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undertones of a kind of listless derision, giving the impression that it might at any moment, for no sane reason, break into a stream of passionless obscenities.
    “Are you the party interested in the blue bug with a rash of daffodils?” the voice said.
    All at once the phone began to tremble in Miss Withers’ hand, for she knew instantly that this would be it. This would be the first break in what she had come to think of as the Case of the Lost Lenore, with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe. Until that moment she had not realized that the case was so important to her. Perhaps it was merely her pride, the dread of failure, however small. Clutching the phone, she responded calmly.
    “I am. Do you have such a vehicle?”
    “Not in my pocket. I know where one is.”
    “For sale?”
    “You might make a deal.”
    “I’d appreciate it if you would tell me where I could find the car. It’s most urgent that I find it. I’d pay you for the service, of course.”
    “Which makes my point. How much?”
    “A reasonable fee. After all, you agree only to put me on the track of the car. You do not agree to acquire it for me and put it into my hands.”
    “Like a hundred skins?”
    “Dollars? That’s excessive. Like fifty.”
    There was a silence during which Miss Withers heard, or imagined she heard, the whisper of breathing on the wire. Then the voice came back.
    “Why not? It’s only bread.”
    “Where can I meet you?”
    “There are all these benches lined up along Ocean Front in Venice. Go sit on one.”
    “When?”
    “Say three o’clock.”
    “That will be satisfactory. I’m an elderly lady, definitely straight. I shall wear my hat with an arrangement of flowers and a cluster of grapes.”
    With these words, Miss Withers had hung up firmly, and now here she was on the bench in Venice, and here suddenly on the same bench, having approached with no discernible sound, was the man she had arranged to meet. Miss Withers, aware all at once of his presence, looked at him from the corners of her eyes. Although he didn’t speak immediately, and in fact gave the impression that he might not speak at all, she knew instinctively that he had not sat down on her bench by chance. He was the man, all right. Probably in his late twenties, he was tall and thin and rather stooped, and despite an attitude of lethargy, there was something alert and watchful about him. His lank black hair hung over his collar at the back of the neck, but it had been trimmed, not too recently, over his ears. His sideburns grew down to his jawline, but his face was otherwise smoothly shaven. He had veiled eyes and a bold, hooked nose and a thin, cruel mouth. His skin was dark, the color of copper, and he might have had, Miss Withers thought, Indian blood in his veins. She waited for him to speak, and after a while, in his own good time, he did.
    “To begin with,” he said, “let’s drop the shuck.”
    “The what?”
    “The shuck. The phony bit. The fraud. You’re not interested in a psychedelic VW. You’re interested in the chick who was driving it.”
    “Quite true. I assumed that that was understood. And I agree that we had better abandon all pretense. I’m prepared to give up mine if you will give up yours.”
    He turned his head to look at her directly, and his veiled eyes, which seemed to be jet-black, revealed through slits a flicker of surprise. “Mine?”
    “Your pretense of being a hippie. You are, of course, nothing of the sort. You’re a spy, that’s what you are. An informer. Otherwise, you would not have called me. Perhaps you are other things that are worse, but no matter. I’m here to do business with you, however distasteful it may be.”
    His eyes glittered. His thin lips split in a wolfish grin. “Well, you have to make the scene, you know, if you want to score. You can’t learn inside when you’re outside. You want to know something, moms? You’re not such a funky straight as I thought.”
    “Thank you very much, I