“Shopping.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Something’s got to break pretty quick.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I could hear her moving around in the kitchenette, then the aroma of coffee. I heard a cup against a saucer.

  “Did you notice the ante’s gone up?”

  “What ante?” she asked.

  “For witnesses to the accident. It was a hundred dollars yesterday. Today’s paper makes it two hundred and fifty.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  There was quite an interval of silence. Then the man said, “You haven’t heard anything?”

  “No, of course not, Dudd. I’d tell you the minute I had anything new.”

  There was another interval of silence. Then the man’s voice said, “I’m afraid of that damned insurance company. If they keep messing around they’re going to upset the applecart.”

  “And you think they’ll keep investigating?”

  “If their suspicions once get aroused, they’ll investigate until hell freezes over,” he said. “We haven’t got too much time. You have to milk the cow when the milk’s there. When the cow goes dry there isn’t any use trying to milk her—What the hell’s burning?”

  “Burning?”

  “Yes. Smells like meat burning.”

  “Oh, my God,” Doris said. I heard her quick steps on the floor, then the man’s voice said, “What the hell! What’s all this?”

  The smell of burning meat permeated even into the closet.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the man asked.

  “I forgot,” she said. “I was cooking a steak. I left it in the broiler and forgot when you came in.”

  “What were you cooking a steak for?”

  “I was hungry.”

  “What are you trying to pull?”

  “Nothing. I was just cooking a steak. My God, haven’t I a right to cook a steak in my own apartment?”

  I heard steps; heavy, authoritative, belligerent steps. Then a man’s voice said, “Okay, Sweetheart, I’ll just take a look around. I’ll just see for myself what’s going on here.”

  I heard a door open and shut. I heard Doris saying, “Don’t, Dudd, don’t,” and then the sound of a body crashing against the wall as he evidently pushed her to one side.

  Steps approached the closet where I was hiding.

  I opened the door and stepped out. The big man who was striding toward the closet came to an abrupt halt.

  “You looking for me?” I asked.

  “You’re damned right I’m looking for you,” he said, and started for me.

  I stood looking at him, not moving.

  Doris said, “Dudd, don’t. Dudd, let me explain.”

  He had his eyes on mine, his lip curled with hatred. I saw the blow coming but didn’t try to dodge. The next one would have caught me anyway. I stood there and took it. I felt myself sailing over backwards. The ceiling spun around in a half-circle, something batted the back of my head and I went out like a light.

  When I came to there was still the smell of burnt meat all through the apartment. Doris was talking, her voice rapid and frightened. I heard the words from a distance. They registered in my ears but didn’t seem to mean anything to my brain. “Can’t you understand, Dudd? This is the man we’ve been looking for. We can use him. I picked him up and was getting acquainted with him. I wanted to make sure about him and then I was going to turn him over to you.

  “Now you’ve gone ahead and spoiled things.”

  “Who is he?” Dudd asked gruffly, his voice still suspicious.

  “How do I know? His name is Donald and that’s all I know. He is fresh out of San Quentin. He came here trying to get a job in the supermarket. One of the checkers there was in prison with him and Donald thought this man could help him, but the fellow wouldn’t have anything to do with him. I saw him give Donald the brush-off hard.

  “That was when I stepped into the picture and—”

  “How do you know he’s been in San Quentin?”

  “He’s done time,” she said. “You can tell. He denies it but there’s no question about it. He’s been in trouble and he hasn’t been out very long. He’s just starved for decent companionship.”

  “And what kind of companionship were you going to give him?”

  “All right. If you want to know, I was going to get him over being lonely.”

  “I’ll bet you were.”

  “I was going to find out about him and then if everything was on the up and up I was going to tell you about it.”

  “How do you know he was in San Quentin?”

  “The way he got acquainted with me.”

  “How was that?”

  “My car was hemmed in by another car. He short-circuited the wires back of the switch so he could get the car back out of the way. I guess he’s a professional car thief. He had a short piece of wire in his pocket so he could jump the current back of the switch.”

  There was a period of silence, then the man said, “Dammit, don’t try doing things alone! I’ve told you I’m furnishing the brains of this operation. All right, get a Turkish towel soaked in cold water and we’ll try and bring the guy to.”

  Their voices still seemed to be coming from a long way off. It seemed to me they were discussing some subject that had nothing to do with me.

  I heard the man’s feet, then water dripped on my forehead, then an icy cold towel was put on my face. Someone pulled the zipper on my pants, jerked my pants down, my undershirt up, and I felt the cold, wet towel on my stomach.

  My stomach muscles tightened involuntarily. I gasped and opened my eyes.

  The big man was bending over me, his expression one of puzzled curiosity. “Okay,” he said. “That does it. Get up.”

