behind me, as though he’d been waiting thirty years for somebody to call him that.
    “Officer Blakey will stay.” Well, one question answered. I must have missed the nameplate on the blue pup tent with sleeves that Blakey wore.
    The judge continued, “By the way, I am sorry about the search, but no security system, even ours, is foolproof. I’m sure you understand.” He smiled and gestured to a box on his desk. “Would you care for a cigar?”
    “No.”
    The smile evaporated and was replaced by the case-dismissed look. “Why were you visiting my mother?”
    “If you must know, we had a date for racquetball.”
    The judge’s eyes glanced up and then down. The ham applied itself to my shoulder again and, this time, started to squeeze. The initial pain was welcomely replaced by a spreading numbness.
    “By the way,” I said through reasonably unclenched teeth, “did you hear the one about the Long Island judge who couldn’t stand lousy coffee?” I was referring to a judge in New York who some years earlier had had his bailiffs handcuff a guy selling coffee outside his courthouse and drag him in to explain why the coffee was, in the opinion of the judge, so rotten. I couldn’t remember what had happened to that judge, hut apparently Kinnington did, because he waved Blakey off. My happy blood sang on its way back to nty shoulder.
    “Mr. Cuddy, I do not wish to see you around my property or my family again. Ever. Do I make