THE LABYRINTH OF DREAMSTHE LABYRINTH OF DREAMS
Copyright © 1987 by Jack L. Chalker
ebook ver. 1.0
 
For Jack Williamson,
who seems to have come up with the idea first
back in the dark ages of SF,
with love and respect.
 
1.
Spade & Marlowe, P.I.'s

It ain't often when a big case just up and walks into your office on a bright 
spring day, but being a private dick is all danger and adventure and you never 
can take anything for sure.
The dame looked exotic, like she was just off the boat, but her movements and 
particularly her eyes said she was here with a definite purpose in mind, one I 
might not like. She was covering a lot up, that was for sure. Her hair had more 
black dye than a licorice factory and she reeked of cheap perfume like a whore 
out for her first trick, but I knew right away that she wasn't no woman of the 
evening. Her big brown eyes met mine and her mouth turned up in a nasty curl, as 
if she wasn't real pleased with what she was seeing. This was a dame with a will 
of her own, one that wouldn't be easily turned from anything she had in mind to 
do.
I felt like a kitten caught raiding the garbage pail; she had that effect on you 
even before she said anything at all. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the 
feeling we'd met before, like when you remember dreaming the winning horse in 
the fifth but only after the race was run and you bet on the nag that was still 
trying to find the track. And now she spoke, the words in accented English 
striking my heart like machine gun bullets at the Jersey marshes.
"Hey! Horowitz! You want I should clean this pigsty, and maybe the pig with it?"
I sighed, my lovely fantasy shattered. "Mrs. Kybanski, have you ever heard that 
a little politeness will get you a long way?"
"No. Sing a few lines. Besides, if I wanted to work with people, I would've 
taken the waitress job at Denny's. You're the only one left in this dump, and 
since it ain't been condemned as a public danger yet, I got to clean it. Bad 
enough I got to walk these streets after dark. I don't have to do it so late 
except for you. Why don't you go home? You ain't gonna miss no clients. They 
don't even come here in the daytime!"
Unfortunately, that was close to the truth, but her stock appeal for pity had a 
flaw in it. "Mrs. Kybanski—there are twelve offices in this rundown excuse for 
an office building, and eleven of them are empty. You just came in five minutes 
ago. Clean them first. I'll probably be long gone by then."
"Yeah, sure. Use your routine, your schedule, your convenience. Why not just go 
home to your shikse and get a good meal for a change? Not that you don't look 
like you been getting a good meal once too much."
That was why I tolerated, even liked, Mrs. Kybanski in spite of her wonderful 
manners and disposition. No matter what her other flaws, she was the only one 
I'd met in the seven years I've been married who thought of Brandy as a shikse 
and nothing else. That was why she could work this neighborhood. As for being in 
the neighborhood after dark, I might get a little nervous, sometimes, but 
anybody who dared to attack Mrs. Kybanski deserved what he would get.
"That's who I'm waiting for, Mrs. K.," I replied. "She's been out all afternoon 
on a case, and she's overdue getting back." The truth was, I was worried. I 
always worried when she went out alone on one of these things, even though it 
was just tracking down the address of a guy who owed about ninety years' worth 
of child-support and alimony payments. We were on a contingency fee, as usual, 
which made it all the more important. The wife had thought the guy had skipped 
to parts unknown, but a few days ago somebody who knew him swore to her he was 
running a 7-Eleven over in south Philly. Trouble was, she couldn't remember 
which 7-Eleven store, and there were like fifty over there. Those damned stores 
multiply faster than coat hangers and grocery bags.
So all I could do was sit around the dingy little office with its cracked 
door-glass and its cardboard-and-tape patch on the window and try and occupy my 
mind. We had a drawerful of unpaid bills, a bunch of collection notices, and 
very little else. The only reason they let us stay in the office was that nobody 
else would be idiot enough to rent it, but even that had its limits. The fact 
was, we were sinking fast, and were only really keeping going by handouts from 
Brandy's large family and from old friends of her dad who'd started this agency 
long ago. Me, I had no family to speak of and no real friends, not since I got 
married, anyway. Of course, they weren't real friends at all if that was gonna 
put them off. The closest relative I had was Uncle Max in Harris-burg, who owned 
a number of car dealerships, but he hadn't even sent me a birthday card since I 
got married. Worse, I hate most police and detective work; it's boring and you 
get no respect at all. Trouble is, I don't know how to do anything else and I 
never saw anything else any better. I often think I was just born wrong. I was 
intended for one of those rich multimillionaire Jewish families that have twin 
BMWs and get wings named after them at Mount Sinai Hospital because they needed 
a tax loss that year.
God got the religion right, but He must have been having an off day that 
time—something I'm accustomed to (off days, that is)—and dropped me in the 
family of a shoe salesman in Baltimore, with no rich relatives except Uncle Max 
(and he wasn't rich then), who worked six days a week to feed and clothe and 
house us and to try to save enough money to get me a good education and not have 
to go through this. Instead he only got ulcers, then a heart attack of the kind 
you never go back to work from and where the medicines cost a hundred bucks a 
month, and Mom had arthritis so bad there was no way she was gonna make it, 
either. I managed high school—public, not the fancy prep school with the old-boy 
network they wanted for me—but I knew right off that if I was gonna make it in 
the world, it had to be Uncle Max style. He started selling cars for others 
while living like a dog, putting all the money in investments, becoming salesman 
of the year repeatedly and doing a lot of politicking. He even switched to a 
synagogue miles away because its members had better business connections.
So, he finally finds this daughter of a rich lawyer and marries her, although 
she's a hundred-percent Jewish American princess, a loudmouth nag, and to me she 
always bore a strong family resemblance to Lassie. But her daddy bankrolled the 
car business and now Max has nine dealerships, a couple of million bucks, 
his-and-hers Cadillacs (he doesn't sell German cars), and, last I heard, a 
mistress or two on the side to console him. Me, I just couldn't play that game, 
so as soon as I graduated I joined the Air Force.
Now, that's not all that dumb. You actually have to volunteer for flying duty, 
and I never much liked airplanes, so if you check "nonflying status" you get an 
office job or a mechanic's job and you go home at night. In fact, the only 
potentially dangerous nonflying job the Air Force has is Security Police, its 
own cops. So, naturally, they made me a cop.
I had thought about letting the Air Force send me to college, but when I found 
out how much time you owed them for it, I kept putting it off; so I didn't go. 
Traffic detail at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod wasn't exactly bad duty, and 
neither was security patrolling at Homestead just south of Miami, but trying to 
keep a bunch of crazy anti-American protesters out of Clark in the Philippines 
when you're ordered not to use a weapon is something else. After I got out of 
the hospital, I started looking somewhere else for a career.
Now, there is a sort of old-boy network among service cops, and I found a job as 
a patrolman up in Bristol, New Jersey, that was close enough to home and quiet 
enough generally to be comfortable, although they didn't pay beans. They did, 
however, underwrite getting a degree, along with my service benefits, but the 
degree they wanted was in either criminology or police science—the liberal arts 
of the crime-busting world. That got me bumped up to detective and almost 
sixteen grand a year. It might not sound like a great salary now, but it was a 
lousy salary then. How I'd settle for it now, though. ...
Anyway, junior detectives always get stuck on Vice, which even in the best of 
towns is like working in a human sewer half the day and doing paperwork the 
other half. Almost all the officers were on somebody's pad, which is how they 
made out on that salary, but the first time you bust a thirteen-year-old hooker, 
or try and find the source of a fifteen-year-old with more needle marks in him 
than a pincushion, you find it hard to protect the scum behind them. You know, 
the guys with the big houses and the twin BMWs. . . .
Not that I'm so morally against corruption that I would never take anything 
under the table. I just couldn't bring myself to do it in that world, even 
though I knew that world would grow and thrive with or without me. The big 
trouble was that if you weren't on the take, your fellow officers couldn't trust 
you. I drew the out-of-town leads, the dead-end stakeouts, and the cases 
involving competitors to the entrepreneurs who supplied central Jersey who they 
wouldn't mind getting taken down a peg or two. I admit I wasn't very diligent at 
it; they also would hand you the kind of stuff that could get you killed real 
quick. It wasn't real comfortable, but it was more of an education than Temple 
ever gave me.
So there I was, as usual, the outsider, the loner, the misfit. I guess I should 
have taken up religion again or something, but while I'm proud of my heritage I 
just couldn't take all the social stuff, the insularity, the class divisions, 
that came along with it. Besides, I always had to work weekends. I'm no beauty 
and I never went in much for the social graces; and the Levittown princesses 
didn't want a cop, they wanted a doctor at least. I'm moon-faced, hawk-nosed, 
with a potbelly, and I started balding at twenty-five (Thanks, Dad). So long as 
I stayed in Bristol I was stuck anyway, and the trouble was, I just had no place 
to go. Uncle Max offered me a job selling cars in Harrisburg, but if I wanted to 
do that kind of work, it was easier—and paid better—to just go on the pad.
So, anyway, they stuck me on this kiddie-porn case that involved liaison with 
the Camden police, a bunch of guys with bigger payoffs and an even more jaded 
outlook on life than my own sweet department. I was trying to track down a 
couple of long-missing local kids whose faces had shown up in a kiddie-porn 
magazine in Denmark, some of which had gotten imported back here, and they were 
recognized. The importer was in Camden, and clearly was far more than just an 
importer, and we were all on him. Even bad cops draw the line someplace. Most of 
'em, anyway. With some relief they assigned me to temporary duty in Camden 
because they needed more men for stakeout duty than Camden could spare, and 
that's what first brought me to this neighborhood and how I met Brandy.
The neighborhood looked older than England and not nearly as well kept up. 
Blocks and blocks of narrow streets and rowhouses and smashed windows and sour 
smells and garbage all over the place. There was this one little office building 
stuck in the middle, so run-down-looking that to this day I believe that if they 
took away the boarded-up and condemned row homes on either side, the place would 
collapse. It kind of bends in the middle, somehow. The windows are all barred 
but rusty, and they're all cracked or have holes through them filled with tape 
or cardboard. The neighborhood itself was mostly black here, although there were 
some Asians now, mostly Koreans and Vietnamese who couldn't afford even the 
slums of Philadelphia just across the river. A couple of blocks away were a few 
small white enclaves, mostly old folks and those too poor to move to a 
higher-class slum. Eighty percent of the place were on permanent welfare; the 
other twenty percent were burglars, dope dealers, pimps and whores, and folks 
whose businesses needed this kind of anonymity.
There was no way I could stake out a neighborhood like this; I'd stick out like 
a sore thumb, but I needed a place staked out, preferably by somebody familiar 
with the place. I needed a good source of information, too, since it was clear 
that Camden Vice leaked like a sieve even on kiddie-porn scum. A source had 
recommended a private detective agency actually in the district; shady, the 
source said, and on a shoestring, but they did anything for a buck and kept 
their prices within an investigation's contingency fund. You went in this 
building and walked up two flights and it was the second door on the left.
SPADE & MARLOWE, Private Investigations, it said on the door in faded and 
peeling letters. The glass was frosted, but it was also cracked, and was held 
together with masking tape. Inside, it was full of file cabinets and a week or 
two of half-eaten lunches; and roaches had the right of way in the small outer 
office, which contained no desk and only one chair, an ancient overstuffed thing 
.like you'd see in my grandmother's living room in the old days but cracked and 
torn, with stuffing coming out this way and that, and springs that had 
surrendered when Grant had commanded the Army. The door to the inner office 
looked open—I soon discovered it was nonexistent—and I walked to it and looked 
in.
There was a single old oak desk piled high with crap, a thirty-year-old manual 
typewriter on the floor, an old black dial phone from the fifties at least, and 
heaps of papers and other residue. It looked like my apartment. At first I 
thought nobody was there, but then I heard noises coming from behind the desk 
and then a head popped up and looked at me.
She was chocolate brown, with a full oval face, the biggest brown eyes I ever 
saw, and Afro-style hair so huge and bushy I thought at first it had to be a 
wig. "Oh, sorry, didn't know anybody was here," she said in a very low, throaty 
voice. Then she stood up, all five foot five of her, and stared at me. "You a 
cop?"
"Yeah, I'm a cop. Sam Horowitz—out of Bristol, so don't get upset. I need some 
help, and I was told this agency was handy for the kind of help I have in mind."
She was chubby, almost fat, but it was as if weight gained after a certain point 
had gone entirely to her breasts and hips. She wore a faded tee shirt with a 
marijuana plant, on it and the words buy american!, and faded and patched jeans 
that seemed far too tight. "What kind of work?"
"Uh—excuse me—but the place is called Spade and Marlowe. Are you one of them?"
"Marlowe's dead," she responded matter-of-factly. "I'm the Spade."
I was always uncomfortable with that kind of humor, but it was too good a line 
not to appreciate. It was soon clear that she wasn't the secretary or a partner, 
but the whole damned agency. She picked up a creaky old wooden chair that had 
been overturned behind the desk and pushed it out and to the side. "Take a 
seat," she invited. "That's the only chair, but I don't use it much anyway."
"Thanks, I'll stand. Now, then, Ms. ... ?"
"Brandy Parker. This job pay?"
"Some. A lot if we can get some results. The families involved have big rewards 
out."
"How big?"
"A few grand. The rewards, anyway."
"Take the chair," she invited, perching on the desk. "I'm suddenly very 
interested."
I told her about the case so far, the missing kids, the kiddie-pom pictures, the 
tracing to the distributor who worked out of a building in this area, all of it. 
She listened attentively, asking a few very good questions when she needed 
clarification, and seemed to get increasingly interested when I showed her the 
magazine and the pictures of the two kids before they were snatched. I liked the 
fact that the more we talked, the less money seemed important and the more her 
own anger grew. She was used to all the shit that went on around these 
neighborhoods, but this was particularly dirty, and the faces—and the contrast 
in the pictures—made it very real.
The cops had been right; she was very good when working in her element, and 
turned up a number of solid leads within forty-eight hours. The Camden cops 
would have to make the official bust, but we needed to feed them place, time, 
and the rest. Brandy's car was broken and she hadn't had the money to fix it, so 
we used my unmarked one, which for anything requiring traveling meant we saw a 
lot of each other. The word finally came down that a pedophile ring was working 
a seedy hotel in the low-rent district, and we staked it out for very long 
periods. A week of all-night stakeouts will let you get to know somebody pretty 
well.
Maybe it was because we were both lonely, both generally depressed, or maybe 
that we just had the same idea of right, wrong, and maybe, but we just sort of 
clicked in spite of our ingrained prejudices. No, it's not the way you think. 
She had more prejudices about Jews than I ever had about blacks. Hell, three 
fine, upstanding white guys had stood around while I lay bleeding on the ground 
back at Clark while two black SPs had finally braved the stones and dragged me 
back, saving my ass. Even though we'd been poor, my parents had always marched 
in civil-rights campaigns—they were old enough to remember "restricted" 
neighborhoods against Jews—and I never thought of blacks as being any different 
than Poles, Germans, Spaniards, or Chinese for that matter. In my family's world 
there were only two kinds of people, Jews and goys.
Brandy Alexandra Parker. Her father, the colonel, had always liked that drink, 
and it made a cute and appropriate name for his only child. Except for the fact 
that Harold Parker had been a career soldier and career MP, he and I had a lot 
in common. I think I would have really liked him. He'd joined the Army as an 
enlisted man at age eighteen, and worked his way up. He was a "consultant" to 
the Navy at the Philadelphia Navy Yard when he realized he'd never get any 
higher than lieutenant colonel—when you're an Army career man and they post you 
to the Navy, they're trying to tell you something—and he'd retired. He was a 
proud man who felt a keen obligation to excel just to prove that a black man 
could be ten times the soldier of those white smartasses, and considered 
prejudice not a barrier but a challenge. He was too old and too overqualified to 
get civilian police work, and the places where he could sign on offered him low 
and insulting positions, so he decided to try it on his own.
He also was caught up in the romance of the thing, to a degree. Spade & Marlowe. 
Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Only the best of company for Harold Parker. He 
didn't have much savings but he had a pretty fair pension, so he went out, got a 
license, rented a cheap office that looked right, and even hired a neighborhood 
girl just out of secretarial school as a secretary. A year later, at age 
forty-six, he married her. She was already six months pregnant at the time. 
Brandy wasn't his biological child, something she was kept ignorant of until she 
was in her late teens and he was trying to keep everything together and keep her 
from quitting school to help him. Her mother wasn't there to help; she had 
suffered from rip-roaring high blood pressure, and after Branday's birth, was 
warned not to try again. She worshipped the colonel, though, and became 
pregnant. The combination of that and being sloppy with her high-blood-pressure 
pills proved fatal. Brandy had been only ten when her mother had dropped dead of 
a stroke. She hadn't even gotten to thirty.
The colonel had set up the agency in the Camden ghetto at a time when it was 
rare to have a black private eye. He saw a need and filled it in the good old 
American tradition, arguing that black folks got divorces and skipped support 
payments and fooled around almost as much as white folks did. For a while it 
paid. Not handsomely, but when added to his retirement it was adequate—of 
course, his clientele then was of a higher class. When the ghetto became a place 
for the very poor, the paying clients went to large agencies with fancy offices 
and set rates, some black-owned and -operated, others the same ones that before 
hadn't wanted their business. He found himself working longer and harder for a 
diminishing client base, and he was no youngster anymore—but he had a youngster. 
The paying jobs often required him to be out late, and she wound up more and 
more in the care of her mother's relatives, mostly cousins and the like, who 
really considered it an obligation and weren't very good at the guardian job.
Brandy understood, but she developed a crushing case of private-eye-itus, caused 
by having a father who was a P.I., and by too many television shows, and she had 
little interest in school. She was a fat girl with no real family life and was a 
class wallflower, kind of like me except for the fat business—that came only 
from Bristol. She went a little wild as a teen. The only way to get boys to pay 
attention was to proposition them; the rest was taken care of by readily 
available drugs. She spent the rest of the time watching black-female-avenger 
pictures and reading lurid novels. She was a good reader because her father 
always was, but she got lousy grades and didn't really care. Her father, 
increasingly trying to hold the business together and with his health beginning 
to fail, finally couldn't help but notice and did a little personal detective 
work. The first thing he found out was that the report cards he'd seen had been 
stolen blanks. She had more absences than days present, and although he thought 
at sixteen she was in high school, the fact was that she was still in the ninth 
grade.
Just as bad, her closest girlfriend had been dead on arrival from an overdose of 
drugs and pills, and never mind the two abortions. The guilt hit him like a lead 
weight. I kind of feel sorry for him at that point, torn between trying to force 
her to the straight and narrow and his guilt at letting her go off in the first 
place.
I'll never know what that scene was like, but somehow a compromise was reached. 
She didn't want school and he wanted her out of that crowd, that was for sure. 
She dropped out and went to work for him at the agency as his secretary, 
receptionist, and assistant. She had promised him she'd get away from the bad 
crowd, stop fooling around, and in a year or so get her GED high school 
equivalency and even go to college. She never did, though. Of course, she was a 
good reader, a fast typist, and she knew the basics of math, and she was smart 
and could learn whatever she needed to learn. The fact was, her reading alone 
made her better educated than half the people I know who are college graduates, 
but her lack of formal schooling did have an unfortunate side effect in that she 
has the same inferiority streak in her that a lot of folks who never finish 
school have, and had an inordinate respect for anybody with a lot of education, 
even if they don't deserve it and know less than she does. If she ever runs into 
an ax murderer who is also a college professor, we're in deep trouble.
The cure, at least, worked. She loved the work, had his files straightened out 
in no time, found out how little money they really had, but the cases he got she 
worked on, too, and became good at stakeouts and at making endless phone calls 
for data. She also went on a diet and took judo and karate lessons at the "Y" 
and from one of those Korean karate mills that have popped up all over. She got 
to brown belt, which makes her formidable and gives her confidence in the 
streets, anyway. All those black-female-avenger films, I guess. She's also a 
very good shot, although even now she's only licensed to carry a pistol when 
performing a task for a client, and then only when hired as essentially a guard.
She saw herself in much the same way her father had seen himself and the 
business. He had spent his life battling prejudice and doing the best job 
possible, and she saw herself as showing that not just a black but a black woman 
was as good in this profession as any man.
Then, one day, the case of a lifetime walked in the door in the form of a chief 
aide to the Reverend Billy Thomas. Thomas was one of those superman types—young, 
personable, golden-voiced degrees in divinity and law, a family whose power in 
the black community came from decades of fighting for equal rights and justice. 
.. . Well, you know the sort. He was in Philadelphia, and he was about to run 
for city council in a district that was about fifty-fifty in racial makeup but 
had always been represented by an Italian. He was convinced that his opponent 
had organized-crime ties, and that to break him loose from his sixteen-year seat 
they'd have to get something on him they could use in the papers. They could 
have hired a bunch of big shots, but they wanted to use somebody who was black 
and totally independent of any larger companies. If the colonel came up with 
something really useful, it was worth twenty-five thousand dollars to the 
campaign, and he got a grand as up-front expense money.
The colonel was good at his job. If he hadn't clung so desperately to his 
failing independent company and had gone with one of the big Philadelphia 
concerns, he could have made it big. This one, however, was different; a last 
miracle from heaven. It not only paid well, but if he could bring this off, the 
resulting publicity from his success—where bigger and better companies had 
failed—would bring him so much business he'd have to hire assistants and get 
good office space.
For the first couple of days, he was very excited about what he was finding, but 
he used Brandy only as chauffeur on occasion and for random checks from cop and 
lawyer sources. She couldn't follow the thrust of his investigation from that, 
and he was pretty close-mouthed. It wasn't that he was trying to exclude her; it 
was just that this case was everything he'd gotten into the business to do, and 
for a right moral cause. Soon, though, his elation turned to frowns and gloom; 
he was finding information on the councilman's ties far too easily and there 
were disturbing undercurrents. Telling her he'd know once and for all after a 
night's work, he'd left.
They found his body, with five bullets in it, floating in the Schuylkill River 
the next day. The cops said it was an obvious mob hit, but could not tie the 
councilman into it. Brandy buried her father, then went to work. She dug, 
probed, traced, deciphered her father's notes; and because she knew his sources 
and knew how he thought, she began to reconstruct his movements and learn what 
he had learned. Eventually she came to the same conclusions her father had: 
there were clear trails to mob money on the part of the councilman—too clear. So 
clear you needed only a legislative aide and not a private dick to find them. 
The fact was, most Italian big shots, like Jewish big shots and Methodist big 
shots, had inevitably crossed paths again and again with bad elements. It was 
almost as if somebody had already traced out all those paths for the councilman 
and then filled in the blanks showing sinister motives when, say, the councilman 
met a mob godfather at a Columbus Day dinner, or belonged to the same Knights of 
Columbus lodge as a couple of mob men.
The fact was, the old Italian wasn't clean, but he was as clean as a city hack 
politician can get. There was, however, a mob connection in the race. The 
Reverend Billy Thomas looked very much like a wholly owned and operated 
subsidiary. When it was clear to them that her father knew this and only needed 
confirmation, they had acted, setting up an informant's meet late that night, 
one that was to turn over incriminating documents. The colonel had his own sense 
of moral outrage, and was even more upset that this would be pulled by his own 
people and others he admired and trusted. He also was smart enough to know that 
the headlines from busting the Reverend Billy would be every bit as good as the 
ones from busting an Italian. They knew it, too. They hadn't taken any chances.
With single-minded determination and solid detective work she broke the case, 
and proved to the Philadelphia cops how the incriminating evidence on the 
councilman was manufactured. They were delighted and pulled out all the stops to 
do the rest. They never got the actual triggerman, but when they began to get 
the real goods on the Reverend Billy, he began to get the sweats. Somebody 
behind him didn't trust him, either. While this was still unfolding, an armed 
band of intruders broke into his home and killed him— during a robbery, of 
course. It was only a surprising coincidence that he was to meet the next day 
with federal prosecutors to cut a deal.
The results were not, however, what Brandy would have expected. She had proved 
herself to both herself and the world, but the only mention of even the agency 
in the papers was that her father had been killed by mobsters linked to the 
reverend. The Philadelphia cops were highly impressed with her, but it wouldn't 
do to admit that a twenty-one-year-old black female high-school dropout had 
broken a case they couldn't. Her own family and circle of friends, however, 
almost completely cut her off. She was a "traitor" to the black race; her old 
man deserved what he got for trying to bring down a black leader. So what if the 
rev was crooked? They all were. At least he was our crook. Business fell to 
zero. Even those who didn't know a thing about it were not about to hire a girl 
like her working alone.
Interestingly, the only people who seemed to have no ax to grind with her were 
the crooks. She sold the house in west Philadelphia and moved into a studio 
apartment in an old section of Camden near the office. She paid off a lot of 
bills and lived on the rest for a while. And, although it was sparse and didn't 
pay very well, she actually got a few clients—all from the wrong side of the 
law. Loan sharks out looking for deadbeats and not able to run them down; guard 
jobs at illicit gambling dens; finding goods on cops who arrested the wrong 
people. Not big money, but it helped. The cops, too, used her on occasion, which 
is what had brought me there. She had deep sources among the small potatoes of 
the underworld, and while she was not about to squeal on them she was 
occasionally useful in digging for major crimes in places the cops just couldn't 
look.
When I met her, she was pulling in just enough money to keep in business, but 
she'd have made more by closing it and going on welfare, in real cash terms. She 
was her father's daughter; she couldn't give up the dream no matter how 
impossible it was, and she'd managed to make herself just useful enough to both 
cops and crooks that she was reasonably safe, and the local junkies knew that 
she didn't have anything anyway and was a bit too dangerous to tangle with. The 
only thing was, the cops and crooks both knew they didn't have to give her much; 
just barely enough to keep going. What kept her going was her dream, her felt 
obligation to her father, and the fact that she was good at the job and she knew 
it.
The grimness of reality had made her withdraw into something of a fantasy shell, 
though. She didn't date. She had contacts, not friends. That's when I met her.
Of course, it was timing on my part, too. My dad had finally died after years of 
inactivity, and my mother lasted only six months after that. I could have made 
use of the old-boy network through the synagogues and social organizations, but 
I hadn't been to shul or belonged to any of those things since I was eighteen. 
There was nobody, really, but Uncle Max, and I already told you about him.
So, anyway, two people who really needed somebody and were in the same line of 
work, more or less, but were socially unlikely to ever come together had, 
through the Fates, done so. I kind of got a taste of things just hitting a bar 
or restaurant with her and seeing the kinds of funny reactions and sideways 
looks. It didn't matter if it was a black place or a white place, it was all the 
same.
Oh, yeah—about that kiddie-porn and kidnap case. Well, we firmed up that the old 
hotel was the place where pedophiles of all races, creeds, and colors met in the 
area, and we linked our distributor to not only the hotel but also to, would you 
believe, a professional baby photographer in Cherry Hill. An undercover cop then 
made the connections and infiltrated the network.
He chose the easy way, setting up a kiddie-prostitution meet and then picking 
one of the two we were looking for out of photos kept in a nice family album. 
The kid—the girl—was all fancied up and brought to the hotel, but they smelled a 
rat, somehow, at the last minute, and we could sense it. There were squad cars 
around ready to make a move on the undercover man's signal, but it just didn't 
happen.
I was pretending to doze in the lobby, dressed like a bum and smelling of cheap 
booze, and Brandy was all dressed up like a hooker, all made-up and really 
underdressed, cigarette dangling from her lips, and perched sexily on the edge 
of an end table leafing through a magazine. Both of us looked totally natural in 
that cesspool. We saw them bring in the kid and I was shocked at how they'd made 
her up, and even more by her glassy eyes and automatic behavior. The undercover 
guy came in a half-hour later and went straight up to the room, but a lot of 
time passed. Too much. Finally Brandy read my mind and sauntered over.
"You take the desk clerk and call in the Marines," she whispered, as if coming 
on to me. "I'm going up and see what's wrong."
I didn't like that. "Let me go up."
She gave me a kiss—the first time she'd ever done that. "You just go do what I 
say. I'll be all right."
Yeah. All right is not the word for it. She swished and swayed on too-high heels 
over to the old elevator and I made my way over to the desk. I hate guns, but 
lives were at stake. I didn't want to risk identifying myself first; some of 
these places have floor buttons for warning signals.
The clerk was sitting back in a chair next to the old-fashioned switchboard 
reading the racing news. I checked my back, pulled my .38, and said, "Real quiet 
now, you be a statue. Police." He started to make a move and I was behind there 
and cracking him in the face with the gun in no time. I had been right—there 
were three buttons to the right of the switchboard, out of view of the desk 
area. He hadn't gotten a chance to push any of them. I picked up his phone and 
dialed a special number. "Come on in. It's going down wrong," I said, and that 
was that. I then looked around. A half a dozen hookers, bums, and junkies were 
around that place and not one of them even deigned to notice what I was doing.
The trouble was, after five minutes the cops didn't seem to be noticing, either. 
I decided we'd been had and ran up the stairs. When the desk bastard woke up he 
could push all the buttons he wanted.
Brandy had been listening at doors on the third floor, but just as I saw her 
there was the unmistakable sound of a shot from one of them and she ran to it, 
reaching in her purse and taking out the biggest damned handgun I ever saw. She 
blew the lock off, then kicked open the door but kept her back to the wall, very 
professionally. There were screams and shrieks inside the room, and when Brandy 
saw me she whirled and plunged right into that mess.
The bastards had gone down the fire escape probably before she'd blown the lock 
off, leaving the kid screaming there and one very badly wounded detective. I got 
to him and he opened his eyes, saw me, and groaned. "Setup," he managed. "They 
knew.. .. They wanted me. ... Where the hell's the backup?"
That's what I wanted to know.
By now the hotel resembled a cemetery, and not from the bodies. At the first 
shot the place had erupted like Mount Saint Helens, spewing its human garbage 
all to hell and gone before the real cops got there. Not even the deskman was 
there. I got down there, called for an ambulance, then called the Vice tactical 
number. The sergeant seemed very surprised to hear from me.
"What the fuck you doing there tonight?" he roared. "We got it set up for 
tomorrow night!"
"Like hell! Your man was here and now he's bleeding his guts out on the floor 
upstairs. We were here, and so were the bastards and the girl. I called the 
ambulance—I can hear it coming now. We were set up, you son of a bitch!"
"Hey, man, take it easy! Yeah, it was on for tonight, but we got orders at roll 
call direct from on high that it was off until tomorrow."
"Then you got a high leak who might just have gotten your man blown away. Patrol 
units are just coming in the door now, along with the ambulance." I told the 
floor and room number to them and they didn't wait, they went right up. "You 
want a bad cop who's a cop killer, you find out who was on the other end of that 
tactical phone number I called when this went down. You call Internal Affairs 
and get them moving now! Either that or you retire before you find a hole in 
you!"
They got the undercover man to the hospital, and he made it, minus one lung and 
the use of his legs. They took the kid into Juvenile, and after a lot of 
questioning "got much in the way of where the kids were being held and how it 
all worked, but in spite of fast raids they came up short. The word was out and 
everything had moved and dug
in. Internal Affairs finally traced the leak to a desk sergeant and his 
girlfriend in Communications. I don't envy them their stay in New Jersey's 
less-than-luxurious prison system, surrounded by folks who just love cops. At 
the price of one good cop's lung and legs we got one of the kids back, and state 
police finally nailed a bunch of small-fry and the photographer, but that was 
that. The distributor's still in business, still living in a fancy Cherry Hill 
home with the twin BMWs and the ideal American family, and somewhere the other 
kids are still in hell. That's the way the business goes, and why I was more 
than ready to quit it.
I found myself, at the end of that wild night, just sitting there on that creaky 
couch in the lobby and trying not to think. Brandy came up behind me and began 
massaging my shoulders. "Want to go get a drink?" she asked.
"Yeah. Any distilleries nearby?" I still looked like a bum and she looked like a 
hooker, but there were several diners with bars attached in Camden where even 
that wouldn't attract attention if you showed money, and she picked one.
"Who did you think you were up there?" I grumbled. "The Ebony Avenger or maybe 
Super-girl? They pay cops to do that, and train them."
"I'm just now getting the shakes over it," she admitted. "Still, those cops they 
pay weren't there, and that little girl and that undercover cop were. It just 
sorta clicked and I didn't even do no thinking about it. The truth is, even 
though I'm scared about it now, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I—we—saved two 
lives tonight. That's more than I done in this job in all those years. I don't 
know. Maybe I should just get my diploma and be a cop."
"It's just as boring as what you're doing, only it pays regular," I told her. 
"For the pay and perks, though, you spend ninety percent of your time playing 
politics or getting stepped on." I paused. "You did good tonight, kid, even if 
you did scare me out of a year's growth and make the bald spot bigger."
"Huh? I did? Scare you, I mean? Why?"
" 'Cause you're one of the good guys in a world full of garbage," I responded. 
"Maybe because you're making about thirty cents an hour out of my payoff fund 
for this and you still put those lives over your own." The booze was getting to 
me a little, and I was bolder than usual. "Maybe it's because in that outfit 
you're the cutest, sexiest black bombshell I ever seen."
Well, you can figure the rest. We went back to her place, and went at it all 
through the night. I had to. She pointed out that her conscience wouldn't allow 
her to throw any white man out in that neighborhood at that hour.
Even though the case was wrapped, I only lived and worked an hour or less away, 
and we kept seeing each other. It was amazing how well we meshed, considering 
just how different our backgrounds had been. Oh, sure, she loved to dance and I 
couldn't dance a step, but that was minor. She liked the Phillies and hated 
basketball, same as me. Neither of us could ever get worked up over which dumb 
millionaires with glandular conditions could put a ball in a basket without 
jumping. My taste for jazz was matched by her fondness for blues music. We both 
liked spicy ethnic foods and neither of us could get excited over a fried 
chicken. We even liked the same kind of books—murder mysteries and detective 
novels, I admit, both old and new, where detectives did the kinds of things real 
detectives only dream about.
The truth was, I couldn't think of much but her when I wasn't with her, and she 
was getting the same way about me, as it turned out. She couldn't move in with 
me, though, because she couldn't be a long-distance call from her office and her 
contacts and stay in business at all, so we found an old but serviceable 
one-bedroom apartment in the old suburbs of Camden and moved in together; but my 
hours plus the commute and her erratic schedule didn't leave us much time 
together. I tried to get her to quit, since with her overhead, small as it was, 
she wasn't bringing in much money anyway, take the high school equivalency exam, 
and maybe go to college, but she would have none of that. And that's how I wound 
up quitting the Bristol police and becoming a full partner, such as it was, in 
Spade & Marlowe.
We got married shortly after that in the courthouse, and honeymooned as fancy as 
we -could afford—Atlantic City. The moment they discovered that I'd married a 
shvartse, my old friends always had something else to do and never called. Her 
few friends weren't much different, particularly the men. Uncle Max never 
returned another phone call. Even the Associated Jewish Charities stopped 
sending form letters asking me to contribute. She also took my last name; 
something that pleased my ego, although it wasn't anything I was hung up about 
or even expected. She just loved the idea of somebody who looked like her being 
Brandy Horowitz.
We did get some new friends, though. Every time we came across another 
salt-and-pepper couple there seemed a kind of instant bond, although the nature 
of the bond was never mentioned. The fact is, though, that in the five years 
we've been married I've never been unfaithful to her and never really wanted 
anybody else. We were like two kids and we didn't give a damn. Even the looks 
don't bother me anymore. Knowing just how hand-to-mouth life would be, and how 
insecure it would be, I'd still do it all over again with no regrets.
The funny thing is, after I came on with the agency, business picked up. Not 
great; maybe we cleared fourteen grand a year the best year after expenses, but 
it picked up. I don't know what it is, but poor black people want a white when 
they have trouble with the authorities. I guess it's just because the system is 
run by whites and they figure (wrongly) that a white guy can talk their language 
and cut through the bullshit, but it picked up. The usual stuff of real P.I. 
work— divorces, money transfers, security analysis for the little businesses, 
that kind of thing. Noting that you can reduce holdups by half by just painting 
the curb in front of a store yellow, for example. The city never knows if it's 
legit or not, but while it doesn't help crooks fleeing on foot, or local 
burglars, it sure as hell makes holdup men uneasy to park in a yellow zone 
waiting for a getaway. That cops notice. So, instead of taking a risk, you hold 
up the drugstore down the street without a yellow curb.
That kind of stuff is readily available to franchises and chains, but little 
mom-and-pop stores never think that way and it's cheap to pay a fee to somebody 
like me to show it to them. They save more than my small fee in the first holdup 
they don't have.
So now Brandy's out in the twelve-year-old rustbucket that's all the 
transportation we have, looking over clerks at 7-Elevens, and I'm sitting there 
getting worried. It wasn't that she was out alone; she was pretty well equipped 
to take care of that. The fact was, she had really poor vision for somebody that 
young, poor enough that I wouldn't let her drive me to the hospital if I were 
dying, and certainly poor enough that the next time she had to take a driver's 
eye test she'd flunk, and I just knew that sooner or later she was going to 
crack up the car and herself with it. She has a pair of glasses but won't wear 
them, and they're out of date anyway.
Finally, the phone rings, and I pick it up, thinking by now it's the cops or the 
morgue.
"Hey! I got him!" she said excitedly. "That asshole who gave us the tip don't 
know a Seven Eleven from a Wawa Thrift Market, that's all!"
I was relieved, but I didn't want to show it. "So where are you now?"
"Down halfway to the airport. How much cash money you got?"
I checked. "About twelve bucks. Why?"
" 'Cause I'm blowin' my last nine on gas and I'm starving. Pick you up in, oh, 
forty minutes and we'll hit a drive-through or something. Guess that's all we 
can afford on that money. All the Jews in the world and I got to pick the one 
with twelve bucks. Gotta go or I won't be able to pay for this call and get 
'nuff gas to get there. Bye."
I sat back and sighed. Two days of combing those stores, and after expenses we 
might get a hundred bucks out of it. Worse, there wasn't anything else ongoing 
at the moment. Things had been slow, real slow, for months now and we were up to 
our necks in debt, and behind in almost everything. We needed to clear about two 
grand a month to keep up and still survive at the poverty level; the past four 
months we'd made a total of about three. We'd had slack times before, but we 
always had a little money from my withdrawn pension funds or something to cover 
things, but they were all gone now. There was nothing wrong with us as 
detectives, but things were so low-class now that it'd take a big chunk of dough 
to pump new life into the agency. One of us would eventually have to take a job 
outside the business; we couldn't even afford to get sick at this rate. Brandy 
had looked around, but found offers only for menial jobs, cleaning and fast food 
and that kind of thing, all minimum wage and no benefits. Me, I was more than 
ten years her senior, and there wasn't much of a job market these days for a guy 
my age whose only qualifications were being an ex-cop and a failed P.I. Somehow 
I felt I'd go on welfare before I'd get a job selling shoes.
The time was coming, though, when we'd have to grow up and be adults. It might 
already have come. Being good wasn't enough. It had never been enough. It was 
who you knew and what you had that counted. More than once I wished the Air 
Force had decided to make me an accountant or a medic or something. Right now I 
could forget the twin BMWs and the big house in the suburbs. I wasn't ambitious 
and material things had never much mattered to me; still, I'd settle for being 
lower middle class.
I figured we'd talk it out tonight. It wouldn't be the first time, but we'd 
never been this far down and this behind before. We were approaching the point 
where we could never catch up, and fast.
 