  I made a couple of abortive attempts and he reached down, grabbed my shoulders, jerked me to a sitting position, then hooked a big ham of a hand in mine and jerked me to my feet.

  He looked me over and abruptly commenced to laugh.

  “What’s the trouble?” I asked.

  “Stick your shirt in your pants and pull up the zipper,” he said.

  He took the wet towel which had dropped to the floor and threw it across the apartment in the direction of the bathroom. It hit with a soggy thump on the waxed floor, and Doris ran and picked it up, vanished in the bathroom and was back in a moment, to stand looking at me apprehensively. “Are you…are you all right, Donald?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and tried to grin.

  “No hard feelings,” the man said. “I’m Dudley Bedford. Who are you?”

  “Donald.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Lam.”

  “Come again.”

  “Lam.”

  “L-a-m-b?” he asked.

  “Lam,” I said. “L-a-m.”

  Bedford thought for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “I get it now,” he said. “You’re on the lam, huh?”

  “No,” I told him, “that’s my name.”

  “Got a driving license?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How long you been out?”

  I kept silent.

  “Come on,” he said, “how long have you been out?”

  I let my eyes shift from his. “I haven’t been in.”

  “Okay, okay, have it your own way. Now, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This girl was kind enough to offer me a steak.”

  “Sit down over here,” Bedford said. “I want to talk with you a while.”

  “I don’t want to talk with you. I’m finished. I didn’t know she was married.”

  “She isn’t married,” Bedford said. “There’s enough girl there for you and me and six more just like us. I don’t own her and she doesn’t own me. I’m working with her. Now, the question is, do you want to work with us?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no.”

  “You don’t know what the proposition is yet.”

  “Of course I know what it is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You told me.”

  “What did I say?”

  “You asked me if I wanted to work with the two of you and I said no.”

  “Oh, I see,” he said, “smart. Like that, eh?”

  “Like that,” I said. “I know what I don’t want.”

  “Well, what do you want?”

  “I want a chance to get a respectable job.”

  “How do you know we weren’t offering you a respectable job?”

  “You didn’t have the right approach.”

  He said, “All right. I’ll try another approach.”

  “Try it,” I invited.

  “You know who I am?”

  “No. You said your name was Bedford, that’s all I know.”

  “You know how I got in here?”

  “You rang the buzzer.”

  “Smart,” he said. “Awful smart. Too damned smart. You could get another sock in the puss.”

  “I probably could.”

  He said, “For your information, I happen to be the owner of the car you tampered with yesterday. I saw you getting out of the car and getting into a car with Doris here. It happens that I knew Doris so I came up to find out what the hell she was doing having somebody tamper with my car.

  “Now then, Donald Lam, it’s your turn. You can talk for a while.”

  “What…what do you want me to talk about?”

  “You can talk about anything you goddam please,” Bedford said, “but if I were you, and in your position, I’d start talking about some reason why I shouldn’t go to the police and tell them that I saw you tampering with my car; that I found insulation scraped off the wires where someone had jumped the switch. In case you don’t know it, although I think you do, it’s a crime to be caught tampering with someone else’s car.

  “Now then, that’s what I’d talk about.”

  I looked at Doris out of the corner of my eye. She winked. I said, “All right, what was I going to do? Your car was blocking the lady’s car so that she couldn’t open her door and get the groceries in.”

  “All right, all you had to do was to go into the market and ask for me. I’d have moved the car.”

  “There wasn’t time for that.”

  “You must have been in a hell of a hurry.”

  “She was.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to take that explanation.”

  “It’s the only one there is.”

  He thought for a while and said, “You know, I could use you. You could do a job for me and then we’d be square. How would that be?”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “Something that would require a little daring, a little tact and a little discretion, and then when you got done you’d be all square with the world and if you did a good job you’d have a hundred dollars in your pocket. How would that suit you?”

  “That hundred dollars in my pocket would suit me fine,” I said, “but I don’t think I want the job.”

  “Why not?”

  “It sounds…”

  “Sounds what?” he asked, as I hesitated.

  “Sounds like something you’re afraid to do yourself.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m not afraid to do any job, but I’m not in a position to do this one.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Now,” he said, “you’re talking. You’re getting cooperative.”

  He reached in his inside pocket, pulled out a wallet, took out a folded column from a newspaper and handed it to me.

  The ad had been circled in red pencil, the ad offering a reward of two hundred and fifty dollars for anyone who was a witness to the accident on August 13th at Seventh and Main Streets in Colinda at 3:30 P.M.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  He said, “You were a witness to that accident.”

  “I was?”

  “That’s right.”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t anywhere near here. I—”

  “Listen,” he said, “you do too much talking when you should be listening. Now sit tight and listen. Have you got that straight?”

