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of Mantin.
    What had I contracted to do that was worth ten thousand dollars?
    I ate mechanically. Even the strawberry short cake May had splurged on for dessert tasted like so much straw. That, topped with whipped cream at forty cents a half pint.
    I asked May what she had done with the money.
    May said, “It’s under the mattress in our room.”
    Supper over, I helped her with the dishes, killing time before I started on my rounds again. While we were working, May suggested:
    “Let’s do what we did this morning. Jim. Start at the beginning. Try to remember as much as you can. Maybe something will give us a clue as to why Mr. Mantin entrusted you with all that money. What was the first thing you did when you left the house last night?”
    I said. “I walked up to the drive-in on Country Club Road and drank three beers.”
    May brushed a lock of corn-silk colored hair out of her eyes. She blamed herself. “If only I’d had Bob take me to the drive-in instead of the Sand-bar. But I was so sure that you’d gone there. Then what did you do?”
    “I took a cab to the Ole Swimming Hole and got really plastered. Shad Collins was tending bar there. He asked me how I was doing. I told him fine. And to prove it I tried to drink up twenty dollars.”
    “And then?”
    “It gets spotty from there on. I know I went to the Sun Down Club.”
    “That’s where you danced with the red-haired girl?”
    “No. I don’t think so.”
    May put her hand on my arm. “You — you didn’t go anywhere with her, did you, Jim?”
    I was indignant. “Of course not.”
    May was relieved. “I’m glad. Then what?”
    “I remember taking a long ride in a car. With some men.” I closed my eyes and smelled the sweet-sour stench of the tide flats. “Probably along the bay road. And there were roosters crowing at the other end.”
    “Roosters?”
    “I remember hearing one crow. Distinctly.”
    “You went to some farm?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Then what?”
    I was glad to be able to tell May something definite. “About ten-thirty I showed up at Eddie’s. You know, that fish food house at this end of Seminole Causeway. The one that advertises all the lobster you can eat for a dollar and a half. Eddie says I damn near broke him. I ate two platters of lobsters and then tipped the waitress a fin.”
    “You were alone?”
    “So Eddie says.”
    “Then what?”
    I was getting too close to Lou for comfort. I didn’t want to hurt May any more than I had. I said, “Then I don’t remember.”
    “Think,” May insisted. “Hard.”
    I did. And for the first time I remembered a night spot where the glass muddlers lighted up when you laid them on the bar. Growing green, purple and red. I’d thought it was novel as hell, but some wiseacre tourist sitting next to me had said they’d had similar bars in all the big cities for years.
    There’d been a white piano on a raised dais back of the bar. And a horse-faced blonde who sang off-color parodies. One of them on Trees. I remembered the first line.
    “I think that I shall never see — a poem lovely as a knee.”
    Then I had sat in a booth with four men, lying about what a big shot I was and how I’d run Kendall’s office if I was Matt Kendall.
    “Try to see the men’s faces,” May said. “See if one of them was Mantin.”
    I tried. But the men’s faces stayed in the shadow of my subconscious mind. All I could see was the waiter. He was a tired little man with a gold front tooth that showed when he smiled.
    “It’s no use,” I told May. “I can’t. I just can’t remember.”
    “And you don’t remember where you got the extra two hundred and forty-two dollars?”
    I shook my head. “I haven’t the least idea.”
    “And the next thing you remember you woke up in a motel out on the beach with Mr. Mantin knocking on your door?”
    “Yeah. That’s right,” I lied.
    “How did he know where to find you?” May asked.
    I told her the truth. “I’ve been wondering that all