2.
Something Big

Sitting around a little apartment-building laundry room in your underwear on a 
hot, muggy night at about three in the morning feeding quarters into a Korean 
War vintage washer and dryer and watching the moths dive-bomb the lone light 
bulb was not exactly the most romantic of situations, but it increased my 
already deep depression.
One of the craziest curses of being poor is that you get fat. That's because the 
kind of stuff that's cheapest to buy is full of fat and starches. Most of me 
stayed automatically thin, so it all went to the gut. I had three rolls of fat 
there, which I named Goodyear, Firestone, and Michelin. Brandy was five five and 
admitted to weighing two-twenty, all of it in her breasts, hips, and thighs. I 
didn't mind—she was still sexy to me—but neither of us had any clothes that 
really fit or any money to get new ones. My shirts were on their third set of 
buttons and still opened themselves when I sat down, and I split my pants so 
much there's nothing in the seats but repairs. I wasn't sure I could even get 
into my one old suit if I had to. Brandy's whole wardrobe consisted of jeans she 
could barely get into and tee shirts so faded you couldn't tell what color they 
started out being, and that old hooker's outfit she'd used way back when (but 
since, only over my dead body). It wasn't that we were so poor we couldn't 
spring for new clothes, it was just that at twenty bucks a shirt, thirty bucks 
for pants, never mind her wardrobe, we'd be up around five hundred bucks, and 
when you start thinking that way the money goes elsewhere.
I sighed. "Babe, we got to talk."
"You got that surrender look in your eyes," she said accusingly.
"Yeah, but a good general knows when. We owe Corbone Properties seventeen 
hundred bucks for back rent and utilities on the office. We owe this dump about 
seven hundred more. The car's so bad, if we take it to the mechanic's he'll 
pronounce it dead—that is, if we paid him what we owed him so he'd even look at 
it. We got another two, three thousand bucks in other bills, and we got eight 
hundred and fifty-two dollars in the bank. And none of that counts what we owe 
the IRS. It's over, babe. I got the word today. End of the month, pay up or out 
at the office. End of the month, pay up or out here. Peter Pan time's over. 
They're ordering us to grow up."
She sat down and put her arms around me. "I know. I didn't know 'bout the 
landlord, but I knew the rest. Can't run even what we have, with no phone and no 
office. I guess I knew it was comin' all along. I just kept hopin', somehow, 
that something would walk in. Something big, you know? It ain't gonna walk in, 
though, is it?"
I shook my head. "No, something big wouldn't even find the address. I got a call 
from Joe Wilkins down in Cape May County the other day." Joe was one of the 
salt-and-pepper brotherhood; he was black, his wife was white. The difference 
was that Joe was an accountant and had a real-estate license. "He knows what 
shape we're in, and he remembered us. They're opening one of those fancy 
beachfront condo developments down on the Delaware shore, and they're looking 
for a resident security supervisor. It only pays about fifteen grand a year, but 
it comes with a furnished two-bedroom apartment, medical plan, all that. It was 
designed with an older couple in mind, but he thought of us. It isn't bad. On 
the water, and the only expenses would be food and clothing."
She thought about it. "Where'd you say it was?"
"Just north of Rehoboth Beach. South Delaware shore."
"I never been down there, but I guess it's like Wildwood or something. Pretty 
seasonal."
"Yeah, five months of intensive activity and seven months of presiding over a 
pretty morgue, although there'll be a few permanent residents— well-heeled 
retirees and the like—and some sailor nuts will be there on the weekends even in 
lousy weather."
She sighed. "Not much for me down there, though. Funny—I never thought of myself 
as a housewife. Not 'til recently, anyway. Still, I been doin' a lot of thinkin' 
lately, and maybe it ain't so bad, I look around that old neighborhood and this 
dump and I ask what I been clinging to all this time and what do I got to show 
for it? I shoulda dropped it all six years ago, when we first moved in together. 
We'd have a nice apartment, maybe a couple of kids, and you'd still be a steady 
cop. Who am I kiddin'? You ain't my daddy, and I ain't, neither. His dream was 
worse than dead before he was. It was worse than that. It was out of date, like 
Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and the Continental Op. Like Shaft and Magnum and 
all them others. All I did was drag you down here with me."
I hugged and kissed her. "You didn't drag anybody. I came because I met the 
prettiest, sexiest, smartest lady I ever knew who had the same crazy dreams I 
did and I fell in love with her. I still am." I kissed her, and we got real 
passionate for a while.
We took the clothes back up to the apartment and flopped down on the bed. 
"You're taking this better than I thought you would," I noted.
"I—I been doin' a lot of thinking lately. I saw the bills, I saw the bank 
account, and I know what business we don't have. I been tryin' to sort things 
out in my mind, you know. There's some that can be Supergirl, but maybe I'm just 
not one of 'em. Just goin' through Philadelphia suburbia, I got to lookin' at 
nice houses and apartments, seein' families in the stores, like that. I got a 
great husband I'm in love with, and I never really saw how important that was to 
me. You gave it up for me, now I'll give it up for you. Ain't no big sacrifice 
anymore, anyway. This don't sound like much work. We'll be together most of the 
time, nice apartment near the ocean."
I looked her in her big brown eyes. "What do you really want me to do, babe? 
I'll do whatever you say."
"I want to be with you. I want to be your wife and have a whole passel of black 
Horowitzes that'll confuse the living shit out of people. I think I always 
really knew that. I just wanted to make a go of it, just for a while, to see if 
I could really do it. Ever since I nailed Daddy's killers, I been really scared 
to be anything else. I—I never told you this, but I got that hooker outfit one 
time because I was down this low, and I thought that might have to be what I'd 
do. Johnny Redlegs—you remember him—he was workin' on me when you showed up, and 
I was almost desperate enough to take him up on it. You and that case were the 
only things that kept me out of it."
I remembered Redlegs. He was a pimp who gave new meaning to the word 
stereotypical. Pink Cadillac, fur coat, floppy hat, and a fairly big stable. 
About the only thing that set him apart from his competitors was that he had a 
reputation for not being violent with the girls and depending on heroin to keep 
them loyal subjects. I tried to imagine Brandy out there now, age twenty-seven, 
turning two or three tricks a night for her daily fix, and the trouble was, I 
could imagine it.
I could also, for the first time, really understand her almost instant 
attraction to me. I was a savior whose background and tastes reminded her of her 
father, and I was there in the nick of time.
"I'll call Joe," I told her. "Then we'll spend the rest of the month packing up 
and cleaning up the few loose ends of the business, and put the agency in 
bankruptcy, where at least we'll get out from under those debts. We'll get some 
new clothes and pay up on this dump if they let us out of the lease, and then 
that will be that."
"Yeah," she agreed. "That will be that."
It was about nine days later and we were well along. There wasn't much 
salvageable in the office, but there were old client files to either destroy or 
put in a safe place—we decided to give them to those we could find and to burn 
the rest—and a few other details to go through. The place in Delaware wasn't 
finished yet, but we were welcome to come down the first of the month and they'd 
put us up in a motel until the first units were ready, about twenty days after 
that. It had originally been scheduled to open in the early spring, but somebody 
had forgotten what the sea does to beaches in winter storms.
Brandy actually seemed more cheerful than she had in a long time. She was almost 
a changed woman, but that wasn't a big surprise. She might brood and worry and 
think everything through a hundred times, but once she decided something, that 
was it, and she'd decided she was going to be Mrs. Horowitz by the seashore. For 
the first time, she was cutting loose from the burdens of her father's dreams, 
and it didn't seem so painful. I wasn't overjoyed—I still would have preferred a 
marginal business of my own in the city to something like this—but the agency 
wasn't even close to the margin.
And then, almost at the last minute, Something Big walked through the door.
Something Big was actually a skunk everybody called Little Jimmy Nkrumah. He was 
actually built like a fullback for the Eagles and had a face that looked like 
it'd played one too many games. I'm not sure about the Jimmy, but the Nkrumah 
wasn't the truth, either. He wasn't a Muslim—he wasn't anything, I don't 
think—but he'd changed his name to something African sounding because it helped 
his image and his business.
Little Jimmy was a loan shark, or at least that was the part of him everybody 
knew about. He ran the Star of Africa Finance Company, a little hole-in-the-wall 
that made legitimate loans— few—by financing some of the little black-owned 
furniture and appliance stores in Camden, but his real business was with the 
folks who couldn't get credit on a bet. When those folks borrowed from friendly 
and understanding Little Jimmy, they got a rate around ten percent per month and 
the collateral was their legs, arms, eyes, spouses, and children. We knew that 
he was connected up with organized crime—even loan sharking in this part of town 
didn't get you a fifty-thousand-dollar Mercedes sports car and a house in the 
exclusive suburb where he lived—and probably was into more, but we didn't have 
much to do with him. Brandy knew that it was Little Jimmy who'd suggested her 
dad to the Reverend Billy.
Little Jimmy dressed fairly conservatively, but the suits were hand tailored and 
only of the best material, I think he had three people on the staff just to get 
rid of scuffs on his shoes. His voice was abnormally high and silky, but very 
cultured, sort of as if Stepin Fetchit had gone to Harvard. We just stared at 
him, surprised he'd even walk into a dump like the office without sending ahead 
a squad of cleaners and shampooers.
"I hear you're closing down," he oozed, sounding for all the world like a black 
Don Corleone.
"Too bad. I mean, the little lady's daddy's last legacy and all that."
"Yeah, well thanks for the sympathy, Nkrumah," she responded, bitterness now in 
her tone. "You sure tried to help things along."
"If you're referring to the unfortunate outcome of your father's case, I can 
only say, as I always said, that I was really trying to do him a favor. I owed 
him one, but that's another story. I was truly distressed at how it all came 
out, but who would have thought that anybody could be that much of a straight 
arrow? Meaning no disrespect, but your daddy was handed a golden opportunity 
late in life on a silver platter. All he had to do was take it, and money, fame, 
and political connections would be his."
"He was too good for the con," Brandy shot back. "He really believed in the 
Reverend Billy."
"To be so naive at his age and experience was the cause of his downfall. I 
offered him the golden platter; he chose his own fate. It was no doing of mine 
that he did so."
Brandy was losing her temper fast. "Some folks would rather be dead than turn 
into house niggers like you!"
The insult stung, but only briefly. Little Jimmy wasn't paying a social call.
"What do you want here, Nkrumah?" I asked him. "If you're gonna offer to 
bankroll us to keep us afloat, forget it. You got your own boys to do your dirty 
work, and we couldn't afford your interest."
"It isn't the interest I'm worried about, it's the principles," the loan shark 
replied. "Are you like your daddy, or are you interested in some real gold, no 
strings attached, if you don't mind getting a little dirty in the process."
I looked at Brandy and she looked back at me, and both of us had identical 
frowns and shrugs. "Go on," she said to him. "It don't cost nothin' to listen."
Little Jimmy smiled, which was not a reassuring gesture. When Little Jimmy 
smiled, you felt like the worm just about to be dropped in the river.
"Would the potential of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars and no con 
job like the one they pulled on your daddy make you interested?"
It was my turn to gulp. Considering the pay at Ocean Estates, he was talking 
fifteen years' wages at least. "Keep going. You can kill half of Camden and part 
of Philadelphia with that kind of money, even now," I noted.
"Someone has absconded with two and a quarter million dollars of money that I 
was responsible for," Little Jimmy told us. "The finder's fee on the money is 
ten percent."
I sat down on the floor and found Brandy already there.
"How'd you get that much bread?" she asked him suspiciously.
He sighed. "What I tell you is death to repeat," he warned. "Still, I said I'd 
tell it all, and I see I do have your interest and maybe your principles, too. 
Money's like that, sometimes. The money is not mine. It belongs to a large 
multinational corporation that often makes the papers and is devoted to 
supplying the public with all the goods and services that people want but which 
they like to pretend are evil and so outlaw them. You know the company, I'm 
sure."
We did. It used to be a mostly Italian holding company with some Jewish members, 
but now it was strictly equal opportunity.
"The narcotics business in this area runs to billions a year," Nkrumah 
continued. "There's a heavy demand to meet. The dealings with the suppliers are 
strictly cash, now that even Switzerland and the Bahamas aren't totally safe 
anymore, and sometimes that amount is very large. Many big banks are involved, 
of course, but lately there's been a lot of heat on. A bunch of banks have been 
exposed, and it has been very costly. Lately we've gone to a system of small and 
intermediate suppliers, middlemen, between the big and small banks. This time it 
was my turn to help out with confusing the source and the destination, as it 
were. I took out a business loan for expansion at a major bank, and I was to 
invest the money, as it were, in a number of places. The loan would later be 
repaid, with interest—all aboveboard. Never mind where it went from me; you know 
what it came back as, and where the interest came from."
Yeah. Maybe a thousand percent interest over a short period from everybody from 
suburban middle-class junkies to Johnny Redlegs's girls. It was a pretty clear 
picture, and told us for the first time just where all that money Little Jimmy 
made really came from. It was kind of clever. Everybody, including the cops, 
knew Little Jimmy was a shark, but a little shark. Using a little crime to cover 
a big deal was subtle. It was probably worked out by computers or something.
The plan was deceptively simple. Little Jimmy was small potatoes, but he really 
could deal in millions without raising any red flags. Even a little outfit like 
his had several million in capital. He would take the loan for "investment" 
purposes and invest it, ostensibly in real estate and other ventures that looked 
solid but were actually fronts. They, in turn, would pay the suppliers through 
other dummy companies, and by paying large sums to companies for, say, 
excavations or engineering work that never actually was done or needed to be 
done. In return, the junk would come on up—or over or wherever it came from— and 
hit the streets in a movement that would be totally unconnected to Little Jimmy. 
The profits would be paid back through a totally different network that reached 
the same dummy sources, which would then repay Little Jimmy's investments with 
interest, and he'd repay the bank. In the meantime, the dummy companies would go 
on the block and be absorbed or bought out by holding companies, getting the 
rest of the money in the process, all neatly laundered and pressed and even on 
the tax books, although with that kind of money you could always find enough 
breaks to avoid the bulk of the taxes.
The weakness was that if you knew both ends, you might intercept things. This 
was known, but, considering the risks involved in bilking that corporation out 
of fifty bucks, let alone millions, it was considered acceptable, just as the 
loans Little Jimmy took out were really paid back since otherwise he'd be out of 
the loan-shark business in a hurry.
The loan had come in, from Tri-State Savings Fund, one of the bigger banks in 
the region and one of the first to get into interstate banking in a big way when 
they dropped the barriers to it, and Little Jimmy had then made his 
"investments," prudently investing no more than ten percent in any one firm on a 
list of up-and-coming small companies. The trouble was, the list was given to 
him by the loan officer at Tri-State; it turned out to be a very different list 
than the one Little Jimmy was supposed to get. When the real companies started 
contacting him about not getting their investments, Little Jimmy hit the roof 
and quickly discovered what had happened. His next problem was to keep his own 
bosses from finding this out; they would take a dim view of his blind obedience 
to the system and his failure to verify everything. He quickly advanced two and 
a quarter million of his own money, but he was only really worth about three 
million— only!—and much of that wasn't really liquid.
In other words, Little Jimmy had to take out a real loan to cover the loan. By 
tax time, there would be much interest in why he'd borrowed five million—partly 
by mortgaging his house, his cars, and his business—all to sink into speculative 
companies with short lifespans.
Of course, when his share came back he'd still have to repay the bank, and that 
would leave him up to his eyeballs in hock. His godfather or chief corporate 
officer or whatever might very well not give him more than a scolding since the 
deal went through anyway; but Little Jimmy knew a lot of names and routings and 
the like, and would be in a very tight squeeze later on, a squeeze his bosses 
might just expect him to get out of by making a deal. Little Jimmy remembered 
what was the ultimate fate of the Reverend Billy. He decided that it might be 
best if this .. . mistake ... was not reported or revealed to anyone else, and 
to see if he could get at least some of his money back, not to mention the 
fellow who was behind all those other dummy companies. He had, of course, put 
the word out that this fellow was no longer "reliable," but he wanted some of 
his own working on this. He couldn't trust his own people with the real 
story—somebody would blab across the river just for brownie points—and so he 
came to us. Not us alone, almost certainly, but here we were.
"So what's the name of this guy?" I asked him. "And why can't you find him?"
Little Jimmy sighed. "His name is Martin J. Whitlock the Fourth, and he 
is—was—chief operating officer at Tri-State. We're pretty certain that the 
business-loan officer who set me up was innocent. Just following the boss's 
orders. He didn't even know it wasn't a straightforward deal. Since then, 
Whitlock has disappeared, and nobody but me even seems to have noticed."
Brandy was still suspicious. "Why us? You got resources. You probably got all 
sorts of folks on this all over."
"It is a contest, I grant you that, but there's more to it. I think I owe you a 
shot at it simply because of our unfortunate past associations. Also, Whitlock 
has certain unsavory avocations in low sections where you two operate so well. 
And, of course, there's the fact that your cousin, Minnie Slusher, is the 
Whitlocks' live-in housekeeper."
"Ten to one he's not even in the country by now," I noted. "This is a cold trail 
from the start."
"Indeed, yes, it is somewhat cold, although all this has happened in just the 
last few days. The moment I learned of it was but three days ago, and Whitlock 
went" to work that morning and did not return that evening. Trace him. Track him 
down. I don't care if he's in Brazil. You don't even personally have to recover 
the money. Just give me where he is, and we will do the recovering and you will 
get your finder's fee. Ten percent of everything we get back."
"A banker can really hide that kind of stuff easily," Brandy noted. "He's an 
expert at it, and that's small change to a dude like him."
"True, but a banker can also tell me where he hid it and how. Just give him to 
me."
"This will take real money to get anywhere," I noted. "You know how much we 
have."
"Yes, you must have a retainer," Little Jimmy agreed, and reached into his coat 
pocket. He brought out a wallet so overstuffed he lost ten pounds just taking it 
out, and he opened it and counted out a wad. "Five thousand dollars," he told 
us. "A retainer. Not a loan. All cash, no taxes, no reporting unless you want 
to. That—and these." He pulled out, so help me, two MasterCards and handed them 
over. One had my name on it, one had Brandy's. We kind of stared at them in 
wonder. Both were on the Tri-State Savings Fund.
"They're real, and they'll work," assured Nkrumah. "They are billed to a 
business I own. They're not approved for cash advances—you already have that—but 
they're good for purchases such as clothes and airline tickets. At a hundred 
dollars a day, I've hired you for the next fifty days. If you bring me a name 
sooner, the cards will be invalidated, but the retainer is yours. Naturally, 
though, the retainer and whatever is charged will come out of your percentage of 
whatever is recovered."
I stared at the money and the cards. "Yeah, but what if we don't turn him up? Or 
what if you don't recover before he croaks? What if one of the big boys finds 
him first? What happens then?"
"Then you cover the charges with whatever is left of the retainer and you keep 
the rest, if any. If there is a deficit, the balance still will not go below 
zero. You'll have nothing, but that's exactly what you have now."
He had a point, but the trail was growing colder by the hour.
"We have to talk this over," Brandy told him. "Leave this. If we take the case, 
time will be important. If we don't, we'll drop them by your office today."
Little Jimmy smiled again. "Oh, I know you will," he responded. "Good day." And, 
with that, he walked out, leaving that pile of bills and those two cards that 
were better than bills sitting on a box in front of us.
I looked at Brandy. "Well?"
"You think we really got a crack at this Whitlock dude?"
"No, but we'd always wonder if we didn't try. Ocean Estates isn't open yet; Joe 
was just doing us a favor. I can call him and tell him we'll be down later. 
That'd give us a month. I can't see any reason not to take it. Why? What's 
bothering you?"
"This. All this. Nobody with his underworld connections just waltzes in and 
hands over this kind of bread to two washed-up dicks on their way to the 
poorhouse. Remember, that same bad dude set up my father with a twisted scheme."
"You think he's using us in a setup, too? I dunno. This isn't the same kind of 
case. This is 'find a man.' Classic P.I. work. I don't know if his story is true 
or not, but the odds are Whitlock's into him or somebody anyway and skipped just 
ahead of them. What they do to him, or why, or even if there's no pot of gold at 
the end of this rainbow, it could make for a real challenging thirty days."
"Yeah, maybe, but Daddy thought his was a safe Something Big, too. If we're 
gonna go with this, you call Joe, but I'm gonna at least run down and unhock 
Daddy's gun."
A lot could be determined just on the phone, which hadn't yet been disconnected. 
Whitlock, Martin J., IV. Age: forty-seven. One of the blue bloods of 
Philadelphia society. Ancestors came on Penn's boat. Inherited a couple of 
million bucks. Harvard Business School, MBA, all the right clubs. Married 
Roberta Armbruster, of the came-over-on-the-Mayflower Armbrusters, added another 
million. Two kids: a son, Martin the Fifth, now in his freshman year at Harvard, 
and a daughter, Virginia, now at an exclusive prep school for future wives of 
aristocratic millionaires. The right blood, the right clubs, and several million 
in his own right. Why the hell would a guy like that stiff Little Jimmy in a con 
for two-plus million and split?
More to the point, why would a guy like that be a chief launderer for the 
hard-drug division of organized crime?
Part of the answer came in a listing of his holdings. It's amazing what you can 
do on a phone if you know what you're doing and have a decent acting voice. Give 
me four hours and somebody's name and address, and I'll tell you what perfume 
his wife wears, where he buys his clothes, who holds his mortgage, and his 
favorite restaurants—just for openers. It's incredible to me how porous the 
credit-card listings, check records, and credit-bureau files are to anybody who 
knows the right language and the right approach.
The motive for stiffing Little Jimmy was simple enough. When you think of the 
very rich, you think of them rolling in dough and lighting cigars with 
hundred-dollar bills. The truth is, most of the very rich don't have enough 
spare change for a Big Mac at McDonald's. The magic word is liquidity. His money 
was invested in stocks, bonds, certificates, real estate, you name it. His money 
didn't even go to him; he had a money-management firm that collected his 
interest and clipped his coupons and paid all his bills for him. The only real 
liquid asset he had was a Super NOW checking account with about ten grand in it 
for petty cash. The rich have the most valuable thing for living rich while 
their money works: almost unlimited credit. They just charge everything and the 
bills are sent to the business or the money managers or whatever. Must be nice.
He must not have figured on Little Jimmy wising up so fast. He did have 
reservations on a flight to San Francisco for next Sunday, but he hadn't even 
picked up the tickets yet. So now he's got over two million bucks in very liquid 
cash and convertibles, but he wasn't able to make good on his planned getaway. 
He couldn't use credit cards; that's the easiest way to be traced. This guy 
wasn't used to paying real cash, let alone using money to hide out from the mob. 
Still, he wasn't dumb. Even' the richest don't get nearly straight .A's at 
Harvard, they just use their money and connections to get hired over the poor 
slobs that do. But this guy was smart, real smart.
A check with the Philadelphia courthouse showed that he was real popular, too. 
One of my old contacts who still worked there told me that there were a bunch of 
federal examiners and marshals in town, and that Tri-State was already getting a 
going-over. That explained even more. If he thought the connection with the mob 
was about to be exposed and himself implicated, he'd have vanished right off. In 
fact, that may have saved him, although it made my life more complicated. The 
odds were that he might not know Little Jimmy was onto him yet; he might just 
have smelled the feds and bolted early. That saved his life, but it meant that 
the feds, at least, were looking for him right now. Worse, he was still an 
amateur at disappearing acts, and he'd had to panic, bolt, and run. That meant 
it would be messy and leave trails even an idiot or a fed could follow, and they 
had the lead.
That still left the question of why he was in this mess in the first place. Not 
that guys like him were honest; it was just that they generally let the 
underlings do the dirty work and take the big falls.
It took about three hours to get the file together on him, and that was just 
about the time Brandy returned with a whole mess of packages. These proved to be 
some shirts and pants for me and a small wardrobe for her, all off-the-rack 
stuff. She'd tried on only a couple of hers, and guessed at my sizes, but she 
was dead on. The sleeves on the sport coat were a little long, but it was a damn 
sight better than what I had at home.
I was a little surprised when she stayed with her old jeans and sandals and 
faded shirt. "I called Minnie," she explained, "and she's expecting me. Any 
black folks in that neighborhood don't look like Aunt Jemima are arrested for 
suspicion of burglary. You still got that old cop ID with the fake shield?"
I nodded. "Uh huh."
"Then you take the missus and I'll take Minnie."
We walked down to the street, and I was startled to see a new-looking Ford 
parked there behind ours. Brandy handed me the keys.
"You didn't charge this!"
She laughed. "Sure I did. At Avis. Looks a lot like the cars the detectives 
drive. You take the front and it; I'll take our car and the servants' entrance. 
We'll meet back at the Midway Diner and compare notes while we buy each other 
dinner."
Whitlock's place was a simple one-story brick rancher off a long driveway in 
Ardmore, one of the richer suburbs of Philadelphia. The fact is, the place 
didn't look all that big from the front, but if you started walking around you 
found out it went back a ways. Like maybe Pittsburgh.
There was only a single Mercedes wagon in the driveway, but even Little Jimmy 
could tell me that Whitlock's two-door sports Mercedes coupe was still parked in 
his marked space in the Tri-State lot downtown. I put on my glasses, which I 
normally use only for reading, and was just going to the door when I saw our 
two-tone Chevy come up and pull around to the side and Brandy get out and walk 
on back. I rang the bell and stood there awhile, wondering whether it was that 
nobody was home or only that with the housekeeper occupied, it was beneath the 
dignity of a Whitlock to open her own door.
It wasn't. I guess even blue bloods get caught in the John.
She was tall and very slender, with a conservative hairdo, with makeup even in 
the late afternoon with no place to go. "Yes?"
"Mrs. Whitlock? I'm Sam Horowitz, with the Department of the Treasury. Is your 
husband at home?"
"You know he isn't. Your people were here earlier today."
I harrumphed apologetically. "Well, there are two separate agencies involved in 
this, and I guess you understand the bureaucracy." She finally invited me in, 
and we had a pleasant if inconsequential talk. I did finally get to see a photo 
of him; a distinguished-looking man, much younger in appearance than his years 
would indicate, with short, peppery hair, light complexion, blue or gray eyes, 
clean shaven, no moustache, beard, or even sideburns, which look a bit out of 
date these days. I have bushy sideburns myself, but that was overcompensation 
for what was missing on top. I know what I look like with a beard, though, and 
forget it.
I didn't expect to ever get back here—or be able to, once the feds found out I 
was here at all—so I decided to play a chance card or two and see if I passed 
Go.
"Mrs. Whitlock, I know how hard this must be for you, but we have some evidence 
that your husband was involved with organized crime. Laundering drug money, to 
be precise. That's what this is all about, and why we think he left. We think he 
stole some mob money and skipped."
She was not completely surprised by this, but some of it was new. "Oh, my. They 
said something about the Mafia or something, but I find that hard to accept. 
Drug money, you say! He—he was on the Mayor's Council for Stamping Out Drug 
Abuse. He always hated drugs. Wouldn't permit a smoker in the house, and had to 
be ready for the hospital before he'd even take an aspirin."
"If that's true, then it makes even less sense," I told her honestly. "I mean, 
he had a nice family, money, position. . . . Why do it? He wasn't a thrill 
seeker, was he? Somebody who might do it just out of boredom?"
"Oh, my, no! He never even drove the speed limit in spite of his sports car!"
"Then they had something on him. Some kind of blackmail. Do you have any idea 
what they had that they could blackmail him with?"
"Certainly not! His life was an open book!" But I could tell by her eyes that 
she was hiding something.
There wasn't much more I could press, and I kept seeing the real feds coming 
back any minute now, so I made my apologies and my sympathies, palmed a cameo 
portrait of him from an end table, and bid her good-bye. Our car was still in 
the driveway, but I wasn't going to wait for Brandy.
The tail wasn't hard to spot; they wanted to be noticed, and on the winding 
little road leading back down to the expressway at Conshohocken, there wasn't 
much chance of shaking or evading them if I wanted to. I knew who it was, and 
when we got to the bottom just before the entrance to the Schuylkill, the 
flashing light went up on top and he pulled me over into the parking lot of a 
rustic-looking restaurant or catering joint.
I got out and leaned easily against the car, waiting for them. There were two 
there, but one was on the radio while the other glared at me, then finally got 
out and came up. "Can I see your driver's license and registration, please?"
"Can I see your ID first?" I responded. "I want to know who I'm dealing with and 
I got a right."
He reached into a breast pocket and did a quick flip of a case too fast for me 
to read, so I reached in and did the same damned thing. He reached for it and I 
said, "Uh uh. You show me yours open and I'll show you mine."
He took it back out, looking pissed, and held it open. Marshall Kennedy. Neat 
first name. I wondered if it had influenced his eventual line of work. He wasn't 
a marshal, though; it was Drug Enforcement Administration.
I nodded. "Sam Horowitz, and I'm private, licensed in New Jersey," I told him 
truthfully.
He frowned. "So what was that shield you flashed?"
"My old ID with a regular shield. I use it like you do, to get into places 
easily. It's part of the job."
"You're looking for Whitlock." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. "Why?"
"I was hired to."
"By who?"
"You know I can't tell you that. I suspect, though, that it was by somebody who 
wanted to bring the whole weight of the feds and local cops down on me so they 
could free their own people to look for him."
He considered that. "I still want the name. PI's don't mean shit to me, and 
don't give me any shield-law crap. There's no federal law covering you. Besides, 
might be interesting to find out just who you told the little lady there you 
worked for. Impersonating an officer's good for a yanked license and maybe a 
year."
"Better a year than getting my brains blown out," I told him. "Be reasonable. 
I'll tell you what I know, short of violating my ethics and my right to life, 
and you see if you're happy. You know I'm the patsy in this. I knew it from the 
start, only the money was too good and I was flat broke."
"I'm listening."
I told him about Whitlock stealing mob money and putting the squeeze on the 
middleman. I also told him about what I'd learned so far, and that I hadn't yet 
figured out how he'd gotten sucked in in the first place.
He wasn't communicative in return, but I got the very distinct feeling that he 
didn't know, either. They were at the same point we were, in spite of their head 
start. He did, however, offer one very interesting new fact.
"He didn't leave the country. He called his wife this morning. Didn't talk long, 
so we couldn't get a trace, but it was definitely a local call. You wouldn't by 
any chance be carrying something he wants or needs, would you? If you are, 
you're aiding and abetting a federal fugitive and I'll slam you real hard if you 
don't come clean."
"I'm as clean as they come. Search away if you want."
He did, starting with me. "There's still a price tag in this jacket," he noted. 
"What'd you do? Raid Sears today?"
The car was given a good but not complete going-over, since they'd had me in 
sight from leaving the front door and I sure hadn't had time to do much more 
than stuff something between the seats or like that. While they were still 
searching, night fell, and Brandy drove by in the car. I pretended not to 
notice, but I sure hoped she had.
The fed finally was as satisfied as he was going to get. "Okay, Horowitz. You're 
on my list now. You be where I want you when I want you, and you report anything 
you learn to me even before you tell your client. I'm letting you run only 
because I think you're what you say you are—a stalking horse. I have to say, 
though, that I don't like you very much. I don't give a damn about P.I.'s one 
way or the other as long as they stay out of my way, but if you're working for 
the ones he stiffed you're no better than they are. You're free only so long as 
you're useful, but to me you smell like an accessory, and that's the way it'll 
read if your client finds out something from you before I do. Get it?"
"I got it. Now I'm telling you to back off and give me some room. All you'll do 
is spook everything if you come along with your heavy boots like you did here. I 
don't care who gets him, but I want a crack."
Kennedy shrugged. "We'll keep a safe distance, don't worry. I'll even give you 
one lead, if you don't have it already. Not much, but it's a brick wall. He had 
a second life someplace. He'd be gone sometimes from home for weeks at a 
stretch, supposedly out of town on business, but the bank has no record of those 
trips or expenses for them. His marriage has been mostly name only for years."
I raised my eyebrows. "Mistress on the side?"
"If so, we can't find any trace of her. It's weird. He'd be at the bank 
sometimes but never leave the parking lot to go home. That's why nobody was 
surprised that his car stayed there overnight. Sometimes he'd take a leave of 
absence for a while, often up to a week every month, but nobody knows where. He 
sure didn't use any family funds, or bank funds, either."
"Nice puzzle. Let me see what I can do."
I drove off then, feeling very lucky, but I was now paranoid about every pair of 
headlights. Now, at least, I knew why we were worth the bucks. We'd trod the 
well-worn trails with the feds knowing us and breathing hard on us while Little 
Jimmy's big agency, probably an out-of-towner, poked and probed in anonymity. 
Was it worth fifty gees—maybe a hundred, the way Brandy was using that card—to 
somebody to do that? When this much was at stake, maybe it was.
Brandy was waiting at the diner, and I told her about the feds and what I'd 
learned. Come to think of it, except for the picture, I'd learned more from 
Kennedy than I had from Mrs. Whitlock. Brandy, however, had far more.
"He's pretty kinky and she knows it," she told me. "There's three closets up 
there in the master bedroom. His, hers, and hers."
"Two wives? He keeps his mistress's clothing at his house?"
"Uh uh. The other hers is also a his. He's a transvestite. He likes dressing up 
in women's clothing and pretending to be one. Minnie says there's an old album 
"she found once in a closet that shows him in drag back from his teenage days. 
She says he's better looking than his wife."
"Hmmm. . . . That explains a lot, including how he was able to vanish so 
completely even in a panic, and maybe why his marriage is a name-only affair. So 
he is a thrill seeker after all. Probably not gay, though. Few of them are."
"He might swing both ways. That's Minnie's feeling, anyway. But most of the 
stuff at the house hasn't been touched in months, and the bulk of it was donated 
to the Goodwill long ago."
It was beginning to come together. If he had photos, so did others, and somebody 
on the wrong side, maybe even an old classmate from Harvard who was graduating 
Magna Cosa Nostra, knew about it and filed it away. He had another place 
somewhere, and that place was probably downtown. He had periods when he came to 
work normally, yet didn't go home at night. He wouldn't want to risk going even 
by taxi or public transportation, for fear of being recognized by some bank 
employee or other and finally being traced. That meant walking distance.
"Sansom Street," we both said together. "Now, who do we know in that area?" I 
added, trying to think.
Sansom was a tiny little street right downtown that was the focus for the local 
gay community, but also had been a refuge for the social misfits from other 
areas. It had those kinds of shops that sold incense and handmade leather goods, 
and had others that sold bean curd by the pound. It was more picturesque and 
quaint than raunchy, which is why it survived. The raunchy areas weren't far 
away, but Sansom was safe. These blue bloods sure had more interesting lives 
than the folks I hung out with.
The trouble was, while this narrowed down the area and gave us someplace to 
look, it also vastly complicated matters. We didn't really know what he looked 
like dressed as a woman, and Minnie had said that the album had vanished and was 
never seen again after that one time. Hell, he could be wearing a wig in any 
style, made-up, wearing a padded bra under a dress, high heels, and come right 
up to us and ask us to buy him a drink. Worse, he'd walk right past the feds at 
the airport or train station, laughing all the way out, carrying the money in 
checked luggage.
Maybe Little Jimmy did simply need all the help he could get.
 
