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barber college haircut and walks with kind of a waltz. Hard to miss, he said.” Overby turned, with no discernible hurry, and examined Stallings with the same time-wasting care. “He was right.”
    â€œWhere do we talk?” Stallings said. “Here, there or in the bar?”
    â€œUnless you’re all done with the ha-ha stuff, we don’t. If you are, I’ve got somewhere in mind.”
    â€œLet’s go.”
    â€œYou check any luggage?”
    With the look of one who has just been asked a particularly stupid question, Stallings turned and headed for the escalator where a four-color photo of the mayor who would be governor beamed down on arriving passengers.
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    When they reached the Mercedes on the second level of the parking garage across the street from the United terminal, Stallings gave the
car a dour glance and then turned to Overby. “Yours?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œGood.”
    â€œYou still got something against the Krauts?” Overby said, unlocking the car’s doors and slipping behind the wheel.
    Stallings opened his own now unlocked door, tossed the buffalo bag onto the rear seat and climbed in. “I just don’t much like dealing with anyone who needs to wear fifty-five thousand dollars worth of car.”
    Overby started the engine, shifted into reverse, changed his mind, shifted back into park and stared at Booth Stallings. “What are you, Jack—some kind of act?”
    Stallings smiled his smallest smile. “Didn’t that son-in-law of mine mention it? I do the old coot.”
    Overby put the car into reverse again. “It kind of gets on the nerves.”
    â€œIt’s supposed to,” Stallings said.
    Neither spoke again until they were on the San Diego freeway and heading north. It was then that Stallings finally asked, “Where’re we going?”
    â€œMalibu.”
    â€œJesus,” Stallings said.
    When they neared the off ramp to the Santa Monica freeway, Stallings spoke again. “Which way’s Pelican Bay from here?”
    Overby flicked a glance at Stallings and then looked back at the road. “South.”
    â€œTell me about it—you and Pelican Bay.”
    â€œYou already know or you wouldn’t be asking.”
    â€œWhat I know,” Stallings said, “I got out of the California newspapers in the Library of Congress. It lacked a certain savor.”
    Overby didn’t reply until he reached the Santa Monica freeway and had the Mercedes over in the far left fast lane, heading for the
Pacific Coast Highway at a steady sixty miles per hour.
    â€œI’ll tell it just once,” Overby said, “and if you want more, then you’d better try the library again.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œOkay The chief of police of Pelican Bay and I made a little money on a certain deal that there’s no need to go into. His name was Ploughman. Chief Oscar Ploughman. So we decided to invest in a political campaign and run him for mayor. Of Pelican Bay. I’d be campaign manager and later share in the satisfaction that always comes from good honest government.”
    â€œThe graft,” Stallings said.
    â€œYou want to tell it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen just listen. The chief wants to build himself a real old-timey political machine. And since I’m bankrolling about half the campaign nut, he’s even started calling it the Ploughman-Overby machine, at least to me and him, if not to anybody else—except he always calls it the powerful Ploughman-Overby machine. The chief was a case.”
    â€œApparently,” Stallings said.
    â€œWell, we put on one hell of a campaign and then he goes and dies on me Election Day afternoon.”
    â€œOf a heart attack,” Stallings said. “Or so I read.”
    â€œYeah,” Overby said. “Of a heart attack. But the old bastard still won, lying in the morgue there with a tag on his toe, and if you think