  “All right.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “You were here in Colinda. You were walking down the street. You saw the accident. A car, a big Buick, driven by a man who didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to traffic conditions, rammed into the car ahead. That was a light sports car, one of these low, racy jobs. It was driven by a babe. You’re not sure about the make of the car. The impact caused the babe’s head to jerk back violently. You saw that much.

  “The babe was all alone in the sports car. She was blond, about twenty-six years old, and you saw her when she got out of the car. She was a good-looking babe, just about the right height and weight, neatly dressed—a good-looking chick.

  “She and the man got together and showed each other their driving licenses. You went on. You weren’t particularly interested. The accident didn’t seem to be serious and they evidently didn’t think so, because when you were down the street at the next intersection the two cars drove past you. The Buick had a broken radiator and water was trickling out from it, but the other car didn’t seem to be damaged at all, except for a dent in the rear of the body. The girl didn’t seem to be hurt.”

  “What do you mean, ‘seem to be’?”

  “She looked and acted perfectly normal.”

  “Was I walking or riding?”

  “You were walking.”

  “What was I doing in Colinda?”

  “What were you doing in Colinda?” he asked.

  “I…I don’t know. I’d have to think it over.”

  “Start thinking.”

  Bedford turned to the girl. “You got some writing paper here?”

  She opened a drawer in a desk and handed him a sheet of stationery.

  “Some paste.”

  “No paste. I have some household cement.”

  “That’s good. Let’s try the household cement.”

  She handed it to him.

  He cut the clipping out of the paper, pasted it to the sheet of stationery, said, “Now we’re going to have to have an address.”

  “He can stay at the Perkins Hotel,” she said.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Perkins Hotel.”

  “I’d have to have some expense money,” I said.

  He nodded casually. “That’s easy.…Okay, now write on here as I dictate.”

  I took the pen he handed me.

  “Sit down here at the table.”

  I sat down at the table.

  “Now write, ‘My name is Donald Lam. I saw the accident mentioned. You can reach me at the Perkins Hotel.’

  “Now sign it, ‘Donald Lam.’”

  “Now, wait a minute,” I said. “Is this going to get me into any trouble?”

  “Not if you do exactly as I say.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Then someone gets in touch with you.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you tell your story.”

  “That’s where they catch me,” I said.

  “They catch you in that and I’ll break every bone in your body,” Bedford said.

  “Suppose my story doesn’t agree with the facts?”

  He grinned and said, “The facts will agree with your story. I want you to remember what I told you. You saw the man driving the big Buick. He looked a little bit tired. He wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was doing. He was in a stream of traffic. He had tried to cut out around the stream of traffic, saw he couldn’t make it and had ducked back in, but he was going faster than the traffic ahead.

  “There’s a signal at Seventh and Main. It changed and the traffic ahead slowed to a stop. This man was a little behind time with his reactions and he smashed into the car ahead.

  “Now, that is something you saw particularly. You saw the girl’s head snap back under the impact. It went way, way back. You stood and looked for a moment, saw the traffic crawling around the two stalled cars, saw the man get out, saw the girl get out, saw them exchange addresses from their driving licenses, saw the man go and look at the front of his car and assess the damage; there was water trickling from his radiator. Then he got back in his car; the girl got back in her car. You started on walking.”

  “Where was I standing?” I asked. “They’ll want to know the exact spot.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m showing you the exact spot. Sign your name on this statement.”

  “How about mailing it?” I asked.

  “I’ll attend to all that,” he said. “Come on now, we’ll walk down the street and I’ll show you exactly where you were standing and exactly where the accident took place.

  “Then we’ll go to the Perkins Hotel. I’ll get a room with a bath.…You got any clothes?”

  “No.”

  “All right,” he said. “You can get a razor, a toothbrush and what clean clothes you need. You stay in the room.”

  “How long?”

  “Until I tell you to leave.”

  “I can go out to eat and—”

  “Oh, hell yes,” he said. “You can go out to eat. You can go out and wander around. You can come and see Doris if you want to, but you keep in touch with the hotel. Every hour or so you check back in to see if there’s been a telephone call for you.”

  “And when a telephone call does come?”

  “You saw the accident.”

  “Who do I tell that to?”

  “Anybody that asks.”

  “And what do I get out of it?”

  “You get immunity for tampering with my car,” Bedford said. “You get your room at the hotel and here’s some expense money.”

  He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket and handed me a twenty and a ten. “When you get all done,” he said, “you get a hundred bucks.”

  “What about this two hundred and fifty dollars that’s mentioned in the ad?”

  “That,” he said, “you don’t get.”

  “Who does get it?”

  “You don’t. Now let’s quit beating around the bush. I haven’t time to be polite. Do you want to take this or do you want me to pick up that phone, call the cops and tell them I’ve got the man who was tampering with my car yesterday and show them the place in the wires where you scraped the insulation through and jumped the switch?”