3.
The Path to G.O.D.
 
I have to admit that I'd really underestimated Martin Whitlock, just like the 
feds and the mob had. It took some kind of brains to steal two and a quarter 
million bucks from the mob, get exposed in a drug-laundry scheme, and vanish for 
three days without a trace while not moving more than six blocks from his 
office. The only amateur's slip he made was calling his wife. That was the crazy 
thing. I think they still loved each other, in a way. She wasn't just protecting 
him for image's sake; this stuff was bound to hit the papers in a big way sooner 
or later—his disappearance already had, and the reporters had no problems tying 
it to federal bank examiners moving in at Tri-State. Hell, Minnie might well 
sell the sordid stuff for the right price if nothing else happened. No, his wife 
was protecting him because, in spite of everything, she still loved him. And he 
had risked a farewell phone call to her, too. And I thought we had problems! 
Just goes to show that millions of bucks and two Mercedes mean less than you 
think. Of course, I'll still take his money and my marriage any day.
The trouble was, this new situation had made me fall back on resources I really 
didn't like to use. I called Little Jimmy and briefed him on the case to date, 
and he seemed really excited about it. I also told him about Agent Kennedy, 
something he took in stride, and his taking it in stride made me very upset.
"Listen, Nkrumah, I'm not doing any stretch because I was hung out to dry for a 
measly few grand and a charge account. You want me to lead them away, you tell 
me, and I'll lead them away instead of pressing this. No more games, though, 
huh?"
"Why, Samuel! I wouldn't dream of hanging you out to dry on this! In fact, those 
people are why I cannot move through normal channels. They have everything sewed 
up tight. I can't breathe without them noticing and in their ham-handed way 
notifying certain parties of my, ah, problem. In fact, if it makes you feel any 
better, give this Kennedy a call and brief him from time to time. Just be 
certain it's the second call you make."
"That won't give you much breathing room," I noted.
"Oh, that's all right. I have resources in high places."
"Seems to me you're thinking that your own bosses are mighty dumb," I couldn't 
help but point out. "I mean, this guy's vanishing act hasn't hit the front pages 
yet, but it will sooner or later."
"Oh, they won't care about him. I don't mind if they do think he took a powder 
just ahead of the bank examiners and the narcs. It's my money, not theirs, that 
is at stake, and they are getting things exactly as they expect. Don't worry. I 
can keep things under control—if you can on your end. It might be best if we 
arranged a different number to use. I really don't mind them discovering who 
you're working for—they probably already know— but I really would mind if they 
overheard something and queered it. Don't call again. I'll be in touch with 
alternatives."
"Okay, but I need a guide through these local sewers. Somebody with clout whose 
information will be reliable and who won't go squealing to Kennedy all the 
time."
"I have an idea. Go home. Get some sleep. I'll see what I can do."
And he was as good as his word. Believe it or not, the next morning the man from 
Federal Express came by with one of those overnight letters and it was from 
somebody I never heard of in Sacramento, California. Still, when I opened it, 
there was a note that I could only assume originated with Little Jimmy a couple 
of miles across town.
There will be somebody at a phone booth at seven AM and again at seven PM at 
each of the numbers below. Call them, in order, at the indicated times with your 
reports and needs. Ask for Sandalwood. If the person on the other end is not 
responsive, hang up and try the next number. Do not reuse a number. When the 
last one is dead I will get you a new list. As for your trusty guide, try Sgt. 
Albert Paoli, Central District Vice. You and he will just hit it off perfectly.
I knew Paoli—or, at least, I knew of him. He was wholly owned and operated by 
the mob, although which branch I never really knew. Still, with his years on the 
pad and who-knew-what skeletons in his vast closets, he wasn't the kind of guy 
to betray anybody—and he was too low a fish to get complete immunity if he got a 
sudden case of nerves or conscience. The last thing any cop wants is to do time 
in the pen.
Paoli was an all-right sort of guy with some people, but he had certain strong 
dislikes that you might call hatred. He hated Jews, for example, even more than 
he hated blacks, and he hated the idea of mixed marriages even more than both of 
those groups. These paled only in comparison to his total and complete hatred of 
all private investigators. The word to cooperate might have originated with 
Little Jimmy, but I'd bet my life it was delivered in Italian.
Brandy and I stopped by a shopping mall before going into Philadelphia, and 
spent some time there, and a fair amount of Little Jimmy's dough. In fact, I was 
beginning to think that if we recovered all two and a quarter million, we'd 
still owe the big weasel money. Still, with me there to try things on, I had 
clothes now that looked decent and fit me, and Brandy had almost a wardrobe. It 
was the first time she'd done much with cosmetics and jewelry since she played 
that hooker, and even though this was understated and looked real good, it still 
didn't seem natural looking to me after all this time. After a nice, expensive 
charged lunch, we drove over to see Sergeant Paoli.
He was a thin, dour-looking man of maybe forty-five going on sixty, with less 
hair than I had, all gray, and one of the biggest noses this side of the ocean. 
Had a desk out in the middle of a combined office, but ushered us back 
immediately to a small private office obviously used in interrogations. The look 
of total disgust on his face was undeniable. Shoot somebody, yeah. Frame 'em, 
sure. Take bribes, screw your fellow officers, fine. But we were garbage.
"I need some reliables in the Sansom Street district," I told him. "Ones who 
might know the transvestites and the queens equally well, and know where they 
hide out in the daytime."
"Thinking of coming out of the closet?" he shot back like he meant it. "That's a 
pretty closed society in there, even harder because it's quite small. Most of 
that sort aren't downtown, they're down in south Philly."
"Either who I'm looking for is there, or he goes through there to make his 
changes," I responded. "He's real good at covering his tracks and he's now on 
the lam from You-Know-Who, and maybe the law as well."
"You want to give me a name?"
"You sure you want to know?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"Whitlock. Martin Whitlock."
"The banker? Well, I'll be damned.... He's hotter than the Fourth of July right 
now. The feds are in. I can't do nothing about the feds."
"Screw the feds. I want him, and when I'm through they can have what's left. 
I've already got a deal with them, so don't think of getting into this thing 
yourself. I guarantee it'll just give you a choice between a bullet or ten 
years' hard time."
"It's your funeral," he replied, making it sound more like a wish than a 
warning. "All right, I'll give you a couple of names and places. You'll have to 
track them down yourself. You can use my name to open the door, but after that, 
you don't ever use it again."
That was fair enough. I was fascinated by the fact that although we both sat 
there, he had refused not only to address Brandy but to even acknowledge her 
existence. We didn't like to stay where we weren't wanted, and we got out of 
there as quickly as we could.
"He don't like us much," Brandy noted. "I guess he likes the old days when 
everybody was named Capone, or Banana-nose, or something or other. Well, Lone 
Ranger, what we do now?"
"We park the horses, Faithful Indian Companion, and we leg it."
Joey Teasdale, Paoli's first suggestion, wasn't hard to find if you were 
patient, had a lot of twenty-dollar bills, and didn't seem to be cops. We were 
all three, although we must have walked three miles and spent a couple of 
C-notes before we found him sitting at a table in the first joint we'd covered. 
He was almost your stereotypical queen, with loud clothes, high-heeled boots, 
earrings, and more perfume than Brandy had worn in a lifetime. At least you felt 
reasonably safe with him; he sure wasn't any threat to Brandy, and I sure as 
hell wasn't his type. He was, however, extraordinarily courteous to Brandy, 
which was more than Paoli had been.
How long you been off the gooseberry lay, son?
"Paoli sent us. We're looking for somebody," I told him.
"You cops?"
"Private. The man lifted something of value from somebody you should never, 
never steal from, and split. He's hot and we need him before the good guys get 
him." Teasdale whistled. "That hot, huh? Who?"
"Whitlock. Martin Whitlock, the banker." "Him? What makes you think he would 
come through here?"
"Look, we got no time for games," Brandy put in. "We got money 'cause the Man 
got ripped and he don't care what it takes to get even. You got it? Now, those 
who make themselves useful earn big brownie points with the Man. Those who 
don't, well, that goes in the report, too."
That hit home. "Yeah, okay, he comes through here regularly," Teasdale said with 
resignation. "Been coming down here for years. Not the usual kind, though. I 
mean, I'm a man, wouldn't be anything else. No offense, dear lady. We get a lot 
of those kind of guys who have a wife and kids and position because that's 
important to them, and then they come down here sneaking around to make little 
liaisons, if you know what I mean. He's not that kind. When he's down here, it's 
total. Looks, acts, sounds all girl, if you know what I mean. Even gets the 
voice soft and sultry. The drag queens, they just like the pretending. They're 
good, but they're acting and they always know they're acting. Not him. It's like 
they were two different people, one male, one all female. I sometimes had the 
idea he'd gotten the operation. Become a she, if you know what I mean, and that 
the man part was the acting."
I exchanged glances with Brandy and knew that we were both thinking the same 
thing. Suppose Joey Teasdale was right? It would explain a lot about why he and 
his wife hadn't had a real marriage in a long time but might still care for one 
another. It would also explain some of the long absences and why a guy like that 
would need enough money to be into the mob. If so, there might be nothing short 
of fingerprints that would nail him.
"You got any line on him?"
"Not immediate, but he never played around. Oh, he'd come into a place now and 
then, but mostly he didn't stick around here. He had a regular thing with 
somebody up in northeast Philly, I'm pretty sure. Only saw the guy once, when he 
came down to Honey's to get some of her—Whitlock's—things and they wouldn't let 
him in the door. I happened to be passing by and played kind of Sir Galahad; got 
somebody who could go get what he wanted."
"What'd he look like?" Brandy asked.
"I dunno. Average height and build, I guess. The only thing I remember clearly 
is he had long, flowing blond hair and a bushy blond walrus moustache and really 
gorgeous blue eyes. Looked kind of like an overage drummer from some rock band. 
Dressed that way, too. He was quite attractive, but it was kind of funny."
"Yes?"
"You sometimes get a sixth sense about these things. It can't be, of course, but 
I'd swear he wasn't the least bit gay."
I nodded. "When was this?"
"Just day before yesterday. That's why I remember him."
That was about all we could get from Joey, but it was both valuable and 
puzzling. Now we had at least one other player in Martin Whitlock's bizarre 
double life, and that player was a total unknown.
Honey Rodriguez was the second and last name on our list, and was also the one 
referred to by Joey Teasdale. This was strictly Brandy's to handle now, for the 
same reason that our mysterious blond man couldn't get in to get Martin 
Whitlock's things, although it was frustrating to me. They just didn't let men 
in the Center City Lesbian Center and Coffee House without a warrant.
She was in there about forty minutes while I guzzled black coffee on the corner 
across from the dump, wishing I'd taken up smoking again when the money came 
back. Brandy had, unfortunately, which only made it worse. Neither of us needed 
to smoke at all, and poverty had been a real good excuse to give it up, but deep 
down it was the only reason we'd given it up. It's bad for you, and antisocial 
these days to boot, but, damn it, we'd only ballooned out to our weights when we 
quit, and while I might be healthier now I sure didn't feel any better. Maybe 
not cigarettes, but in self-defense maybe an occasional cheap cigar or one of 
those curved Sherlock Holmes-type pipes. On Little Jimmy's card, naturally.
She finally came out and gave me a smile and crossed over and we walked over to 
a small cafe off Chestnut. "Well? Did she convert you?" I asked her.
Brandy laughed. "There were some mighty-good-lookin' broads in there, but when 
you got down to it they all lacked an essential ingredient, and since it's the 
only thing we keep you men around for anyway, why spoil it?"
"Got anything?"
"Some real interesting stuff, but it only gets crazier and crazier. This kind of 
shit ain't for small-time P.I.'s, honey, or big-shot feds, either. It's 
booby-hatch time."
"Shoot."
"Whitlock took a bunch of pills and shots and stuff, all right. Hormones, almost 
certainly. Kept a whole medical kit in a private locker in the back of the 
center, there. Whitlock money's been supportin' that place, almost. Thousands of 
bucks' worth. They all swear that Whitlock's a she passin' as a he, not the 
other way 'round, but several were there when she or he or whatever changed, and 
they swear there's not a scar or stretch mark on that body, and that it had all 
the right curves and moves, including average boobs that were strapped down in a 
kind of corset that also filled out the upper body, made it look muscular. I 
don't know much about transsexuals, but the people over there seem to know a 
lot, and they swear that Whitlock was as natural-born a woman as they know. What 
do you think of that?"
"I don't think. Not at this stage, anyway. So if that's true, then who fathered 
those two kids of his? Besides, they aren't that old. I think Mrs. W. would have 
noticed a lot sooner, at least by the honeymoon. Besides, I got on the phone 
that he was a member of the Triangle Health Club, and that's rich men only. If 
he went through that kind of operation, it'd take months and cost a fortune. He 
couldn't cover it up that long and keep his regular schedule. Those things take 
months before all those hormones kick in."
"Where'd you learn so much?"
"The National Enquirer. So I'd bet my booties that old Martin was a man until 
just recently and would still be more castrated man than full-figured gal."
"They said this started more than two years ago, and they saw her then."
I nodded. "So this leads me to a deduction, Watson."
"We don't make enough to pay taxes now."
"Quiet. Us geniuses need clear heads. The only way I can figure that we have the 
Marty Whitlock everybody knows and the female Marty down here is if there isn't 
much kinky going on at all. You get an estimate of height and weight?"
"Hard to tell. She wore heels there, and dear old Honey noted that she wore real 
finely made elevator shoes as a man. They all thought it was a great scam, and 
they didn't look much closer because of the money."
"Few do. But the height?"
"Honey said, with heels, they were about the same height. Call it five ten."
I nodded. "Uh huh. And Marty was five ten as well. Now, if we assume that the 
real Marty Whitlock didn't wear elevators, let alone heels, we can account for 
maybe three inches."
"Brother and sister, maybe? Real close look-alikes?"
"Have to be real close. The trouble is, he does have two sisters, both accounted 
for and neither one likely to be able to pass for him even with Hollywood 
special effects working on his side."
"He could have just passed her once and seen the resemblance and got her on the 
payroll. He'd have a hell of a good payroll. It'd beat workin'."
I considered it. "Maybe, but it's unlikely. The clue here is that she looked 
enough like him to convince everybody down here that there was a masquerade. 
Remember what Joey told us? As a woman, he looked like somebody totally 
different, a real woman. Except for one thing, we've been led down a garden 
path. Not only does he vanish into this sexual anywhere, but he leads us to a 
point where it appears he's either a drag queen or a transsexual. Now, why?"
She shrugged. "Maybe it's because he knew he'd have to disappear someday, and he 
figured this was a real neat dead end. Everybody would now be looking for a drag 
queen or a transsexual, not for him."
"And left it in place for a couple of years?" I thought about it. "It's almost 
too clever. You wonder how somebody with his background would even know about 
these places, let alone work them out that neatly. It explains the call to his 
wife, though, even though it's one of only two mistakes he made. She knows 
what's going on. Most of it, anyway. Damn! This is frustrating! You don't hire 
somebody to go through this kind of elaborate shit for two years just as a blind 
alley, and even if you have this kind of shit going you can't buy much more time 
than if you got a fake passport, went up to Canada, and took the plane to Rio or 
whatever. No, this smells. This stinks. He did this for a reason other than to 
cover his tracks. This was something ongoing, something he rnaybe needed to 
develop so he could get out from under the Little Jimmys of the world one step 
ahead of the feds. Why stick around here at all? He could just as easily and 
untraceably have called her changing planes in Chicago."
"Unfinished business. He had to move in a hurry, faster than he figured. You 
said two mistakes, though."
"Uh huh. Get another description of that guy who came by to pick up her gear?"
"Yeah, it was pretty much as Joey told us. About five ten, blue eyes, long blond 
hair and moustache. ..."
"The operative stuff is at the start. Five ten, blue eyes. Probably a real good 
blond wig and a real professional matching fake moustache."
"The real Marty Whitlock," she sighed. "But why come at all? Testing out the 
disguise, or what?"
"Uh uh. Remember, he was spooked into moving a few days early. His girlfriend 
was told to stay away. Considering the trail he laid, they'd be more likely to 
be looking for her than him, or so he'd think. Those rich upper-class types 
really believe the cops are that good and that fast. But she needs some stuff 
from there, or something in the locker was traceable. So he puts on an old pair 
of jeans and a tee shirt, maybe old tennis shoes, and with some difficulty gets 
the stuff. We can forget the blond shit, though. He knows he was conspicuous, so 
he'll ditch 'em or at least stick 'em in the trunk and use something else. Big 
beard, shaved head, maybe tinted contact lenses, and he's off. Dead end, babe. 
We don't even know the name he was using in northeast Philly—if that was where 
he was doing whatever he was doing—and there's only three quarters of a million 
people out there. It'd take us years to canvass enough to find this pair."
Brandy grinned. "You won't have to. See, they thought she was one of them, and 
they smelled somethin' real odd about this dude even if he did have the 
handwriting and all. After all, Whitlock was their sugar daddy or mama or 
whatever. So when he left, they tailed him. I have the address."
I almost jumped across the table to kiss her. Naturally, this spilled my coffee 
and her Coke, but I didn't care. Finally I said, as the waitress and several 
patrons stared at us in disgust, "I think we go out there—after I make two phone 
calls."
"Little Jimmy and who else?"
"Agent Kennedy. I'm gonna give 'em both everything up to the sex change. If 
they're any good, they might get further, but maybe not. In the meantime, I'm in 
good with them and we'll be the first there."
There were still several hours of setup and work involved. The place was one of 
those older middle-class apartment houses with sixteen apartments in the place, 
and there was only so much you could expect even from Divine Providence. You 
could use a hundred scams to talk to the neighbors, but I once tried the 
insurance-agent ploy and half the people wanted to talk policies. It was easier 
just to fall back on the old reliable and flash the badge while Brandy cased the 
joint. It wasn't too hard to find their apartment; it was the one couple nobody 
knew much about and everybody thought a little nuts.
That left getting into apartment 2-09. I wasn't much good at petty burglary, but 
when it was clear that the place was dark and unoccupied, I turned things over 
to Brandy. She had that nice, big safety lock picked in about two and a half 
minutes of sweat. I did the sweating, of course.
At this stage, our pair had been pretty casual. They never expected to be coming 
back, and they never expected anybody to be able to find the place. At the end 
of the lease, which was prepaid only to the end of the month, the landlord would 
use his master, open the place up, get a cleaning crew in, and rent it out 
again.
These weren't furnished apartments, but it's tough to make a smooth getaway in a 
moving van. Most of it appeared to be rental furniture, with the stickers still 
on, pretty much like I figured. It wasn't terribly full of stuff, though; a 
couch and a couple of chairs in the otherwise barren living room, a queen-sized 
mattress and box spring in the bedroom, and a dresser. Most of the clothes and 
some of the toiletries were gone, but the small fridge was still reasonably 
full— fortified skim milk, Perrier, some never-to-be fondue, and even a couple 
of bottles of sixty-buck-a-fifth champagne. Overchilled, but not bad. Brandy 
took care of the small tin of beluga caviar; I never could see the appeal of 
solid-salt fish eggs that cost ten cents a pinhead-sized egg. Just your average 
lower-middle-class apartment dweller's emergency rations.
Then we started looking under mattresses and behind furniture. It didn't take 
very long, considering the underfurnished nature of the apartment, but we came 
up with a whole bunch of junk. It's amazing what falls in back of dressers, and 
there is some sort of law that states that anything left for any period of time 
will migrate to spots where you will never see it or find it. Most of it was the 
ordinary debris—a plastic hair curler, a couple of combs, some loose change, a 
magazine sweepstakes form, that kind of thing. One very crumpled little piece of 
tissue-thin paper, however, stood out and Brandy carefully unwrapped it. "Aha! 
The master detectives strike!" she announced with a flair and handed it to me.
It was a credit card slip.
The thing was hard to read and seemed to be fairly old, but I could read the 
name and the number and the expiration date, and it was still current. Amanda W. 
Curry, and a card good until the end of this year. Now, for the first time, we 
had a name and a way to track them. Whitlock just wasn't the type to go around 
packing suitcases full of cash, and he could hardly walk in and ask to buy two 
and a quarter million bucks in American Express traveler's checks without 
attracting a little attention. He would keep most of the money in dummy accounts 
probably spread all to hell and back, and contract with a money manager to pay 
the bills on this new set of credit cards. Little Jimmy had provided me with a 
sample of Whitlock's handwriting, and I took it out of my wallet and compared 
it. The charge slip was definitely signed in a woman's hand, yet there were 
certain similarities in the way the letters were formed, particularly the W. I 
handed them to Brandy. "If it's not the same, then they grew up together and 
learned from the same teacher," I noted.
She squinted, then said, "Yeah, that's right. I can't figure this out yet, but 
it sure is strange. Every time we figure we're dealin' with one person, we find 
two. Every time we figure two people, it looks like one. Don't make no sense at 
all."
I handed her the other prize from the junk trove, a crumpled and torn business 
card. She examined it carefully, but I had the strange feeling she wasn't 
reading it. "Just how bad is your vision?" I asked her.
"Good enough."
"Uh huh. Then read that card."
She sighed. "Okay, so I can't. So I'll blow some of this money on new glasses, 
all right?" She handed it back. "Now what's it say?"
"General Ordering and Development, Inc.," I told her. "McInerney, Oregon. Never 
heard of the place, but it sure doesn't sound very big. No address. Two phone 
numbers, though. One of 'em's been circled, sort of, in old pencil. Funny, too, 
there's ho name on the card. Just 'Western Distribution Center.' "
She thought a moment. "Kind of crazy, but that name seems familiar, somehow."
I shrugged. "I wonder if they call it GOD, Inc., around the plant?"
She snapped her fingers. "Yeah! That's it! The Amazing Stork Knife!"
"Huh?"
She was rolling now. "And the Motorized Minnow, and Pet-er-cize, too!"
"Slow down. If you can't manage English, try it phonetically."
She looked excited. "You don't watch enough TV."
"We hocked the TV months ago," I noted.
"Hell, this has been around for years! You know all those ads for all those 
crazy junk things that come on in the middle of the late show, or are all over 
cable TV? Things like pocket fishing gear, steak knives, and exercisers, 
disposable telephones, stuff like that?"
I nodded. "As much as I tried to avoid them, yes."
"Well, right down at the bottom they got to say who's really selling them. Not 
the TV station you send the money to or the eight-hundred number you call, but 
the real company, down in fine print. They made 'em do that after there were so 
many phonies getting into the act. Well, General Ordering and Development is one 
of the biggest!"
This was beginning to get interesting. "So they sell a thousand products by 
buying cheap, late-night ads from Hong Kong distributors and junk makers. If 
this is one of the biggest, then it's a multimillion-dollar company at the very 
least. You say it's been around awhile?"
"Years, anyway. They came in with a roar and bought up a bunch of the smaller 
outfits who started this whole thing. Why?"
"Well, those companies borrow money to buy the junk in huge quantities, and 
those are short-term, high-interest business loans. The bigger you are, the more 
banks you need behind you, if only to guard against the inevitable turkeys you 
get stuck with and can't fool even the sleepy public into buying. Big banks. 
Banks like Tri-State."
Her eyebrows went up. "I see.. . . But why the western division? Why not the 
east?"
"It doesn't matter to a bank where it is, so long as it's a good risk, and some 
banks at some times have more money to lend at better terms than others that 
might be close-by. In these days of quick flights across country and instant 
mail delivery and electronic funds transfers it doesn't really matter. The 
trouble is, we don't know if this is anything or not. It might just be that 
Whitlock met with a guy the day he came over here, and lost this."
"That's probably it," she agreed, "but at least we have a name. Wonder what a 
check of the airlines for the past two days might show?"
The funny thing about that was that it was so simple to do. Guys like Whitlock 
have secretaries and agencies to make their plans, and they tend to have 
corporate deals that keep them to just a couple of airlines. Even if he was 
sneaking off, I had a hunch he'd still fly his favorite, and I knew from his 
abortive Sunday tickets west what airline he favored. His idea of a real fooler 
might be to fly coach, but I was even wrong there. Curry, Mr. and Mrs., first 
initials M. and A., were flying strictly first class.
"Still San Francisco," I noted. "Why?"
"Simple. You can get real lost in a city like that, and they would have 
connections with the underground set through their friends here. When did they 
leave?"
"They landed two hours ago," I told her. "Might as well be two days or two 
weeks."
Brandy thought for a moment. "Want to play a wild hunch? Maybe an expensive 
one?"
"What do you have in mind?"
"Well, I was just wonderin' how you get from San Francisco to a little burg like 
McInerney, Oregon, strictly first class."
"You know the odds of there being any connection between that business card and 
what's happening now?"
She stared at me with those big brown eyes. "I know what the odds are unless 
there is a connection. You wanna call Little Jimmy and turn the rest back in, or 
do you wanna see San Francisco, maybe a little of Oregon, too, all on him?"
I had to admit that she had a real point there. "All right; then, we'll spend a 
little time here this evening seeing if we can get some descriptions of them and 
some impressions, then we'll fly off after them tomorrow if we can figure a way 
to do it quiet."
"You gonna call Little Jimmy and the feds?"
"Yeah. Little Jimmy I'm gonna call from a phone booth in a few minutes with the 
whole thing. The feds I'll call a little later. We'll give 'em the apartment and 
that's it. I think we'll keep this charge slip and business card for ourselves."
She thought a moment. "You got to figure the feds have been doggin' our trail 
all along, maybe Little Jimmy, too. How we gonna explain San Francisco if you 
don't give 'em the name? Or stop 'em from keepin' on following us?"
"I been thinking about that. We'll have to come up with something, and fast."
I saw that evil smile on her face. "Maybe we just gotta take a leaf from old 
Marty Whitlock."
"Forget it," I told her. "I'm not shaving my legs and I'm not wearing any 
dress."
There weren't many people to canvass by the time we left, but we found a few. 
They knew little about the occupant—singular—of that apartment, but they knew 
what she looked like. Real butch, right down to the haircut, usually dressed 
real mannish, too. Kept to herself, had a few visitors and no close friends, and 
was away a lot. One couple thought she was a guy, although they'd never talked 
to her or seen her close-up. It was more of the same androgynous pattern, only 
this time from the other end.
The major asset Brandy had during that period when she tried to keep the agency 
afloat after her father had died, and even in tracking down his killer, was the 
number of relatives her mother had all over the metropolitan creation. Cousin 
Minnie had been just one of these; there were many more, and while she was close 
to none of them, it was true that blood was thicker than water. We didn't have a 
whole hell of a lot of time, and we had an awful lot to do.
My old bum disguise was out; not only was it pretty well known, but it's kind of 
conspicuous for a bum to buy an airline ticket at all, let alone with either 
cash or a credit card. Instead, I dyed gray the hair I still had, and added a 
matching false moustache and my reading glasses, although they actually limited 
my vision for all but reading, and I usually just carried them in my pocket. In 
fact, just looking in the mirror I felt old, and I didn't like it. I had the 
uncomfortable feeling that I was staring at the not-too-distant future. Adding a 
small and worn hat and a very rumpled blue suit, and walking a little bent over 
and carrying a drugstore cane, I was pretty sure that nobody who didn't come 
straight up to me and examine me would recognize me.
Brandy slipped out of the apartment while it was still dark. She had a more 
extensive makeover to do, and we agreed to meet later, having set up a system 
with her cousin Lavonia, who happened to be a cabbie. Lavonia was perhaps more 
distant than any of the other cousins, but it was amazing how sweet and loyal 
she could be when presented with unregistered cash. Still, we could take no real 
luggage with us. All that nice stuff we'd bought had to be abandoned for now. 
We'd have to buy what we needed when we got there.
I left the apartment house at nine in the morning on a bright, sunny day, after 
spending an hour making sure that I looked and acted correctly and consistently. 
About a block down I finally spotted the feds' tail, sitting there in his car 
sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. He gave me half a glance when I walked 
by directly across the street from him, but nothing more. I couldn't spot Little 
Jimmy's tail, if it existed, but I was reasonably confident that if the feds 
ignored me when they knew I'd had a reputation for disguises as a vice cop, 
Little Jimmy's cretins would be even more easily fooled.
Lavonia was sitting in her cab where she was supposed to be, and I walked up and 
opened the back door.
"Fuck off, geezer! I'm off duty!" she shouted at me with the usual tact and 
diplomacy of a cabbie.
"Take it easy, Lavonia; I'm the one you're waiting for," I responded, and got in 
and shut the door.
She turned and stared at me suspiciously for a moment through the bulletproof 
glass partition separating her from her fares. She looked nothing like Brandy; 
light-complected, skinny, and with a face that was born hard and mean. "That 
really you, Horowitz?"
"Yeah. Let's get going. There's a fed just around the corner, and 
who-knows-who-else looking around."
She switched on the ignition and pulled out into traffic with the usual 
disregard for traffic, pedestrians, and stationary obstacles. I often think that 
there is a factory someplace that makes all the world's cabbies. They all look 
different, have different accents, but deep down they're all the same person.
She dropped me at one of those motels on the north side of the city that rents 
rooms by the hour and asks no questions. I would have to stay pretty much on ice 
for a few hours until Brandy was ready. We had decided to fly out of Newark 
rather than Philly because there wasn't any use in taking chances on people 
stationed there, and also because Newark had a couple of cheap airlines flying 
cross-country where you basically bought your seat on the plane. That made it 
damned difficult to get an advanced passenger list, and by the time they found 
out the reservations were in assumed names, it would be too late. The trouble 
was, it took extra time. It would take maybe ninety minutes to get up there, add 
an hour to make sure you got there in time to keep them from giving away your 
seat, and the earliest you could figure on was a flight at six-thirty in the 
evening.
I got lunch at a diner down the street, keeping in character—though having a 
tough time when the waitress kept calling me "Pops"—but it wasn't until after 
two, when my nerves and patience were really thin, that somebody knocked at the 
door. It was Lavonia.
We drove over to a row-house area that had a number of small businesses in the 
basements, stopping in front of one that looked older and in worse condition 
than our building and had a weathered sign that read. New You Salon and Beauty 
Parlor. They sure as hell lived up to their name. I wouldn't have recognized 
Brandy, just passing her in the street, and that's saying something. Only when 
she approached and then got into the cab was she unmistakably my Brandy.
Most dramatically, they had given her a very short haircut, then fitted her with 
an enormous and very natural looking wig of slightly curly reddish-brown hair. 
Cosmetics had been neatly applied that subtly changed the way her face looked, 
topped off by crimson lipstick and long and complicated golden earrings. She was 
also wearing a fancy-looking sleeveless top with a leatherlike dark-red vest and 
a skirt of the same material, slit a bit up the sides, as well as matching boots 
with the highest heels I'd ever seen. It couldn't disguise the fact that she was 
chubby, but the whole thing used that to minimize it, or actually make it 
something of an asset. I was stunned. "You look absolutely beautiful," I told 
her.
"Yeah, and you look like hell," she returned. "In a way, it ain't fair. I got to 
suffer with this damned girdle and you get to look like an old slob."
We went over to the turnpike and headed north. There were no evident tails, but 
you could never be sure. We wanted to cover all the bases, though, so this would 
be our only opportunity together until we got to San Francisco. I would be 
dropped a block from the place in East Brunswick where you got the airport van, 
and Brandy would do the same from Union. From that point we wouldn't know or 
acknowledge each other until we got outside the airport terminal at the other 
end. Nobody was going to get the chance to remember a salt-and-pepper couple, or 
think it odd that a young comer would take an inordinate interest in an old 
white geezer.
"You found the place and got some contact names?" she asked me.
I nodded. "McInerney is in the mountains east of Bend, so if they would fly up, 
they'd go there. That means either a commuter line out of San Francisco or 
Oakland, or a hop to Portland and then a line over to Bend for a pickup. It's 
one of those old logging towns that almost blew away, and I'm told that this 
company more or less bought the whole place. It was always a company town; just 
now it's a different company and different business. It's a small town, but 
we'll stand out as much or more than they would. There's not much anybody else 
could tell me from here, except that this General Ordering and Development 
corporation is big but no Fortune Five Hundred affair. It never lacks for money 
or credit, though, so there's somebody big behind it. I didn't have time to run 
down the corporate officers—it's officially a Delaware corporation, although 
that's just a mail drop—but there was nothing immediately dirty or suspicious 
about them. The home office is actually in Iowa, with branches for the west, 
central, east, and south. They sell a lot of stuff, but they make most of their 
money with their regional phone hookups. They take orders for just about 
everything from just about everybody."
She sighed. "Yeah, I know it's a long shot that they would run there. There's no 
reason for them to run there, I guess. Still, it's the only thing we got. What 
about contacts?"
"A few phone numbers of people out there, mostly in California. Nobody had much 
for Oregon. I had to use pay phones for all of this, so we'll have to do most of 
our follow-up once we're there. A P.I. in Oakland and a couple of contacts who 
were associated with our friends down on Sansom." Those were long shots, of 
course, just in case this Oregon thing was as blind as it seemed to be.
I had called the feds from our apartment the night before, and they'd gone to 
the north Philly address and done their thorough job. Kennedy, in fact, had 
actually called back, quite pleased with what he was getting from me, and given 
me another of those crazy facts. They had found only three clear sets of 
fingerprints in the apartment among, of course, the thousands of smudges and 
useless partials. One set was mine, one was Brandy's, and the third was 
undeniably Whitlock's. That satisfied them, but left us with even more of a 
problem.
"Did she wear gloves all the time or something?" Brandy wondered aloud. "I mean, 
if his prints were there, and he was only there some of the time, then hers just 
had to be there, too. I could take it more if they'd found hers but not his."
It bothered me, too. I was dead certain now that we were after two people, 
Whitlock and this Curry woman or whatever her real name was. There were enough 
signs in the background information we'd developed and the witnesses we'd 
interviewed and even in the apartment itself, not to mention that two people had 
taken that San Francisco flight. Everything pointed to there being two, and to 
an incredible scheme to make it seem like there was only one, a scheme totally 
out of character for Martin Whitlock IV, and not one he was likely to have come 
up with on his own. Yet, too, there was that closet of women's clothes in his 
house that Minnie had seen, and that album showing him dressed as a girl through 
a fair portion of his life. None of it made sense, and the prints made even less 
sense. They expected to be long gone and buried in new identities and locales by 
the time anybody discovered that apartment, if anyone ever did. Why weren't her 
fingerprints all over, more so than his, in fact?
The flight out wasn't much fun, either. These discount carriers were more like 
cattle cars with wings than real airlines, to begin with, and that was only the 
start of it. I sat up forward in nonsmoking, while Brandy sat near the back 
smoking away again, and every time I'd look back she was surrounded by guys, 
mostly young, black, and handsome and full of muscles, and she seemed to be 
having a wonderful time.
Okay, okay, so call me jealous. I guess it's more a deep-down insecurity. She's 
young and cute; I'm a decade older, white, balding, and paunchy. Everybody was 
real solicitous to the old guy, meaning me, but I mostly growled and sulked.
We took off late and we landed later, but at least neither of us had to wait for 
luggage. I walked past baggage claim and noted that she was having some problems 
getting rid of her entourage. The lady had no bags, and everybody wanted to 
carry them for her. She finally took the last refuge of choice and walked to the 
ladies' room, and when she emerged she'd removed the wig and some of the 
cosmetics, as well as the vest, and stuffed them into her big purse. It wasn't 
much, but the change was dramatic enough that nobody waylaid her as she walked 
outside and stood next to me. Without the wig, though, she didn't look at all 
terrific. In order to allow her to use any sort of wig with minimum problems, 
they'd cut her hair so short you had to look close to see any hair there at all.
We caught a cab over to an airport motel that was next to a rental-car place. 
The firm was closed, at close to ten o'clock, for walk-in rentals, but I was in 
no condition to drive all over a strange town that night, anyway. They had 
twenty-four hours plus on us; either we knew where they were going or we didn't, 
and only a lot of time on the phone would tell that. I checked us in and we went 
up to the room.
Brandy flopped down on the bed with a sigh and then started undressing. It 
really was a hell of a tight girdle; it made impressions in her that looked more 
like what you'd do in modeling clay than in human skin, and I wasn't sure if 
she'd ever be able to get that thing on again. She was quickly my old Brandy 
again, except for that haircut. She got up and walked into the bathroom and 
looked at herself in the mirror, then sighed. "Maybe I should just shave it. 
It's gonna take a year before it's lookin' decent again." She came back out and 
looked at me. I'd gotten out of those lousy clothes and tossed the false 
moustache in the ashtray. "What do you think?" she asked me.
"Might make you fit in real well around here," I responded grumpily.
"What's with you? Awww. . . . Don't worry. We'll buy some black hair dye for you 
first thing tomorrow."
"It's not that. It's just . . . Aw, skip it."
She seemed more amused than upset, and sat there and started a back and neck 
massage on me. It's one of my few real weaknesses, and one I can't deny. I'd let 
Norman Bates's mother massage there, if she was any good at it, and I wouldn't 
even check for knives.
"Yesssss . . . ?"
"Well, you seem to have had a pretty good time flying out here."
She laughed. "Not bad, for my first long plane trip. Oh, you mean the boys! 
Hell, honey, after all this time I kinda needed that just for my own sake. It's 
hard to explain—but I'm here, with you, not shacked up with one of them. I seem 
to remember that this was the place where coed showers were invented. Want to 
memorialize the occasion?"
"Maybe, but they sure weren't invented here. I think they were probably invented 
about ten minutes after they invented the shower."
Okay, okay, so I should have been down at a pay phone calling around, and I knew 
it, but there are some things a man needs more at a given time than duty. 
Besides, I never believed we'd get anywhere with all this, anyway.
Bright and early the next morning, though, I did make the calls, first finding 
out the recommended way to get to this nowhere in Oregon, and then being told 
that Bend was it. After that, you drove or took a local bus. There were more 
ways to fly to Bend from here than I figured, though—I never knew it was that 
big a place, although for me anything under a two-million metro is a small town. 
Still, using standard P.I. phone gimmicks, I had 'em in about two hours in spite 
of a real officious clerk at one of the airlines. I'd been afraid that they 
might have used general aviation, which would have been really tricky, but 
fortunately they took the quick route. In fact, they flew up there only that 
very morning, about the time I started my calls. I cursed myself for letting 
lust get ahead of business. If I hadn't needed cheering up and lots of romantic 
reassurances, I could have been there at the ticket counter when they showed up.
The fact is, nobody flies to Bend, Oregon, while on the run, so the 
million-to-one shot had been right. They were going to visit G.O.D.'s mountain, 
no question about that. I wondered why they'd delayed in San Francisco, but then 
it hit me. They needed time to set this up—this was a run, not a planned escape, 
after all—and maybe they wanted to see San Francisco. At any rate, they wouldn't 
risk any calls from Philly to McInerney, simply because it would stand out, and 
because if Whitlock handled that account it would be monitored by the feds. 
They'd wait until they were here, with no way in hell to monitor their calls.
Brandy was watching TV when I got back up to the room—I didn't want those calls 
recorded by any motel operator, after all—and she turned and pointed. "Look!" I 
looked.
"... This miracle space-age device remembers up to a hundred phone numbers, 
including area codes, up to thirty-two digits. You just put it to the mouth of 
any touch-tone phone and press the coded buttons like this!"
"What?" I managed, but she held up a hand. Soon the Superdialer number card was 
on the screen, with toll-free number and all the credit cards it took, so you 
could rush to your phone and buy one for only $39.95 plus $3 shipping and 
handling.
"There. Right at the bottom. See?"
Sure enough, in real tiny print right at the bottom it said, general ordering 
and development, inc., davenport, iowa. That was the home office.
I had always meant to ask Brandy about Pet-er-cize, but now I didn't think I 
wanted to know.
"So, what's the story?" she asked me.
"The story is that we were within a mile of 'em two hours ago, and they are 
probably still somewhere in the Bend airport this minute," I told her. "We sure 
blew it last night."
"You mean I did. But who'd have thought they'd still be around? They sure ain't 
movin' fast for folks with all creation after 'em. I guess we get dressed as we 
are and grab a bite at the airport, huh?"
"You know we don't have to," I pointed out. "We did the job. We actually 
completed the commission. All I have to do is call Little Jimmy, and tell him 
that Whitlock's in McInerney and has contacts or confederates in this company, 
and that's it. That's all he asked us to do."
"You know—you're right. I hadn't really thought about it." She gave a big grin. 
"So the super-detectives did the job and proved it all! We beat the feds, the 
mob, everybody!" She paused a moment, thinking. "Still, can you really give it 
up now? I mean, never know who the hell she was, or what all this was about?"
I didn't have to think much about it. "For a percentage of two and a quarter 
million, most likely ninety percent recoverable by Little Jimmy's friends; yeah, 
I could forget about it. It might drive me nuts, but I'd be rich and nuts, which 
beats poor and knowing any day of the week."
"Sheeitt," she responded. "Let's call him from the Bend airport. It won't take 
much risk to us. I mean, where the hell could they go in a few hours from 
Nowheres, Oregon? How long you figure it'd take to drive up there from Bend, 
anyway?"
"Three hours, maybe. Depends on the roads."
"So they'll just be gettin' into town when we get to Bend. What they gonna 
do—run off to Mars in a Handy Dandy Super Flying Saucer, only One Million 
Dollars from our toll-free-number line, MasterCard and Visa accepted?"
She had a point, and I had to admit I was not only curious, but also a little 
mad at myself. The fact was, I'd like to see these bastards, more her than him. 
Okay, doll, now let's see why you don't leave no fingerprints... .
There weren't exactly flights to Bend every hour; in fact, you couldn't fly 
there directly at all, but with a change in Portland, as the pair had done, it 
wasn't that much of a problem. Once we decided to keep going, though, I couldn't 
resist a double check. I placed a call to the airline they were using in Bend 
and tried to have them paged. It was a long shot, but you figure they might be 
figuring on getting picked up by somebody with the company, and it wouldn't be 
that unnatural. The plane, in fact, had been late getting in, and had only been 
in for a few minutes, but nobody answered the page and I finally gave up and 
called the airline people to see if they were still at baggage claim. "A man and 
a woman who almost look like twins," I told the baggage office.
"Oh, yeah, they just left," said the guy. "Hold on and I'll see if I can spot 
"em." He kept me hanging for about five minutes, then came back. "Sorry. I think 
they rented a car at Hertz, though. You might check them."
I did and they had, but they were gone now. The best I could get, even with my 
phony-cop approach, was that they were driving a new Oldsmobile, and she 
remembered them particularly, not only because they looked so much alike, but 
because they'd requested a Cadillac. Still, having the make, model, and license 
number wasn't bad, particularly since I knew damned well where they were going. 
What was most interesting was that they had rented the car for a week.
Now, that might not seem like much, but nobody rents a car for a week when 
they're only going to need it for a couple of days—unless it's fantastically 
cheaper to do so, and it certainly wasn't—and they particularly wouldn't if 
somebody else, say their friend in the company, was going to return it. That 
certainly implied that they expected to be around the place for a while and 
needed wheels for the whole period. They were pretty confident, I had to say 
that, still using the Curry name, which had to be in the federal files by now, 
and still using a credit card in that name. Given a couple of more days for the 
bureaucracy and procedures, even Kennedy or Little Jimmy could have tracked them 
here, at least to Bend. Without that business card, though, they might not 
figure on McInerney, not unless it was in fact a big Whitlock account.
I called Little Jimmy from the airport in Bend, while Brandy was filling out the 
car-rental form. It was four in the afternoon, but I'd almost forgotten the time 
difference and it was seven back at that phone booth.
"I got him," I told the contact. "Ready to deliver."
"Call the number I'm gonna give ya," the punk replied, sounding not at all 
impressed. "The man said to tell you to call it no matter when you called or 
why. Do it now."
I took down the number, puzzled, and called it, and was very surprised to hear 
Little Jimmy's voice on the other end of the line. He listened while I told him 
everything to date.
"Well, drop it," he responded. "Keep the dough, keep the cards until the end of 
the month if you want, but that's it."
"Uh uh. No welching. We did this for a percentage."
"Horowitz—I'm telling you to back off. Let it go. Let him go."
"You telling me there never was any money?"
"The son of a bitch stole every dime I said. He can keep it. There's no way I 
want anything more to do with him, ever. Even this distance is too close. If you 
know what's good for you, you'll go back to San Francisco, have a nice vacation, 
maybe find a job there if you like it. You want some references? You're good. 
Damned good. I think I could get both of you a nice position with some solid 
firm out there."
"Listen, Nkrumah, what in hell is this?" I growled. The fact was, Little Jimmy 
wasn't sounding like himself at all. He was sounding very, very scared. "The 
feds nail you?"
"No, no." He sighed. "All right, if you must know—I was set up all along. It was 
a scam. They busted Big Tony Guliano this morning, and at almost the same time 
they hit almost every cog in the smuggling game through which the merchandise 
passed. Every one! They have tied me to both Tri-State and Guliano, and I am 
about to visit the Cayman Islands for a while. Perhaps a long while."
"On what?" I asked him, not quite believing all this. If this pair was part of a 
federal scam, why this crazy scene with the transvestism and the rest of it? I 
was sure Kennedy hadn't known about that apartment until I told him. I'd still 
bet what I had left of Little Jimmy's money on it. "They stole your poke."
"That is none of your affair. My loans are being bought out if I am outside the 
country by tomorrow night. I still have a future, but not for a little while. 
Now it is time to take a much overdue vacation. I will make certain your 
references are on file in the right places, and will send you a list care of the 
main post office general-delivery window in San Francisco. This is it, Horowitz. 
I'm sorry, but it is over. I truly am impressed with your work, though. Truly 
impressed."
"Thanks for very little," I grumbled. This was smelling as bad as Marty 
Whitlock's girlfriend. "Don't write if you set up again."
"Horowitz—I want to emphasize only one thing, and then I am gone. Don't take it 
upon yourselves to follow them any further, and do not get near that town or 
that company. You are ignorant of what you are dealing with, as I was. I know 
more than I wish now, but I want nothing more to do with them. Be smart. Take 
that lovely lady of yours and enjoy. Forget that couple and that company. If you 
don't, you will either be dead or you will pray to God that you die. That is all 
I will say. None of my numbers will work from now on. Farewell."
And, before I could say another word, the weasel hung up on me, leaving me 
standing there, stunned, with the phone still in my hand.
Now what the hell was this? There was no way around it but to find Brandy, brief 
her, and then call Agent Kennedy.
Brandy was even more intrigued by this than I was. While up to now I had been 
willing to rest on my laurels, and take the money and run, now there was no more 
money, only a ton of questions.
I figured I might have some trouble getting through to Kennedy if all this was 
going down, but he was right there.
"Yeah, it's true, they busted a bunch of them today including Big Tony, but it 
wasn't us," he told me, sounding more than a little irritated at that fact. 
"Turns out the FBI was running a parallel operation and we almost queered it 
with this Whitlock business. Seems they found out about him and his kinky double 
life, and used him to go up and down the chain. A few of the middle fish haven't 
been rounded up yet, but the organization's broken but good. This one, anyway. 
There's always ten more to replace it, unfortunately.''
"What about Little Jimmy Nkrumah? He on the list? He was the guy who hired 
us—and just fired us."
"Huh? Nkrumah? Nope. Don't see that name here anywhere. You're sure this guy was 
involved?"
"Positive. He was the middleman in the money tree, and it was his money that 
Whitlock skipped out with."
"Hmph! That's funny. Maybe they're just leaving him out to dry or something, 
since they say they traced the money all the way, or maybe they've turned him as 
one of their boys. I don't know, Horowitz. We're all one big happy federal 
family, right? Only we don't tell each other anything at all. Well, what's the 
difference? You did as good as could be expected, so there's nothing more 
between us, and you've lost a client and our quarry turns out to be the Bureau's 
man, so it's over."
"Uh—Kennedy? If it's over, what's Whitlock doing in Oregon with a woman who 
looks enough like him to be him in drag? Who is she, and what the hell are they 
doing out here leaving his wife and kids hanging."
"Who knows? Witness protection, maybe. We got an order to lay off him, and you 
do, too, if you don't want to get back in trouble with us again. I admit there's 
a lot of funny, unexplained stuff with this, but I don't know it all; it's not 
my case anymore. I got a thousand more in the active file, so that's it. By next 
week some rival mob will move in and cover Big Tony's whole network, and nobody 
using stuff on the streets will even notice the difference. Just let it go, 
Horowitz— for your own good."
That was almost as unsatisfying as the call to Little Jimmy. All of a sudden 
everybody from the mob to the DEA was telling me that Whitlock was an 
untouchable, all the questions were better left unanswered, and all we needed to 
do to find the land of milk and honey was take the next plane out to anywhere at 
all but here. It stunk.
"So what do you want to do?" Brandy asked me.
"What can we do? I mean, right now our boy's gone from being the most wanted by 
everybody to being a total untouchable for all sides. For all we know, he's up 
in Hicksburg negotiating a new bank loan."
"But you don't believe that, and neither do I."
"No, but Little Jimmy wasn't scared of the feds; and one good reason was that 
the feds didn't know about Little Jimmy. They also think Whitlock passed the 
whole two and a quarter million down the line as per plan, but we know he 
skipped; and Little Jimmy did the passing of his own money and wanted Whitlock 
tracked down without his own boss, Big Tony, knowing he got skimmed. Little 
Jimmy would rather risk prison than write off almost his whole fortune, so 
either whatever scared him is worse than prison or somebody covered his losses. 
Who the hell would spend that kind of bread to buy out and protect a shark like 
Nkrumah?"
"Maybe it's the hand of G.O.D., Inc. Wanna go find out?"
"No, but I won't be able to sleep nights ever again if I don't anyway. Not when 
we're only three hours away from the answer. I just hate being my own client, 
that's all. The client's a cheapskate who'll stiff us."
"Maybe, but I'm game. I want to see these whackos, anyway. Move out of the 
booth. I got to call San Francisco."
"Huh? Who do you have to call there?"
"Overnite Courier. They got a box of mine I got to get forwarded up here 
somehow."
"A box? What? Clothes?"
"Nope. If these cards are still good, we'll take care of that next, and in 
style. But I ain't goin' up in those redneck mountains without Daddy's magnum."
"You sent your gun by overnight parcel?"
She shrugged. "Couldn't take it on the plane, you know."
 
