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sprawled asleep in the front seat, his peaked cap over the upper part of his face, his mouth wide and snoring. Out of the tail of my eye, I saw the Ford turn north toward the highway.
    I shook the driver awake. He was little and gray-haired, but he wanted to fight. “Take it easy, for Christ’s sake. What goes on?”
    I showed him money. “Follow that Ford coupé.”
    “All right, take it easy.”
    Max Heiss tried to get in beside me. I shut the door in his face, and the taxi pulled away. We were in the street intime to see the Ford turn left at the highway intersection, towards Los Angeles. At the intersection a red light stopped us. It was a long time before it turned green again. We drove fast out of town, passing everything on the highway. No green Ford.
    Five miles beyond the city limits, I told the driver to turn around.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t run that light with all the traffic going through. You have trouble with those people?”
    “No trouble.”
    When I got back to the station, Max Heiss had gone. That suited me just as well. I ordered breakfast, always a safe meal, in the station lunchroom, and discovered when I started to eat it that I was hungry.
    It was shortly after five o’clock when I finished my bacon and eggs. I walked back to the Mountview Motel.

CHAPTER 6 :     
Lucy’s key, with the numbered
brass tag dangling from it, was in her door. I obeyed my impulse to knock. There was no answer. I looked around the court, which was sunk in the somnolence and heat of late afternoon. On its far side trailer children were chirping like crickets. I knocked again, listened to answering silence, turned the knob and stepped inside. Lucy was lying almost at my feet. I closed the door and looked at my watch. Five seventeen.
    The roller blind was down over the window. Light slanted through the cracks in the blind, supporting a St.Vitus’s dance of dust motes. There was a wall switch beside the door, and I jogged it with my elbow. The yellow walls sprang up around me and the ceiling pressed down from overhead, ringed with concentric shadows. The light radiated from a wall bracket directly over Lucy. Its paper-shaded bulb shone down into her face, which was gray as a clay death-mask in a pool of black blood. Her cut throat gaped like the mouth of an unspeakable grief.
    I leaned on the door and wished myself on the other side of it, away from Lucy. But death had tied me to her faster than any ceremony.
    One of her arms was outflung. Beside the spread upturned hand something metal glinted. I stooped to look at it. It was a handmade knife with a curved six-inch blade and a black wooden handle ornamented with carved leaves. The blade was stained.
    I stepped across Lucy towards the bed. It was identical with the bed in my room, its green rayon cover wrinkled where she had lain on it. At its foot her suitcases stood unopened. I opened one of them, using a clean handkerchief to mask my fingerprints. It was neatly packed with nurses’ uniforms, crisp and starched from the laundry. Like the private compartment of a divided life, the contents of the other suitcase were a jumbled mess. It had been packed in a hurry with a tangle of stockings, wadded dresses, soiled blouses and underwear, an
Ebony
and a sheaf of romance magazines, an Ellington album wrapped in red silk pajamas. I found an envelope tucked among the powders and creams in a side pocket.
    It was addressed to Miss Lucy Champion, c/o Norris, 14 Mason, Bella City; and postmarked Detroit, Mich., Sept. 9. The letter inside lacked date or return address:
    D EAR L UCY
    Am very sorry you lost your job we all thot you got youself fixed up for Life but you never know what is going to come, sure we want you back honey can you raze the fair am afraid we cant. You father is out of work agin and am the soul sport of the family again, hard to make ends meat. Can always give you a bed to sleep in honey something to eat, come home things will be better. Brother