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Janet.”
    She smiled at Hood and nodded. “I know, Chris, it’s one of the problems of the whole problem, isn’t it? We have to kill this man Karl so that neither the police nor the gangsters know we did it, or even suspect us. I assume his friends or whatever would want to revenge him even if they only suspected.”
    “And they’re not concerned with rules of evidence, Janet,” Hood said.
    “So we can’t even be spotted,” Janet said. “If they recognize us, we’re dead.”
    Hood smiled. “That sounds about right,” he said.
    “We’re still talking about murder here,” Newman said.
    Hood sipped at his Perrier water. Even in the booth with the Newmans he seemed remote, partly in the shadow. They each leaned forward, arms on the table. He leaned back in the corner of the booth.
    “What difference does it make what you call it,” Janet Newman said. “Don’t play word games. We have a problem here and we’re thinking about a solution. You had the original idea.”
    Newman looked at his beer glass. “This isn’t a goddamnedcurriculum question. We’re talking about a human life.”
    Janet made a hissing sound. “I know what we’re talking about,” she said. “I had a lot of chance to think about it last night while I was lying on the bed tied up. It’s not going to happen to me again. That’s a goal. I’m looking for a process by which we can achieve that goal.”
    “Process-oriented,” Newman said. “Really sharpened the old management skills being chairman of that curriculum committee. ‘Scuse me, chairperson.”
    Janet Newman said, “Oh, Jesus Christ, Aaron.”
    Chris Hood said, “Excuse me a moment.” He slid out of the booth and walked halfway down the bar. A heavy man in a white three-piece suit and a black shirt with no tie was leaning over the left shoulder of a woman at the bar. She was wearing an ankle-length flowered dress and sandals. As Hood approached, the woman said something to the man and shook her head hard.
    Hood put his left hand gently on the man’s shoulder and smiled and murmured something.
    The man said, “Who the fuck are you?”
    Hood murmured again to the woman. She nodded.
    The man said, “Get your hands off my shoulder, Jack, or there’s gonna be trouble.”
    Hood’s hand tightened slightly on the man’s shoulder, and he murmured again and nodded toward the door.
    The man said, “Fuck you, buddy,” and Hood hit him in the kidneys with his right fist. The punch traveled six inches. The man yelped. Hood’s left hand slid down the man’s arm, got the wrist, and levered it up behind the man’s back. His right hand took hold ofthe man’s collar, and Hood and the man in the white suit walked very fast toward the front door and outside.
    The bartender put another drink in front of the woman in the long flowered dress, and Hood came back in the bar, walked down to the Newmans’ booth, and sat down. He sipped at his Perrier.
    “Sorry,” he said.
    “I was about to rush out and join you,” Newman said. “What happened out there?”
    Hood smiled and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Man just decided to move to another bar.”
    “What if the man is too hard to handle?” Janet said.
    “They usually aren’t,” Hood said. “And besides”—he took a two dollar roll of nickels out of his coat pocket—“I have a helper.”
    Newman laughed. “All right, Chris,” he said. “Want me to work here on busy nights? We could really do a tune on some guy.”
    “How about Adolph Karl,” Janet said. “Can you do a tune on him?”
    Newman finished his beer and belched. “I bet we could,” he said. “Chris and I? Huh? What you say, Chris. Can we take him?”
    “What’s that the man said once,” Hood answered. “To kill a man you need three things: the gun and the balls?”
    “We can get the gun okay,” Newman said. He ran
get
and
the
together. “And we got the rest.” Newman’s color was high and he drummed on the table edge with both