4.
Shots in the Dark
 
I was getting used to this charge-and-never-pay business; I would be sorry to 
see the gravy train end in a couple of weeks. I wondered just who was now paying 
the bills that came in. Still, we had something of a wardrobe now, including a 
couple of suitcases, plus toiletries and the like, and we were both feeling a 
little more human. Brandy had reverted to her jeans-and-tee-shirt routine for 
now, although they were new, and some sandals, although she kept that 
professional-looking wig. She also had even found a couple of other wigs of 
varying colors and styles, and she'd picked up some better clothes in case the 
occasion warranted. Me, I'd gotten another off-the-rack suit, although right now 
I was in jeans and a plaid sport shirt, and I just hadn't been able to resist a 
pair of ranch-style boots and a black felt cowboy hat.
Brandy should have been excited about this part as much as or more than before, 
since she was the one who wanted to see this out anyway, but I found her 
somewhat moody. "What's the trouble, babe?" I asked her. "All this finally 
getting to you?"
She shook her head and stared out the rental-car window at the passing scenery. 
"Uh uh. I just—don't feel comfortable around here. We been through the airport 
back there, to a bunch of stores, and now on the road, and there wasn't a single 
black person anyplace we been. I never been in a place where there were no black 
people before except me."
The truth was, I hadn't really noticed, but now that she mentioned it I couldn't 
recall any. Oregon had the reputation for being real liberal near the coast, 
around Portland and Salem in particular, and as rock-ribbed reactionary in much 
of the rest of the state. "Anybody give you trouble back in the stores?"
"No, it's not that. Not exactly. They just sort of treated me like I was some 
kind of exotic animal or something. Funny comments—you know, like whether or not 
one of the wigs was right for my, er, well...."
"Uh huh. Well, it's a price to be paid if you want to see this through. I can 
still turn around, get a room near the airport, and we can fly back tomorrow 
morning, all the way to Philadelphia and home if you want."
"No, no. I want to see this through. Specially after what that rental-car girl 
said."
It had been just another piece in this crazy puzzle that didn't add up at all. 
The couple had borne a striking likeness to one another, but he in his business 
suit had seemed somewhat smaller and younger than she, with a high-pitched 
tenor— and she had said virtually nothing, but seemed bigger, almost mannish. It 
had been almost as if the man and woman had been wearing each other's clothes 
and aping each other's mannerisms.
The town itself was on a main drag, as those things went, but it was no 
four-lane expressway. It was a winding, two-lane stretch that went up into the 
wooded mountains and became the main street of a bunch of little towns.
MCINERNEY, the sign announced just before you got to the turn and saw it, pop. 
1349. It was two blocks long and maybe had houses going back a block or two on 
either side, with the small business district using diagonal parking. There was 
a drugstore, a couple of small cafes, a post office, a sheriff's office, a 
little town municipal building, a small food market, a service station, four 
places selling redwood burl to tourists who wandered by, and a small branch 
bank. There wasn't even a McDonald's. It all had wooden fronts and twin 
boardwalks for sidewalks, and not much else. The only reason it didn't look odd 
was that we'd gone through a dozen nearly identical places on the drive up here.
The reason why G.O.D. picked the spot, though, seemed to have to do not only 
with the depressed area, but also with the railroad tracks we crossed just the 
other side of town that then turned and paralleled the main drag. We passed a 
small motel, then saw the complex through the trees although it was well hidden 
from the road. The whole roadside was bracketed by a chain-link fence that was 
high and imposing, although partially hidden by the trees through which it 
snaked; but when you looked back through, in a couple of spots you could see 
some mighty large buildings up there.
There were two entrances; one just north of town near the railroad tracks, and 
the other a main entrance about a mile further up that looked like the entrance 
to a military base. It was wide and paved, although it took a strategic turn 
away from visibility as soon as you cleared the gate, and it had a gatehouse in 
the center with railroad-style crossing gates blocking entry or exit without the 
man in the gatehouse pushing a button. A sign there indicated that Truck 
Entrance and General Receiving was the road near the tracks, but nowhere was 
there a sign indicating what sort of company this was.
By the time we'd arrived, it was well after seven, so there was little traffic 
around. You couldn't help wondering, though, how a place like that could be 
supported by a town this small. Commuting wasn't the answer, either; you'd have 
to go a couple of hours in either direction over a road like this to round up 
enough people to staff it. There wasn't much more we could do now; it was 
approaching darkness. I turned the car around and we headed back for the small 
motel, which was also, as far as I could see, the only motel or hotel in or near 
the town. If Whitlock was coming here, and wasn't staying with friends or 
associates at or inside the plant, the odds were that he was using the same 
place. I hadn't noticed a red Olds in the lot, but that might not mean much.
The desk clerk, a grandmotherly little old lady, stared at the registration 
card. "Philadelphia. We don't get many folks from back east in here. You with 
General?"
"Not exactly," I responded. "But we do business with them now and again. They 
sell a product for us now, but only in the east and midwest, and we're seeing if 
we want to expand to the coast and if it's worth the cost."
"Oh, really? What sort of product?"
"Women's wigs, actually. Natural-hair wigs at reasonable prices, and a new way 
to clean and restore them at home without costly treatments."
She nodded and completed the registration, no longer caring or even very curious 
about us. Even so, if we didn't wrap this up in a day or so, I knew everybody in 
town would know about us and why we were allegedly there, and that would include 
the powers that be, over at the company. I was counting on the fact that places 
like that have a complicated bureaucracy and that the left vice president 
usually didn't know what the right vice president was doing.
The room was surprisingly nice for a little motel in the middle of nowhere run 
by Grandma Moses. They had a color TV with cable so we could make sure not to 
miss any General product ad, and the usual amenities, and the beds were clean 
and firm.
Brandy had arranged for her box to be sent up to the Bend airport office of 
Overnite while we went shopping, and now she unpacked it. It did in fact contain 
the pistol and a box of bullets, but it also contained an assortment of other 
stuff, including a can of mace and a set of brass knuckles.
"You ask about the Currys?" she asked me. She was really feeling self-conscious 
in these parts, and hadn't come in with me to register.
"No, I figure this is a company town from the word go. If I asked her, then it 
might just tip them, even if they just dropped into the office for something and 
she mentioned we were asking about them. This is a small place, and if you think 
you're out of place here, they are, too. I—"
At that moment there was a tremendous roar of an engine and the whole place 
started to shake, and did so for several minutes. I went outside and walked 
around back of the unit with Brandy. The damned train tracks ran maybe ten yards 
in back of the motel, and this was one hell of a train going by. It seemed to go 
on forever, not just boxcars, but covered gondolas full of stuff, and tank cars, 
as well as flatbeds on which truck trailers were attached. After a while, the 
train stopped, still not ended, and there was a long pause when it just sat 
there. Then it lurched, backed up slowly, lurched again, then went forward a bit 
more.
"They're switching off a lot of cars, that's for sure," I told her. "I guess 
they must have their own little switchyard in there. I hope nobody wants to go 
into or out of town for a while."
She stared at the train, deep in thought. "You know, these cars seem to be 
loaded up with stuff. Those open ones have covered loads, and the freight cars 
are sunk down on their springs."
"Yeah? So? Before they can send the junk out, they have to have it in."
"Maybe. But did you see any railroad cars with mail or United Parcel signs on 
'em? I couldn't make 'em out too well in the dark, but this outfit sends almost 
everything either UPS or mail."
"No, I didn't notice any, but that doesn't mean much. They probably just ship it 
out in special boxcars to the parcel terminals," I responded. "It'd be the only 
easy way in or out of here. That post office in town wasn't big enough to serve 
our block in Camden. Maybe they got their own post office up on the hill, or 
their own private UPS station. Some big places have that."
"I dunno. Maybe. It just don't seem right, somehow."
I shrugged. "Maybe this is just delivery from the hundreds of makers and 
importers of stuff. Maybe a different train ships 'em out once a day."
We left the train to its dancing, and walked back around, and Brandy looked up 
and then almost pushed me against the building.
"Hey! What ... ?"
"Shhhh! My eyes may be goin' bad, but I swear there's a big red car pulling into 
the motel!"
I peered around the end unit and, sure enough, here it came. It couldn't have 
been coming from town, though, not with the train blocking the way, and it was 
unlikely to have been coming from the north. They had been over at the plant, 
that was clear.
We were in number twelve, and they pulled into the space for number sixteen, 
only four doors down from us. "Stay here for a moment," I told Brandy. "I'm 
gonna walk down and get a Coke." The soft-drink machine was at the end of the 
unit, just past number twenty-four.
They parked the car and got out just as I approached, paying me no attention at 
all. So here they were at last, I couldn't help thinking. We'd played all the 
long shots and we'd won.
What everybody had been telling us about them was definitely true. They didn't 
look just enough alike to be brother and sister, they looked nearly identical. 
Well, not quite. Amanda Curry looked like Whitlock perhaps ten or more years 
younger; there was a smooth and youthful look to the face, and a slighter build. 
Both were dressed casually in jeans and work shirts and boots, pretty much as I 
was. There was no real sexual confusion in the two dressed like this, but her 
hair was cut almost in a crew-cut fashion, as short as Brandy's, in its own way. 
Removed from the three-piece suit and cultural background, Whitlock's face was 
strikingly androgynous. It, too, was smoother and softer than you'd expect, and 
his hair was cut in much the same short fashion as hers.
She had been described as butch, and she was certainly that. Her mannerisms, her 
way of walking and moving, were culturally quite male, and she was clearly 
aggressive and in charge. They locked the car, and then she went to the door and 
opened it, and he followed. The door closed.
I wandered slowly past their room with my drink and there was a small gap where 
the two curtains hadn't completely closed, but I couldn't see much without 
standing there, and I thought better of that.
Brandy met me at our door and we went in. She took the Coke and drank a fair 
amount, then put it down. "Well? What do you think?" she asked me.
"I think everything we heard is true. The real question is what we do now. There 
are several possibilities, including going up and introducing ourselves, or 
trying to bluff our way past that gatehouse. The trouble is, that place looked 
huge, and there's no way to know if there's anything up there worth looking for, 
let alone what it might be."
"Little Jimmy thought there was something crazy goin' on up there, something 
dangerous."
"There's only one thing it can be. This corporation's some kind of blind or 
legitimate front for some rival in organized crime. Whitlock was into this 
bunch, and they forced him to double-cross the old bunch. Now that old bunch is 
busted, there's two-million-plus profit from the deal, and Whitlock's under 
their protection since the eastern mob doesn't forget and loves to make 
examples."
"And this dyke twin of his? What about her?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I sure can't figure where she came from and why she 
looks so much like him, but it's clear she was in it because of that striking 
resemblance. Some part of the scam involved him being in two places at once, 
maybe leading Kennedy's crew away, or maybe Little Jimmy's boys. I'm sure the 
resemblance is natural. If it was some kind of plastic surgery, they'd have used 
a man with the same general build. Now she's got to get away as well, to keep 
the old mob guessing as to how the thing was worked, that's all. Face it, 
babe—it's over. It was one hell of a case, but in the end it was just an 
ordinary, ugly war between two rival mob factions. I don't know if old Marty 
likes to wear his wife's panty hose or not, but it's either true or something 
cooked up to ease the sense of doubt when the male and female Marty switched 
long-range identities. It doesn't matter. There's no more case."
She sighed. "I guess you're right. They're bound to figure that anybody still 
chasing them has a contract with the old mob. So what happens now?"
"Nothing. We stay here tonight, check out tomorrow, and very visibly go back to 
the airport and then back to Frisco. Then we call somebody back home, get our 
mail sent out, and see if Little Jimmy really came through with the referrals. 
If he did, we'll see if we might want to relocate and work for somebody else. If 
he didn't, well, I think we got about two grand in cash left. After that— the 
Delaware shore, as before."
"I guess," she sighed. "Still, I—"
Her words were broken by the sound of a loud shot from one big gun and the 
immediate crashing sound of a broken window. Since it wasn't our window, Brandy 
grabbed the magnum and I instinctively dove for and hit the lights, then we both 
peered out the window from the side of the curtains.
It was dark out there; somebody had extinguished all the lights along the 
parking area, and the red neon motel sign gave little light. "You see anybody?" 
she whispered.
"Uh uh."
"I got some cover with the car. I'm goin' out there."
"What! Why?"
"They might just have got the wrong room the first time, and in case you never 
noticed, lover, these places ain't got no back doors."
She crouched down, and I slowly and quietly opened the door enough for her to 
crawl out on her hands and knees. She made it to the car grille, but I could see 
someone lying prone further up, someone who just might have been either Whitlock 
or Curry. I not only couldn't tell if it was dead or alive, with the light this 
poor, I could hardly tell which way the body had fallen. Clearly, though, 
nobody, not even Brandy, could safely move against an unknown potential assassin 
out there someplace, maybe with a sniperscope, unless there was a diversion. I 
crouched down low to the floor and opened the door a bit wider.
"Hey!" I shouted at the top of my lungs through the cracked door. "What the hell 
is going on out there?"
A shot came right through the middle part of the door, about where I would have 
been standing had I not been born cautious. Brandy, however, had taken the 
opportunity to move down, since if the bastard was shooting at me he wasn't 
looking four doors down. I risked another peek and saw she'd reached the downed 
figure. A third shot roared and struck the pavement, sending sparks flying, but 
it was a good several inches from her. Whoever it was hadn't moved fast enough.
I wondered where in hell the cops were. Surely some of the other guests, or at 
least the manager, had called them by now. It wasn't too clear, though, if maybe 
our man had cut the lines, and in back I heard loud noises and the shifting of 
heavy cargo. That damned train was still blocking access to town! ,
I heard Brandy whispering frantically to someone, but I couldn't make out the 
words. There was another shot, and I heard somebody say, "I see him now! Other 
side of the road. Too far to hit with that cannon."
"Maybe not, but I can make it hot for him," Brandy responded. "Sam! You okay?"
"I'm in one piece, if that's what you mean." It suddenly occurred to me that the 
woman with the gun had such lousy vision she couldn't have hit the damned motel, 
let alone a guy a hundred yards away. Well, she could shoot in the general 
direction, and he wouldn't know that.
"The man's hit! It's not bad, but we're sure as hell pinned down here. That 
shooter's got a clear field of fire and—oh shit!" I heard her suddenly squeeze 
off three shots with the magnum, and I heard a scream from further down the 
walk. "Got him!"
Just great, I thought. Two of them. And how many more? Just what we needed at 
the end of the trail. No big payoff, and caught in the crossfire of a hit squad. 
Brandy had been lucky, too. The guy had missed with his shot, and she had only 
to brace and sight along the motel's front wall to nail him. I bet she still 
couldn't see the Coke machine.
"How many bullets you got?" I called to her.
"Just used three. That leaves five left in the clip."
"All right." I went back, found her box of cartridges, and went back to the 
door. "I'm coming out low to the car and bringing the bullets. Give me cover if 
I need it."
I didn't need it, because just then the lights of two cars illuminated the area 
in front of the motel, coming in toward town from the north. They both 
illuminated and somewhat blinded the shooter, and I took advantage of them to 
make it out and to toss the box to Brandy before dropping down to the far side 
of our car. I had no idea if the shooter saw me at all, but if he didn't, I had 
an idea. I made it around to the car door, figuring that it would be out of the 
shooter's line of sight, providing he hadn't taken the opportunity to move. I 
opened the car door carefully, keeping down, and eased inside, then fumbled for 
my keys. The shooter had a rifle and a good night scope at a range of maybe a 
hundred yards. Child's play for anybody with any skill at all.
"Give him a full clip!" I called to Brandy. "I don't want him to hear the car 
starting up!"
She fired off the remaining five and I started the car. He returned fire, three 
shots in their direction, one busting the back windshield of their Olds. Hertz, 
I decided, wasn't going to like any of us one bit.
There was no way I could use the car for cover, and a getaway for any of us was 
unlikely, but there was one way to buy a fair amount of time if they were ready 
to move. The end of the rear unit was only eight rooms from where they now were, 
and that would give them cover and two exits. The trick was to make it that far. 
I only hoped that, in fact, the bastard was using a sniperscope.
"As soon as I stop, you move!" I told them. "Don't stop for anything! Now—you 
reloaded?"
"Yeah!"
"Give me all you got, slow, one at a time!"
I put the car into reverse and gunned it backward at her first shot, then 
whirled it around as a shot came right through the windshield. I hit the 
brights, full, threw it into park, and dove for the couple of yards I needed to 
get in back of the motel office.
Sure, I knew he'd eventually shoot out the headlights, but with a sniperscope 
those brights blinded him almost instantly, and now they illuminated the whole 
stretch of parking lot, road, and tree-filled embankment on the other side where 
he was. Those damned lights were full in his face, and until he got them out, 
everything in the darkened motel in back was invisible to him except maybe the 
Coke machine.
When you mount a sniperscope, it's for a specific purpose. It takes time to shut 
it off, then remove it (since it's a big sucker) so you can use the standard pin 
sights. The guy was good; he'd just finished shooting out the last of the four 
headlights in less than thirty seconds with a couple in the grille for good 
measure, but now it was going to take him almost that long to remount and 
recalibrate his scope again. I looked back, trying to adjust my own eyes for the 
dark, and I didn't see a soul in the back units.
I did, however, hear the unmistakable sounds that the train was now moving, not 
just rumbling back and forth as cars were switched and disconnected up front. 
That meant traffic would soon be clear, and there'd be an open run from town to 
here and back again. This had already gone on longer than the shooter figured, I 
thought with confidence. He counted on maybe nabbing one clear, then keeping 
them pinned down until his partner could get to the room and finish the other 
off, counting on the train to block both traffic and loud shots. Clearly they 
hadn't expected third-party intervention, and particularly not 
third-party-with-a-big-peashooter-of-their-own. At this point, our boy would 
either have to run for it or come to us.
He was determined, that was for sure. I saw him now run down along the road, 
carrying the rifle as bold as you please, and then run across to the nearest 
block of units. He was pretty good, really; Uncle Sam had apparently shown him 
the proper way to do things with a rifle and against hostile fire. Clearly he 
was going to come up in back of that block of motel units, maybe all the way 
back to the tracks, then try and stalk them— and here I was without a weapon to 
my name.
I went forward, worried about Brandy but also having enough common sense to 
realize that I had to act independently with what I had. I made my way around to 
the motel office and found the door ajar. Inside, there was nobody, but the 
switchboard phone had been ripped out and all the connector cords had their 
plugs cut off. It was still connected, though; the thing buzzed like a hornet's 
nest and there were four lights flashing.
Under the reception counter, however, I thought I found what I was hoping for. 
Two buttons; one red, one white. If the phone lines were still connected, the 
odds were that these were, too. I pushed them both, and bells and alarms started 
going on all over the place. God bless Oregon for a strict fire code. About 
thirty seconds later I heard a loud siren from off toward town; clearly the fire 
alarm had triggered the volunteer signal, something I hadn't figured on at all 
but didn't mind in the least.
Two cars with flashing red lights arrived within a minute, but they weren't who 
I expected. Both were white cars with security on them in big black letters. 
These weren't from town; they were from the corporation. I didn't care who they 
were. They had on plant-blue uniforms and they wore .38s. I went up to the 
nearest of them.
"Two guys started opening up on the middle unit," I told them. "One from over 
there, one from the end. The one at the end's been taken out, but the sniper is 
moving up in back there and he has a scope!"
"Who're they after?" the private cop asked, drawing his weapon.
"Two guests and my wife are back there someplace, with one gun."
There was a sudden sharp exchange of fire from in back of the motel. I heard the 
rifle go twice, and Brandy's magnum go three times, but it was hard to tell the 
order and impossible to say who got who. They didn't wait, though. One car went 
to each end of our middle unit and they got out, using the doors as shields, 
acting like real pros.
Red and blue lights from a sheriff's car appeared, and it too roared up, 
followed by a very large fire engine. I shouted for the firemen to get down—it 
was a sniper, not a fire—then threw caution to the winds and ran back up to the 
middle unit. Both rent-a-cop teams had moved in back, while the deputies split 
to cover the rear of the two end units. I wasn't worried about myself, but I was 
terrified as to what those shots might mean for Brandy. I suddenly realized just 
how much I needed her.
It had been over, however, before the reinforcements arrived. As I went around 
in back of the rental cops, I heard Brandy shout and then saw the cops move in 
back and switch on their flashlights. I followed, and found the trio in the 
culvert between the back of the motel and the tracks, with two of the company 
cops now putting away their weapons and leaning down to help the wounded. Two 
others were examining a form about twenty feet away.
Whitlock looked messy, but he really was pretty lucky. Most of the damage was 
nothing but superficial cuts from the motel window shattering. He'd been nicked 
in the side but it wasn't much; he'd simply tried to make it out to the car, and 
gotten trapped in the crossfire, playing dead because he was too scared to move.
Brandy hadn't gotten the shooter; Amanda had a rifle, too, which I'd mistaken 
for the hit man's shots. It just had a small, cheap, regular scope on it, 
though, useless from inside the room at that distance and in the dark. Braced 
here, though, with the hitter walking full-body toward her, she couldn't miss.
"We better get you up to the plant infirmary," one of the rental cops said to 
Whitlock. "You all right for the car or should I call for the town ambulance?"
"I—I can manage," he said weakly, and I was startled to hear his voice, which 
was low, soft, but almost—if not all the way—into the female register. Close up 
he looked smoother,. more—I don't know, certainly not an ex-Marine, if you know 
what I mean. In point of fact, seeing the pair now, close and off their guard 
and not moving about, they did look damned near identical, but not in the way I 
figured. It wasn't a case of her trying to look like him; rather, it was he who 
was looking and sounding very much like her.
I went to Brandy. "You all right?"
"Yeah, I think so," she managed, breathing a little hard. "It was pretty hairy 
there, though, wasn't it? If you hadn't pulled that bit with the car lights, 
we'd all been dead ducks."
We walked over to the dead hit man, and even Brandy's eyes weren't so bad that 
she didn't give a little gasp and cry. This one was a real bloody mess, but the 
face was pretty much unmarked. That face, those eyes, were very familiar to me.
"What the hell is going on here?" I managed.
Lying on the ground, dead from three shots in the torso, was unmistakably the 
form of Martin Whitlock IV, looking very male and very ex-Marine and just like 
his picture.
I turned, ready to demand an explanation of this as an earned right, and came 
face to face with the sheriff of McInerney. Or, rather, face to chest. He was 
about six five, three hundred pounds, all muscle, including the head. He was the 
biggest, meanest-looking sucker I'd ever seen.
Brandy stared at him, equally openmouthed. I think we both felt he was either 
somebody on a break from a circus sideshow or he was going to say, Marlowe, I 
want you to find my Velma. Instead, he looked down at Brandy's magnum. "Ma'am, 
you'll have to give me that," he said in a very deep and commanding voice, the 
kind that you would have obeyed if he'd said you had to get down on all fours 
and bark like a dog. She handed him the pistol, butt first. "What is your name, 
ma'am?"
"Horowitz. Mrs. Brandy Horowitz."
The big man was certainly startled. "Horowitz?" He turned to me. "And I suppose 
your name is Uncle Remus?"
"That's uncalled for, Sheriff," I responded, getting my nerve back. That kind of 
stuff never went over with me whether in Camden or in the wilds. "I'm Sam 
Horowitz and this is my wife. We're private investigators."
"Oh, yeah? Then, I guess you have a license for this artillery piece?"
The fact was, she didn't, but a good P.I. always is ready. "Sure, but it's in 
Jersey," she responded.
"Well, we'll have to check that out. Will you both come along with me, please?"
They were already taking the couple from the east away, and I noticed that the 
private cops were attending to the sniper's body exclusively. I would have loved 
to have gotten a look at the other hitter out front, but I was a little afraid 
he'd look just like Martin Whitlock and I wasn't sure I could take yet a fourth 
look-alike, particularly tonight. Still, I didn't like this treatment.
"Look, Sheriff, we just saved that couple's life," I pointed out. "I'm not 
saying we're owed an explanation, but at least I think we deserve some courtesy. 
Without us, you'd have two dead bodies."
"Yeah, well, we appreciate that, Mr. Horowitz, we really do, but that don't mean 
we don't follow procedures. We got two dead, and the one in front was killed 
with something other than a rifle—this pistol, I assume."
"He was shootin' at us!" she protested. "All I did was self-defense!"
"Well, ma'am, I'm sure an investigation will show that, but right now it's a 
shooting requiring justification. Just get into the car, please, both of you."
"So what's the charge on me?" I asked him. "I'd go anyway to get this ridiculous 
thing out of the way with my wife, but you're acting like I'm under arrest as 
well."
"Yes, sir, you are, and it's my duty to inform you that anything you say from 
this point can be taken down and used in evidence against you, and that you are 
entitled to a lawyer before any questioning begins. If you can not afford a 
lawyer, one will be appointed for you without charge. Do you understand that?"
"Yes. I want to know the charge on me."
"Well, sir, suspicion of vandalism, suspicion of breaking and entering, and 
turning in a false fire alarm, for starters."
"This is absurd!"
Absurd it was, but they took us in, booked us, and brought us up before a 
very-sleepy-looking magistrate. We waived the right to a lawyer right now, since 
in a company town there was no way in hell he'd do anything but cost us money, 
but we reserved the right to import one later. The judge looked over the charge 
sheet and also a list of what had been on our persons at the time of booking. 
Unfortunately, that included our last two grand and our credit cards.
"Samuel Horowitz, you are accused of three misdemeanor counts. Do you have 
counsel?"
"Not at this time, Your Honor, but I will."
"Very well. Trial is set for nine in the morning on the fourth of August. Bail 
is set at five hundred dollars, with a condition that you remain within this 
county until the trial date. To insure that, should you post bail, we will 
retain your wallet, cards, driver's license, and investigator's license. Meals 
may be taken at Malone's Cafe, and lodging at the motel, said charges to be 
deducted from your bond upon appearance. Next."
He looked down at Brandy and you could see on his face that he didn't much like 
her color or her attitude.
"Brandy Parker Horowitz, you are charged with willfully causing the death of 
another, identity to be determined. As the sheriff's report indicates that the 
victim himself possessed a weapon and it had been fired, the holding charge is 
manslaughter pending the outcome of a final investigation. As no holster was 
found, under the laws of the state of Oregon you are also charged with carrying 
a concealed and loaded weapon. As these are potentially serious charges, trial 
is not set, pending the outcome of a complete investigation. Bail is set 
at—ah—one thousand seven hundred forty-six dollars and twenty-seven cents. 
Condition of bail is that you not leave the jurisdiction of this court until 
trial." The other conditions were the same as mine.
In effect, the bastard yokel had taken every cent we had, including pocket 
change, as well as every single thing we had—those credit cards, driver's 
licenses, you name it. Ordinarily I'd have called the bar association all the 
way over in Salem and gotten a civil-liberties man here, while refusing to pay, 
but I didn't like the idea of Brandy being locked up in a redneck jail like this 
even for a few days. Frankly, from their attitude at the booking, I didn't think 
they'd be real nice to even a white guy if his name was Horowitz.
It was dawn before they had a deputy drive us back up to the motel, and when we 
got there, dead tired and pissed as hell, we found that they'd cleaned up most 
of the mess, although the window to Whitlock's room was still out and there were 
still two holes in our door. When we got inside, we discovered that we'd had 
visitors. The contents of our new suitcase and Brandy's box had been dumped and 
gone through carefully, and they'd taken anything that might have been a weapon. 
Also missing was my photo of Whitlock and all that pertained to the case.
"Well, Little Jimmy warned us," I sighed, undressing and flopping down on the 
bed. "Remind me next time to let anybody who wants to shoot and kill anybody 
else they want, if we aren't getting paid to save 'em."
"It really burns me," she agreed, flopping next to me and looking just as tired. 
"They took the help, but they didn't even say thanks."
I stared at her. "Still, just when you think you got it, something else pops up 
and sticks it back in the Twilight Zone or something. How many Martin Whitlocks 
are there?"
"I dunno," she responded, yawning. "But if they're gonna keep us on ice in this 
place, I think maybe we oughta get a look at that plant. What's one more charge, 
more or less, anyway?"
She had a point there.
"I'm dead," she said, "but I think maybe I'll go out for a moment and get 
something from a few doors down."
"Huh? What?"
"They took most of the stuff from the box, but the little fingerprint kit is 
still there. I just thought of something, if they haven't cleaned it up. I'll be 
right back."
She returned in less than a minute, triumphantly cradling something in a 
handkerchief, and she put it down and unwrapped it on the bed. It was a small 
flask, gold plated but unadorned with designs or symbols.
"When she crawled out to him, she brought this to ease his pain, thinkin' he was 
hurt worse than he was. He took it and drank some, then put it down. You got off 
in the car then and I was shootin', so I wasn't sure what happened to it. It was 
still there on the walk." She carefully removed the small brush and powder from 
her kit. They'd pushed their hands in to make sure nothing was hidden there, but 
that was all.
"What's the difference?" I asked her. "They even took the print samples I had of 
Whitlock."
"Yeah, but they both touched this in my presence, and neither of 'em were 
wearin' gloves. I just got to know."
There weren't many prints on the thing, although enough were smudged that you 
couldn't tell anything for sure, but there were four or five clear ones of 
thumbs and index fingers. "Yeah—see? All three thumbs match and both index 
fingers match."
"So? It just means the smudges are the other one's."
"Uh uh. See here? One of those sets is slightly smaller than the other, and 
there's a difference in the grip." She showed me, and I was doubly impressed 
with her, sleepy as I was. You had to really look at them, but there wasn't much 
doubt in my mind that they were two different people's prints.
"You're telling me that Whitlock and Curry have the same fingerprints?"
"Nope—that says so." She carefully applied the fixative and then the paper, and 
peeled off the prints. "If only we coulda done this with the sniper. I wonder if 
the prints match?"
"If they do, then we've shot hell out of all police work," I pointed out. I was 
beginning to really feel like I'd fallen into the Twilight Zone now. "No wonder 
they only found one set of prints in that apartment."
"Sam—just what in hell are we dealin' with here?"
I shook my head. "I dunno, babe. I remember reading about clones a while back. 
Make a whole new you from one cell of your body. I knew they could do it with 
some plants and stuff, maybe worms, but not people. And why Whitlock?" I paused. 
"No, that won't work, either. In your genes you're either male or female. We're 
dealing with a male one—the shooter—a female one in Curry who even the lesbian 
locker room accepted, and our own target, who looked a little of each last 
night. Damn! They don't like Jews much around here, and they don't like blacks. 
Maybe it's some kind of neo-Nazi genetic experiment using the rich blue blood of 
the east."
"That would sure explain that sheriff. Nobody like him was ever born natural."
"Well, I'm gonna sleep on it, if I don't have nightmares," I told her. "Later 
on, when I'm awake and reasonably normal, we'll see about looking over that 
plant."
They had completely cleaned up the mess four rooms down by the time we awoke, 
and somebody had been by and towed away both our car, which was shot to pieces, 
and theirs, which was only slightly better. It looked deserted and lonely.
We walked the mile and a half down to the cafe, stopping at the railroad 
crossing and looking off into the woods where the tracks vanished. There were 
two sets of tracks, both with polished rails, telling me that this was no spur 
put in for the company's convenience but at least a backup main line that had 
some regular traffic on it. That meant that there was probably a spur just up 
from here, leading into the plant itself, that necessitated the long loading and 
unloading and the back-and-forth shifts of the train. It would be interesting to 
know just how much of the train was uncoupled and stored there. Possibly quite a 
lot, judging from the hour or so it blocked everything up.
I didn't wonder that they hadn't locked us up in town. The whole sheriff's 
office seemed to have just two cells, more like holding areas, and both of them 
were used for drunks and the like. Normal procedure, if they were serious about 
the charges against Brandy, would have been to hold her until she could be 
transferred to a county lockup, wherever that might be, and to process her and 
set bail at that time. The fact was, they didn't want us off with state 
authorities and real lawyers and judges outside the company's control. They just 
wanted us on ice until they—or the company—decided just what to do with us.
The cafe extended the friendliness we'd come to expect from the town. We entered 
and were told to wait, although there were only three tables with people at 
them, out of a total of maybe twenty tables and booths. The waitress went back, 
and brought out two large bags and two cans of Coke and handed them to us. I 
peered inside. It looked like a burger, fries, a small wilted-looking salad in a 
plastic dish with a cover on it, and a commercial brownie. We sighed and started 
to sit down at one of the tables, but the waitress stopped us. "I'm sorry, but 
you'll have to eat outside somewheres," she told us, not sounding the least bit 
sorry. She lowered her voice. "Some of our patrons object to eating in the same 
place as you."
We looked around. None of the patrons there now seemed more than mildly curious 
about us.
Brandy looked her straight in the eye. "You mean with black folks?"
The waitress shrugged. "We are sensitive to our customers' wishes. They're our 
bread and butter."
"You never heard of the Civil Rights Act? The Equal Accommodations Act?"
"No," responded the waitress, and it sounded like she meant it. "Look, you 
better go before there's trouble. Some folks here won't take kindly to you 
causing trouble, and it wouldn't do no good to yell for a cop. Besides, where 
else you gonna get food? You go or you starve."
We got the idea. I'd seen some of those guys in the logging outfits and big 
pickups around town already, and I just didn't think it was the best time to get 
into a real argument with them, not to mention the fact that we did indeed 
depend on this place for even the leftover shit they handed us. At least the 
Coke was fresh. There was a little park near the railroad tracks with a lone 
picnic table, and we ate the food there, such as it was.
"What do you think?" Brandy asked me.
"I think we're in deep shit," I responded honestly. "Look, there's a phone booth 
over there. If I had a quarter to activate it, I'd try a few collect calls or 
charges to our home number."
"This do?" she asked me, and reached into her purse and pulled out a small 
amount of change. Small, but at least a buck's worth. I stared at it. "How'd you 
manage that?"
"It all fell on the floor last night when I was cleanin' out the purse. Before 
any of that shit hit the fan, I mean. I got some of it, but most of it wound up 
in back of the bed. I thought of it this morning."
I took a quarter and walked to the booth, wondering if we finally hadn't had a 
break. This proved, however, to be a rather unique phone company. First of all, 
the operator apologetically said that it wasn't the policy of the phone company 
to permit charges to an out-of-state number. It wasn't a question of dealing 
with AT&T or GTE; she wouldn't give me a longdistance line. I tried a couple of 
collect calls to numbers at home, including Kennedy's DEA number, but each time 
that same operator told me that they refused to accept the call. When she 
refused to connect me to the Oregon state cops, I got the message. At least I 
got the quarter back.
"No good," I told Brandy. "They got us cut off. They own either the phone 
company or the operators here, too. The only thing now would be to hitchhike up 
to the next town, where they might have a freer phone system, or hop a freight 
and scram. They don't seem to be watching us too closely."
She thought it over. "Maybe, but even if we could get out, then what? We got no 
money, no ID, no nothin. We go to the state cops, they just turn us back over 
here—and you know it. We go to some lawyer, he ain't gonna believe a word of 
this, and it's our word against theirs and they got those charges. I ain't gonna 
spend a life in this wilderness washin' dishes and lookin' over my shoulder for 
no cops who want me on no murder rap and you for aidin' and abettin' a fugitive. 
Hell, this crew could probably get Hertz to give out interstate warrants on us 
for stealin' their car!"
And that, of course, was exactly why nobody was keeping close tabs on us. The 
fact was, they didn't much care if we escaped. Either we'd be ruined for life, 
and on the run, or we'd get picked up and trucked right back here. Brandy lit a 
cigarette and looked at it mournfully. "And I only got four more packs of 
these!"
"I told you not to start again. Come on, if you're done. I think I'm in the mood 
for a romantic walk in the woods."
We walked along the railroad tracks for a few hundred yards, then came to the 
switching point. The whole area cleared out fairly good just up along the 
single-track spur, and for the first time we could see the complex that was 
General Ordering and Development, Inc. It was damned impressive.
There must have been thirty or forty railcars on sidings, eight per track, along 
with unloading areas for both bulk cargo and containers. A number of truck cabs 
and frames sat in a neat lot nearby, waiting for goods. Two warehouse-style 
buildings were visible, both of which seemed to go off into the distance. 
Because of a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire and a solid and locked gate 
across the tracks, that was all that could be seen of the complex.
Brandy gave a low whistle. "They sure didn't get this big on Vegetrons," she 
noted. No people were visible, but when Brandy shook the fence, more in 
frustration than to do anything, there was a sudden, furious barking, and from 
the vicinity of the boxcars came a whole horde of very nasty-looking Dobermans. 
We didn't need any more hints; we started back before they started hurling 
themselves at the fence.
"You got to figure they use those to check the trains for visitors," she noted, 
disappointed.
"Yeah, probably, but it's still the weak link in their system. They have to keep 
those dogs locked up when the fence is open. You can bet on that. Ten to one 
they don't roam much during regular hours, either, or no employee there would be 
totally safe. If we rode in on a car and then managed to get up toward the 
buildings before they secured the place, I think we'd be safe."
"Yeah, then all we got to worry about is their own cops and alarms, with them 
all uptight to keep what happened last night from happenin' again."
"Then, we play it by ear. But if a train comes through tonight and stops, then 
at least one of us is going up there. I can't see how anything short of 
execution is any worse than what we got now. If we can discover something, then 
maybe we can make a deal."
We weren't exactly equipped for burglary, but the bottle of black hair dye I'd 
bought during our Bend shopping spree had enough for my hair and also to dye one 
of her tee shirts black. I figured the plaid shirt and jeans would do for me.
I hadn't really expected another train the next evening. For one thing, it was 
Saturday, and any plant was likely to be closed the next day, particularly in 
this northwest version of the Bible Belt, but I was wrong. I wondered just where 
the hell they were going to park the new cars, since the sidings up there had 
looked pretty full.
We went out in back of the motel and began walking alongside the train. We 
didn't see anyone, but kept out of the light and close to the brush just to be 
sure. Finally we came to where the road curved to go into town and the tracks 
crossed the road, and there we saw flashing lights not only from the crossing 
signs but also from cars blocking the way. Both the sheriff's deputies on the 
town side and the company cops on our side were actively at the crossing and out 
of their cars. Up near the gate they were bound to have active security, and we 
clearly weren't the only ones to see this point as a weak spot.
"Can't ride the rods," I told Brandy. "They're sure to check there. And I don't 
see any open boxcars. The only crack we have at it might be that gondola just in 
back of that livestock car or whatever it is."
It was a tarp-covered load, and seemed to be filled with a dark crushed rock. We 
crawled in and under the tarp, and both of us quickly wondered why the hell we'd 
bothered dying anything. You just sat in that stuff and you were covered with 
black soot. It was almost like fine coal dust, a whole railroad car full, but it 
definitely wasn't coal. I couldn't figure out just what it might be. The car in 
front, though, turned out to be chock-full of live and very agitated turkeys, 
very much awake in the middle of the night and protesting loudly. It covered any 
sounds we might make, but it worried me. This General Ordering wasn't likely to 
be doing TV ads for live turkeys, and that implied that we might be in a section 
that wasn't going in at all.
"If we don't, we don't," was Brandy's response. "The hell with this. Either we 
get in there tonight or we take this train to someplace where we can call home 
and get some help from somebody."
We waited several endless minutes and then the train lurched and started to move 
slowly forward. As we crossed the intersection, the law had lights shining under 
the cars and through the couplings, and men there to check 'em out. We kept real 
still and didn't watch much of the festivities.
We stopped in the woods short of the gate and there was another lurch. I risked 
a peek and saw a whole line of cars ahead of us being pulled off onto the 
siding. I couldn't see around the turkeys, but I could've sworn the main engine 
wasn't attached. That truck and rail yard was really lit up, though, and there 
was a bunch of people around, many coming this way from the gate and checking 
under and even up on the cars. I didn't like that.
I could hear a bunch of them close-by now, and for some reason all my mind could 
picture was a marching army of Martin Whitlocks.
"Hey, Al! What you doing up there?" somebody called. "You think somebody's gonna 
climb in there with them turkeys? Anybody does that deserves to get through. 
Those things peck like hell!"
There were some grumbles from ahead and some casual laughter from nearby on the 
side. If they were this thorough, the odds were that they were going to take the 
damned tarp off. There wasn't much to do but burrow down in this soft, sooty 
stuff and get as still as possible.
The tarp came off, although I knew it more by sound than by sight. I just held 
my breath and prayed I wouldn't sneeze, and I hoped Brandy was doing the same.
A couple of guards jumped up on either side and stuck their hands in the muck, 
one not too far from me. "Yuk! This stuff's really lousy!" one of them said, and 
the others seemed to agree. They put the tarp back on and jumped down. I was 
about to burst, but I gave them as much time as I could before slowly easing my 
head up and taking a breath—and then trying to stifle a coughing fit. Brandy, as 
a newly returned chain-smoker, was in worse shape than I was on this, but the 
train gave a noisy lurch and we were going forward again as she hacked the stuff 
out of her lungs, me not far behind her. I finally crawled up and peeked out, 
and saw we were through the gate and being pulled onto a siding. Off to the 
left, I could see a small switcher pushing a long line of railcars out the other 
side and back to the main track.
Well, at least that explained the storage and the back-and-forth jerks. They 
uncoupled the engine, drove it forward a ways past a second switch, then took a 
number of cars on a switcher out to be hooked up to the big one, while other, 
full cars were pulled into the newly vacated siding.
"I hear dogs barking," Brandy hissed to me. "Think maybe they do a check with 
them and a trainer?"
"Bet on it. We're gonna hafta get the hell off as soon as we stop, and get to 
cover up by the main buildings."
"Anything to get out of this shit bath," she said, and I could only agree with 
her on that one.
As soon as we stopped, I looked around, saw nobody, and got out, then gave her a 
quick hand down from a ledge to the ground. We went immediately under the next 
row of train cars and out the other side again, and none too soon. The dog 
barking was getting real loud, and just as we cleared the next set of standing 
cars they lurched. We had to keep going, under and across, as long as possible.
There was a short stretch of open track rows at the end of the last line of 
train cars, and it was well lit. Up top in a tower were two figures looking very 
busy as they surveyed it all. The switchman and the dispatcher for the yard, 
most likely. It was maybe thirty yards to any real darkness and cover, but it 
was only about thirty feet to the base of that tower. Under it, we couldn't be 
seen by the men above, and we'd have a little cover in the shadows while we 
waited for our best chance to run the rest of the way. We poked our heads out, 
and looked in both directions from under a boxcar. There were a few figures 
walking down at the far end, but nobody seemed close. The big danger would be if 
one of the two guys in the tower looked down, but we had to chance it.
"Now!" Brandy whispered. "Nobody close; one dude up there is gone and the 
other's lookin' through binoculars." Unthinking, I followed her to the tower 
shadows as fast as I could run, then braced myself against a support beam, 
breathing hard. I looked over at her and saw she wasn't breathing all too 
comfortable herself.
"Take your time," I said in a low, hushed tone. "We got twice as far to run the 
next leg and we don't want to collapse halfway." I stared over at her, 
concerned, and still a little disconcerted by her looks. Without her old hair or 
the wig she really looked different.
She looked at me and grinned. "In all this time, this is the first time you've 
ever been blacker'n me."
"Guess again. All it did was equalize us. Sheesh! I don't know what that stuff 
is, but ten to one it's cancer-causing at the very least."
"Smells like some kind of gasoline," she noted.
"Yeah. Must be some petroleum product, some plastic powder. It's probably easy 
to store and ship that way, then gets poured into little molds and heated to 
make plastic widgets for nineteen ninety-five. You ready?"
She nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"Then, let's do it!" A quick check showed nobody in sight, and we headed 
straight back for the darkness at the edge of the tracks, which proved to mark a 
point about two thirds of the way up a hill or embankment toward the plant 
itself. The thing wasn't totally dark, but as black as we both were, it gave 
more than enough cover. We had experience from the night before how hard it was 
to spot somebody in a dark place.
We ran most of the way up that hill until we hit another high fence. It wasn't 
expected, and we both stopped and sat down against it and looked back at where 
we'd covered. It seemed an impossible distance.
Brandy pointed. "Rental-cop lights, up and down between those far cars. See 
'em?"
"Yeah. Maybe the dogs smelled us. I guess we got to keep moving. Wonder if 
there's a break in this fence?"
"Got to be. Question is whether or not there's people at the gates."
She was right, of course. There were two large gates big enough for trucks to 
pass through, both open but both with people on them. There was a smaller gate 
further down, just people-sized, that was unguarded, but there was no way in 
hell we could get to it without getting past the truck gates, and if we could do 
that we could go through them.
There was only one guy on the closest gate, and he didn't look like a guard, 
more like a truck driver or factory worker. A truck cab came down and stopped, 
and he talked to the driver and pointed. Just a yard boss or traffic manager, I 
thought. "Well? Do we take him out or wait him out?" I asked her.
"Let's wait a couple minutes. Then we'll take him out if we have to. I don't 
like the lights down there, but there ain't much can be done 'bout it. We got to 
get through and I forgot my wire cutters tonight."
Sometimes, patience will give you a little break. Another truck came up and 
stopped, and this time the guy jumped up on the step and said something to the 
driver, and they drove down to the yard, the gate man hanging on. We didn't wait 
for an engraved invitation, but started crawling down to that open gate as fast 
as we could. I made it first, got up quickly and turned the corner, then 
flattened in the darkness on the other side. Brandy had more trouble than I did, 
but, then, she wasn't shaped right for it and she hadn't had the benefit of 
Uncle Sam's technique.
It was a nick-of-time thing, but we made it. No doubt about it—they had some 
holes in their security, whether we'd had luck or not. They knew it, too; about 
twenty seconds after Brandy had cleared the lighted area and had joined me prone 
on the grass on the warehouse side, a private cop car roared up to the gate, 
stopped, and radioed something. Within two or three minutes a guy, maybe the 
same one who was there before, came running up from the yards and started 
getting into a screaming match with the rent-a-cop. Finally they had the last 
words and the cop drove on up past us and back into the complex. I didn't know 
who won, but the guy on the gate gave a rising finger in the direction of the 
cop's taillights and at least had the satisfaction of the last word.
"Okay, sweetheart," I said in my best Bogie voice, "let's go case this joint."
 
5.
The Labyrinth
 
The place was big, bigger even than we'd thought from the outside. It went back, 
it seemed, almost forever, an endless series of gigantic warehouse structures 
with office-type fronts and loading-dock rears, interconnected with a network of 
roads. This was no television-junk joint, I don't care how much they make. This 
was many millions right here, and this was only a branch location. I hated to 
see what they had near Davenport.
Still, in a way, it was less than I expected, too. "This joint's as big as 
General Motors," I noted, "but where's the smokestacks?"
She frowned. "Yeah. I think we're gonna wear this gunk forever, but if it's some 
kind of raw plastic, then where's the place they make it into little plastic 
thingies? You're right!"
"I'm more than right. We haven't been over this whole place yet, having been 
here more like an hour than a week, but so far I haven't come across any big 
parking lots, either. Place this size must take hundreds, maybe thousands, of 
people to run. So far, outside of the rail yards, all I've seen are rent-a-cops 
and gate guards. Oh, that's a lot over there, but it's for what? Ten? Twelve 
cars, tops."
"Maybe they bus them in from town," Brandy suggested, thinking.
"That whole town would have to be here, and there's no sign of it. That town 
would be bigger than it is, just supporting the work force this place must take. 
I mean, two jail cells, two little cafes, one gas station, and a grocery store 
that was a real mom-and-pop operation? Come on. That town isn't real. The whole 
damned thing's a front, run for this operation by folks out of work for years 
with the logging bust, taking their money and being their whores. It's bought 
and paid for, so nobody looks too close and nobody notices things out of the 
ordinary. How they get up the tax assessor I don't know, but bigger fish than 
him have been bought and paid for. If I remember, this was the state where that 
Indian swami and his cult took over and ran a whole county for years."
"That doesn't answer your question," she pointed out. "Where are the people who 
work here? Who are they and where do they live?"
"Even better. Where in here do they process a couple hundred live turkeys?"
The rent-a-cops had been real active in patrols, but if they thought anybody was 
inside who shouldn't be, they didn't act like it. They were easy to dodge, even 
though the streetlights within the complex were well thought out. The real 
problem was the sheer size of the place, and the inability to really get a look 
inside those massive buildings. Many were lit; it appeared as if the biggest one 
in the back was active and at work, although there was no sign of life outside 
nor any crowd of cars or whatever anywhere around.
The buildings, too, were mostly wired with elaborate burglar alarms and remote 
sensors and switches. It wouldn't be easy to get into one that wasn't lit up and 
in operation.
We did eventually find a parking lot attached to a large one-story structure, 
but it looked more like the headquarters for the state police, with maybe a 
dozen plant-security cars parked there and spaces for at least as many more, 
along with spaces where regular cars were parked. At least the cops commuted.
Without a full tool kit, with jumper wires and pliers and glass cutters and the 
like, it was unlikely we were going to break into any of the buildings. Worse, 
sometime the next day we were sure to be missed by the folks down at the town, 
and while they might figure we scrammed, they would also be thinking of the 
plant and grounds here. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend much time around here 
like this. The black stuff smelled and itched like crazy, and there was no food, 
and no evident water, either. We'd spent so much time on getting in, we hadn't 
even thought about getting out.
"Let's get over by that big building that looks like it's open," Brandy 
suggested. "Maybe we can find some way to see in."
"Sounds like a good plan to me," I agreed, just wanting to get something out of 
this experience. We headed over that way, but then had to drop as a door leading 
inside the building opened and two people walked out, both dressed casually 
although not in • any particularly recognizable fashion. One was a big man, fat 
but imposing, sort of the kind you expect to see either selling door to door or 
driving one of Oregon's ubiquitous pickup trucks; the other was a slender woman 
of medium height. They were engaged in an animated conversation, and I couldn't 
make out a word of it. It sure as hell wasn't English.
"Sounds like a record bein' played backwards," Brandy whispered, and the fact 
was, it sounded just like that, only very natural, very conversational.
They passed quite near us, oblivious to our presence, but we stared hard at 
them. The woman, for example, looked very young, yet she had shoulder-length 
hair that looked snow-white and a smooth, dark complexion that was hard to make 
out in the available light. The big man had a face that seemed dark and covered 
in hair; not just a beard, but more like a monkey's face, and his arms showing 
beyond his short-sleeve shirt were also the hairiest I'd ever seen. I resisted 
the impulse to check the moon to see if it was full, although I never really 
believed in werewolves.
They went to another building, and the big man took out some keys and opened a 
small box set in the door, and punched a combination that sounded like a 
push-button telephone being dialed. Then he opened the door and they both 
stepped in and switched on lights.
"Want to jump into the fire?" Brandy asked. "We'll probably get caught, but it's 
the only way."
"I don't want to do anything but get out of here," I answered truthfully, but I 
followed her as she approached the newly unlocked door and tried it. It opened, 
straight into a small reception room with a desk, chair, and phone, but there 
was no sign of the hairy man and the white-haired woman anywhere. "They could 
leave and lock us in here," I whispered.
"Uh uh. There's fire exits, and there's a phone I bet don't go through town," 
Brandy responded. "We're better off than we were and we get a chance to look 
around. Come on."
There was a sudden sound of starting machinery, the lights dimmed for a moment, 
then the whole building started to shake as whatever it was that had been turned 
on got up to speed. We cautiously approached the inner door, opened it, and 
peered into a still-darkened warehouse. It was hard to see anything on the floor 
of the place, although there were catwalks high above that had small lights on 
them, and far off along one side was a glass picture window at catwalk height 
that was lit up.
We went along the wall, hitting a stairway up to the catwalks, and both of us 
got up on it a few steps and tried to see into the darkness of the warehouse 
floor.
"Sam," Brandy said uneasily, "I swear that the whole bunch of dark there just 
moved."
We went further on up the stairway to a metal porch that seemed well above the 
floor and just below the catwalk level. We were on the opposite side from the 
picture window and couldn't even really see it from where we were, so it was 
unlikely we'd be spotted.
Whatever was happening, it took a tremendous machine to do it; and that machine 
seemed to be under the floor of the warehouse. I stared into the blackness in 
the center of the place that should be visible, at least in outline, to me at 
this point but wasn't, and I saw what Brandy had talked about. The darkness 
seemed almost a solid mass, and it appeared to be shifting, moving, changing 
shape and form. It was weird, whether real or some kind of optical illusion.
Old Sam Spade and Phil Marlowe had never had to face anything like this.
There was another start-up-type whine, and suddenly the center of the warehouse 
wasn't dark anymore, although I'm not sure just what it could be called. In the 
center of the darkness, there appeared another, flatter darkness. Sorry, that's 
the only way I can describe it. It was shiny but nonreflective, like a mirror, 
and the only reason it could be discerned at all was because it was framed by a 
pencil-thin outline of blue light. The blue was quite clear, but gave off no 
radiant light, so the rest of the warehouse floor was still bathed in darkness. 
Every once in a while, across the surface of the mirrored blackness, small 
trails of blue light would shoot like stars on a summer night.
It scared the living shit out of me.
"It's invaders from Mars or something," Brandy breathed. "My God—did Little 
Jimmy know about this?"
"Not at the start, not when he hired us," I managed, unable to keep my eyes off 
the strange thing on the floor below. "I think maybe he found out more than was 
good for him before he canned us, though." What would make a weasel like Little 
Jimmy write off over two million? This might. The deal was clear. You call off 
your dogs and take a long vacation in the tropics, and we'll bail you out and 
keep you off the bust list.
The crazy thing was, I was ready to believe in Martians or whatever with no real 
effort, even that they'd hole up in a place like this. Where else? They'd be 
kind of obvious in downtown Philadelphia. But the Martians involved in a drug 
deal and double-crossing a Mafioso? That I couldn't handle. Not yet.
The big mirror changed. It seemed to fold in on itself, like a file card being 
crimped in the middle, then go through itself, and when it finished there wasn't 
one mirror but two, the other intersecting the first at a clean ninety degrees. 
Now there were more folds, each section folding in, and the thing began to take 
on a crazy pattern, not regular at all. It reminded me almost of those pictures 
you see of those old English gardens with the hedges cut like a kid's maze. But 
this thing was in three dimensions right here on a warehouse floor, and it was 
turning.
"Let's get out of here," I told Brandy. "We don't know how big and complicated 
that thing's gonna get, and how safe is safe. That pair up there is up and 
beyond that floor behind glass. We're not. We don't know where safe is. Maybe 
it's just gonna take that plastic powder and instantly make forty million 
plastic Jesus statues, but I don't like to be this close to it until I know a 
lot more."
"Yeah, okay," she answered huskily.
I took her hand and together we went down the stairway. I could see the door 
only a few feet beyond the end of the stairs, since it not only showed light 
around the edges but even had a little red exit sign illuminated above it. That 
thing was still twisting and turning, faster and faster now, and I knew we were 
in a race. I had my eyes only on that door now, and, naturally, I missed the 
bottom step and fell onto the cold concrete floor of the place, Brandy falling 
on top of me. I was hurt, but not enough to matter, and Brandy got up and 
reached out to help me up, taking my hand in the near darkness. I found it, took 
it, and was just pulled to my feet when one of the edges of that blue and black 
thing folded and hit us like a revolving door.
Suddenly I could see Brandy, and she could see me, very well. We both had glows 
of the blue stuff all around our bodies, making us stand out, but all around us 
were constantly changing walls of blue-framed blackness. I gripped her hand 
tight, fearful that we would never again see each other if I let go, and looked 
for the door and the sign. There was nothing, nothing but constantly changing 
panes of black mirror framed in blue. Only they weren't mirrors. They weren't 
anything. One swung around on us before we knew it and passed right through us. 
I braced, expecting to be slapped down by a solid swinging door, but there was 
no sensation at all. It just came, passed through us, and went on its merry way.
I don't mind admitting that I was scared to death—not only being trapped in that 
thing, but scared, too, that I would lose Brandy's hand and my only remaining 
touch to anything real. She held my hand just as tight, and I could tell that 
the same thoughts were going through her own mind.
It did no good whether you stood still or started walking; the endless series of 
blue-outlined panels kept moving anyway, so I pulled on her hand and started 
walking in the direction I was certain was the exit door. With no physical 
sensation, the light show lost some of its threatening aspects. The effect of 
moving, though, was unnerving, since all of a sudden it seemed as if everything 
stopped shifting around but you were boxed in with a cube of blue-outlined 
squares. Stepping through brought you to another cube, then another, then 
another.
I tried to call to Brandy, but she seemed unable to hear me, and I saw her own 
mouth form words but bring no sound. In fact, there was no sound at all anymore, 
not even the sound of the big motors driving this, whatever it was.
There was no choice. Stay still, and you stood in a box, so you moved through 
them, panel after panel, side after side, trying to move out of the thing. I 
mean, the warehouse was big, but it didn't seem all this big.
Suddenly, we stepped into one and stopped, for beyond the panel to our left 
there was a solitary metal desk at which sat a man. He was wearing some sort of 
gray uniform, but he looked quite ordinary; an older man with a walrus moustache 
and, of all things, a monocle. The desk itself had some sort of device built 
into it that looked to me like some kind of sound-mixing console, with hundreds 
of little dials and levers. He looked up from the panel, stared at us for a 
moment, then moved a control. We started toward him, but he took the monocle 
from his eye and said, "Frabishsnap!" and threw a long lever. His voice sounded 
quite odd and amplified badly, like over a poor loudspeaker system.
Suddenly the whole cubic structure shifted, and now, even though we were 
stopped, the panels came at us faster and faster. Every once in a while one 
would blink on, for just a moment, then blink out before we could go to it.
A parched desert landscape with nothing alive under a blanket of eternal clouds. 
. . .
A jungle scene, thick and lush, with the remnants of some tropical monsoon 
washing down from the growth that blocked all views....
A reddish-brown landscape, with tremendously high grass of some pink color 
stretching off into the hills as far as the eye could see under a blue but 
unnaturally light sky. . . .
There weren't too many of these, although I had the distinct impression that I 
was actually seeing far more than the few sunlit scenes. It was quite possible 
that most of what I was seeing was, in fact, the inside of dark buildings at 
night.
There was a sudden, disorienting shift in balance and point of view, and we both 
got dizzy and fell ... onto wet grass. Sound hit me like a full orchestra, 
although it was only the basic sounds we all live with and the rustling of wind 
in the trees.
"Brandy?" I whispered. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I think so. You?"
"I'm suddenly feeling it where I tripped on that last step. I have a hunch I'm 
gonna be bruised for a while, but I feel okay otherwise." I sat up and looked 
around. "Where in heaven's name are we, though? And how did we get here?"
"I—I don't know. Jesus, Sam! Are we on another planet or something? What the 
hell was that thing?"
I shook my head and looked around, then up. There, in the sky, was a very 
familiar-looking quarter-moon, the same moon you could see back east. "If it's 
another planet, it's one just like the one we left," I told her. "That's the 
moon, all right."
She looked. "Yeah. It is, isn't it? But—where's the warehouse? Where are all the 
buildings, Sam?"
That was a very good question. I sat there a moment nursing my wounds, and tried 
to think. "Hypnosis, maybe. Some kind of hypnotic machine. All that spinning and 
whirling in the dark. Who knows where they took us? As a matter of fact, they 
probably never knew we were there. We just kept walking in a trance or 
something, and now we're lost in those damned hills. I bet that's it." It made 
me feel a little better.
"I dunno, Sam. That funny dude with the eyepiece—did you see him, too?"
"Yeah, and heard him, for all the good it did. Looked like something out of 
comic opera, Gilbert and Sullivan or something. If you saw him, too, the odds 
are he was real, if nothing else was. That's bad. It means somebody knows we 
were there."
"Sam—maybe it wasn't hypnosis. Maybe—this is crazy, but I can't help thinkin' of 
that train yard and them two dudes up in the tower switchin' cars from one track 
to another. Suppose that thing was some kind of—railroad, I don't know, whatever 
people from outer space or somethin' might use. We kept goin' on a track, or 
something, and then we came to a switch place, that little man bein,' in the 
same job as the train men. He sees us, knows we ain't supposed to be there, and 
so he kinda, well, switches us. Switches us onto a siding or something like 
that. Just like they do with the trains."
I thought about it, and didn't like the thought at all. "If they'd dumped us in 
a desert or under that pink sky or if we had two moons or something, maybe I 
could buy it," I told her, "but this is Earth. The odds of there being two moons 
just like that is pretty slim. No, I can't buy it."
She sighed. "Yeah, but if this is still the Oregon woods, then it's hotter and 
wetter than I remember it bein' not too long ago. You can cut this air with a 
knife. Sweet Jesus, Sam! What did we get ourselves into?"
She was right about the heat and humidity, but it was too subjective a call for 
me to admit anything right off. "We got into something we shouldn't have, babe. 
We shoulda cut and run when Little Jimmy gave us the ax, that's for sure."
She reached into her pocket and took out a crumpled pack of Kools and a small 
lighter.
"You better give 'em up again, babe. Might be a while 'til you see another 
pack," I warned her.
"Shit on that. Never in all my born days did I need a smoke more than now. Just 
too bad it's got to be tobacco." She lit it and sat back for a moment. "God, 
that crud we lay in itches!"
That it did. I looked around the horizon, but all I could see were trees in all 
directions, although we were sitting in a clearing of sorts. I had been around 
enough to know that when it's pretty dark, even a small town's lights show up as 
a glow on the horizon; but there were no lights to be seen at all except the 
stars and the quarter-moon.
Then, off in the distance, I saw a flash; then it was gone. I had hopes for just 
a moment, but then the sound of distant thunder came to us, and the horizon in 
that direction seemed to blacken very quickly.
"Storm coming," I noted. "Maybe our way. Just what we need."
"The hell with it. If it comes here and rains buckets, I'm gonna strip out of 
these clothes and let it give me a shower, and maybe the clothes, too. Anything 
to get this crap off." She took off her boots and stuffed the remaining 
cigarettes and the lighter deep in the toe, then set that boot on its side, away 
from the storm. That was one of the reasons I loved her. She was always thinking 
and always practical, even in the strangest situations.
The clouds rolled in like tar spread across the sky, blacking out the moon and 
stars. The wind picked up tremendously, and it wasn't too long until I felt the 
first drops. Brandy was already stripping, I could see from the lightning's 
illumination, and I finally decided that she had the right idea. If anybody came 
up and caught us now, I'd just as soon be nude and washed than covered with 
foul-smelling grime.
I didn't like thunderstorms much—lightning always scared me, and I was always 
sure I was going to get hit no matter where I was—but the nearest shelter was 
the tall trees, and I knew damned well you didn't go next to trees in a 
thunderstorm.
The next ten minutes or so was the longest ten minutes of my life. It was one 
hell of a storm; the rain came down like I'd never seen it before, and all 
around there was a thunder-and-lightning show that was both scary and awesome. I 
never knew that much water could fall over such an area; it was as high-volume 
as if you were under a fire hose turned on full. It was more like being in a 
swimming pool than a shower or rainstorm, but it sure as hell got rid of that 
black, smelly powder.
It tapered off as quickly as it had come, and off in the direction from which 
we'd first seen it, the stars actually began appearing once more, while the area 
behind us was getting the treatment. That sucker was some storm.
I had mostly stood, frozen with fear, through the thing, and I found myself 
damned near unable to move now. The grass was high, thick, and very wet, and 
although the soft wind was drying me out, it wasn't doing anything for the 
surroundings. I could hear running water everywhere, and to take a step was to 
squish. At least Brandy had guessed right about taking off our clothes; on us or 
off us, they'd have been just as soaked, only now we were reasonably clean 
underneath.
The clothes, however, were definitely not wearable for some time. We picked them 
up and tried to wring them out, but no matter how much you twisted, there seemed 
to be more and more water, and that was just the shirts. Twisting out fairly new 
jeans wasn't easy, either. I always thought they were sort of water-repellent, 
but they just seemed to absorb more than the shirts.
Brandy had prepared for the washing as much as possible, while I hadn't thought 
much about it, so like a fool I'd left my boots straight up to the sky. One had 
fallen down, but toward the storm, and the other was filled to the brim with 
water.
"Well, what do we do now?" I mused aloud, not really talking to Brandy.
"I think we head for the trees and find someplace to hang this all up to dry," 
she replied. "Then we settle down and see if we can get any sleep or what out 
here in the wilds. Don't seem no use to try and find out where we are 'til 
mornin'. Daylight comes, maybe we can find a road or something."
There seemed like nothing else we could do. We didn't know one direction from 
the other and wouldn't until the sun came up, but with the clearing, we figured 
the clothes would get some kind of breeze and some sun no matter where we hung 
them, so long as they were exposed. All we could do, of course, was find some 
low bushes and drape them across the tops. Neither of us had remembered to pack 
clothespins.
There wasn't anyplace really dry to settle down, but we found a spot behind a 
big tree that was grassy and had escaped the full force of the rain. Somehow, 
though, with the dripping-down, I didn't think we'd get much sleep that night. 
We lay close together, and put our arms around each other.
"Well," I sighed, "back a couple of weeks ago I figured we were about as low as 
we could go, and now here we are, stark naked in the woods in which live who 
knows what, with nothing but some drying clothes, a partial pack of cigarettes, 
and a pocket lighter, stuck in the middle of nowhere. We got nothing, not even 
answers to any of this."
She sighed and kissed me. "I know. Maybe we're jumping bail to boot, too. No 
matter what, I keep draggin' us down more and more. Now it's Adam and Eve and no 
fruit trees. At least I got no trouble with bugs. Nothin' that lives 'round here 
can be as scary as the cockroaches of Camden. It's like a punishment, somehow. 
Everything I ever did, I screwed up. School, business, Daddy's dreams, 
everything, including you."
"I was wrong," I told her. "I said we got nothing and I was wrong. I'm like the 
guy on the news whose house burns down, and he's standing there, crying about 
how he's lost everything, with his wife and kids all standing around him safe 
and sound. I love you, Brandy. I love you more than anything else in the world. 
You didn't do anything to me. I came willingly, all the way, 'cause I fell in 
love with the cutest, sexiest, craziest girl in the world. All we did here, 
including the bad mistakes, we did together. You're a part of me, the most 
important part. How could you screw me up if I wasn't just as crazy as you?"
She grabbed me and kissed me, hard and passionate. "I love you, Sam Horowitz," 
she whispered sexily. "I love you a thousand times more now than when I married 
you."
It was kind of kinky doing it there in the wet grass, out in the open and all, 
but, damn it, if you couldn't eat and you couldn't sleep and the only thing that 
really meant anything to you was there in the same mood, it sure beat thinking.
The underwear and the cigarettes and lighter were okay, but the rest was a real 
wreck. That sun was hot, as hot as I had ever felt it, and I'd been in the 
Philippines and Hawaii in midsummer. That sun had done a real job on some of the 
clothes.
"I never knew jeans could shrink," I said glumly. They didn't look all that 
different, but there was a good two- or three-inch rise in the leg bottoms, and 
as for closing the top flap and zipping them up, forget it. I didn't regret the 
flannel shirt that much, not in this heat, although at least I could get it 
on—though not buttoned— but the pants were a pain.
Brandy's hadn't fared much better. There was enough give in the briefs and even 
in the bra to make them serviceable, like my jockey shorts, but as for the jeans 
and dyed tee shirt, forget it. Seemed that no matter what, we were stuck in our 
undies, and as for the boots, well, mine felt as wet as last night, although 
Brandy's were okay, only mildly damp, but still had some of that black gunk in 
them because they hadn't been rinsed out.
"Well, it's not a total loss," I commented sourly. "At least when we find some 
civilization we'll have our underwear."
Brandy shrugged. "Well, it's something. Our big problem isn't clothes, it's 
food. Wonder what grows in Oregon?"
"Apples, I think, and maybe potatoes, or is that Idaho? From the looks of things 
here, I'd say we'd better move or learn to eat grass."
The grass, in fact, was tall, going up to almost waist height in the lower 
areas. I knew it'd seemed bad last night, but not this bad. We picked up our 
soggy boots and walked up the rise to the nearly flat center of the big meadow, 
which was about where we'd come out, or woke up, or whatever it was we'd done, 
and Brandy looked around and frowned.
"What's the matter?" I asked her.
"This place. You got to use a little imagination, but it sure does look like the 
same area that plant was built in." She checked the sun. "If that's east, or 
sorta east, then let's go south a bit and see what we find."
"If there's a train yard down there, I'll believe anything," I responded.
It really was a vast area of grass, maybe a hundred or more acres,' and it did 
kind of look like the lay of the land where the plant had been—if, as she'd 
said, you used some imagination. It was kind of like what the place would have 
been if the plant had never been built and this area never developed. There was 
even a steep downslope, but it led to the start of the trees at the bottom, not 
any rail yards. It was, however, a flat area, more or less, built up from the 
looks of it by occasional stream floods.
"You got any idea where we're heading?" I asked her.
"South is all. We can't stay around here, can we? Nothin' to eat but grass. 
South's as good as any."
I had to admit that much. There was no reason not to head south. We entered the 
trees and kept walking, but I still couldn't feel like this was all real. We'd 
gone from the bottom to an assignment to find a guy who skipped with mob money, 
trailed him to the house of some dame that looked like his identical twin, right 
down to his fingerprints, tracked them to a redneck town in rural Oregon that 
was the headquarters for a company that supposedly sold junk to TV ads and had a 
plant that was run with no workers, then saved our quarry from a gunman who 
turned out to be another twin, got taken to the cleaners by the town for our 
pains, and then we'd broken into that damned plant and wound up communing with 
Mother Nature in our underwear.
We reached a streambed that was still somewhat swollen from the results of the 
previous night's storms, and Brandy started walking east along it. There was no 
way I wanted to risk crossing that thing now, not at this point, anyway.
"This stream look familiar?" she asked me.
I shrugged. "I'm a city boy. See one stream, one forest, you see 'em all."
"There was a stream running alongside them railroad tracks. Looked kinda like 
this one."
"Yeah and we're gonna hit a road down to town just through here, I suppose."
"I doubt it. I really doubt it."
"So what's the point? What do you expect to find?" I asked her.
"Something. Anything. Something like—that area over there. See where it's sorta 
cut out by the stream?"
"Uh huh. So?"
"See that big rock there, stickin' sorta out of the bank? Look familiar? Use 
your imagination a little."
"It's been overworked the past week." Still, I did see her point and I didn't 
much like it. That rock was almost a dead ringer for the one jutting out across 
from the picnic table where we'd had that first meal from the cafe. There was 
also a kind of dip, or fold, in the land, more than a valley, that went off 
beyond it to our right and curved around and down a little, and the fold 
continued up something of a slope to our left. If I were going to build a road, 
it'd be along that fold for sure, even though it was a little creek of its own 
to the left and had been cut dry by the stronger stream to the right.
I stopped. "All right, I admit it looks a lot like the same place, or the same 
place if people had never been here, but what's that prove? I bet there's a ton 
of places that look just like this all over these hills."
"Sam—when we took the walk up the tracks last night, I paced off the distance. 
You know I'm always just doin' that kind of thing in my head."
"Uh huh."
"Well, this is about three hundred and eighty standard paces from where we came 
down. That gate and sidin' was less'n four hundred yesterday. Face it. This 
place here is just where it would be if we were still in the same place, and 
that's too much for coincidence, 'specially with that big cleared area just up 
there right where it should be—only it ain't cleared, it's natural. There may be 
a ton of places around that ain't developed, but I betcha not a one has just 
this way."
I sighed. "So what are you saying? They didn't send us anyplace, they sent us 
back in time or something, before there were people here?"
"I don't think so. You ain't noticed nothin' queer about this whole place? Think 
about it."
I thought. "What do I know? I'm from the city, remember, and so are you."
"Don't have to be off the farm to see this. No birds, Sam. No birds, no 
squirrels, no animals or sign of animals around. Bugs, yeah—and I couldn't tell 
one bug from another, so I can't say if they're funny lookin' or not—but no 
birds, that I can see."
I looked around and up at the trees and the patches of sky, and I knew she was 
right. There were insects, yeah—crawling, buzzing around, all sorts of bugs, but 
if they didn't look like roaches, wasps, or bees, I was no better at telling one 
from another, either.
"Well," I said slowly, not really wanting to think much further on this, "we 
have to decide what to do next, then. We can say this is some kind of limbo 
where there's no company, no people, no animals, go back up to the clearing and 
hope that old Monocle-and-Moustache sent some kind of message and they'll come 
and pick us up before we starve to death, or we figure they aren't coming for 
us, and try and find some food someplace before we starve to death."
"Well, if they didn't come for us last night, with our pants hung out there like 
signposts and us not far away, then we can't count on them comin' any time soon. 
I figure we see if we can find some food or something, and if we can, we figure 
they'll be able to track us and come to us. Sure ain't much here to lose a scent 
'cept maybe another big storm. I mean, they sent us here, so somebody knows and 
can find us if they want, but we can't count on it."
I nodded. "Okay, then—which way?"
"You pick it. I haven't had much luck lately." I thought a moment. "Well, let's 
assume for the sake of argument that this is somehow the same place as we were, 
although how that can be I can't imagine. If we go across the stream and down 
that way, we'll have miles and miles of ups and downs and forests until we hit 
the river valley. That might be the place to play house, but it's ninety, a 
hundred miles, maybe. We won't make that without something to eat. Still, I 
remember the map enough. If this fold holds true for the road, going north is 
more of the same until we hit the river valley, only it'll be mostly uphill for 
a while. These are only baby mountains compared to the big ones around, too."
"So?"
"Well, no matter what, we curve around and get back to that river valley, right? 
That means the river runs north and south. You got to figure the shortest route 
down there is by going west, along this big stream, here. We've been thinking 
road, and we don't have a road to travel."
"Sounds good to me, but I sure hope we find something to eat real soon, or I 
don't think either of us will make it all the way."
We headed back up, and now that I'd come to accept her theory, at least as a 
working model, I could actually almost visualize building that railroad through 
here.
About a half hour beyond the big clearing, the slope started down, and the whole 
thing widened out. Suddenly, we weren't in forest anymore, but in a thick grove 
of very different-looking trees. I stared at them. "I'll be damned! Apple 
trees!"
They were apple trees, and while some of them were better along than others, 
there were some there with apples as ripe as you could want. We ate a few each, 
throwing caution and possible bellyaches to the wind, since they were either all 
right or they weren't. At least they were enough to give us some energy to keep 
walking for a while.
"Funny about those trees," I commented. "They're really kind of out of place 
here. I don't remember much about farming stuff, I admit, but it also seems kind 
of hot here for apples, and it always seemed to me that red apples were picked 
in the fall, not the middle of the summer."
"You think they were planted? To keep people like us alive?"
"Maybe. Let's go on a little and see. People can't live on apples alone, or at 
least I don't think they can."
The valley dipped down and widened out still more, and it was clear after a 
while that in fact this whole area wasn't totally natural. There were pear 
trees, and peach trees, and huge wild-growing clumps of grape plants, and while 
they weren't all ripe, some of each were. There was stuff there that shouldn't 
be ripe and there was other stuff there that I would swear shouldn't be 
there—the grapes, for one, and a whole grove of trees dropping walnuts by the 
score. Equally odd was the fact that only a small amount of each was ripe, with 
others clearly in a kind of line, going east, from ripe down to not ready for a 
long, long time. If you didn't pig out, maybe up to a dozen or so people could 
live here for months, maybe indefinitely, so long as nothing spoiled the crops.
"They shoulda put up signs," I noted. "Not everybody would come east."
"Maybe there's one like this in every direction," she suggested. "It might be 
worth finding out. If they have this stuff here to stash people who get into 
their system or whatever, there might even be others here, or there might have 
been others here."
Except for the sound of rushing waters and the buzzing of insects, I couldn't 
hear any sign of anybody else. "If there are others, we'll find them soon 
enough, if they haven't taken some of these and moved on. I almost doubt there's 
anybody else here, though. Doesn't look like there's ever been anybody in this 
place, except the ones who set this up." I sat up. "However, they can't keep a 
place like this up without some attention. Somebody's got to be by, if only to 
check it out and correct anything that's not right, sooner or later. Trouble is, 
that may be weeks, even months from now, unless old Monocle reported us and it 
wasn't filed for attention someday in the future."
"I'm sure we were reported, and I'm sure they know we're here, and just who we 
are by now. I think we're just stuck on a siding in the middle of nowhere. Face 
it, Sam—who are we to them, anyway? So they have our IDs and the cards and stuff 
like that. How long would it take you to have our life history if you had your 
wallet?"
I thought a moment. "About two hours, tops. Yeah, I see what you mean. They got 
more resources than we have by a long shot. So they find out we're both bankrupt 
detectives with no assets and no close family, nobody to even miss us, and that 
we got overeager, thanks to Little Jimmy. We're nobody back home, but to this 
company or whatever it is, we stuck our nose in and we know too much. If we 
didn't before, we sure as hell do now, although I can't think about what it is 
we really know. I mean, did we stumble into some deal where the Martian Mafia is 
trying to muscle into the Philadelphia drug trade? It's still crazy."
"Yeah, you're sure right on that." She undid her bra and panties and tossed them 
away.
"What'd you do that for?"
"I don't know. We had nothin', Sam, and we still lost what we had. Might as well 
be totally nothin'. I mean, face it—I think we're here, and here to stay. I 
always had a kind of fantasy to be stranded on a desert island or something, 
just me and men—a man—you—oh, all right. If we're stuck, we're stuck in a pretty 
place with a lot of food and water, and maybe we got a whole world to ourselves. 
I can keep washin' them things out, and weeks or months from now they'll fall 
apart anyway. Then what do we wear? Skins? There ain't no animals here, Sam, and 
even if there was, I wouldn't know how to trap 'em, kill 'em, skin 'em, or make 
what I needed to make into something that wouldn't feel and smell like rotten, 
dead animal. And if somebody comes, it ain't no more embarrassment to be naked 
than to be in a bra and panties. The hell with it."
"You're probably right," I agreed. "We're both city born and bred. I wouldn't 
know what part of what to even plant, and we're still guessing on what's ripe 
and what isn't. Fact is, we aren't just stuck, we're stuck here, unless they 
planted these groves all over the place. The damned thing is, we can't even get 
too adventurous. If we break a leg, or worse, there's no treatment here, no 
doctors, no phones or ambulances or cops. It's just you and me sitting around 
the garden, kid, depending on good old G.O.D., Inc., to keep us fed."
Brandy gave a little gasp. "Not if they leave us here forever, we won't be 
alone. My diaphragm's back in a room in a motel that just don't seem to exist no 
more. I always thought 'bout us havin' kids, Sam, but not caveman style."
I hadn't really thought about that angle, and, out here, there really wasn't 
anything else to do. Me, I was still trying to figure out how we could go to the 
bathroom without becoming real messy real fast. Shows the difference in the two 
of us, I guess.
I always dreamed of leading a life of idle luxury, but the fact was that this 
wasn't exactly my idea of things. I'm now convinced that Eve was easily seduced 
by the serpent because she was incredibly bored, and that Adam ate that apple 
willingly because there was nothing left to do. We didn't even have that way 
out, so there was no alternative to some careful exploring.
My boots finally dried out, and while it seemed kind of nuts to go tramping 
about the wilderness wearing boots and nothing else, the fact was that with the 
rocks and other unknown things in the ground, they were something of a 
necessity. We retrieved the clothes anyway, and fashioned some of them into 
crude sacks in which we could carry small amounts of food. It didn't give us 
much range, but it gave us some, meaning at least that we didn't have to plan on 
getting back to that little garden spot before dark.
Just where we were still bothered me. The best idea was that we somehow got 
flung back in time to before there were animals or people, but that didn't 
really wash when you thought about it. The land was just too closely shaped to 
the land we'd seen when it was civilized, even to that big exposed rock and this 
stream. If we were in the distant past or something like that, things would have 
to look very different.
We managed to cross that stream and then walk into town, or where town would 
have and should have been. Just beyond it was another of the groves, proving 
Brandy right again in guessing that it really hadn't mattered which way we'd 
gone. It was pretty clear now that old Monocle had in fact stashed us on a 
"siding," a place where you put people when you knew they shouldn't be riding 
your railroad but you didn't exactly know who or what they were. The real 
question was whether we'd eventually have an engine sent to move us or if we 
were on one of those abandoned sidings. The other question was how the hell you 
could move, or have sidings, when you didn't move, as it were.
The first night, both of us had muscle cramps and some blisters, but we'd 
managed to survey some of the area and we were learning to accept the situation 
a little. We had no trouble sleeping, huddled together on soft grass under the 
edge of the trees, although we did have a couple more little thunderstorms in 
the evening. Noisy and wet, but nothing like that tremendous storm that had hit 
us that first night.
There were bugs everywhere, but we got few bites of any kind. I guess if you 
don't have mammals around much you don't develop mosquitoes and things that 
drink blood, so the few bites we got were from ants or small spiders or 
something that just didn't like us or where we were sitting. I had this vision 
of black widows or tarantulas or something, but none of the bites seemed more 
than irritating.
The real question was how much exploring we were going to be able to do. Neither 
of us was in any decent shape, and the second day every muscle in our bodies 
ached. That more than anything was the real trap of this place for the 
overweight, out-of-condition folks from civilization. If you rested and relaxed 
the second day, you were back where you started from in terms of shaping up, but 
it was tough to force yourself to go anywhere or do anything when you hurt so 
bad and the basics of what you needed were so close at hand. So, out of 
necessity, we kind of pushed each other.
There were, in fact, at least four groves, the one up the "road" we figured was 
about where the motel would have been. We shifted up to that one partly because 
it was closer to the "company" site, and provided clear access to that huge 
meadow as well as better storm cover.
It's funny, though, how quickly you can adapt to something totally foreign if 
you don't have to worry about the basics. We had food, water, a very basic 
shelter with the trees, and each other to keep from going completely nuts. If 
you had to stash somebody, this was a good place to do it. You didn't even need 
weapons or fire to scare off the wild animals. There were no wild animals. As 
long as it stayed hot and humid, and deserted, there wasn't much need for 
clothes. Brandy still had her lighter, although her cigarettes were long gone, 
but we decided to conserve the lighter as much as possible in case we ever 
really needed a fire. We even abandoned the boots after a while; it seemed 
better to get the feet toughened.
After a while you no longer noticed the bites; you learned where was a good 
place to sleep and where wasn't, and what gave the best shelter when a storm 
came up; the heat and humidity seemed normal, and even crapping in the wild 
became second nature, although Brandy had more trouble with part of that than I 
did. Nothing around seemed poisonous, but a few stomach upsets taught us quickly 
what was ripe and what was not.
I had worn a cheap watch much of my life, but for some reason I hadn't put it on 
when we set out on that expedition. It was one of my many regrets; it would have 
been interesting at least to know what time it was, and what day.
"You know, I don't think anybody's comin' for us," Brandy said one afternoon. 
"It's been too long."
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm kinda getting to that point myself."
"I was thinkin' that the winters get real cold up here, I bet, no matter how hot 
it is now. We don't have the know-how to make stuff like clothes, even if there 
was something around with fur or if we ran into a whole mess of cotton plants. 
If we're gonna live, we got to move south. Real far south."
"Yeah, I know. I just haven't wanted to think about it much. I don't even know 
how far it is, but it seems like a hell of a long way. A thousand miles, maybe. 
If we walked ten miles a day, it'd take a hundred days if nothing else was 
wrong, and there won't be groves of trees around dripping with ripe stuff to 
eat, and there's pretty big mountains in the way, too. I don't remember the map 
much, but it seemed like the only flat land was from Bend—or where Bend should 
be—north, and that's the wrong way, babe."
"I know, I know. But if we stay around here much longer, we're gonna be too late 
to beat the snow. We took all the other risks. We risked goin' after Whitlock 
when we were warned off—even fired—and we snuck into that plant."
"Yeah, and it got us here." Still, she had a point. Stay here, and we had a 
potentially short lifespan. Move, and we either bought time or bought it 
quicker. I never liked being in the back with the meter running, and that was 
what staying was. We had to chance a move.
"All right," I told her, "we'll gather up what we can carry that might feed us 
for a couple of days before it goes bad, and we'll strike out west, toward that 
Bend valley. Once we're there, we'll see if we starve at that point or can go 
on. One day at a time."
"Yeah. One day at a time."
We rigged up some makeshift packs using the old clothes, but we really couldn't 
carry too much, and only the nuts weren't likely to quickly spoil. Still, we had 
to do something, and this was better than nothing.
We walked east along the streambed, past the grove we originally found and more 
or less into the wilderness. It was not easy going after a few hours; these were 
mountains, not little hills, and they were pretty much unspoiled except by 
weather and stream action. Some of the passages involved pretty narrow areas 
above the stream, and in some cases wading in the stream itself, trying to avoid 
slipping on the rocks or losing your balance. The worst part was that it was 
hard to tell how far we'd come. We might have covered ten miles, we might have 
covered one mile, for all we knew. By the end of the first day, though, we were 
in pretty rough country.
There was only danger in going on after dusk, so we found as level and as 
comfortable a spot as we could and settled in for the night. We were not fussy 
anymore, that was for sure. We snuggled up together in silence.
Finally I said, "What are you thinking about?"
"Just—thirikin'. Maybe thinkin' 'bout not thinkin'."
"Huh?"
"Somehow, some ways, we wound up with a whole world just to ourselves. Nobody 
else. No cars, no pollution, no slums or ghettos, no wars, no violence, no 
racism—nothin' but what we brought into it. Just Adam and Eve, more or less. I 
been findin' myself thinkin' funny the last few days."
"Huh? Funny?"
"Yeah. Right off, all I could think of was how everything was always against us. 
You know, the self-pity bit. All I wanted was back. Lately, though,' I can't 
figure what I want to go back to. I stopped thinkin' 'bout that world. It ain't 
real no more. It's evil. Corrupt. And it sure ain't done us no favors, honey."
"You're getting another one of those dreams. I can tell."
"Yeah, well, what's wrong with dreams if that's all you got? We were okay back 
there. Hell, honey, we were good. We did our jobs real good, and it got us 
nowhere. Nobody cared. Bein' good just didn't cut it. So, here we are, with a 
whole world to ourselves. I know the odds against us, so don't start lecturin' 
me, but we got to think like we're gonna make it. If we don't, we sure as hell 
won't. And what if we do?"
"We survive. We try to do something with the rest of our lives."
"Yeah, but what? So we have a mess of kids, right? Can't hardly avoid it if we 
stay together. We got to forget that old world existed; make it a nightmare. The 
rules of this whole new world are what we say it is, the way we live and act and 
teach our kids. We got a big chance here if we just stop lookin' back and 
thinkin' the old stuff."
I kind of thought human nature would run its usual course regardless, but I let 
her dream. It was better than thinking about the first broken leg or worse 
injury. Even appendicitis would kill her—not me, mine's gone—and just handling 
our first toothache might be too much for our level of skill.
Still, we went on until in about two or three days we reached the end of the 
mountains and the start of the great, broad river valley. It was really a sight 
to see, from a grassy knoll a couple of thousand feet up a mountainside. You 
could even see why they named the town Bend, from the way that river looped, 
but, of course, there wasn't any city. There also weren't any trails, but we 
tried to figure a safe way down. The whole river basin looked rich, and there 
were all sorts of trees, bushes, and other growths all over the place. Whether 
anything down there was edible, though, I didn't know. Without our mysterious 
Johnny Appleseed, I didn't know if there'd be apples or other stuff in the wild.
We didn't, however, get the chance. It was the damndest thing I ever ran up 
against, including that crazy thing inside the warehouse. It was a wall, a solid 
wall, that just wasn't there, but was.
By that, I mean that you couldn't see anything, and the wind came right through, 
and all was natural and normal in every way except that you couldn't move down 
that mountain beyond a certain point. It felt like thick glass or extra-smooth 
plastic. There was no sound when you pounded on it, and when we tried to beat 
against it with sticks, there was also no effect. Pounding it with a stone 
produced only a dull thudding noise, but if you threw the stone at it, the stone 
sailed right on through.
Brandy was so frustrated she was close to tears, and she finally knelt down and 
beat against it. I went over to her, not quite knowing what to feel like. 
Clearly, whoever had put us here wanted us to stay here. It was a wall that 
blocked people, and nothing else. I looked at Brandy, but there wasn't anything 
really to say. We'd reached the limits of G.O.D.'s county, and we could not go 
beyond. Even here they were going to make sure we didn't violate the terms of 
our bail.
 
6.
Of Seasonings and Secrets
 
I don't know how long we'd been in that place; any semblance of time was 
shattered after we discovered the Wall and determined to our satisfaction that 
it went pretty well around the place. Long enough for Brandy to grow back a fair 
amount of hair, and me the fullest, thickest beard I ever had. Long enough for 
the both of us to become slimmer, trimmer, yet more weathered and worn on the 
outside. Brandy isn't built to be thin; she had a wide frame that was designed 
to be somewhat substantial. Still, she'd lost all her gut and much of the fat 
off her hips and thighs, and replaced them with hard muscle. It was a dramatic 
improvement, probably the best she'd ever looked or felt, although she was 
somewhat surprised that her breasts didn't shrink proportionately. I was 
delighted with that.
I, too, was as tight and as lean as in my Air Force training days, although my 
stomach showed the scars and stretch marks, as did hers, of past abuse. What was 
most startling, and next to Brandy's figure the most pleasing, to me was that, 
incredibly, I started to grow hair again where none had been for several years. 
It itched for a while, but then it started to come in, black speckled with gray 
(what the hell, it was hair), and Brandy really was impressed. My beard, as I 
mentioned, also came in very full and thick, something that also surprised me 
because the only other time I'd tried to grow one it had been thin and uneven 
and scraggly. The new combination was very much to Brandy's liking, which was a 
good thing since I had no way to shave the damned thing off. The fact that being 
outside all this time had turned my complexion quite dark brown was an added 
bonus.
There were negatives, though. Constant exposure had weathered and toughened the 
skin, which also aged it. Both of us certainly looked older than we were, and we 
were developing lines in our faces and skins. My vision was still pretty good, 
but Brandy's, which hadn't been that good when I met her, had deteriorated more. 
She was having a hard enough time that she no longer went to any lengths to 
conceal it. I had the distinct and uneasy feeling that she was going blind and 
she knew it.
We had our share of cuts and bruises and scrapes, and even developed some small 
scars from them, but we weren't ambitious enough anymore to try anything really 
dangerous, and if infection was possible here it sure didn't bother us. It kind 
of figured. If there were no animals or people on this world, then the local 
germs wouldn't know what to make of us.
The feared winter weather just didn't come. There were two temperature 
conditions within the Wall: hot and hotter; and two conditions of moisture: 
ninety-nine percent humidity and heavy rain. The storms varied in intensity and 
duration, but there was always one sometime in the afternoon and another in 
mid-evening. Although the days grew short, that didn't vary, and we realized 
that the Wall wasn't merely a barrier, it was a greenhouse. The streams began to 
run bitter cold, but the air temperature never cooled. We would occasionally go 
down to the Wall and look out at the mountains in the distance and see snow 
falling, and to touch the Wall it felt cold; yet just a few feet in, it was, if 
anything, hotter than earlier. At least, I could see the snow falling and 
describe it to her. She could see her immediate surroundings, although blurrily, 
but anything beyond a few yards was a total blur.
Interestingly, she adapted well to that, and insisted on keeping up our runs, 
our tree climbing, and the rest. She feared, however, even short separations. 
She liked to be near me, touching me, as much as possible, as if nothing but me 
was real.
Another casualty, though, was conversation. There didn't seem much point in 
reminiscing or discussing the past, and neither of us much cared anymore why 
there were at least three Martin Whitlocks of at least two sexes, or what that 
company did, or even how it sent us here. The Wall, and the unchanging sameness 
of the place we'd come to think of as the Garden, left little in the present to 
think about arid offered no future except more of the same, pays might go by 
with us saying very few words to each other, since the routine rarely varied and 
where we went now we'd been before, yet I had never felt closer to her nor she 
to me. We didn't care about anything else because there wasn't anything else. 
Because we lacked the knowledge and skills to turn this environment as our 
ancestors would have, and we lacked the necessity of doing so, having food and 
water and warmth and needing nothing else, our whole civilized veneer was being 
stripped from us. Thinking much only made things worse, so you got so you didn't 
think much, just acted out of habit arid did whatever your impulses told you 
when they spoke, within the limits of the environment we now took for granted. 
We realized that we were sinking into a kind of comfortable madness, a bearable 
madness, that, like animals in a cage, we were consciously being trapped by it.
There is no world but the Garden, whose boundaries are the Wall. There is no 
other world, no other reality. There is only Her and Me. I found myself 
repeating that every time I thought of something beyond the here and now, and I 
really didn't want to stop it, not consciously. I—we—both of us—had consciously 
surrendered. Only the dreams remained.
He was there at the stream, and at the trees, and along the pathways, always 
there in my dreams, with trenchcoat, slouch fedora, and dangling cigarette.
"Listen, sweetheart, you can't give in to this thing or they win, see? You're a 
man, a private dick, not no jungle savage. You can't sit around doin' nothin' or 
you may as well be dead."
"Listen, Spade, don't you lecture me!"
"Hey! I made all the mistakes, didn't I? Even fell in love with the dame that 
iced my partner, and that's worse than anything you got to show. Now, your old 
lady, she loves ya and depends on ya. You gonna let her go down like this? She 
saved your neck a couple times, and she still feels all this guilt stuff about 
all this bein' her fault. It's your turn now, hot shot."
I turned to get away from him, but other figures stepped out of the woods and 
stared me down. I knew them all. Marlowe, Archer, the Continental Op, Nick 
Charles. .. . Everywhere I turned there was another, and they were all saying, 
"Your turn now, hot shot. You're the big brain, Sam, you're the top gun, Sam, 
you figure it out."
"What the hell can I do? I don't even know where I am or who sent me here or 
how! You didn't break out of jail, any of you, you were all bailed out!"
"There's always something, Sam, if you look hard enough," Spade responded. "You 
keep 'it up and something always turns up."
"Sam? Sam!"
"Uh, wha—? Leave me atone, all of you!"
"Sam—wake up!"
I opened my eyes groggily. It was still pitch-dark. "Huh?"
"Listen! Wake up and listen!"
I tried to clear out the cobwebs and listen as she Said, and I heard something, 
something odd, off in the distance. A sound, like a cross between a hum and a 
crackling noise. I was suddenly awake. "The meadow! It's coming from the 
meadow!" I was on my feet in a moment and she followed. I looked around, unable 
to see a thing. "We ought to get over there—if we can find it in this darkness."
"I can," she responded, and took my hand.
It was about half a mile through the woods, but she led me like she had the eyes 
of a cat. It was no big deal in the daytime to follow a trail that was worn and 
blazed by you in the first place, but I hadn't realized how little she'd been 
depending on her eyes and how much on other things. She felt that path, and she 
was unerring and confident.
We reached the edge of the trees and I stopped her, and we both crouched down. 
There, up on the rise, was a pattern I had seen only once before and never 
expected to see again, outlined clearly against the darkness. Rotating, folding, 
revolving panels of blue light surrounding a mirrored darkness, moving around 
and around, folding this way and that.
"Think somebody's coming for us, after all this time?" she asked me.
"I don't know, but maybe we shouldn't wait to find out."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"If they can come out of that thing, we can go in it."
"Yeah—but we don't know where we'd come out."
"Yes we do. Someplace other than here. Come on!"
We ran for it, not caring about the exposure or thinking about anything else. 
Someone had opened the cage door, and might discover that and close it at any 
moment. It didn't occur to me to wait to see who might emerge; the fact was, 
there was no certainty that anybody would emerge. It might be intended for us to 
enter, if we had the nerve, or it might even be that somebody else had to use 
this siding to get someplace else entirely and it might vanish for an eternity 
at any minute. I had to use their tracks, but by damn it was my train!
"Which way do we go once we're in?" Brandy called as I pulled her along.
"We went left to get here, so we'll go right," I told her. "Just hold tight. The 
odds are we're gonna get sidetracked again, but maybe this time somebody will 
remember us!"
Okay, Spade, you just keep that sucker there another twenty seconds and I'll 
take the leap!
We reached the edge, and it was still folding and unfolding into those 
impossible patterns with increasing speed. There was no hesitation; I went right 
in and grabbed Brandy's hand, tight.
We were once again standing in something that seemed to be a revolving door; but 
this time I wasn't scared and confused, I was desperate. Once again, scenes of 
landscapes seemed to flash by as various panels approached, but if you kept 
moving, kept walking through them, you didn't exit but continued on through that 
maze. All of the scenes seemed to be totally different than any I remembered, 
but it had been so long ago and a life away and I neither could be sure nor 
cared.
We were suddenly not alone in the maze of panels. She was tall, real tall—seven 
feet, maybe— and incredibly thin, and her face was white, not like I was white 
but like those Japanese dancers— only this looked like her natural color. Her 
lips, nostrils, and eyes were all jet black, and she was wearing some kind of 
long satin dress down to the ground, all a brilliant purple. She spotted us and 
started for a moment, then just nodded and went on past into the direction from 
which we'd just come. There was nothing else to do but nod back and give a 
casual wave with my free hand.
Rather than upset or unnerve me, our encounter with the strange-looking woman 
reinforced my feeling that this thing wasn't operating for us. I didn't know 
much about her, and wasn't sure I wanted to, but we owed that tall woman for 
this chance.
Suddenly we spotted another woman behind a panel, but this one was different. 
She was small, slight, wearing a uniform that looked like a cross between Star 
Trek and the Bolivian navy, and if you overlooked the spiked purple hair and the 
slight puglike snout below her eyes, she looked relatively normal. She was also 
sitting behind a table that looked like a mixing board, and she was wearing, of 
all things, a monocle.
We kept walking, but we were suspended nonetheless, unable to reach the next 
panel no matter how we tried. I felt Brandy tighten her grip as she realized 
what had happened—even she could see that far—and I watched as the woman saw us, 
frowned, and looked at her board. I got the distinct impression that our looks, 
even our nudity, didn't faze her in the least, but that the fact that we weren't 
on the timetable was simply not done.
She was a lot younger and, I suspect, a lot less experienced than the old guy 
we'd hit on the way out who'd sent us to the Garden, and I could tell she was 
trying to figure out just what to do. I stopped walking, as did Brandy, sensing 
my intent, and we stood there patiently and waited for her to make up her mind. 
She looked up and saw us standing there, and I gave her a disgusted look and 
shrugged. I could sympathize with her problem, but how she solved it was of 
vital concern to us. We weren't supposed to be there, but we were acting like we 
were, and not at all scared or withdrawn; nor did we, as we were, exactly look 
like major threats to the organization. We weren't, after all, totally 
black-clad individuals trapped in the system. Finally she activated her intercom 
speaker.
"Glifurtin sworking on ka pau maw?" she asked in a low, guttural growl, or at 
least it sounded something like that.
I hadn't the slightest idea what she said, but, what the hell, if she expected 
me to speak her language I had every right to expect the reverse. "G.O.D. 
Western Distribution Center, McInerney, Oregon, United States of America," I 
shouted back, surprised that I could hear my own voice.
She looked at her board and fiddled with a couple of dials. "Oh, English. How 
jolly quaint," she growled. "What line number? I don't have you on my board 
set."
"Beats me," I responded. "You people were supposed to take care of that. We just 
use this thing, we don't know how to run it."
She cleared her throat, which really sounded menacing. I now had a new 
definition for calling somebody a real dog. "Terribly sorry, there's been a 
mistake somewhere along the line," she replied. "I'll take a stab at it with 
what I see and what you gave me, and if it's wrong you can get them to reroute 
you." She pushed some levers and turned some dials and we were back off into the 
revolving doors of blue rectangles again.
Some of this network of whatever it was, was obviously on all the time, but not 
between all the right places. Of course, the Garden hadn't any machinery at all, 
or at least I didn't think so, but it might have been buried deep underground. 
The fat hairy man and the silver girl from what seemed so long ago had obviously 
gone in to turn their station on, either because it was needed as a way station 
to send somebody further, or because they were going to send .some of that 
trainload of stuff somewhere else.
We stepped out of the pattern—not really of our own accord any more than we'd 
exited into the Garden—where the girl with the monocle had sent us. It was quite 
dark, and we were clearly inside a large building, but I knew almost immediately 
it wasn't our warehouse. The floor of the warehouse had been poured concrete; 
this floor was very rough stone, maybe stone block. "We're not home," I 
whispered to Brandy, "but the thing's still going. Want to get back on?"
"Why bother? She said she was sendin' us where they spoke English and where 
people looked like us. So what if it ain't home? What we got that we hafta go 
back there for, anyway? Let's see if we can get outta here before they find us."
"You're sure?"
"Nope, but so what? They ain't gonna send us back and just let us go. Next time 
might be someplace a hundred times worse, or maybe back to the Garden."
"But we have nothing!"
"And we got more back home? Come on."
It was nearly impossible to see in the place, so we ran into a wall before we 
knew we were at it. It seemed made out of even rougher stuff than the floor, 
more like natural stone. A cave or something like that. We went along it, away 
from the still-twisting display, until we came to a large double door. It was 
locked, and so were a number of doors we also found. There didn't seem to be any 
way out of the damned place.
We looked back at the transport display, but it seemed to be slowing noticeably 
now, more or less reversing its previous contortions, until, very quickly, it 
was the simple cross, then the single screen, then just a tall blue line, and 
then there was only darkness. The vibrations and rumbling of the great machine 
died down, then all was silence.
A strip of light suddenly came on at the far end and far up the wall, and I 
could see a little. It appeared to be a balcony cut out of the rock wall, and, 
moving a bit, I could see that there were stone stairs cut in that side, leading 
up from the floor. It was definitely not the place we'd left, but it clearly 
served the same purpose. I could see no other stairs, although there were 
massive doors cut into the side where we'd tried to exit—doors clearly locked 
and barred now.
"It looks like that stairway or nothing, babe," I told Brandy. "They got this 
one designed for an exit up top. Stay with me against the wall, and let's get 
over there so we can find it in case they turn the lights out again."
The funny thing was, there was just enough light to see the whole expanse of the 
place, and there was nothing really to see. The whole floor looked as barren as 
the unadorned meadow back at the Garden. Wherever the machinery was that worked 
that thing, it was well hidden.
"I think we got to chance those stairs and that door now," Brandy said 
worriedly. "You got to figure they'll lock this place tighter'n a drum when they 
go."
It was a good point, although I didn't at all like the idea of going up there 
and being on the same level as the operators, with it lit up like that.
The stone floor and stairs were cold, and we climbed quickly to just near the 
top. I barely had time to think that before we'd had that long stay in the wild, 
neither of us could have made this climb without wheezing.
As expected, there was a door at the top; and, well down the balcony walk, there 
was a second, open door and to its right a viewing window just like back in the 
warehouse. As before, there was little time to think about our next move and no 
time to debate it; we bounded up and opened the nearby door and entered a narrow 
passageway, still of that same stone block. At the end was yet another thick 
wooden door, this one with a lock on the inside, and I threw it and we stepped 
outside.
It was still dark. I suspected they did all their transportation stuff when it 
was dark and there would be few around to wonder about the funny noises and 
vibration or get too curious about it. The area was lit up, though, with either 
torches or some kind of oil lamps. It looked pretty primitive, but nothing got 
around the fact that it was pretty cold outside and that there was a slight wind 
to boot. Not wintry or snowy weather, but it sure as hell wasn't the sort of 
weather you could be comfortable with if you had no clothes on, and I said as 
much to Brandy.
"We might as well go back and try and bull our way through, then," she answered, 
accepting the obvious. "We sure can't hold up out here for a night."
I turned, and immediately saw a flaw in the new plan. The damned lock was 
spring-loaded and the door was solidly shut behind us. I looked around, but 
there wasn't a soul to be seen anywhere.
"This is a kick in the head," I noted sourly. "All that crap we went through to 
keep from being picked up, and now that we decide it ain't worth it, we can't 
even get arrested. Can't even find anybody to arrest us."
"We could just hunker down here and wait for them," she suggested. "I didn't see 
no other way out of there. Be kinda hard to lie our way outta this, though. 
Damn! If we only had somethin' to pick that lock with!"
"We could freeze waiting for them. Let's see if we can find somebody to 
surrender to."
We walked along what I first thought of as a stone porch, and more of the place 
seemed to come into focus. It wasn't just a big stone building; this thing was a 
castle, like they had in Europe, and what we were on was called, I think, a 
battlement. All around I could see other buildings of dark stone, but aside from 
the fact that they all looked like travel posters of Austria, there was little 
to be learned from them.
Before we found a stairway or entrance, we heard the door open well behind us, 
and turned and went back. Two figures emerged, and after making sure that the 
door was secure, turned to walk away.
I took a deep breath. "Hey!" I called out loudly. "Help!"
The two figures stopped and turned, and we started toward them.
"We took a wrong turn and, boy, are we in trouble!" I yelled.
They stopped, then stared at us in wonder as we came clearly into view. I was 
afraid we might have another dog-girl or fat werewolf here, but the two at least 
looked human, although dressed in robes and hoods.
"Who the devil are you two?" the larger of the two demanded to know. "And what 
in heaven's name are you doing skulking about here like that?" He was a man with 
a very cultured British-sounding accent and a very pleasant voice. It was a 
relief to find somebody in this network who didn't speak gibberish first.
"I'm Sam Horowitz and this is my wife, Brandy," I told them. "We've gotten 
caught twice now in that damned transport system, and this time they shot us 
here."
The second figure gasped. "You came out of there?" It was a woman's voice, with 
much the same accent.
"Yeah, out of the blue lights and the folds. Can we explain everything inside 
someplace? We're freezing to death!"
"Yes, by all means, follow us," the man told us. "This is most irregular. Most 
irregular. The abbot is not going to like this one bit."
I turned to Brandy as we walked, and repeated, "The abbot?"
"I don't know. Sounds better than the Costello, I guess."
I knew what the title implied, and I think Brandy did, too. Abbots headed abbeys 
or something like that. Monasteries and convents and that kind of thing. With my 
background, I couldn't be sure beyond that, and Brandy was raised Baptist, but I 
kind of suspected we were now in some sort of religious retreat, probably 
Catholic or whatever passed for Catholic wherever this was. The Middle Ages for 
sure, but monks and nuns in medieval Oregon? Either history was real wrong or 
Columbus had a great PR man.
We went down some stone stairs and reached a wing of the big building behind the 
main body, and the woman opened a door and entered while the man held it for us. 
It wasn't tremendously warmer inside, but at least there was no wind.
The woman had gone on ahead, because we had a reception committee. There were 
three of them, each of whom looked about seven feet tall and three hundred 
pounds, and all three were wearing black robes with the hoods hanging down their 
backs, and all three had swords on thick black belts worn outside their robes. 
They all bowed slightly to the man, whose own robe was a rusty brown color.
"Take these two to a holding room without allowing them to be seen by anyone 
else," he ordered. "Sister Elizabeth will be returning shortly with some clothes 
for them. No conversation with them, no questions. I will notify the abbot and 
then return for questioning."
The three bowed again, then turned their attention to us. One of them motioned 
us to follow him, and the other two fell in behind. I didn't feel too great 
about all this, but at least we had shelter, and somebody who knew the score was 
being forced to pay attention to us. The only thing I worried about was whether 
these guys would just decide we were a complication they didn't need, and 
dispose of us, one way or the other. It was something I didn't care to think 
about.
We were taken to a small room lit by an oil lamp with a straw bed and straw on 
the floor as well. It had a door but no windows, and after we entered, the door 
was shut; but it was clear that two of the silent giants had taken up guard duty 
on either side of the door just outside. I figured it was more to keep the 
curious out than to keep us in. We had no place else to go.
Sister Elizabeth was back in a few minutes carrying a bundle. These turned out 
to be a brown wool robe like the man had been wearing, a black robelike dress 
like the sister's, and some boots. "I had to guess on the sizes," she told us 
apologetically, "but at least it will warm you."
She was a slightly built woman with a plain, very English sort of face, totally 
free of any makeup or jewelry, and her rust-colored hair was cut so short she 
didn't have to comb or maintain it, although it would never win any prizes for 
hair styling. While we tried on the clothing, I couldn't help but notice that 
Sister Elizabeth's gaze kept returning to Brandy, and I had a suspicion that she 
might never have seen a black woman before. I kind of hoped that she hadn't seen 
Jews down at the local Inquisition.
The clothes were baggy but serviceable; mine was thick wool and Brandy's seemed 
to be cotton, and while mine ended just below the knee and hers almost dusted 
the floor, it was still okay. The boots were a different matter—not just for 
size, but because we hadn't worn shoes of any kind in so long that they hurt and 
felt funny. They were soft leather, though, with a lot of give, and while both 
pairs were a bit large, they would do until we had the chance to get a better 
fit.
"What is this place?" I asked her. "A monastery?"
"It is the Mount Olivet Retreat in the Barony of Oregonia," she responded. 
"There is both a monastery and a convent here, as well as a seminary, conference 
area, and master library."
"Are you really a nun?" Brandy asked, echoing my own thoughts.
She seemed somewhat startled by the question. "Of course. I have been in holy 
orders for eleven years."
Her reaction was so genuine and so automatic that there was no reason in the 
world to doubt her. Still, it was puzzling. I could easily see a group like this 
using a monastery, convent, or whatever as a cover, even having some real ones 
around, but I couldn't see having real ones work that machinery. I mean, most of 
the folks we'd seen so far, like the pair at the warehouse and the woman who'd 
sent us here, weren't even a hundred percent human.
We were given no more chances for questions, though. The man who was with her, 
who she called Brother Michael, came for us, looked us over, nodded to himself, 
then said, "You will come with me now. The abbot was just getting ready for bed, 
but he insists on seeing the both of you at once. Come along, please."
I could tell we were hardly trusted, although what sort of danger we could pose 
to them was beyond me. I mean, they sure as hell knew we didn't have any 
concealed weapons or concealed anything else on us. Still, those big guards had 
eyes only for us, and passages had been sealed off to keep anybody from seeing 
us. Finally we reached an upstairs chamber, just about the time I was ready to 
take off those boots and throw them away, and we waited while Brother Michael 
went in and then returned. "The abbot will see you now," he said formally, and 
we all went in.
It was a comfortable office, large and well organized, with walls of bookshelves 
filled to capacity, a huge redwood desk and padded chair, and plush padded seats 
and benches. To one side was a large fireplace whose fire was dying but not 
dead. The room was very comfortably warm.
The abbot entered by a side door, looking tired. He was a thin man of medium 
height, with short gray hair and a pair of old-fashioned glasses. He wore a 
black robe over which was a gold chain with a round medallion hanging from it. 
He sat in his chair and looked us over carefully, then looked at the others. 
"Take the normal security precautions, but you may leave us alone," he said to 
them. It was a kind, gentle voice and the tone was casual, but clearly this was 
not a request but an order. They bowed, and all left, closing the door.
"Please sit down," he invited, indicating two padded chairs. His voice had more 
than a trace of Irish brogue in it. "I am Brian McInerney, bishop of Olivet and 
the abbot of this place. And you?"
"Sam Horowitz, and this is my wife, Brandy," I responded.
"Uh huh. Horowitz, you say? Jewish?"
"Born that way."
"You will pardon me, but the lady does not look Jewish to me."
"The lady wasn't born that way," Brandy replied a little coolly, "but she's 
pretty satisfied to be a Horowitz."
Mclnerney shrugged. "No offense is meant. I've seen a lot stranger than the two 
of you in my time, I assure you. However, the only people of color in this land 
are of American Indian ancestry, and interracial unions are quite rare and, I'm 
afraid, not socially condoned."
"It's not easy where we come from, either," I noted. Well, it was easy to see 
why Dog-woman sent us here. I'd said McInerney and Oregon and specified English.
The abbot sighed. "Ah, yes, and that brings up an interesting question, Mr. 
Horowitz. Just where do you come from?"
"New Jersey," I told him. "But in that world this place is the western 
distribution center for a company called General Ordering and Development, Inc."
Mclnerney nodded. "As you might surmise, I am familiar with the company. Why 
don't the two of you tell me how you came to be here—and doing an imitation of 
Adam and Eve, as I'm told. Before we can make any decisions regarding your 
future, I must know who and what I am dealing with."
"I have a lot of questions, too," I said.
"But you do not have me in your office in your world deciding my fate," he 
pointed out with unassailable logic.
And so I told him the basics of the story. At least, I told him that a rich man 
in a big city near ours stole a lot of money from a man in our city, and that 
both were involved in criminal activities, and that the victim hired us to track 
the thief down because his own bosses would not be very understanding if they 
found out. I told him we were private detectives whose work was taking jobs like 
this one, and how we'd traced our quarry, found his look-alike girlfriend, 
traced them here, and then gotten involved in the gun-fight, the third Whitlock, 
and why and how we'd wound up sneaking into the plant and getting caught in that 
thing and sent to limbo. He sat there, listening intently, and never once 
interrupted until I was done and until Brandy had tilled in some gaps.
He sat there about a half a minute more, saying nothing, then said, 
incredulously. "Do you mean to tell me that you do not have any idea what this 
is all about? That, even now, with two trips through the Labyrinth, you are as 
ignorant of the facts as you are stuck?"
We nodded in unison. "That's about it, Bishop," Brandy agreed.
"You understand that I am going to have to check this all out? That if any part 
of your story is false I will be able to determine it?"
"That's fine with us, sir," I told him. "Why would we lie about it?"
The abbot sighed again. "Mr. Horowitz, I am certain that you must realize that 
any organization of the size, scope, and power of the one that controls the 
Labyrinth will have its enemies, its opponents. Idealists, revolutionaries, and 
ambitious underlings seeking to topple its leadership or to compete with it are 
inevitable. Such activity is always ongoing, although lately it has been sharply 
on the increase. People have died, stations have been put out of commission, and 
a great deal of havoc has been raised. The only reason you are not in our 
dungeons is that I think you are telling the truth. A gut instinct, I admit, but 
born of thirty years of ministering to people."
"Then you're really a priest? As well as the— station master?" Brandy asked.
"Oh, my, yes! Part of this appointment entails also being the station master, as 
you put it. We are no false identity put on to mask them. Instead, we have an 
arrangement with them that works to our mutual benefit. This is not to say that 
they don't have their representatives here— they are all over the place, by 
which I mean the world and not here. I fear that the general accommodations here 
are too spare for their liking. They are a worldly bunch, I must say. This post 
is difficult to fill, you understand, for there are few who can deal with them 
and still sleep nights. I often am beset by doubts myself, but I must accept my 
Church's decision that our interaction with them serves the common good." He 
yawned. "You must excuse me, it is getting quite late. For the moment, I fear I 
must place you under guard and keep you apart from the rest of the people here. 
So far, we have managed to limit the knowledge that you even exist only to those 
connected with the Labyrinth, the security staff, and myself. As the security 
staff are all under permanent rules of silence, I feel certain I can keep this 
quiet for now. In the meantime, I will arrange for Sister Elizabeth to get you 
some bedding and something to eat, and I will call for you when I know more."
He called for the guards, and that was the end of the interview. They took us 
back down to the floor with the small rooms, and Sister Elizabeth managed to 
find some blankets, a couple of scrawny feather pillows, and some sweet-tasting 
beer and fruit and pastries. It wasn't exactly heaven, but, right then, it would 
have to do. It was certainly no worse, and a good deal better, than I'd feared 
it might be.
They kept us down there for a couple of days. It wasn't all that comfortable, 
particularly after being used to some ability to roam, but the food was decent 
and it gave us a little time to reacclimate ourselves to the real world, or what 
passed for the real world, anyway. I kind of hoped the guards were eunuchs or 
something, though, since there were times when the sounds coming from the cell 
might have made celibates reconsider.
The rest of the time was spent simply comparing notes and seeing what we could 
come up with. We had a big picture now of what was going on, even if the details 
still didn't make much sense. Somebody, somewhere, had invented a machine that 
allowed you to travel between worlds. It wasn't between planets—we kept coming 
back to the same out-of-the-way spot in Oregon—but between different versions of 
Earth. How they could exist, we had no idea, but clearly they did; and it was 
the kind of fact you accepted by Sherlock Holmes's maxim: when everything else 
is eliminated, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
The next question was, what were they doing on all these Earths? If they 
followed the usual human pattern, which was not certain, then just about every 
motive boiled down to wealth, power, or passion. From what we'd seen so far, 
passion was not one of their strong suits, which left the other two. Certainly 
they'd shown real power, and maybe they wanted to take over and run all those 
worlds—or maybe they already did, and we just were too ignorant to know it. 
Power was an end in itself, but there still had to be a bottom line someplace to 
justify all this trouble and expense on a permanent basis, and that left wealth.
They loaded railcars' worth of stuff into that warehouse back home, and it had 
to go somewhere. Maybe natural resources from resource-rich places were being 
acquired and shipped to other worlds that were resource-poor, or who had wasted 
theirs. That was an idea, but what did the poor ones give? Interestingly, it was 
Brandy who came up with the answer to that.
"Knowledge," she decided. "They trade off both the raw materials and maybe 
finished products, and they get knowledge in return. Maybe just little stuff in 
some cases, big ideas in others. Just think of all the Edisons that might come 
up in a thing like this. And maybe other types of folks, too. Education, 
religion, business, philosophy— you name it. If most of these people are 
basically like us, stuff that works one place might work another." She frowned. 
"Yeah, and stuff you ain't sure of could be tried out on some world, or a lot of 
'em, just to see how it did work. Guinea pigs, Sam. It's a real complicated 
operation, if you think about it."
She was probably right. I remembered back long ago some science teacher of mine 
putting down the sociologists and historians and all the other social scientists 
because they couldn't be scientific—you could never isolate all the variables 
and repeat the experiment. Not with this, though. If there were a lot of 
Earths—who knew how many?—you could manipulate things, play God in the 
background, stand back, study, and see how it all came out. And all the time you 
were taking what you wanted from all those worlds, trading raw materials for 
ideas, finished products for raw materials or ideas—you name it. Wealth and 
power in spades, with all of us as pawns in their games. But who had the 
ultimate control? Where did all the best, the profits in wealth and power, wind 
up?
"Simple," she said. "On the one Earth that invented the—what did he call 
it?—lab'rinth?"
"Labyrinth. I think it was a giant underground maze in Greek mythology, but I'm 
not sure. Seems to me I read about it once. A place so complicated that if you 
didn't know the way, you'd wind up getting lost forever."
She nodded. "Like us."
"Yeah," I sighed. "Like us."
"What I can't figure is the mess that got us into this in the first place. I 
mean, I can see 'em, now, inside the Mafia, inside the drug trade, you name it. 
But where do folks like Little Jimmy, Big Tony, and Whitlock come in?"
I had given that some thought. "You heard the abbot. Somebody's been playing 
games with their operations. Somebody who knows the Labyrinth and can use it, 
get access to it. People have died, stuff stolen, even stations destroyed, he 
said. I think we got sucked into something like that. This company or something 
like that was being taken and their operations blown. You'd have to be real 
smart and real subtle to take on and maybe hurt an operation like this. Think 
about all those Whitlocks—male, female, you name it, all with the same prints 
and stuff. Where could they come from?"
She saw where I was going. "Sure! Other worlds. But that must mean there's lots 
of worlds with the same people in them!"
"Uh huh. So Whitlock is their man at the start—one of the boss company's men. He 
wouldn't be able to resist the combination of power and wealth and being on the 
inside. That's his type. But somewhere along the line, the other side, whoever 
they are, puts the snatch on him. Maybe they kill him, maybe not, but he gets 
replaced with another Whitlock who's working for the other side. He feeds 
information to the opposition, queers their deals, maybe for a while. And maybe 
they got another Whitlock around on their side, but the only ones they got are 
from worlds where he was born a girl. I know that sounds crazy, but it fits."
"Yeah, yeah. It's all crazy, but if it fits, it fits. You're on a roll, Sam, now 
that we're thinkin' the right way. Keep goin'."
"Okay, so the only other Whitlock they have on their side is a girl, but she 
looks a lot like old Marty, enough to pass, if you didn't get right up close 
with somebody who knew him for years; and they need a way to make the switch so 
their Whitlock can report, get stuff, whatever, and they also need a way so that 
if anybody catches on and fingers Marty as a girl, it seems convincing. Could be 
this would give our G.O.D., Inc. boys a real perverse thrill. Marty takes off 
work, goes down to Sansom, comes out later as a drag queen, and everybody's 
happy—while the real Marty is uptown making deals or making calls to his bosses. 
If anybody noses around, there's the dresses in the bedroom, and Minnie's big 
mouth and that album, which, I bet, is part of the family album of the girl 
Whitlock. It's so wild it worked for two years, partly because nobody could 
dream that they'd fake it that way, and partly because it was so well 
contrived."
"Yeah, it hangs tough, I admit, 'cept for a couple of extra problems, like Mrs. 
Whitlock and the other female Whitlock."
"His wife's no problem. They got the real Marty someplace, remember, so there's 
blackmail, and she's got two vulnerable kids away from home. For all we know, 
they went the whole hog and switched her, too. She didn't seem all that worried, 
anyway. As for the other woman, well, they had to get their own girl out of 
there before it all fell apart and she was snared, right? Be kinda hard to 
explain her to the feds after the first physical, after all. So the big double 
has to get out, but keep in character, keep convincing. They built this whole 
transvestite thing as a cover, after all. Now the feds swallow it, we swallow 
it—but sooner or later somebody's gonna put Amanda Curry someplace while Marty 
was clearly someplace else. They need both a him and a her, so they send in 
another to be Amanda while the female double plays Marty. It worked. We were 
fooled. So was the hitter—the male Whitlock sniper. All the heat's away from 
Philadelphia and over in Oregon where it can be controlled. They probably even 
left that old business card behind the dresser in the apartment deliberately. It 
also explains why they delayed and then sat around here, and why they used the 
Curry credit cards all the way. Decoys, while they cleaned up the mess back 
home. And we were so damned proud of ourselves!"
Brandy seemed disturbed. "Yeah, Sam, it all makes sense, if anything in this 
craziness makes sense, but I don't like the other things it says."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Sam—if there are lots of Whitlocks, male and female, and we can talk so easily 
about maybe another Mrs. Whitlock, too, then—how many of us are there? Sams and 
Brandys, I mean?"
I hadn't thought of that angle. "Um.. . . Yeah." Fat Sams, thin Sams, Sams who 
married nice Jewish girls and sold cars in Harrisburg, Sams who went on the pad. 
Maybe even Sams who were nice Jewish girls. And Brandys who went to college, 
Brandys who married middle-class black guys, Brandys who wound up whoring for 
pimps in Camden, maybe even Brandys who made Spade & Marlowe the biggest agency 
in the area. I couldn't imagine Brandy as a guy, but there were probably some of 
those, too. The fact was, the very idea that the two of us would ever even get 
together at all, let alone hit it off and get married, was pretty slim. 
Everything was against it, and lots of how it fell together was pretty 
improbable—like real life, I guess. Everything was a string of both likely and 
improbable events and turns, luck, breaks, or lack of breaks, you name it. 
Everybody's life was like that, from the small to the famous and the infamous. 
What kind of impossible breaks did it take for a nerd and loser like Hitler to 
get where he got, and stay there? The odds were that in most of the worlds like 
ours, he never got that far.
Now it was clear, at least, why we were under wraps, and under suspicion as 
well. Even if they found out that our story checked exactly, they had to have a 
way to make sure we were the same Brandy and Sam who went through all that. If 
these people even had the same prints, I wondered how it was possible to 
determine that for sure. Maybe they couldn't. They sure couldn't with the 
Whitlocks. If that was the case, then any organization that played God with so 
many lives and worlds, and played with creeps like Big Tony, Little Jimmy, and 
the drug boys, might not be willing to take a chance on who we were. We could be 
buried up in the mountains here on a world not our own, and that would be that. 
Back home, people disappeared every day and were never found again. If the abbot 
objected, or made some kind of moral protest, it would be just as easy to send 
us to some world like the Garden that maybe was the end of the line for a spur, 
not likely to ever be used again.
Whatever, it was sure that we weren't going to break out of here. Oh, I think 
maybe we could have suckered the guards, maybe gotten out of the building, and 
just maybe clean away—but then what? We couldn't exactly be unobtrusive—it was 
pretty clear that nobody around here had ever seen a black-person before. No 
job, no real clothes—and not even any knowledge of what the regular folks wore 
for clothes. No, we were stuck, and any play we might make we'd have to make out 
of desperation.
It was well after dinner on the third night that they came for us. Two of the 
guards came in and motioned for us to get up and get ready to go someplace. We 
were more than ready, although we figured that they were just going to take us 
back up to the abbot. Instead we found ourselves outside in the dark—it always 
seemed to be in the dark, these days—and being marched toward a fairly 
fancy-looking stagecoach. The driver up top was an indistinct figure dressed all 
in black himself, and when we got in, we found ourselves shut up with a fugitive 
from a Robin Hood movie. Well, all right, the outfit was a dark purple and not 
forest green, and the boots and belt were a dull, dark red, but you get the 
picture, right down to the little three-cornered hat. I first took this 
character for a young guy, but on second look it was a real boyish-looking girl, 
no makeup, short hair combed and parted on the side.
The coach lurched forward and we almost found ourselves in the girl's lap. I 
used to watch all sorts of westerns and costume epics, with stagecoaches and 
chariots and all the rest, but I never realized how damned bumpy, rocky, and 
downright uncomfortable they were.
The girl smiled. "It takes some getting used to, but it's easier if you just 
relax." She had one of those low, husky kinds of voices that also could be 
either male or female. I was getting my fill of androgyny by now.
"And who might you be? Maid Marian?" I asked her.
She threw me a curve, with her reply, because she knew who Maid Marian was, and 
because she seemed to know things about our own world: "And you are the 
barbarian warrior with his Numidian queen, right?"
"Touche! So what's this all about before I get so seasick on this meat wagon 
that I can't make out what you're saying?"
"My name is Jamie," she said, and she had that same English-type accent as 
everybody else around here. "My occupation is somewhat like your own. I am in 
the security division, northwest zone."
"For the Company, the Church, or the local government?" Brandy put in.
"For all of them, to one degree or another. Someone wants to talk with you under 
more controlled circumstances, and we thought it best to get you out of there as 
quickly as possible, before they started getting ideas on their own."
"You mean they do have an Inquisition, then?" I said. "I knew it!"
"An Inqui—" She paused and laughed. "That's amusing. Surely you don't think that 
the place up there is Christian, do you? Oh, there are Christians about, here 
and there, but they were never the major force in this world that they were in 
so many others."
Brandy looked thoughtful. "Come to think of it, we never did see a cross. Not a 
one. Even that abbot wore some kind of round medal."
She nodded. "I fear they are an odd lot, although they have a great deal of 
influence in this district. They worship a whole pantheon of gods and demigods, 
and spirits of trees, animals, fire, you name it. Oh, on the whole they're a 
very moral and sanctimonious lot. They never sacrifice anyone to the gods who 
doesn't go willingly."
Brandy and I gulped at the same time. "They sacrifice—people?" she managed.
"Oh, yes. Not very often. Usually only at solstices and equinoxes unless there's 
some special need or occasion. As I say, they have a lot of power and influence 
about, and everyone's a bit frightened of them anyway, so they make perfect 
allies. We maintain them and allow them a measure of authority, and in exchange 
they run the station for us. It works out rather well all around, and has for 
quite a long time. You do realize by now, I hope, what sort of operation you've 
blundered into?"
"We sorta figured it out," Brandy told her. "Not that it's clear or that we can 
follow everything or accept everything, and maybe we guessed wrong here and 
there, but I think we got it.
There's a whole lot of Earths, and somebody runs the railroad between 'em."
"The railroad is a near-perfect analogy," Jamie replied. "Yes, there are a lot 
of Earths. A lot of universes, really, all one right after the other, as far as 
anyone can find. They all exist basically in the same place, only removed so 
that what happens in one has virtually no effect in the ones on either side. 
There are occasional mild problems, which are usually taken as ghosts, spirits, 
premonitions, visions, or whatever, usually connected with an overlap between 
specific people or places. Some worlds that have destroyed themselves have bled 
their poisons as well, drastically changing or even destroying their neighbors 
at the same time. Well, on one of these worlds, a minor company—formed in a 
barn, basically, by some very bright people—discovered how to go between them. 
Such a discovery led to profits, and power, and what we have today."
Brandy peered closely at the woman. "And just what do we have today?"
"Why, the Company, of course. The biggest thing that ever was created, bar none. 
You've had a taste of it."
"More than a taste," I noted sourly. "You haven't been stuck in these hills for 
a year, living on apples and nuts, with nowhere to go and little or nothing to 
do."
She shrugged. "No one told you to break into the Company. No one took a sword to 
your throat and forced you into the Labyrinth. Occasionally there's a field 
disturbance and someone from one world suddenly passes through to the next, 
which is why all worlds have their mysterious disappearances and occasional 
appearances, but that didn't happen to you. I have read your file."
That got Brandy's interest up. "So there's a file on us, is there?"
"There is a file on everyone who ever, wittingly or unwittingly, got involved 
directly with the Company. I must say that you two look only vaguely like your 
pictures, "though. That's one major reason we were wondering about you, you see. 
The boss finally had to trace you entirely through the, network to verify your 
story, and that only makes us ninety percent certain. You could have been 
intercepted at any number of points, particularly since the time line of that 
siding you were on is quite fast." I stared at her. "What do you mean by that?" 
"Well, there's a centerpoint of sorts. Worlds go out in all directions from it. 
It's not the one that runs the Labyrinth—it's really not much of anything—but 
it's likely it's the prime world, the seat of creation. The time rate there is 
also the base rate, and it's quite slow, relatively speaking. The further away 
from the centerpoint, the faster the time rate seems to be for each given world. 
It's purely subjective—you never know the difference unless you travel often 
between them. Take this world, for instance. I have no idea of the true ratio, 
but it's probable that an hour here would be the equivalent of, say, a day in 
your home universe, or perhaps the reverse. That abandoned experimental 
botanical region the switchman shuttled you to when it was clear you were not 
authorized on the system—which is one of the standard procedures for such 
things—runs at a very fast clip. That's why it was used for organic experiments. 
You plant your seeds and they grow at a normal rate relative to their universe, 
but since it's hundreds of times faster than the universe of the planter, he or 
she just pops back over in a day or two, and it's a year later to the plants."
Brandy shook her head wonderingly, and I was feeling a little dizzy. "You mean," 
Brandy said, "that we spent a year there but maybe only a coupla days passed 
back home?"
"Yes, something like that. That's why it took so long to trace you, you see. The 
switchman's report on you hadn't even reached Company security for processing 
when you popped up here. I fear that switchman you talked into sending you here 
is going to get badly disciplined."
"You've been to our world?" Brandy pressed. "You seem to know a lot about it."
"Not yours. Good heavens, that would push chance too far. One like yours, 
anyway, and several more. Part of our promotional training. I must tell you that 
I wasn't all that impressed. All that dehumanizing machinery, the ugly smells, 
the coldness of the people, the crime and corruption and fears and tensions. ... 
We've had three murders in this barony in the past four years, and all were 
crimes of passion. It's quite peaceful and quite secure. Oh, I suppose your 
medicine is wondrous, and perhaps the good of such mass communication and 
transport outweighs the bad, but somewhere along the line you seem to have lost 
your sense of values and proportion. Your woodland is vanishing, your animals 
and plants are dying, your water and air are fouled, and you live in houses like 
forts behind heavy locks and steel bars, and fear to venture out alone at night. 
Everyone was so upset, when I was there, that a bunch of fanatics had blown up 
some ambassador in some foreign kingdom; yet right then, people were getting 
robbed, raped, and murdered all around them, and everybody seemed to think that 
was normal. No, thank you. I like it here."
It was a hell of a speech, and I wished I could come up with a good, snappy 
retort, but I was still trying to find the flaw in her reasoning.
"Tell us about this place, then," Brandy invited. "What is your world like?"
"Oh, it's not organized very differently from anywhere else. There's an emperor 
here, one of several for all the empires about, and under him there are kings 
and a few queens who run countries within the empire. The countries are divided 
into smaller and smaller units under dukes, barons, and the like, each taking a 
sacred oath to obey and defend the one above him. The nobility accounts for 
about four percent of the population. Then there are the knights and their 
families, the heads of individual estates and the leaders of police and 
military, which are one and the same thing here, and that's another five percent 
or so. The rest of the people, except for the townspeople and traders and the 
like, are bound to the land. They work, and in exchange are given food, 
clothing, housing, general cradle-to-grave care, and protection from any bad 
elements."
"That's the kind of thing they used to have in olden days," Brandy pointed out. 
"I forget its name, but what it boils down to is that about ten percent have 
everything, and everybody else supports them as slaves."
"It's feudalism. That's the word," I put in.
"No, it's not slavery," Jamie argued. "In the world like yours that I lived in 
for a year there were several different forms of government. One was called a 
democracy, but in it about five percent of the people had about ninety-five 
percent of the wealth, and most of the political power. You got to vote for 
which of the two people put up by the rich you wanted. Then there were two other 
systems that differed in ways too subtle to matter. One had the government 
owning everything in common, and was run by a single party and a bureaucracy 
that amounted to about nine percent of the people. The party made all the 
decisions and lived quite well, and the rest of the people worked for whatever 
the party gave them. The third system was sort of like the other two combined, 
with the rich owning everything and being members of a party who all sat down 
together and decided what would be made, what would be sold, and at what price 
and profit, and what wages and working conditions would be. In all cases it 
seemed that you were talking about ten percent ruling ninety percent absolutely. 
I may be a bit dull on political matters, but I couldn't really see much 
difference deep down. No people in this land may be bought or sold. It is 
immoral. They remain with the land, no matter who becomes their lord."
I began to realize that they'd sent us a live one to soften us up. Trapping us 
in a coach with Jamie in the middle of the night was worse torture than sending 
us back to the Garden.
"And you? Do you belong to somebody's land?" Brandy asked.
"Oh, my, no! I'm the daughter of a knight. The fifth daughter. My parents were 
always preparing my sisters for marriage and position, and I was always down 
learning fencing with the squires and outdoing the boys at their own games. Why 
not? I never liked the idea that men were inherently better at some things than 
women, and, besides, by the time they got to me there was pretty slim pickings 
in terms of wealth or advancement possibilities. My father, noting my talents 
and having surrendered at his attempts to make a lady out of me, introduced me 
to a man who turned out to be a marketing representative with the Company. My 
contacts and position have allowed me to aid my family, so they are content; and 
my job suits my own proclivities, so I am content. The Company is male at the 
very top, but no one not born on that world can be on the very top anyway, and 
that takes both talent and relatives. There is, however, a considerable career 
path an ambitious and smart woman might take, and that is sufficient for me."
I was about to ask whether she liked boys or girls best, but Brandy read my mind 
and gave me a poke in the side. What the hell. Diplomacy was a part of the 
detective's art at times.
It was nearing dawn when we began to slow, maybe three or four hours out. I 
didn't know much about horses, but I figured we'd have to stop just to rest 
them. We were coming into a town of some kind, down low, and in the distance I 
heard an eerie and very mechanical whistle blow. "What's that?" I asked.
"A train. What else would it be except a train or the fire alarm?" Jamie asked 
casually. "They can't get steamboats this far upriver."
And here I was just getting used to the idea of being in the land of King Arthur 
or something. "You have steam stuff?"
"Oh, yes. We're not primitives, after all. Steam is at the heart of the 
emperor's power, for only the emperor runs things of steam, and licenses and 
schools all those who operate such devices. When I was little I once had a dream 
of being the first female train driver, but that's just not done here. One of 
the empires over in Africa, I hear, is a matriarchy and there it's possible, but 
that's not the way of my own emperor or land. As I say, there are trade-offs, 
and I have found my own niche."
"Yeah," Brandy whispered a bit sourly. "Everybody born at the top thinks that 
way."
To my surprise we went right down to a small railway station, and then alongside 
the tracks, slowly. There wasn't a lot of light, but the trains used in this 
world looked more primitive than museum pieces, not even as fancy as the 
wild-west trains or those of the Civil War. The cars were all wood and looked 
like they belonged to an enlarged antique Christmas train set. Most were 
freight, but the last car was an old-time passenger car, and it was the only 
part of the train that was lit.
We pulled up to it, and Jamie reached over, opened the door, then hopped out and 
helped us both down. We were stiff and I, at least, was starting to feel my lack 
of sleep. I wasn't tired enough, though, that I didn't see a dozen or more black 
shapes lurking about the yard. Whoever this was, he carried a real heavy 
bodyguard.
The car was divided into two parts, a parlor area and a sleeping area, and we 
entered the parlor and took seats in lavish surroundings. There was gold trim 
and velvet seat covers and the curtains were fine silk. It was the kind of car 
old royalty must have owned in Europe back in the nineteenth century.
A man entered, wearing a maroon dressing gown, a pipe in his mouth. He was a 
large man, rather handsome with a full brown beard just going to gray, nicely 
trimmed hair of the same color and condition, and a large build. His gray eyes 
surveyed us with some bemusement, and he smiled and came fully into the parlor. 
"You must pardon my meeting you like this," he said to us in a voice that was 
full and sonorous and more classical American than English, "but I'm afraid I 
hadn't planned on fitting any of this into my schedule. This world isn't one 
where you expect your tea to be late or anything more complex than a toothache." 
He paused a moment. "Oh, pardon. Jamie, you wish to make the formal 
introductions?"
The security agent stood. "Sir, Mr. Samuel Horowitz and his wife, Brandy 
Horowitz. May I present the chief of operations for the northwest district of 
the Company?"
The man smiled and stuck out a hand. "Lament Cranston, at your service," he said 
pleasantly.
 
7.
A Choice of Futures
 
There was a sense of total unreality about sitting in an antique railroad car, 
surrounded by a world still stuck mostly in the Middle Ages, and having the 
Shadow come up and introduce himself. I figured I needed sleep worse than I 
thought.
"You seem startled by my name," Cranston noted. "Have you encountered an 
alternate me?"
"Not exactly," I told him, "but if you can't cloud men's minds so they cannot 
see you, it'll be a big disappointment to us."
He frowned. "Invisibility? Haven't heard of that one."
"Your name was attached to a fictional detective who could, back in my world."
He laughed pleasantly. "Well, that's flattering. It does happen, you know. 
Everything happens, you see."
He sat down, and just after, we felt the car lurch and there was a loud sound 
behind us. They were adding cars, it seemed.
"Brandy, Sam—I hope I may call you that— just how much do you understand of all 
this?"
"They got it pretty clear. Surprisingly clear," Jamie assured him.
"I don't know how it's possible, but we have to figure there's a lot of Earths 
one on top of the other," Brandy told him. "And your Company can go between."
"Very good!" Cranston exclaimed, sounding quite pleased. "There's not merely a 
lot of Earths, there's apparently a number approaching infinity. An enormous 
amount have no human life at all, and many have no life of any kind. Others have 
developed rather differently, with different species dominating the worlds. 
We're in what we call the 'human' band, although that's misleading and an 
insulting term in many ways. It's just that the men who discovered the infinite 
worlds and the way to go between are from a world where people evolved much the 
same as your ancestors and mine did. We prefer to call the band the Type Zero 
band, and those Earths which developed quite different advanced forms are Type 
Ones, Type Twos, and so on. Each band is vast in and of itself, with uncountable 
variations of the same basics. Far too many for our people to even have 
sufficient numbers of live bodies to check them out."
I thought about it. An infinite number, with thousands, maybe millions, or more 
varying the norm. I couldn't really grasp it, even though I could accept the 
reality of it because here I was in another of them.
"The physics is far too esoteric to explain, if I could," Cranston continued. 
"It's a matter of perception, they tell me. I had it gone through a hundred 
times and it still made my head swim. All their histories date to the same 
event, a big explosion that began the universe but also created an infinite 
series of universes, all overlaid one atop the other. So much of all this 
development is chance, though, and none of them developed precisely the same 
way. In a sense, you could just think of the history of the universe and all the 
chance occurrences and improbabilities that went into the way it is now, and 
then step back and say, 'Everything that might possibly have happened 
differently, did'—somewhere."
"And you're milking them all," Brandy commented.
"Well, yes, of course we are. Only a very few—representative ones from the 
regions of more dramatic departures in history, culture, and development. We 
have perhaps a dozen established stations in your area of the Type Zero 
spectrum, all well apart. Occasionally we can open a temporary station stop—a 
flag stop, we call it—when we need something specific from a close neighbor, 
such as someone's exact counterpart. That, of course, breeds the curses of this 
network. You live in constant paranoia in this job, never a hundred percent 
certain if the person you're talking to is the exact same one you think or 
someone else. And, as you can well understand, any organization with this amount 
of power makes enemies. Some just want the power for themselves. Some believe we 
have an ideological mission to remake all the worlds into whatever vision the 
group has in mind. Others think it's immoral to do what we do, or are troubled 
by our methods; and still others want free and unlimited access to the network 
with no restrictions, which would bring chaos. You see how it is."
We nodded, because we did see. "I know you're in bed with some pretty 
disreputable elements back home," I noted. "I can see how that sort of thing 
would upset people."
The train lurched and then began to move into the dawn. We were clearly not 
going to remain in central Oregon much longer.
"Sam, Brandy—look. The Company is not heartless, even though it must sometimes 
seem pretty ruthless. We've seen the horrors humans can do to other humans in 
all their worst aspects, but we can't cure the ills of an infinite number of 
worlds. It simply isn't possible. We took the view, long ago, that we would not 
interfere in the development of worlds in any way that would induce dramatic 
change, with a single exception: We can't even hope to prevent mass destruction 
of humanity where it might occur, but when it is clear that a holocaust of that 
magnitude is about to take place, and that world adjoins worlds where it is not, 
we endeavor to stop it. That alone taxes our resources, but something like a 
nuclear exchange of massive proportions is so catastrophic it actually can bleed 
over, poisoning the worlds on either side for some distance, killing those 
nearest and dramatically altering others further away. That is something we feel 
we must do, no matter what the cost. If a world blows itself away, it is tragic 
and we can't stop it, but when it takes up to billions of others with it—we must 
try."
"That sounds admirable enough," I admitted.
"Otherwise, we establish stations and spurs, and that takes resident Company 
personnel. We're so stretched now, that often that personnel is of a different 
type, and thus can't even operate freely within the world. For what we want, we 
are dependent on setting up a network of natives, people from that world. In 
many cases, the most efficient way to gain access to whatever we want quickly 
and unobtrusively is to co-opt the criminal element, particularly if it is well 
organized and powerful. They understand wealth, power, and secrecy. I looked up 
your world. We've only had stations there for thirty years or so. The easiest 
way into the so-called Western World was through its criminal organizations, 
which were organized much like corporations. They act as autonomous subsidiaries 
of the Company, and only those at the very top know the truth—and they don't 
mind. Control them, and their inheritors, and leave everything else running 
normally, and we get what we want."
Brandy sighed. "Let me get this straight. You're sayin' that the Mafia is a 
wholly owned and operated subsidiary of this Company of yours?"
"Well, yes, among others. It's different here, because this society is far more 
simply organized. Here we simply need to control some key members of the 
nobility and influential religious groups. The biggest problem is being 
dependent on the slow transportation system and the very slow communications 
here."
"If they got steam now, they're about ready to explode into real technology," I 
noted.
"No, that's unlikely. Most of the basic research here has been done already. 
Most of it is suppressed, sometimes forcefully. The rulers here, those at the 
empire level, want no radical changes beyond what you see. I suspect we may have 
overdone it at the beginning, when we showed certain key people other worlds, 
worlds like yours. To them, those worlds are the stuff of nightmares."
There was little to say to that. "Might it be presumptuous to ask where we're 
heading?" I asked, trying to steer things to a more practical point. "And what 
you plan to do with us?"
"We are heading south to my beach house," he told us. "There we'll get you 
cleaned up, groomed, dressed, and whatever, and there you can be examined by 
staff personnel. I have a few ideas right now, but until we know more I won't be 
able to give much more information, I fear. We've hooked up a sleeper and a 
diner to the train. Just berths, I'm afraid, but they will allow you to get some 
sleep. Tomorrow will be early enough to discuss the future. Nothing is hurried 
here."
We were treated with every courtesy by Cranston and his staff while we were on 
the journey, but Jamie was there with us any time we weren't in the sleeper, and 
when we were, others outside and all around made sure we stayed there. They 
would talk about pleasantries or maybe the land or any kind of general things, 
but nothing specific, and certainly nothing more about the Company. Cranston 
kept to himself a lot, apparently working in his room, but he made appearances 
for meals and occasional drinks.
In the sleeper, Brandy wondered where all this was leading. "I can't get a 
handle on the man, Sam. He's the kind of man who don't mess with you unless you 
can do him some good, but what could we do for him in this place? Is he gonna 
ask us to kill somebody for him and take the fall, or what?"
"I don't know, babe. We have to roll with him for now, though, because he's the 
boss and there's no place to run. I know what you mean, though. He's too high up 
to mess with us for this length of time unless he has something in mind, but 
he's too low down in the Company totem pole to really do us much good."
Cranston's "beach house" turned out to be a monstrous Elizabethan-style estate 
overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It was, however, more than a little isolated, 
forcing us to ride south for most of the day and the next night on the train, 
then transfer to coaches and basically climb a mountain on a pretty poor dirt 
road for maybe thirty miles to get over to it. It had a permanent staff, but was 
clearly supplied by. sea somehow, and not off that rickety road with the hairpin 
curves. The view from his terrace was beautiful, though, and his living room 
could hold four hundred families from a Camden project with room left over.
A staff was there, and no matter how they dressed or talked, it was clear from 
the outset that absolutely no one in or around that house was anything but a 
Company employee, and from some of the accents and what they knew, it was 
equally clear that few were natives of this world.
We were measured for clothing by people who'd done it a lot, and somehow some of 
that clothing was ready for us within hours of our arrival. While waiting, each 
of us was given a full physical by a doctor who knew far more about medicine 
than any doctor should in this world, and maybe more than a doctor would back 
home. The place had no electricity and was fireplace-heated at night, but that 
doctor had instruments that worked by battery power. He pronounced us both in 
excellent physical shape, except for Brandy's vision, and used a small device to 
measure her eyes.
We went back to the bedroom, a luxury affair with big, wide bed, fireplace, 
redwood furnishings, and the rest, and when the clothes arrived, so did a pair 
of glasses. They were round and seemed rimless, but the bridge and earpieces 
were a golden bronze color. They looked kind of cute on her, although they 
magnified her already big eyes somewhat. She put them on and, standing stark 
naked, walked to the mirror and looked at herself in wonder. "Sweet Jesus!" she 
breathed, and it occurred to me that it was the first time she was really seeing 
herself clearly in the reflection. Me, I'd been admiring her new head of hair 
since I came in. So what if it was mostly gray? It was hair, damn it, where hair 
hadn't been in years and where, I had thought, hair would never be again.
Just the exercise and the food of the Garden had dropped almost a hundred pounds 
from her, replacing most of it with good muscle. The only places she hadn't lost 
much were in her face, which was still round and apple-cheeked, and in her 
breasts, which had stubbornly refused to shrink much. Her ass and hips were 
tight, her waist very slender. I made her at something around 40-24-36, and she 
was something else.
Me, I had a full head of hair, although it was uneven, hanging down the neck 
maybe an inch, and a full and pretty ragged beard of the same color. I always 
had a lot of body hair, but it was uneven; now I had hair on my hair—chest, 
arms, legs, you name it. I'd slimmed down and firmed up pretty good myself, 
although it was still the same old nose and mouth and eyes that peered back at 
me, maybe a little more worn and wrinkled. It was easy to see, though, why we 
wouldn't match the IDs Cranston had gotten. Our own relatives wouldn't recognize 
us now. I had a sinking feeling they would, sooner or later, though. I 
remembered that when I got out of Basic I looked almost this good, and I'd sworn 
to myself I'd keep it, but it hadn't lasted six months after I was free to do 
what I wanted again. I was a born self-abuser.
"Oh, Sam, this is dy-no-mite!" she squealed. "If I ever thought I could look 
this way I'da worked at it. I sure as hell ain't gonna let this go, no sir!" She 
turned to me. "You don't look so bad yourself, you know. Get that hair and beard 
trimmed up and you'll be the sexiest man in any of these worlds."
We examined the clothes. They'd only sent up one set each, but what could you 
expect from six-hour tailoring? Brandy's outfit was all tan or beige, and mostly 
soft calfskin lined with thin fur, maybe rabbit, that also served as trim. She 
had a pair of those Robin Hood boots like Jamie had, the kind where the tops are 
kind of folded down, although with thick but not real high heels; a matching 
dress that wasn't quite knee-length but was cut real loose; a pullover wool and 
cotton sweater dyed to match the rest; and a thin calfskin belt that was more 
ornament than necessary.
My outfit was more along the lines Jamie had worn, but was even more Robin 
Hoodish in being a real dark green. Except for the boots—which were leather and 
had the same kind of turned-down-top design but which had lower, flatter heels 
than Brandy's—mine was all cloth, mostly cotton it seemed, with pants, a 
pullover shirt that nonetheless had a low cut exposing some of my hairy chest, 
and a thin black leather belt that also wasn't really needed. There was some 
stretch, but those pants and that shirt were tight. If anybody in this world had 
discovered underwear, it was for strictly formal occasions, and even though the 
pants were reinforced in the crotch, no lady would ever have to guess about my 
sex or how big it was. It was crazy—I hadn't had any problem being stark naked, 
but I was more than a little embarrassed at this skintight business. They also 
didn't seem to have invented flys. I'd have to peel this sucker off to piss.
We were called to dinner and served by a staff dressed out of some old English 
movie with the double-buttoned uniforms and knee-length jerkins and high socks 
and all that, even white-powdered wigs, but we dined alone. After, the servants 
took us into separate small rooms off to one side, and we were given hot scented 
baths, which we badly needed, and I got the haircut and trim I needed, and got 
the countless snags out, not without pain, while Brandy got her hair shaped and 
trimmed. She mostly did it herself, she told me; they just didn't know how to 
handle her kind of hair.
Finally, we walked out on the cliffside patio and stared into the darkness while 
the sound of the surf hitting the rocky cliff far below engulfed us. It was not 
at all lit, except for some reflections from the candles and oil lamps inside, 
but it was just light enough to keep from killing yourself and not enough to 
spoil the stars.
"Sam," Brandy sighed, "we've come so far to here, and none of it seems real. I 
think of all of 'em, this seems the least real, includin' that Labyrinth thing. 
I almost feel out of place here. I mean, what's a low-class pair of jokers like 
us doin' in a place like this?"
I nodded and sighed. "Yeah, I think I know how you feel, babe. I don't know 
what's up now, or whether anything is real. I mean, we're not only on another 
world in a fancy place, but it's Lament Cranston's place, for heaven's sake!' 
This is sort of.out of our league, babe. We were back there playing sandlot ball 
and dreaming of making the minor leagues, while preparing to give up the game 
and get real jobs. Now we're in the majors, babe, but as utility men. Expendable 
and maybe useful. Don't kid yourself about the upper-class bit, though. You 
noticed this place? Even the maids got fourteen petticoats on, and the butlers 
could wait on the queen of England dressed like that. Us, they dress like Robin 
Hood and a B-western cowgirl. This may be fancy-made, hand-tailored peasant 
dress, but it's still peasant dress."
"Yeah, well, it's where we should be in this place, I guess. I know tomorrow 
they might serve us up for breakfast, but, right now, I just got no complaints. 
Hell, Sam, we never did have nothin' but each other, and that's what we got 
now." She paused a minute and looked back out into the darkness. "You know, when 
I started missin' them periods back in the Garden, I thought I was pregnant. 
That doctor says no, though. Says it was the food that did it, that I'll start 
gettin' 'em again. That's what made these bodies and your hair so right, you 
know."
I hadn't pressed that point when it was my turn, and I was interested. "You mean 
I'm going to lose it again?"
"Could be. Maybe not. Turns out that place was designed to grow special food 
that would do funny things to your chemistry. Not all by itself, but with 
exercise and sleep and all, it'd pep up your sex parts, change fat into muscle, 
get your hormones really flowing, and it was supposed to be more or less 
permanent. Painless perfection. Even protects against most diseases and promotes 
healin', he said. That's one of the byproducts of working for the Company, I 
think. You know how old he said Cranston was?"
I shrugged. "Forty, maybe forty-five?"
"Seventy-one! That's the kind of stuff they got, Sam."
I swallowed hard. I was nearly perfect now, but if I looked like Cranston at 
sixty, let alone seventy-one, I'd feel more than happy.
"Then I asked him why they abandoned the Garden. He said the stuff was too 
unpredictable and had some side effects, like my extra-big boobs and all that 
fur on you. They got better, more reliable stuff now. The old boy only meant to 
stash us for a few days. Still, I'm almost glad, now, that we got stuck awhile, 
now that we got out. Bein' forced to eat healthy foods, exercise, get in 
condition. We'd never have done that on our own. Still, I can't handle that time 
thing."
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm still finding that one hard to swallow. A year there and we 
haven't even come up to our trial date back home. If that's so, I'd sure like to 
see the look on people's faces if we showed up there looking like this! Nobody 
said how fast this one runs, though. It's between the Garden and home, that's 
for sure, so it's probably fast, too. Not that it makes any difference now, I 
guess."
A butler emerged from the house bearing a silver tray with two drinks. "A light 
liqueur before bedtime, sir and madam?" he asked politely. "It is the master's 
own special stock."
We shrugged, and took them, and the butler went back into the house. We sipped 
the drinks and relaxed, sitting on a redwood love seat on the patio.
"You know," I remarked casually, "one thing's really bothering me. That Garden 
made your vision worse, yeah, but you had lousy vision to begin with. How the 
hell did you ever drive that car without cracking up?"
She chuckled and yawned. "I always had my old pair of glasses in my purse. They 
weren't much for everyday—gave me headaches—and I never liked their looks, but I 
could drive with em."
I clinked glasses with her and we downed the rest of our drinks. "Well," I told 
her, "you make sure you keep wearing those. I like 'em just fine, but I like 
somebody who can see even more. You take 'em off in bed, when you don't need to 
see well." I yawned, too, and started feeling dizzy. The world started spinning. 
"Brandy?"
She slumped over into my lap, out cold, but before I could do anything I slumped 
over, too, and all was darkness.
If you ever had general anesthetic at the dentist's, you know how we felt for a 
considerable time. You're vaguely awake and aware that things are going on, that 
questions are being asked and being answered, things are being done to you, but 
you don't remember what, and you're only vaguely aware that any time is passing. 
Then, slowly, you come out of it, but you feel like you're drowning in the 
bottom of a well and you rise up, try and break the surface, and gasp for air as 
the real world breaks around you.
I sat up and opened my eyes in one quick reflex action. I was in bed, naked, in 
a bedroom that was smaller than the one at Cranston's beach house but still 
quite pleasant. It was still on the beach somewhere; I could hear pounding surf 
and the cries of seabirds outside.
I looked around, head still pounding, and saw Brandy lying there, still out, but 
murmuring agitatedly and occasionally kicking or pushing away in her sleep. My 
head ached, but I figured that was the mickey working its final revenge. A pair 
of French doors led out of the room to my left; a regular door led, I thought, 
to the rest of the house. I managed to get up and walk over to the French doors 
and look out.
We had certainly been moved a great distance. There was a small balcony out 
there, and beyond was the ocean, but not the rocky cliffs and chill foam of the 
northwest's Pacific; white, sandy beach led gently down to it here, and the 
breakers crashed onto a nearly pristine beach. Well out in the water, I thought 
I could see sailboats or something like them, and the whole place looked warm 
and summery in contrast to the chill of Oregon. I didn't know a whole lot about 
the Pacific coast or more than one little corner of Oregon, but I had the 
sneaking suspicion that we'd changed worlds again. How, and why, I didn't know. 
They certainly hadn't lugged us all this way down to Cranston's place just to 
take us back to McInerney.
I looked in the drawer and found clothes there, and in the closet. Not funny 
clothes like we'd been given at Cranston's but real clothes. Shirts, socks, 
pants, even jockey shorts with the label in them. Another drawer had women's 
clothes, including panties and large bras, and the closet had others, from 
informal to a couple of dresses that looked like they could be real interesting 
if filled with a warm body. Maybe there was a different reason why they only 
gave us one set of funny clothes.
Brandy woke up with the same suddenness that I had, and looked around, then 
groaned and held her head. I turned and went over to her. "It passes pretty 
quickly, babe. How you feeling?"
"Oooh! Badder than I felt in a long time!"
I let her come out of it, got up and walked back over to the dresser. Her 
glasses were on top, and I picked them up and brought them back to her. She put 
them on, and started to look around. "New place again, huh?"
"Yeah, more to our style, anyway," I told her.
In a few more minutes she was examining and then checking out some of the 
clothing. She found two boxes, one containing an assortment of jewelry and a 
cosmetic case, the other had a pair of watches along with a beard trimmer and 
comb set. Both watches were the digital-alarm type, one for men and one for 
women. They both said it was 10:34 on August 1. If that related at all to home, 
it had us gone less than two and a half weeks.
"Of course, it don't say what year," Brandy noted.
We slipped the watches on our wrists and began to get dressed, since that seemed 
the thing to do. Since we still seemed to be at the beach and the watches said 
it was August, Brandy went for shorts and a tee shirt and I decided on some 
slacks and a sport shirt. Shoes still felt wrong, but we both figured we'd 
better get used to them again. There was a pair of slip-on moccasins that fit 
nicely on my feet, and Brandy found some sandals. She debated the bra and 
decided not to, for now; although she'd always worn one and even slept with one 
for support, it had been a very long time.
"You tried the door?" she asked me.
I had to admit that I hadn't. "It just didn't occur to me," I told her, walking 
over and turning the knob. The door opened,, without a problem, on a narrow 
hallway. There was a bathroom right there, with clean linen, and we took the 
opportunity to wash our faces and get generally straightened out. Then it was 
time to see just where we were and what this was all about.
There was a modern kitchen with patio doors that led out to a patio, of all 
things. A girl was sitting out there in a skimpy bathing suit, relaxing in a 
lawn chair and sipping on a drink. She saw us and motioned for us to come out. 
It took me several seconds to realize that the girl was Jamie. She still had 
that short haircut, and I think I have bigger breasts than she's got, but her 
body was lean, curvaceous, and unexpectedly feminine shorn of those boyish Robin 
Hood clothes. She had on sunglasses, which weren't a bad idea in that sun.
"Well, hello! Back from the dead, I see," the security agent said cheerfully in 
that London-cultured stage accent of hers. "There's coffee and tea on, if you 
like, or cold drinks in the 'fridge. If you're hungry I could do up some eggs 
and bangers or hunt up some fruit or sweet rolls. Won't take a moment."
Brandy looked at me. "Bangers?"
"I think they're sausages." I turned to Jamie. "I think some coffee and those 
rolls would do me. I think I've had my fill of apples and stuff like that for a 
while." ,
"Maybe some iced tea and some of that fruit," Brandy told her. "After what fruit 
did for me, I'm not gonna switch off."
Jamie hopped up and ran into the house while we took seats around a round lawn 
table shaded with an umbrella stuck up through the center. This was quite nice, 
but it sure didn't make any sense at all.
Jamie was back in less than five minutes with a tray that included what I 
wanted, and not only the iced tea but a whole bowl of fruit—apples, oranges, 
bananas, you name it. I tried the coffee and it tasted very bitter. I was about 
to complain about it, when I suddenly realized just how long I'd been between 
cups, even though I used to run on the stuff. I was always a black-coffee man, 
but this time I added some cream and sugar from a nice little tea service there 
and got it palatable.
Jamie took another chair at the table and relaxed. "So, how do you both feel?"
"Let me get something straight first," I responded. "You are the same Jamie that 
came with us south on the train?"
She laughed. "Oh, yes. Mr. Cranston recommended me for assignment to you for a 
while, and no one who is ambitious ever turns down a promotion."
"I thought you couldn't stand the modern worlds," Brandy put in.
"Oh, it's not standing or not standing, it's that one never has the choice of 
where to work if she wants the good jobs. I certainly wouldn't like to retire 
here, or spend the rest of my life here, but I certainly don't mind working here 
for a while. I admit I could get to like this sort of place very easily."
I nodded. "Just where is this sort of place, if I may ask, and what was all that 
about slipping us both mickeys?"
"Mickeys? Oh, some sort of slang, I suppose. We needed to know just exactly 
whether you were what you claimed to be or not. There was no way to check on a 
switch in Horowitzes, as it were, somewhere along the line, particularly since 
you were involved in some nasty business with the wrong element. We couldn't 
very well do much around the monastery, since if the Labyrinth is infiltrated we 
couldn't know who we might trust up there in case they wanted to falsify the 
results. The beach house was perfect, and we could get some good technicians 
there in a hurry without arousing suspicion or alarm. They put you through the 
most awful tests, I'm afraid, but don't feel singled out. I've been through them 
myself and will probably be through them again. Complete computer analysis of 
your entire body, psychiatric probes and analyses, various kinds of coercive 
interrogation, and all the rest. They know more about the two of you now than 
you know about each other, or yourselves. A great deal of who and what we are is 
in our genes and body chemistries, they tell me, and they can even read those 
codes."
"I gather they were satisfied," I said.
"Oh, yes. They're quite impressed with you, you know. You tracked through that 
whole ugly Philadelphia business all the way to the plant, and then you 
infiltrated the plant, even though you had no idea what you were seeing. Then, 
faced with the evidence of something totally unbelievable, you accepted it and 
worked from there, even figured much of it out. That is impressive. They were 
also fascinated with you as a pair. In spite of vast differences in education, 
background, culture, whatever, the two of you have minds that seem to be very 
much alike. So much so that you almost know what the other is thinking when 
you're concentrating on a common problem. What one lacks, the other has, so the 
fit is nearly seamless. Yet you're so unlikely a couple to ever get together 
that you just prove the old rule that anything that might happen has or will 
happen."
Both of us liked to hear that, although I suspected I'd rather skip the downside 
of the report.
"The proof of that is in your intelligence and aptitude measurements," Jamie 
continued. "Individually, you're not exceptionally above average, either of you, 
but together you have near-genius aptitudes in certain areas, such as puzzle 
solving and deductive reasoning. They like that, which is why we're all here. 
'Here,' by the by, is a small island in the Bahamas group that is wholly owned 
by the Company. You are essentially home."
The funny thing was, I wasn't all that sure I wanted to be "home." There wasn't 
a whole lot here for us, after all. "So why the Bahamas and all this, then?" I 
asked her.
"We'll know more when the Company personnel arrive, but I think they are going 
to offer you a job with the Company. Something in the line of work you've always 
followed."
Brandy nodded. We had been expecting this, simply because we survived and 
remained in civilization. "Jamie—you've worked with them for a long time. I 
can't say we aren't interested, 'cause if they're as thorough as you say they 
are, they already have a good idea we'll take it, but what if we didn't? I mean, 
I want to know if this is a real proposition or if we have a gun to our heads."
She was silent for a moment, then said, "Well, it's a bit of both, I suppose. 
They prize loyalty highly, for example. As Mr. Cranston told you, there's a good 
bit of paranoia involved in this job, and you survive and prosper by not 
fighting it. You have already caused a lot of trouble not even knowing the 
facts. You could cause a lot more now that you do know, or, worse, you might get 
an offer from the traitors working against us. They probably wouldn't kill 
you—they really don't like people working for them under that sort of coercion 
since they're so easily susceptible to being turned against the Company—but they 
would probably open a quick and temporary flag stop on a world without a 
station, very primitive, the sort of desert-island situation, and implant some 
sort of device that would prevent you ever traveling the Labyrinth again, and 
forget about you. I'm afraid, though, I can't see where your reservations lie. 
You are being offered a great opportunity."
"Their reservations, my dear, are that they are romantics and moralists at 
heart," said a man's voice behind us. We all turned, and even after all this 
time, both Brandy and I gasped.
Martin J. Whitlock IV, male, handsome, pepper-haired and nicely tanned, dressed 
in a colorful sport shirt and slacks and tennis shoes, walked over and pulled 
out the fourth and final chair around the lawn table and sat down. "Isn't that 
right?"
We both continued to stare. Finally I managed, "The real Martin J. Whitlock the 
Fourth, I assume?"
He grinned. "You tracked me down at last. Not, I'm afraid, anywhere near Oregon, 
though."
Jamie looked at him, and then at the two of us, and frowned. "You know each 
other?"
"Only by sight and reputation," Brandy replied. "So we were right about the 
decoy business!"
"It got more and more convoluted as it went along," Whitlock told us. "It was 
kind of insane to begin with, and so it fell apart in an insane way. We'll get 
to that in a minute. Just now we were talking about morality, Mrs. Horowitz. You 
see, Jamie, she's grown up in a pretty poor neighborhood where the pimps and the 
junkies battled for territory, and now she knows the relationship of that group 
to us. You were willing to work for that pig Nkrumah, though."
"That was different," she shot back. "That was crook against crook. You can't 
insist your clients be perfect, but if it was Nkrumah goin' after some poor 
sucker who skipped without payin' 'cause he was scared for his wife and kids, I 
wouldn'ta touched it in a minute."
Whitlock thought a moment. "You ever think of what organized crime really is 
today? I really didn't, until I analyzed it from a strictly business viewpoint, 
because that's just what it is—a business. It fills a gap in the system. People 
get up in arms about immorality, or want to legislate behavior, liberals and 
conservatives alike, and they outlaw all sorts of stuff—but it's stuff that a 
large number of people in society want. Take loan sharking, for example. Anybody 
with any job at all, even a fry cook at McDonald's, can get collateral credit 
for buying furniture, that kind of thing. Like any other bank, no loan shark 
will lend to somebody with no way or means to pay a loan back. They lend to the 
compulsive spenders, the compulsive gamblers, the people with long histories of 
stiffing credit companies, declaring bankruptcy, that sort of thing. Their own 
behavior has made it impossible for them to get credit. Nobody goes out on the 
street with a gun and says, 'You will borrow a thousand dollars from a loan 
shark.' They beat down the shark's doors with pleas. The shark sees they have 
the ability to pay, but the basic collateral is fear. These are people who want 
or need to be coerced, frightened, forced into paying back the loan."
"Yeah, and if you don't, they break your legs," she noted.
He shrugged. "That's why the interest has to be so high. If you have to enforce 
the contract, you remove the guy's ability to repay, and that cost is added on 
to everybody else's loan. It's a business, and a service people want. It's just 
based on a fact of human nature the churches and politicians want to ignore or 
pretend isn't there."
"So you make crooks out of them to get the payback money," I noted.
"Crooks don't borrow from sharks, generally speaking. If you have to stick up a 
store to pay back the shark, you're better off just sticking up the store in the 
first place and saving the interest."
"Yeah, well, what about drugs?" Brandy pressed.
"Another good example. About twenty percent of the country uses illegal drugs 
regularly. I suspect you have. Nobody is forced to use them; they do it by 
choice, and sometimes through self-deception. Nobody thinks they can get hooked. 
But they're so anxious to snort, smoke, or inject drugs into their bodies, 
they'll buy anything from anybody. Even the amateurs get into the act— and then 
we have bloodletting, and innocents die. Organized, with a steady supply at a 
stable price, we keep the victimization generally to those who victimize 
themselves. We don't force anyone to take anything; we just supply the demand 
because nobody legitimate would."
"And cause a crime wave so they can feed their habits," I pointed out.
"Yes and no. They got their drugs before there was organized crime, and they'll 
get their drugs from somebody one way or the other, because that's the kind of 
personalities they have. If the government legalized the stuff and doled it out, 
they'd stop that sort of thing. Otherwise, it's going to happen regardless. The 
demand is there. It's either a bunch of psychotic idiots or it's a business 
organization maintaining a constant supply."
He sighed and shifted in his chair. "You can do this with almost anything. No 
man was ever stopped on the street and had a knife put to his throat and told, 
'You will go have sex with this prostitute.' Yeah, there are some forced into 
it, but you go talk to them sometime. You'll find most took it for the easy 
money, or because they have no sense of their own worth, or they're so insecure 
it's a safe haven. I know you once thought about it, Brandy. I've read your 
file. Now, you were smart and attractive. You could have taken a basic job, a 
fry-cook job, got your GED, maybe gone to college or business school and gotten 
a career job. You know it. You think what your reasons were for considering 
going the whoring route, and you'll see what I mean. Yeah, people get trapped in 
those jobs, but people get trapped in lots of ugly jobs because they're stupid 
or don't think straight or have too many romantic visions. We don't trap them, 
they trap themselves."
He was pretty good at rationalizing, and I knew the arguments from old. They 
were the same kind of arguments vice cops gave for going on the pad, and many of 
them were valid. "You mean those kids who get kidnapped and forced into kiddie 
porn trapped themselves?" I asked him.
"Of course not. They're the dregs of the business and I wouldn't have anything 
to do with them. I have kids, too. If I found them under a rock, I'd turn them 
in. The problem is, when you're working a business that is predicated on the 
idea of supplying goods and services that people want but can't otherwise get, 
you spawn imitators, spinoff businesses, that fill the gaps even you won't. 
Somewhere there are organizations that kidnap blue-eyed blondes for the harems 
of Middle Eastern princes, but that's not us. It's just the proof that wherever 
there is a demand, somebody will supply it. General Ordering and Development 
doesn't even do the criminal stuff. They just use it because it's there, and it 
can't be stopped until human nature is radically altered. It's an unpleasant 
pattern that works well, world after world, because corruption is itself easily 
corrupted. There are countless worlds, and they don't have many people for them, 
but they can't take but so many natives into their confidence or their existence 
is blown, their operation compromised. Crooks take the money and don't ask 
questions even when the requests are pretty weird. Big crooks have resources, 
established channels of information—connections to almost every major business, 
industry, and government institution—and an insular, underground economy ready 
to use. We use it."
"You say 'we,' " Brandy noted. "I gather you're with the Company, but are you 
the native Martin Whitlock?"
He chuckled. "Sure. I am—was—one of the district managers for Company 
Operations. At the start, it was just the matter of getting huge accounts for 
the bank when we were expanding to full multistate operation. They sized me up, 
liked what they saw, and realized that my position was excellent for handling 
operations here in the east. I jumped at it, but it was pretty unnerving for a 
while. While I was training, they brought in another Marty Whitlock, and I mean 
another me. So close he knew all my friends and family. His whole life 
paralleled mine to an incredible degree, except for one important and glaring 
difference. He was gay."
I took in a breath. "Women's clothing, too, I suppose?"
"No, he wasn't a transvestite. In fact, he wasn't comfortable the way he was. 
He'd even married the same woman, but they'd divorced and had no children. It 
was pretty bitter, and Bobbie—his Bobbie—exposed him. She used a private 
detective to find his assignations and document them. You might appreciate that, 
Mr. and Mrs. Morality. He kept most of his money, but he lost his job, position, 
social standing, that sort of thing. He became one of those rich bums with no 
aim or goals in life. The Company tracked him down, recruited him, prepped him, 
and we even tested him out experimentally. Nobody noticed. Bobbie—my own 
wife—knew. She had to. Meeting the both of us at once was a shock, but they can 
really razzle-dazzle you with their power and influence. She bought it, and the 
kids Were both away. He was me while I trained, and old Whitlock never missed a 
phone call. Then, of course, I came back, and you can guess what he thought by 
then."
I nodded. "He liked being back in his old position, having his old family, 
prestige, contacts, and the like. He didn't want to give it all back."
"Right. Oh, they had a world for him, as a reward, that was right up his alley, 
a world where he didn't have to pretend anything, but he saw no reason to start 
again when he already had it. We didn't know it at the time, but he'd already 
started the ball rolling in his favor. Somehow, while I was away, he managed to 
discover somebody in the criminal end who was working for the opposition and 
could get word to others with access to the Labyrinth. He got back and dropped 
from sight, and we couldn't find him. That's when we came up with this insane 
plot. I didn't, but some big airbrain at corporate headquarters did, and just 
like the rest, I was trapped by that time, so I had to go along. I think it was 
because they had two other versions of me that I was recruited in the first 
place, but because of that, some think tank at headquarters—composed of people 
who never had to live this kind of stuff—came up with using one of them, who, of 
course, differed from me in one even more vital way."
"Enter Amanda W. Curry—the W for Whitlock, I assume," Brandy said, nodding.
"Right again. We set up a command post in the apartment up in northeast Philly, 
with special scramblers and devices and remote phone hookups and all the rest. 
We couldn't use private detectives, because we had no idea where the other 
Whitlock was or what he was planning, and they'd always wind up fingering me. 
What we knew was that eventually he had to come to me. We used the mob, of 
course, to be our eyes and ears. Just told them my evil twin brother escaped 
from the asylum and was out to replace me."
"And they bought that?" she asked skeptically.
He shrugged. "Hey—these aren't exactly the intellectual cream of the crop. Mandy 
controlled the network, but I was director of operations, so it was my baby to 
control, and I knew the Company was mostly watching to see how I handled it. Of 
course, the way we had to give anybody the slip was the crazy one the boys back 
at headquarters invented. Mandy and I had the same parents, same society family 
and blue blood, same general aptitudes, so she was a natural to be their 
overseer on the project. When I needed to disappear, I'd walk over to Sansom, 
use a prearranged little hole there to get into deep disguise, while at the same 
time Mandy would also be there. Then she'd walk out as the drag queen Whitlock, 
and I'd get up to the apartment or out to track down leads I couldn't do 
publicly. My double worried me, but our big task was to find who the traitor was 
who'd given him the means, method, and opportunity for all this. That traitor 
was the key to finding him first, and also to making sure we were secure in the 
future. Mandy was about two inches shorter than me, but fingerprints don't lie, 
do they? And she was close enough to me in facial structure and the like to get 
away with it."
"She convinced almost everybody," I told him. "Confused the hell out of us, too. 
Still, the more I think of it, the less wild the idea really was. They didn't 
want to risk another double, but a female Whitlock was somebody different enough 
they could feel reasonably confident about; and you said she inherited your 
position, stock, and aptitudes, so she could run an intelligent investigation, 
understand your business and what you talked about and to whom. Still, in the 
end, it didn't quite work, did it?"
"No," he sighed. "They were too clever. I could be two places at once, but Mandy 
could never take my place in the office. When whoever the traitor was found out 
I was closing in on him, he moved. Left me a whole complicated string of red 
herrings that were very time consuming and very hard to unravel. It took time, 
so I arranged for a business trip as a cover—the Company's handy for that—and 
dropped out for ten days. As soon as I did, though, my double walked in—the very 
next day—and said the trip had been cancelled, and took up my spot in the bank. 
They prearranged this whole dope business—I would never have been directly 
involved in anything like that myself—and nabbed the two and a quarter million 
bucks that brought you into all this. We got the word almost immediately, but 
that put us in a bind. What could I do? Walk in and confront the bastard? You 
see what his plot was. Steal the money, vanish, which would bring me back with 
Nkrumah right on my neck. I would have to liquidate a lot of assets and cover 
the losses myself to save my own neck. He'd have made his point, and I would be 
as good as blackmailed. He could do anything he wanted to me. Ruin me, get me 
killed, anything. He could have it both ways. Be me whenever he wanted to, and 
be a bum playboy entirely on my assets when he didn't."
"And, if he ever got tired of it, he could bump you off anytime and replace 
you," Brandy added. "But I don't get why he didn't just bump you off in the 
first place. I mean, your wife knew, so she couldn't know if it was legit or 
not."
"Uh huh. I wondered, too, until I realized it was that crazy masquerade. Mandy 
confused them. They weren't sure if it was me or if it wasn't. We'd laid a 
pretty good foundation going back quite a ways, using Mandy's old family album 
pictures and stuff like that, so the servants weren't so sure, either. See, if 
Mandy was just me, it was a complication, but if Mandy was an alternate me then 
the Company would know the day after the switch was pulled. If he went along and 
dressed up as Mandy, and Mandy was really somebody else, then the jig was up, 
but if he didn't, then it was a radical change in behavior that would also be 
noticed, since Mandy was intimate with a lot of the gay and transvestite 
communities, and that was one part of my life he didn't share and couldn't fake. 
So, he finally decided half a loaf was better than none, and that he could find 
out the truth later and make decisions then. Either that or give it up—costing 
me a fortune, messing up my credibility, and running away with all that money as 
an untouchable. See what I mean?"
"But you didn't let him get away with it," I noted. "You pulled his plug 
instead."
"I saw no other way. I called in the federal bank people with a phone 
call—anonymous—to just the right people with just the right information. He had 
to skip before they caught him and hung him up to dry. His only chance then was 
to get me first. If I turned up dead, it would be a gangland revenge slaying, 
he'd be legally dead, and free to spend the money. Better than before, since he 
had contacts with the opposition, access to the Labyrinth somehow, and, being 
dead, he could hardly be disgraced. All he needed was my body, and all I needed 
was a trail far away from me that he would follow. That, however, necessitated 
using the fourth me—another female version, as you well know, because we needed 
a female me then. I made a fuss over getting the clothes from the lesbian 
center, which got them suspicious enough to follow me. I tell you, they were so 
incompetent I had a lot of trouble not losing them! Then we cleared out of the 
apartment, leaving the card. Right at the start, before I even called the feds, 
I called and made that Sunday reservation for San Francisco just to give an 
extra signpost and make it easier to find the pair going west."
"Uh huh." It was pretty much as we figured, but the fine details were not 
falling into place and it didn't make me feel too great. The guy had almost 
drawn us a map and detailed instructions, and we thought we were hot shit to 
have sniffed him along! It was pretty humbling.
"We needed another 'Amanda' just in case they were convinced that there were two 
of me, male and female. Mandy played me as a male, which she could do as long as 
you didn't know me, and the other one, who I understand was also Amanda—it was 
our grandmother's name—played herself. She had to look enough like me to make 
the whole scenario we invented fall into place. Of course, the joker was 
Nkrumah, who didn't roll over or put out a contract but instead set the dogs on 
us—pardon, no offense meant. You got to each of the points in the trail first. I 
have the feeling that after the first breakthrough, because you were related to 
Minnie, they all allowed you to be the stalking horse, and just followed the 
trail. One of the people along the way who you contacted or questioned is our 
traitor. He, or she, along with the other me, followed your leash as well. When 
you went up to McInerney, they followed, although I think they already suspected 
the destination. The two Mandys, I'm afraid, were the bait our security people 
used. That's why they hung around where they did, and why they stayed in the 
motel rather than getting out fast. The trouble was, you were the odd couple, 
the complication we couldn't figure."
I nodded. "Yeah. You knew we came from Nkrumah or somebody in that organization, 
but you didn't know if we were the hitters instead of the other Whitlock, or if 
we maybe were setting up the girls for the kill."
"Exactly. Little Jimmy initially just figured you to draw the heat away from his 
boys, but you got results and he let you run. We couldn't figure you—except that 
we could trace you to Little Jimmy's corner of the world, and that was good 
enough. The trouble was, we took our eyes momentarily off the ball while we, 
too, followed you. We figured you had to be with the opposition, knowingly. And 
because everything was concentrated on you, we let my counterpart and a contract 
hood who was free-lance but had done a lot of work for Big Tony's family get by. 
That hood knew his business. A real pro. No phone, no lights, and the girls in a 
room with no back exit in the middle of a concrete block of motel units. I was a 
crack shot in the Marines, and so, of course, was the other me. He would nail 
them in the room, or keep them pinned down until the hood could get right up to 
them and just shoot them down—all before security could get there, thanks to the 
train. Then you stepped in and saved them."
"I got the hood on sheer luck," Brandy told him. "I was blind as a bat, at that 
distance. Guess he just didn't figure we had that kind of firepower. One of your 
girls got—you—with a rifle."
"You can see, though, how it looked to security when they arrived. They still 
didn't know which side you were on, or whether you'd nailed the hood because 
there was no way he could tell which was which in the dark and at that distance. 
They figured the girls sounded the alarm, not you, Mr. Horowitz. Nothing was 
really clear, so they just rousted you until they could treat the girls and get 
the full story. By the time you reached our judge, we knew you'd saved them, but 
we didn't know why, or what game you were playing, so it was decided to buy 
time. Trap you there until we could find out everything about you, and what was 
going on and where you stood, and go from there. We just hadn't realized how 
resourceful you could be."
It made sense. It all hung together. Case solved. Except for a number of very 
puzzling details.
"You still don't know who that traitor was, then? He's still in place there, 
someplace?"
Whitlock nodded. "Yes."
Brandy frowned. "Yeah, but who called off the feds and scared shit out of Little 
Jimmy so's he fired us and scrammed? Who could have that kind of power and 
clout?"
"Good question. And everything in the east is stuck in limbo until we find out. 
Little Jimmy got out clean. We haven't been able to trace him at all. We didn't 
think he'd run, considering we offered to cover his losses. He must have had 
that escape route plotted for years. Either that or he's in a concrete barrel a 
mile down off Cape May."
I grinned, my memory going back what for me was more than a year, although to 
Whitlock it was still current events. "I think I can find him, if he actually 
got away and wasn't hit right then. I don't think he was. I don't know 
why—maybe—" I snapped my fingers. "Sure! Big Tony! Somehow he fed 'em Big Tony 
on a platter before he split. He tied up the mob for a day or two on that, and 
tied up any possibilities of Big Tony's mob making the hit then. He bought time 
that way. No wonder he was scared to death! He was so scared I doubt if he even 
realized it, but he told me where he was headed, generally speaking. I think I 
could find him, if he was telling the truth—and I think he was."
"Big Tony, of course, was a tool I sometimes used, but he had no direct 
knowledge of the Company and its reach. They would hardly use Big Tony's mob to 
hit Nkrumah—or would they? They had motive—the missing money—and they would be 
the perfect foils to do the opposition's dirty work with no traces. Hmmmm. . .." 
Whitlock paused for a moment, thinking. "Interesting. You know he left clean. 
Didn't take the money. Hell, the paperwork wouldn't be done on it by now!"
"Clean. . . . No, not clean, and not with a slush fund, either, although I think 
he has one. Somebody else agreed to cover him first. That means he knows 
something." I had an unpleasant thought. "Once well away, though, they could hit 
him without it even making the papers. Save themselves money and a leak. They 
just got him out so he wouldn't turn stoolie to the feds. But the feds'd give 
him protection, and no money. He took the offer of a hideout and money from 
whoever it is, instead, but he's asking for a bullet now, if it hasn't been done 
already."
"You think he wouldn't guess that and maybe run somewhere else?"
Brandy laughed. "Sure, he'd take all the precautions, but he wouldn't run no 
matter how scared he was until he had the money. Money is life to Little Jimmy."
I thought a moment. "You know, if I don't shave, he wouldn't recognize either of 
us right now. Nobody drops a hundred pounds in this short a time, or grows a 
full real beard. Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance they haven't hit him yet, 
want to let things cool down first, up in Philadelphia; distance the hit from 
the rest of the stuff."
Whitlock smiled. "You are interested in the job, then."
Brandy held up a hand. "Uh uh, baby. Wait a minute. Yeah, we're interested. Real 
interested. But this is strictly free-lance right now. You can hire Spade and 
Marlowe, but you can't buy 'em. Not yet."
"Fair enough. Unlimited expenses, but one condition."
"Yeah?"
"Jamie goes along. You tell her what you need and she'll get it. She'll be the 
comptroller and contact on this. For obvious reasons I can't show my face 
anywhere right now, and I can't dare even try to clean up this mess until 
everything's tidy. I love my wife, you see. I love my children, too. I don't 
want them endangered or pulled into this, but I miss them. You have the vast 
resources of G.O.D., Inc. at your disposal. Find Nkrumah, if he's alive. Find 
that traitor. Let me go home."
I looked at Brandy, and she looked back at me and winked.
By God, the game was afoot!
 
8.
Taking on the Competition

We still didn't quite know what to make of Jamie, other than the obvious fact 
that she was holding our leash. We could pretend we were independents with a 
client again, but we knew better. We were there because Whitlock needed us; 
because all his money and power and fancy resources couldn't take him into the 
neighborhoods and classes where we worked best. What I mean is, you couldn't 
really penetrate Jamie's masks. She could accept without a qualm working for a 
company that at least aided and abetted half the crime in the Western World, yet 
she detested the crime-ridden cities and the atmosphere of fear that such 
activities helped promote. She seemed perfectly at home in our world, yet was a 
native of a place that had old-time steam trains, castles, baronies, and no 
electricity or working toilets. She had also seemed quite mannish, maybe more 
than a little butch, back in her own world, yet seemed girlishly feminine now. 
She was a bundle of contradictions, and when you saw that, you knew you never 
saw the real person at all, just whatever act or mask they wanted you to see at 
any given time.
Identification and papers were no problem; they'd brought all our stuff to the 
Bahamas as well, including our driver's licenses, P.I. licenses, and the like. I 
would have preferred ones with aliases, but we just didn't have the time. I 
certainly expected that if I found Nkrumah at all, he'd be stone-cold dead, but 
every minute wasted was one that might guarantee that fact. At least the Caymans 
weren't very formal, and we were already sort of in the Caribbean. Of course, I 
had no real idea of where the Caymans were, but I remembered hearing they were 
pretty loose and pretty poor.
I'd always wanted to fly as a passenger in one of those luxury business jets, 
sipping martinis at twenty thousand feet, but all they had on their island was a 
glorified Cessna with cramped quarters and seats that looked designed for the 
Army. The pilot was a big, black Bahamian man who looked like he'd been 
everywhere and seen everything and had never been impressed. He was very well 
paid, and he asked no questions of his passengers that had anything to do with 
business. He said to just call him Mike.
We flew over long stretches of water with just occasional tiny islands for 
hours, then came up on a huge landmass. Brandy leaned forward and shouted at 
Mike over the incessant engine noise, "What's that below we're flying toward?"
"Oh, dat's Cuba, m'um," he responded casually. "We hav'ta land there to get 
enough fuel to take us the rest of the way."
"Cuba!" both Brandy and I exclaimed at once. "You can't land there! We're 
Americans!" I had visions of being forced down by Migs and getting thrown in a 
Cuban jail for a year or two.
"No, m'um," Mike replied, sounding unworried. "You are passengers on a General 
Corporation plane on Company business. The government, dey see eye to eye with 
de Company on lots of t'ings. You bring hard currency, you be surprised how nice 
dey be down dere."
I seemed to remember that the Mafia had tried to bump off Castro once, but I 
guess the Cubans didn't hold grudges. And, he was right. We didn't land in 
Havana or anything like that but at a small general aviation strip somewhere 
deep in the country. Mike had been really pushing his plane and must have had 
confidence he knew it well; the gas gauge was right on empty when he landed.
We used the opportunity to stretch and make a pit stop—their Johns were smelly 
and full of flies—but both Brandy and I were more than a little nervous around 
there. Although there were mostly small planes in the airport, like ours, most 
had military markings or coverings and a couple had cccp and a hammer and sickle 
on their tails. Still, everybody treated us nicely, although almost nobody spoke 
any real English, and the plane was gassed, checked, and serviced efficiently. 
Watching a bearded guy in military fatigues pump fuel into a plane while smoking 
a big cigar, I had to wonder just how much of a threat they could be to anybody 
but themselves and helpless, stranded travelers.
The Caymans, it turned out, were due south of the extreme western tip of Cuba, 
really in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, there was only one town of any 
significance on the main island, and it didn't seem that big. This was not 
exactly a place on the normal tourist routes. Because of this, it was also quite 
poor, and money would talk rather loudly and quickly there, even from strangers. 
That was good, since we had no real local contacts down there. Even G.O.D., 
Inc., it seemed, had forgotten Grand Cayman Island.
We put down on a small airstrip well away from town. The thing wasn't much; Mike 
said it had been built by a crazy American who moved there and collected 
satellite antennas years before. There were supposed to be the usual government 
formalities—the Caymans were a more-or-less-independent country under the 
British Commonwealth—but there wasn't even a building at the airstrip, let alone 
a customs and immigration man. Just a wind sock on a pole and a tacked-up sign 
stating that all arrivals from abroad had to check in with customs and 
immigration in Georgetown during regular office hours. We were a little late for 
them today, so we decided we'd hit them ar our mutual convenience.
A Company official had phoned ahead on Jamie's instructions. There were no 
Company personnel on the island, but when you dropped cash on the phone you 
could get a taxi to pick you up and a cottage to rent. The taxi wasn't there 
when we arrived, but just as we were beginning to think about walking, an old 
and battered thirty-year-old Chevy came smoking up the road and turned in to 
meet us. Our coach awaited.
The driver, a good-looking black man who was far younger than his car, got out 
and introduced himself as Ben Swope. I noticed he had really big eyes for 
Brandy, and I didn't feel the least bad about that, even when she turned on the 
tease to him. This whole "country" wasn't much more than a small town, and even 
in big cities the taxi drivers knew what was happening. Pair taxi and small 
town, and you have a really nice source of information.
The cottage wasn't much—one big studio apartment with a sloping roof, really, 
and a bedroom created by a wall divider—but we weren't looking for the Regency 
here, we were looking for a man.
Ben was very solicitous of Brandy, and helped with our bags, and Brandy gave me 
a wink and started really coming on to him. I knew she had to be dead tired by 
then, but this was business. Mike had to be taken into town, because he was 
staying at a small hotel there while he sorted out the paperwork and got some 
gas run back to the plane, and in no time Brandy had invited herself along. 
"You're real tired," she told me. "Maybe Ben can show me the sights."
I played along and let her go, which surprised Jamie no end. "You seemed rather 
cavalier about all that," she said after the taxi had driven away, Brandy in the 
front seat next to Ben.
"You're the client. This and stakeouts and long sets of phone calls and 
interviews are what the job is really all about. She's tired, but by tomorrow 
the whole town will know about us, officialdom will have to insist on checking 
us formally into the country, and we'll have to produce real IDs with our names 
on them. Names Little Jimmy and his cronies will know. The description might 
sound wrong, but how many salt-and-pepper couples named Sam and Brandy Horowitz 
can there be?" I paused a second. "No, don't answer that. I mean on this world?"
"You have a point, but he's very young and very handsome, and he is, well ..."
I bristled at her insinuation. "Her kind, you were going to say. As opposed to 
your kind and my kind, you mean. I think you better get off any thinking of that 
sort while you're around either of us, or client or no client, Company or no 
Company, you will not be a part of this business and I mean that. There's enough 
native-born prejudice in this world. I don't have to take it from somebody who's 
imported."
She seemed genuinely surprised that I was offended by her comment. That was the 
nastiest form of prejudice, and the hardest to beat. The bigot who thinks he or 
she is a liberal because they don't mind eating in the same restaurant. Whitlock 
probably thought he was a liberal, too—after all, all his servants were black.
At least she didn't press it. For all I knew, a trained Company agent was a 
triple black belt and could beat me up blind and with both arms tied, but I 
think she sensed how close she'd come to getting belted. I had enough trouble 
with that kind of shit here; I sure couldn't ever accept it from somebody who 
worked for an organization that employed women who looked like dogs or 
seven-foot Japanese dancers or guys who had fur.
Yeah, I was worried about Brandy, but not in that way. She could handle poor Ben 
okay, but we were in a strange town on a remote island, and the only way off was 
a plane that couldn't get off the ground without a fill-up.
Jamie and I unpacked, and I, at least, took a nap. When I awoke, it was very 
dark, and nobody but me was around. Jamie had been busy, though; there was food 
for the small and very loud refrigerator, and I made myself a sandwich and drank 
a dark British beer, then went outside and looked around. I wondered where Jamie 
had gotten the food and why she'd gone back out, unless she was trying to make 
it a competition with Brandy. I hoped not. She might be a pro where she came 
from, but she was out of her element here and would most likely screw things up. 
It wasn't just waiting for Brandy and Jamie or anybody to show up that was 
getting to me, nor the fact that I was the only one doing absolutely nothing. 
What worried me was that time was marching on, and that if Little Jimmy found 
out about us I was sure as hell a perfect target.
I went outside into the darkness and wandered around for a bit, until I heard a 
car coming and went back up near the house, staying, however, in the shadows. It 
was Ben's cab, and he let Brandy out, and they had a very long kiss. That one 
really did make me jealous, I'm afraid; there's insecurity deep in the heart of 
every older man married to a younger and more attractive woman. She left him, 
and walked up to and into the house, and Jimmy backed out of the sandy driveway 
and went back toward town. I walked up and entered the house.
Brandy turned, then smiled. "Sam! I was beginning to think everybody had 
deserted this place!" . "That was some kiss you gave him."
She smiled coyly. "Aw. ... You care!" She came over and put her arms around me. 
"You know there's only one man in my life. God, I'm dead tired, though. Where's 
Jamie?"
"Good question. I took a nap, and when I got up there was beer in the 
refrigerator and cold cuts next to it, but no Jamie. I been sitting around 
praying she isn't out there trying to be Supergirl and screwing us up."
"Yeah, particularly since I know where Little Jimmy's hidin' out."
"What! Thanks for the news bulletin! He is here, then?"
"Sure is. Right on schedule, too. Him and three foxy-lookin' ladies who seem to 
be his wives, bodyguards, and whatevers. A regular United Nations. One black, 
one white, and one Oriental, they say. I'll say this—he knows how to hide out in 
style. Seems he's got some relatives and old business pals around here, but 
nobody's real close to him."
"He's got a house?"
"Uh uh. Boat. Big sucker. Not a yacht, but you could make South America with it. 
He and his girls live on board—they're also the crew. I hope he's payin' 'em 
well. There's only one decent harbor and that's right downtown, or what passes 
for downtown here. This ain't exactly New York City. In fact, this ain't even 
Asbury Park. He's been layin' low but he's hard to miss, as you know. Callin' 
himself Joseph Mohammed, if you can believe that. He's spread the word around 
that he's some kind of Muslim and those are his three wives."
"He's one short of the maximum for the old style, but Little Jimmy always was 
cheap. Think he knows we're here?"
"Oh, he's spread some money all over to make sure of it. Ben got twenty whole 
American dollars to report any newcomers who show up without advance long-term 
reservations. The mob does move dope through here, but not on a permanent basis. 
A boat comes in, a bunch of men get off, they stay a couple of days, go out 
fishin' every day, then one night they meet a plane, and then when the plane 
goes, they go. It's fairly regular, but never the same boat, men, or plane. They 
got a decent commercial airport the other side of town. No jumbo-jet city, but 
it's all right for this place."
I nodded. "Any of these mob men in since Little Jimmy's been here?"
"Just once, for two days. Little Jimmy sailed away almost while they were 
gettin' off the boat, and passed 'em in the harbor when they sailed out. He's 
bein' real cautious."
"Yeah, that makes sense. Still, he wouldn't even stay around here if he had 
everything he expected to get. He's hanging loose, taking a risk here while he 
waits. This was where his slush fund was set up, and where he always probably 
intended to wind up. Now even here's too hot for him, but with two-plus million 
you can really disappear into Guyana, or maybe all the way to Brazil. Who's he 
waiting for?"
She yawned. "I dunno, but I don't think they're comin' tonight. I'm dead. I 
think tomorrow may be soon enough to go ask him, if Jamie don't spook him 
tonight. I'm done, Sam. I got to get some sleep."
"You go ahead. I'll keep the watch here for a while. I never completely woke up, 
though, so we'll see how long I last."
When my new watch beeped at four in the morning, I counted five beers and no 
Jamie, and dozed off myself in a chair.
I awoke when I heard the sound of a car pulling up to the house, and looked at 
my watch. It was about ten in the morning, and Brandy was still out cold. I went 
to the door and looked cautiously out. It was Jamie, driving one of those tiny 
English cars that make Volkswagens look like Cadillacs. She was made-up a 
little, but barefoot and wearing an oversized shirt and bikini bottom and not 
much else, although she took a shoulder purse out of the car and put it over her 
shoulder before she came in.
"Well," I said, "you look like you've been busy."
"Oh, it was most productive." She put the bag down, reached in, and pulled out a 
fist full of documents. "I couldn't get passports without your photos, but these 
papers will do in a pinch for here, and we are all clear with customs and 
immigration. You are a wealthy American businessman named Jacob Brodsky, and I'm 
afraid I took the liberty of making myself Mrs. Brodsky, and Brandy your 
personal secretary, since I wasn't sure what sort of line she was using with the 
cabbie and how long she wanted to maintain it."
I looked over the papers and they sure as hell looked official. "Pretty good for 
a night's work, but this names Brandy as Brenda Hawkins. That's probably not the 
name she gave Ben last night."
"Won't matter. I explained We were here incognito while the solicitors fended 
off some nasty lawsuits and cleaned up a few things, and they seemed to 
understand that easily. Apparently about two thirds of the foreigners on this 
island are using assumed names and this is a rather common practice here. 
They're honest enough that I think they would turn in really major fugitives 
from justice, but not the passive sort with lots of money and no danger to the 
community here."
"And how did you accomplish all this?"
She shrugged. "It's a small town. I got bored here and wandered in, found a 
grocery and got the supplies here, then went back after dark to see what the 
place was like. Everyone was very nice, and someone pointed out a rather 
important official to me. Since he was in a pub trying to pick up girls, it 
wasn't difficult to get to know him."
I raised my eyebrows. "So I've got a cheating wife now?"
"Perhaps. He is rather attractive, and it's been a long time."
I couldn't resist. "Is he—your kind?"
She winced. "Please. I needed that lashing of yours to remind me of the basics. 
I apologize. That's really what sort of pushed me into action."
I wondered if it was really that easy. Still, I had suspicions. "If he's 
attractive and important, why is he picking up girls in a bar?"
She grinned. "I don't know. Perhaps you can ask his wife, or, better yet, his 
three ex-wives."
"You didn't—press about Nkrumah, did you?"
"Oh, my, no! That would have set off every alarm in the town. I mean, surely a 
strange white woman asking questions about the likes of him the first night in 
town would have caused him to panic. I know my job. Do you know yours?"
"We know where he is, who he's with, and what name he's using," I informed her. 
"I think today we're gonna try and find out why he's hanging around."
"Why who's hanging around?" I heard Brandy ask sleepily. She wandered in, 
looking shot to hell, the way either of us usually looked in the morning.
"Little Jimmy. Care to wake up and go into town for some brunch, and wander down 
maybe near the docks? We have a car now. Rented, I assume."
Jamie nodded. "At the airport. They almost fight with each other for your 
business. I left the keys in it. Who's going to steal it around here?"
"You want to sleep or come in with us?" I asked her.
"Oh, just let me change and I'll come in. I got some sleep last night, and I 
function on very little."
Brandy was never a big coffee drinker, but I made some while Jamie showered and 
changed, and Brandy drank almost as much as I did. The adrenaline high was gone 
now, and she was feeling the effects of first-night ambition. While this took 
place, I showed her the papers and briefed her on the cover story and 
identities. She was generally impressed, although she wasn't sure she liked my 
change in marriage partners— even though I could hardly blame Jamie for doing 
what I would have done, flying blind and handed an opportunity, myself. Since 
she'd told Ben she was Sandy Parks, from Philadelphia, we had the crazy 
situation of having cover identities for our cover identities. It kind of 
appealed to my sense of the perverse.
Jamie emerged wearing shorts, sandals, and a colorful shirt, and Brandy was now 
awake enough to get dressed herself. She, too, went for shorts and sandals, but 
picked a very tight tee shirt and no bra, a combination that left nothing to the 
imagination. It was kind of funny watching them, in a way. Brandy was dressing 
to show off her most outstanding attribute, and Jamie was wearing loose and 
oversized tops to hide her lack of same. Brandy was wearing a string bikini 
under her clothes, though, and I figured she might have something in mind.
The town was no tourist mecca; it was populated by real people, the kind the 
tour boats don't show you. It was Caribbean poor, and that was pretty poor 
indeed, even poorer than our old sections of Camden; but at least they didn't 
ever worry about a heating bill here, and even the most run-down shacks seemed 
to have cable TV along with five or six kids and two or three mangy-looking 
dogs, and about every fourth house had a car in front in some stage of repair or 
disrepair. The harbor area and marina were pretty nice, though, and the people 
were friendly, courteous, and English speakers all, so that helped. There were 
several restaurants near the yacht harbor, and we passed by the ones with native 
soups and great seafood and took the dingy one that would cook you breakfast 
anytime. An English breakfast, too, which was a real meal.
After, we took a leisurely stroll around the harbor area and got a fairly good 
look at Little Jimmy's hideaway. It was one of those large cabin cruisers with a 
lot of room belowdecks, and it looked imposing. It was docked all the way at the 
end of a large series of slips, and in its position, really at right angles to 
the dock, it only took hauling in the gangplank and undoing two lines and he was 
ready to roll. We didn't dare actually walk up the pier, but on the rear deck we 
could see the big man himself relaxing with a drink and reading something.
"Maybe I'll try gettin' up close," Brandy said thoughtfully. "I may remind him 
of somebody, but no way is he gonna recognize me."
"I don't like it," I told her. "Remember, odds are he knows just what he's 
dealing with now, even if he didn't before. If he gets one whiff of Brandy or 
Camden, he might figure you for a close double."
"He ain't that smart. Besides, he's got his girl guards around, and I'm gonna be 
strictly in a bikini. What kinda threat can he figure?"
I looked at Jamie. "Might be worth a shot," I said, "if we can get some support. 
You're the Company gal. Any way to wire somebody for sound wearing just a string 
bikini?"
Jamie thought a moment. "Yes, in a setup like this, I believe we have something 
in the bags that might work. Not good over any distance or obstacles, but from 
the boat to the shoreline, I'd think it might do. We might possibly arrange some 
cover, too. I'll check with Mike on that. Think it can wait an hour?"
I nodded. "If he's going anywhere soon, it won't matter anyway."
Jamie did in fact come up with what was required. It was a tiny little 
transmitter, powered by a watch battery and not much bigger, that could in fact 
be attached to a woman's watch itself. It required a small pickup unit with high 
gain, and an earphone, and was noisy as hell, but it might just work. Brandy 
took advantage of the time to make herself up a bit—nails, eyes, that sort of 
thing—and out of our old luggage, which had been transshipped to us, as I 
mentioned, she found the reddish brown wig. With a little work, it fit very 
nicely even though her hair had grown out quite a bit. Add dark sunglasses, and 
even I wouldn't recognize her.
We'd also gotten her father's magnum back, but it was impossible to conceal, the 
way she was going, and useless at any distance no matter what you've seen in the 
movies. I would be lazing on a bench at harborside, apparently listening to a 
Walkman-style tape recorder; Jamie and Mike would be elsewhere, with cover and 
support should it be necessary, Mike from somewhere on the rooftops and Jamie on 
a small rented one-person sailboat. Her versatility, considering that she was 
supposed to have spent most of her life in that medieval place, was surprising. 
I had a strong idea that Jamie's background was quite different than she'd let 
on, proper speech pattern or not. I grew up near two bays, several big rivers, 
and an ocean with lots of beach, and I couldn't sail one of those little suckers 
if my life depended on it.
"How are you going to arrange a meeting with him?" I asked her. "He never gets 
off that damned boat."
"I'm just gonna walk right up and say hello," she responded, and that is exactly 
what she did.
I'll tell you, she looked absolutely incredible when she walked out onto that 
pier, wearing about as little as you could and still be legal most places, 
sunglasses, the wig, and not much else; and despite being barefoot, she wiggled 
like she was wearing the highest heels around. There were men on about half the 
boats docked at the slips there, and she made an instant impression on all who 
noticed her. She stopped to talk to one or another, passed pleasantries, asked a 
lot of dumb questions, and kept her voice high and her vocabulary low. It took a 
little effort before one of them asked her where she was from, and when she said 
she was an American, they asked her if she was with the big boat at the end. She 
looked surprised. "That big thing's American? Ooooh! Gee, I wonder if they're 
from anyplace I know?"
Little Jimmy had gone below, by this point, and one of his girls, the white one, 
was up top where the wheel was doing something. That didn't bother Brandy a bit.
"Hi! Hey, up there! Hi!"
The woman on the boat looked puzzled, but when she saw who—or rather, what—was 
hailing her, she seemed to relax a bit.
"What d'ya want, honey?" the guard called down.
"Lionel over there just said you was Americans. I'm an American and I just 
thought I'd be neighborly and say 'Hi!' "
"Well, hi, then, and good-bye. We don't want no company right now."
"Well, jeez, it's just such a gorgeous boat—or is it a ship? I just thought—"
"Well, don't think so much."
Whoever she was, she sounded like working-class Philadelphia or very nearby. She 
wasn't familiar to me, but I had a hunch now that all three might be either 
whores (getting a little long in the tooth) with whom he'd had relationships, or 
maybe mistresses stashed around the area. Either way, that made them addicts 
dependent on Little Jimmy for their source in this remote place.
Brandy pushed hard, stepping on the gang-plank. "Well, sorry. All I wanted to do 
was see what a boat like this looked like. Jeez—it's real big."
"Don't you come on here!" the woman on the bridge screamed and started down. 
"Fuck off, sister! Now!"
At that moment Little Jimmy decided to stick his head up and see what the 
commotion was all about. He looked around warily, spotted Brandy on the 
gangplank, and had the expected reaction, "Annie! Enough! I'll take care of 
this!" he said sharply, stopping the woman just before she reached the gangplank 
herself. Annie looked uncertain, gave what must have been a real dirty and 
disgusted look in Little Jimmy's direction, and backed off.
The old loan shark hauled himself on deck and went over to Brandy. "My 
apologies, my dear. Annie can be a bit—protective."
"Well, jeez, I was only tryin' t'be sociable," Brandy responded, sounding 
little-girl hurt. "She ain't got no call talkin' that way."
"My abject apologies. I am Joseph Mohammed."
"Sandy Parks," she responded. "At least that's what they told me to tell 
everybody, and I kinda like the sound, don't you?" Somehow she'd made her way up 
the short gangplank and actually onto the boat in minute movements.
"It's very nice. It suits you. But that's not your real name?"
"Nah! My real name's Brenda, but I like this new one so good I might keep it. 
Don't tell nobody, though."
"Not a soul," he promised. "But why an assumed name, if I may ask?"
"Oh, Dave—I mean, Jake—is tryin' t'skip on some dumb lawyers for somethin'. Oh, 
shit! This name stuff is so hard to keep straight."
"I'll keep your secret," Little Jimmy promised. We were pretty sure that by this 
time of the afternoon he had at least the full cover story on us. "Would you 
care for a drink?"
"Gee, you mean y'got a bar here?"
"And a bartender. Nan! Vodka and tonic for me, and—you?"
"I guess a daiquiri is a little much, even for you out here."
"One daiquiri coming up. Banana all right?"
"Yeah, great. Gee, this is somethin'. I mean, Dave's got a lot of dough—oh, 
damn! I mean Jake—but he don't have no boats. Just b'tween you'n me, he can't 
swim." She turned. "That's him, just sittin' there listenin' to that borin' 
music on his Walkman and readin' business magazines. Can't do much else right 
now. I mean, his wife's around someplace."
Little Jimmy did not require diagrams. "You know, I have the oddest feeling that 
we have met before," he said, and I tightened. "Could that be possible?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. I been in Dallas the past coupla years, but I was born 
in Philadelphia. Where you from?"
"That is a coincidence! We might well have met."
"You from Dallas, too?"
"No, Philadelphia. That area, anyway. I thought I heard it in your voice."
Well, Nan, the black one, came out with the drinks, and the pair on the deck 
continued to small-talk and gossip. Little Jimmy had a few trick questions that 
only a Philadelphia-area person would know, which was easy enough to cover, and 
he seemed to lose his suspicion as she spun a very convincing life story that 
was almost all inference. The biggest inference was that she'd met me while 
doing some hooking nights, to pay for secretarial school days, while I was in 
Philadelphia on business, and that I'd finally taken her on as a 
secretary—officially. There was a suspicion that my wife suspected, but since 
she was frigid tended to tolerate it so long as the fiction was maintained 
around her.
"Perhaps it's not all one-sided, my dear," Little Jimmy told her. "That wife 
picked up no less than a government minister last night in a bar and they went 
off together."
"Oooh! She did? That slut. Wait'll I tell Dave!"
"Oh, I wouldn't do that. Save it until you or he needs it, like maybe she 
decides on a divorce or something. You seem a smart girl. Play it right."
"Yeah, thanks. Maybe you're right. You know, it drives him nuts to pretend, but 
we gotta. I mean, be real. He's white, I'm black, and his business is in Dallas, 
for crissake! I ain't complainin'. I mean, I'm treated real well. All them 
Dallas rednecks only get uptight if there's a piece of paper and all, and I 
don't need that. Hell, half of them bigmouths got dark girls in their closets."
Nkrumah chuckled. "How well I know. It's tragic, though, that such a thing still 
exists in our day and age. I was born poor and illegitimate, and my mother spent 
her life on welfare. I promised myself I'd have everything the white man had but 
that I would use whitey, like he used us, but never depend or work for him. I 
did pretty good, too. The money for all this is all mine, but its sources are 
very thoroughly integrated."
And Little Jimmy was off with his grandiose bragging. He was retiring, he told 
her, because the kind of business where a black man could make this kind of 
money got dangerous sometimes, and he figured he had enough to quit while he was 
still young enough to enjoy things. Brandy was getting both tongue-tied and 
giggly in the heat; I suspected that the drink she had been given had a proof 
content high enough for spontaneous combustion. Back when she was fat she'd 
taken booze real well, but after a year on the wagon and now thin, I remembered 
that even the ale in that monastery had made her real mellow. It was getting 
time to break this up.
The only question in my mind was whether or not to force the issue now or wait a 
bit and hope we could catch whoever he was going to meet. I figured the best 
time was the present. With this boat, there was every chance that the meet would 
be at sea, probably at night, and he'd be impossible to track and all hopes of 
any answers would be gone. Besides, if he got hit, it wouldn't do us any good at 
all. Right now I had Mike somewhere in back of me, also wired, with a nice rifle 
and telescopic sight, and Jamie skirting around in the harbor. We'd learned 
about all we were going to learn from him at this point, including the fact that 
he intended to be around for a while yet. This had already accomplished what we 
needed: to get us access to Little Jimmy while he was tied to the pier, and in 
broad daylight.
"Oh, oh. I fear your man has grown a bit jealous," Little Jimmy said. "I think 
perhaps we should say adieu for now."
Jamie was just coming around again and I gave her a hand signal. Mike had a 
wire, so I knew he'd be on us. I walked straight up the gangplank and over to 
Brandy, my back to the sea, and looked at Little Jimmy. "Hello, Nkrumah," I 
said, real friendly-like.
I never saw somebody jump like that. "Annie! Nan! Suzy! Stations!"
Annie up front came up with a pistol from nowhere, and Nan opened the door and 
showed a real-nasty-looking Ml6 rifle, the kind that can fire fifteen rounds in 
a half second and kill with any hit to the body. I still didn't see Suzy, but it 
didn't matter.
"Now, is that any way to treat an old friend and ex-employee?" I asked him, 
trying to keep the confidence in my voice. "I'm not even armed. If I wanted to 
hit you, I could do it at any moment. I got a sniper trained right on your fat 
head right now, just as insurance. Girls, you can get us, but we can sure as 
hell get him—and what good'll that do you? Relax. It's talk time."
Little Jimmy stared at me. "Horowitz? Horowitz? Is that really you?"
"Aw, I thought I'd fool you with the beard."
He started to relax a moment, then grew tense again. "That beard isn't fake. 
It's real. I can see that. Nobody grows a full beard that size in a few weeks! 
You're not Horowitz—you're one of them!"
"Wrong, wrong, wrong," Brandy put in. "Little Jimmy, for a man with the smarts, 
you sure been actin' stupid and careless of late."
I could see it in his eyes and in the tremble in his hands. The man was scared 
to death. "You— you're Brandy! But. you're not the Brandy I knew!"
"Still wrong," she replied. "You hired the two of us, and you fired the two of 
us, right here, in this world. Only thing is, after we got canned we took a 
little trip right outta this world, and things go faster there. We're back now, 
though."
Little Jimmy started to get a little of his confidence back. "So, you tracked me 
down. So what? All I have to do is give the word and you're dead, right now. I 
don't know what this game is, or who's paying you, but you have my retainer. I 
own you until the fifteenth."
"No, Jimmy boy, you released me on the phone and told me to bank the retainer. 
Remember?" I said calmly. "And can the threats. I got a sniper on you, and if 
Black Beauty in there opens up with that cannon she'll mess you up as bad as 
me."
"I—fired you?" He started looking around. "You're bluffing on all this, 
Horowitz. I don't know which one you are, but I've got you."
I sighed. "Girls, don't get itchy, or this will end real bad real fast. Hey, 
Mike, if you can hear me, see if you can put one where it'll be a nice demo but 
not spill any blood, huh?" I waited, and for a couple of seconds I wondered if 
Mike was really there at all, but suddenly there was a distant firecrackerlike 
pop and Little Jimmy's latest vodka and tonic got blown to smithereens. I 
tensed, but the girls looked far less confident now than before, and Little 
Jimmy let out a screech and fell back.
"Sorry to scar your fine table, here," I told him, "but I think I've made my 
point as well as you made yours. Standoff. Except you're the target of our man, 
and I don't think the ladies here would find much profit in shooting us if 
you're blown away. In fact, ladies, I suggest that if he makes that necessary, 
you not shoot at all—or you will surely wish that you were as dead as he was. We 
have a client who's got a lot of people and a lot of resources and don't care 
much about people except as lessons."
Little Jimmy composed himself, and both Brandy and I started to relax a bit. If 
we were going to die, we'd have been dead by now.
"What do you want here, Horowitz?"
"Just information. Seems we got hung out to drip dry by you and your crowd, 
Nkrumah. I don't like setting up people for hitters, and I don't like getting in 
the crossfire."
"That was your own damned fault and you know it! I told you to take the money 
and split!"
"Yeah, well, we all got taken for a ride anyway, and your hitters shot a fat 
zero. They're both gone, and their targets, both decoys, are ah've and away, and 
so are we."
"Decoys! But . . ."
"The man's still around, Little Jimmy, and he wants to go home, only he can't, 
'cause he's got a backstabber in his neighborhood and we still don't have the 
whole picture," Brandy told him. "You got the missin' part."
"I don't! I was used, just like everybody else!" he replied. "I didn't know who, 
or what, was involved here! Who the hell could have even imagined such a thing?"
"But you know now, just like we do," I pointed out to him. "Only we found out by 
falling right out of this world. You didn't. That means between the time we 
searched Whitlock's apartment and the time we talked to each other that last 
time when I got to Bend, you learned more than a little. You found out the whole 
damned thing."
"I swear I knew nothing!" Little Jimmy protested, and finally his side came out.
He had been picked up, while leaving his office in Camden, by some of Big Tony's 
boys and taken for what they said was a meet. He was scared it was a one-way 
trip, that Big Tony was going to finish him off because he'd lost the money and 
was now undependable, but it wasn't Big Tony they took him to see. Instead, it 
was Whitlock himself, clean-shaven and distinguished looking. Except, of course, 
it wasn't Whitlock—not the one he thought. The double freely admitted he was a 
double and had switched places with the other one while that other was "playing 
games in queenie-land." He said he knew that Little Jimmy handled a number of 
investment accounts for Big Tony, that he was something of a laundry for the 
mobster, and he wanted the names and dates and information on those accounts and 
transactions. Whitlock Two offered him his money back—in exchange for Big Tony.
Little Jimmy shrugged. "I mean, what the hell? I never liked those white Italian 
bastards anyway. Kept people like me on the fringe of the real power, took us 
out when we got too uppity for them. Big Tony thought blacks should be back 
picking cotton except that they were profitable, but a hundred times he called 
me nigger to my face and I took it. I had no choice but to take it. Not then. 
But I was ruined. Wiped out. I knew I couldn't keep the news from Big Tony much 
longer about the money, and I knew what he'd do to me even though it hadn't cost 
him. Waste one nigger, you set an example. I had a way out, so I took the deal. 
I gave him Big Tony, and he gave me a list of safety-deposit boxes spread all 
over the Caribbean, each containing some of my money, and the authorizations. I 
went home just long enough to pack, and then Whitlock was there! At my house! 
Only he had a three days' growth of beard!"
"The real one," I commented, nodding.
"Yeah, that's right. Or, I think so. Who the hell knows anymore? He tells me 
what kind of thing I'm up against. He tells me where the doubles come from. He 
tells me he doesn't work for Big Tony, that Big Tony works for him. He offers to 
make good my money, and keep me out of this mess, if I tell him what I know. Of 
course, I'm scared to death at this point, so I agree to go along with him and 
lie low for a while, but as soon as he leaves, I split, man. I hit my stash 
fund, then I started taking a quick tour of the Caribbean. The first two banks, 
the money was there; but when I hit the third, in Barbados, they acted like they 
knew me on sight, and insisted that I'd been there only an hour before—dressed 
differently, but otherwise the same. I went from there to Martinique—same story. 
Finally I skipped down to Kingston, made certain I hadn't been there before, and 
waited."
He sighed, paused a moment, then continued, "I staked out that bank for four 
days. On the fourth day, I saw—"
"Yourself," Brandy guessed. "You watched you goin' into the bank."
He nodded and buried his head in his hands. "Yes! I knew then that what the 
Whitlocks had told me was at least partly true. They're taking us over! One by 
one, they're taking us over, replacing us with exact duplicates! I made for this 
island and this boat, which I'd prepared long ago, and which the ladies here 
helped maintain, and I've been on it ever since. I don't want to be replaced!" 
He stared at us. "You think this is your world, but are you sure? Are you sure 
of anything?"
"No," I admitted, remembering Cranston's comment that paranoia was part and 
parcel of this business when you knew the truth. "But I'm as sure as I can be. 
So what are you going to do now? Sit here on this tub until the money runs out? 
Sooner or later you're going to have to get involved again in some way to keep 
the money flowing."
"I am involved. You said I fired you."
"Yeah. Over the phone, when I called you from Bend."
"Horowitz—the last time we talked was the call you made after leaving the 
apartment in northeast Philly. They picked me up that night, and the other 
Whitlock was at my house when I got there in the wee hours of the morning. I was 
gone after that. As God as my witness, I never talked to you after that. He 
did."
That explained a lot. I suddenly had as much sympathy for Little Jimmy as I was 
capable of having for weasels and skunks. All he really knew was that he was 
screwed with the mob, and that there were two Whitlocks who'd used him. He 
bought the real Whitlock's story only as much as it helped him keep from going 
nuts, but he really didn't know that much. I was convinced of it. They'd pulled 
in another Nkrumah to cover and make a more orderly exit, but then what? The new 
Little Jimmy had the same greed as the old one. He'd made for those boxes to 
recover as much of the money as possible. He couldn't stay too long in Camden 
himself because the heat was on.
"He was waiting for me in my hotel room in Kingston . that night," Little Jimmy 
told us. "I couldn't arrange a plane out that day. When I entered, he was there, 
with a gun."
"I just wanted to meet face to face," Little Jimmy Two had told him. "My intent, 
I admit, was to kill you. That would make it easy. You—I—would be legally and 
permanently dead. No hunters. I really intended to do it, but I can't do it. 
It's odd, but I can't. I hadn't really realized that until just now."
"What—what will you do with me?" our little Jimmy asked him.
"Go to your hideaway. You have sufficient funds for quite a while. Stay there. 
Vanish there. So long as you do, you will live. If you show up, or get made by 
anyone, though, you will seal your own fate. I will not have to do it, thank 
God. Just stay out of our way."
"And you been here ever since?" Brandy asked him.
He nodded. "Not moving off this boat, or out of the company of at least one of 
the girls at all times, so they'll always be confident that it's me."
I had a sudden bad feeling about this. "Nkrumah— where's the third girl? The 
Oriental one?"
"Huh? Around, I don't know. Nan?"
"She went out earlier this mornin'," the woman with the M16 responded. "Haven't 
seen her in a while. We're low on a lot of supplies."
I was suddenly real nervous again, but I had to make an insurance position 
known. "Girls, there's no way you're going to shoot us all and survive, and you 
know it. You want to tell me who's working for who, and maybe get us all out of 
this?"
Little Jimmy looked like he'd seen a ghost. He turned and stared at the pair. 
Clearly he hadn't gone far enough with this replacement bit. He didn't have all 
the story.
"We was only suppos'ta keep him happy," Annie, the white girl, told us, still 
holding the pistol. "You got no idea what kinda life we come from, mister."
I nodded. "I think I might. Who hired you? Who brought you over?"
Both of them looked uncertain as to what to do or say. Finally it was Nan, with 
all the firepower, who said, "Gritch. Sol Gritch brung us. We was in his stable, 
y'know."
I looked at Brandy and Little Jimmy. "Name sound familiar?"
Both of them shook their heads no. We suddenly had a new player in the game, and 
that was something I didn't like at all. "He from Camden or Philadelphia?" I 
asked.
"Sure. He's big in southeast Philly. Everybody knows Sol."
There, maybe, wherever "there" actually is. Not here.
"You never saw nobody but this Gritch?" Brandy asked them.
"Sure. Lots," Annie replied. "But nobody else we knew or cared about."
I had a sudden, unpleasant thought. "You had to come in through the Labyrinth. 
Where was the station?"
"The what? You mean that dizzy thing. Up in the middle of nowhere. You know, 
near Penn State."
There was a sudden spray of bullets and we all hit the deck. I saw Annie fall, 
and I felt a sting in my left arm. "Stay down!" I yelled. "Brandy! You okay?"
"Yeah, for a moment. Who the hell—?"
"Mike!" I yelled, hoping the microphone was still open. "Can you make the 
shooter and, if so, nail the bastard!"
There was no rifle fire, which meant that either they'd taken Mike out or he 
couldn't get a bead on the shooter. Suddenly there were three sharp reports, not 
rifle shots but pistol shots, and the sound of a body somewhere forward falling 
into the drink.
"Nan!" Brandy yelled. "Can you toss out that cannon to one of us without coming 
up? They're sure to wipe us out!"
"To me!" I shouted. "You're half tight and haven't got your glasses on!"
Nan seemed uncertain as to what to do, but finally tossed the M16 out onto the 
deck. I crawled to it and got it; the pain in my arm was getting real 
irritating, but better there than in my head.
It was clear now that the shots had come through the windshield from the bow; 
that's why Annie had taken it and why I'd gotten nipped. I was almost in a 
direct line from her.
I made my way warily forward and up the ladder to the wheel. Annie was 
splattered over half the side; she was out of the game for keeps. Keeping down, 
I cautiously peered out of the shattered windshield, but could see no one.
"Anybody alive up there?" I heard Jamie's voice call from the water side.
"Yeah, some of us!" Brandy shouted back. "You got 'em?"
"There was only one. The Chinese girl or whatever she was. She's meat now. Came 
up out of some hatch up there, crawled up, and started firing before I could 
react. Sorry."
I relaxed a little and made my way back down to the others. Brandy turned and 
then gave a little gasp. Little Jimmy had been between Annie and me. We went to 
him, but Brandy didn't need her glasses to see he'd done his last deal. One of 
the slugs had gone right in the back of his head.
Brandy suddenly looked at me. "Sam! Oh, my God! You're hurt!"
There was the sound of a European-style police siren in the background, and a 
lot of yelling and screaming.
"Only a flesh wound," I said bravely, and then passed out cold.
Mike came to see me in the small hospital. As the only registered member of our 
party not under arrest, he was the only one who could. I was sort of under 
arrest as well, but that amounted to a cop on the door and a search of all 
unofficial visitors. I figured that with all the shots flying around, the cops 
had never known Mike had been any part of this.
"Dey questioned me for a little, but only about all of you folks," he told me. 
"I tell dem I'm just a charter pilot and dey pretty much believe dat. I wasn't 
able to see either of de girls, but I made a few calls on de Company. Some folks 
will be in tonight if dey can get Company planes. I worry about dem two, though. 
Dis sorta t'ing just isn't done here."
"They'll hold up," I assured him, hoping the authorities would at least obey the 
normal procedures until help arrived. "Brandy's had a lot of experience with 
cops and Jamie's a pretty tough customer."
"I'll say! I didn't even see dat girl wid the gun. Angle was wrong. Sorry."
"You did your best. It's too bad she had to be killed, though. She was their 
agent here, that's clear now, although even the other girls didn't know it. She 
had the answers. What about the surviving girl, Nan?"
"Oh, she's okay. Dey got her under protective detention, as dey call it, tryin' 
to get more information, but dey don't t'ink she was a shooter. So far she's 
givin' dem the straight dope on the shooting, as far as I can tell, and 
odderwise clammin' up. Says she was a whore wid Little Jimmy, dat's all. She 
don't know nuttin' else."
I nodded. "That's good. I just hope we can get some big shots in fast, and, if 
so, they're the right ones. You heard the whole thing?"
"Yeah. I already tell dem dis Sol Gritch character. Dey will do a big check on 
him. We should know what we can know by de time dey get here."
"In the meantime, you make sure Nan stays in protective and doesn't get released 
or taken away," I told him. "If the opposition doesn't get her, then they can't 
know what we learned before their agent wasted Little Jimmy." I paused. "Mike— 
how much do you really know about what's going on here?"
He grinned. "I don't know nuttin', man. I'm just a poor charter pilot for a big, 
big company, dat's all." With that, he turned and left, leaving me with the 
feeling I was being had. He sure was a pilot, and a good one, but he was far 
more than that. I wondered if even Janie knew how much more.
The bullet had taken a small chunk out of me but had only grazed the bone. My 
main trouble was loss of blood from moving around after being shot, although I 
knew I was going to have a pretty useless left arm and probably lots of bandages 
and antibiotics for a while. No matter what, I had to trust to Brandy, Jamie, 
and Mike to keep things from getting out of hand at this point. I was sure as 
hell stuck for the moment.
I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sudden turning on of my 
hospital room light and the entrance of two men who looked about as natural on 
Grand Cayman as Brandy and I at a Ku Klux Klan convention. They were both white, 
young, well built and trim, and wearing suits and ties. They looked like Secret 
Service agents.
"Sorry to awaken you, Mr. Horowitz," said one, "but I thought you'd want the 
details as soon as possible. We're working with the local authorities now to get 
the release of both your wife and our agent, and hopefully the outworld girl, 
too. I'm Bill Markham and this is Tod Symes. We're with headquarters security."
"I assume you mean the headquarters in Davenport."
He chuckled. "Where else? Or, then again, is that a question I should ask, all 
things considered? We are who and what we say, I assure you. There are ways to 
determine that, and you and your wife as well."
That was news. "Oh? How?"
"It's a small encoded implant. Don't worry— we'll show you all that sooner or 
later. We're on the same side in this, after all."
I was beginning to wonder who was on whose side anymore but I let it pass. "You 
run down this Gritch character?"
"As much as we could. As soon as the call came in, we hopped a Company jet and 
got here. We've tracked a Sol Gritch here in the Philadelphia area, but he died 
nine years ago and was a real-estate speculator and slumlord. We're now running 
a trace on him in other probability lines, but we don't have much close to this 
one, so it'll take some time. That's where they can get us easy. They go into 
worlds we don't cover that are pretty close, and do some development of their 
own. There's over sixteen hundred lines in which all the principals in this case 
exist in roughly the same positions, so you can see how needle-in-a-haystack it 
has to be when you don't have anybody there, not even a station."
The concept was staggering. Sixteen hundred lines in which there was a me, and a 
Brandy, and a Whitlock, and a Little Jimmy, and maybe all the others. Not the 
same, maybe. Maybe we weren't married, and not to each other, in all sixteen 
hundred, but we all existed there. Of course, the opposition would have, if 
anything, a worse manpower problem than G.O.D., Inc. There was probably only one 
of those they were using, the one in which they also found the gay Whitlock and 
the Nkrumah clone, but it would still take time.
"Mr. Horowitz," Markham said, sitting in the lone chair, letting his silent 
partner stand leaning against the wall, "do you have any idea now what this is 
all about?"
"As much as I can, without knowing the full facts of this Company opposition," I 
answered truthfully. "This is no band of radical nuts or malcontents. You know 
it and I know it. They have free access to the Labyrinth, so they have probably 
got the right Company credentials, and their moves are being dictated by 
somebody high up within the Company structure. We might sneak in and get trapped 
in that thing without you knowing it, and we could have even gotten out of that 
monastery if we'd had to, but something this elaborate can't depend on sneaking 
into warehouses, monasteries, castles, or whatever, whenever somebody needs to 
be moved. Besides, we could get in, and out, but not control where we were 
going. These people can. You want to tell me just what the hell is really going 
on? Maybe if you do, I can give you the rest."
Markham sighed. "You're right, it's bigger than a few rebels and it's nastier. 
The fact is, why does anybody want to be a senator, or congressman, or the 
cabinet secretary? The pay's good, but it's not great, and almost all of them 
can do better in private business. And I hope you're not going to say to serve 
the public or advance ideals. Otherwise, I'll have to tell you the truth about 
Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy."
"Power, pure and simple," I answered. "That's why so many of them quit when they 
reach their limits. I'm not dumb. I grew up in the U.S.A."
"General Ordering and Development is probably the largest corporate structure in 
human or nonhuman history, but that's still what it is. A corporation. It runs 
as a business. The kind of people who run it run it because they like the power. 
They enjoy it. They need it. But there can only be one president, one chairman 
of the board, only so many board members, and even a limited number of vice 
presidents, although it looks like an infinite number to me. As in most 
corporate structures, the old men remain and refuse to give up power until they 
drop dead, and others are promoted as much on family or connections as on merit. 
In fact, often at the expense of merit. It's a familiar structure to all large 
corporations."
I nodded. "So somebody's trying to hasten things along, or get even with the top 
boys for not noticing them. They're the most dangerous, because they're smart 
and motivated more by revenge than even greed."
"Exactly, although we think this is very much a strictly business situation. You 
see, in many cases such large numbers of people would simply go out and form a 
competitive group. Often their new ideas and new slants would be so good they'd 
eventually sweep the old company aside, although not without a lot of nasty 
fighting. The problem here is that it's of necessity a monopoly business. The 
Company controls the Labyrinth, and there is only one Labyrinth. As far as we 
know, there can be only one Labyrinth, according to the physics involved."
"Huh! Seems to me that if you knew how it worked, all it'd take is a big machine 
hidden in a deep hole with lots of power to it and a camouflage structure on 
top."
Markham shook his head. "No, it isn't that way at all. Mr. Horowitz, there are 
no great machines under those warehouses and castles. If you think a little, 
you'd realize that, since you escaped the botanical station through a flag 
access stop in the middle of land with no buildings, people, or anything much 
else. They had to open the flag because you weren't at a dead end; you were in 
the way, and a switch point needed to be created that spanned thirty-seven 
worlds, in order to get somebody from here to there. You said it yourself: 
power. It takes incredible power. The lone master machine exists in a universe 
where there is almost limitless power—and nothing much else. All the rest are 
the mechanics needed to make the process a controlled network. Stations to 
channel access. Switch points to save time and increase accuracy. The worlds 
aren't in a straight line. They are at all angles to one another, including 
angles we can't even imagine."
I saw the problem. One machine, one network, and the competition couldn't really 
touch that network without fouling themselves up as well. "Then the only thing 
you can really do is try and take over the Company."
"Exactly. What they're doing now is running a competitive operation on our own 
network, using worlds we haven't touched, and building an organization of people 
recruited from those worlds. An organization that is now well organized enough 
to start hitting us in vital spots. It's not a general war; it's an endless 
series of little wars. The operation here is fairly large, but it's not vital. 
It's on the periphery, so it's lightly defended compared to some other worlds, 
where, naturally, the bulk of personnel and resources are channeled. Because we 
depend heavily on organized crime in the West here, it makes it even easier to 
go in and make alterations at the level where things actually get done. If they 
succeed here, then we have to either divert major resources and personnel here 
to fight them off, and leave a more vital point undefended, or we have to 
declare them a winner and abandon further development. Either way, they win. 
Corporate heads roll. Things are reshuffled. Key people move up."
I got the picture. No wonder G.O.D., Inc. took such a liking to the Mafia. Hell, 
it was the Mafia, the prototypical Mafia on the grandest of all scales. All the 
godfathers jockeyed for control, and if they were frustrated working with the 
system, they fought it, sometimes violently. Board members themselves probably 
double-crossed fellow members if they wanted to move one way and the old guard 
shot down their plans.
I sighed. "All right, all I can do is figure what happened here. They fingered 
Whitlock, probably when he was tabbed and investigated before being handed the 
east-coast coordinator's job. For some reason, they had burrowed into one of 
those sixteen hundred other worlds, and so they had a match—a real good one, 
considering their replacement Whitlock. A Whitlock loser who was common enough 
that he'd drool to be a winner again. And they have this State College access to 
the Labyrinth. It's pretty wild, real wilderness, all around there. Mind telling 
me why you used Oregon with a State College station?"
"We don't have a State College station. There's a semipermanent flag stop there 
for eastern access, but it's not a full operation and it's totally automated. 
We're checking out traffic to and from it now, but that takes time. See, we 
can't handle a full station unless we can secure it through a tremendous number 
of worlds. When you're dealing with truck- and boxcar-loads of stuff, you have 
to make sure it ships right, point to point. Other points of entry for our 
convenience are automated flag stops. Just sidings, as it were. Of course, if 
we'd wanted to get the Whitlock women out, we'd have used State College, but we 
wanted them to be followed and take pursuers as far away from the east coast as 
possible."
I nodded. I was feeling very weak and tired but, damn it, I'd paid for this 
stuff with a year of my life and some blood, and twice this other crowd had 
tried to shoot me.
"Tell me this," I said at last. "If Big Tony gets twenty years in Atlanta, and 
his organization is fragmented, who is most likely to get control of his 
territory? Between loan sharking, prostitution, and particularly narcotics, he 
controls maybe a billion dollars' worth of business, I figure. That's a hell of 
a lot. Enough even for a seat on the mob's own inner council." That was the 
board of directors, more or less, of the old-line organized-crime families.
"We thought of that. The most likely candidate is Al 'Big Nose' Norton, who has 
a hell of a share of Jersey and wants more. He's got the muscle, the contacts, 
and the resources. Of course, he isn't Italian, but that's not a hundred percent 
prerequisite anymore, as you know."
"Anybody named Norton who can take a hunk of Jersey can be anything he wants," I 
responded. "If Norton moved in without much opposition and takes over, we can 
assume he's the object of all this. He's theirs, whether he knows it or not. If 
something happens to him, or they push a dark horse in to take over, that'll be 
the man they wanted. He gets all that territory and power, and the only price he 
pays is that, with a seat on the inner council, he'll be able to figure just 
what the Company wants and what it's doing, and feed it to the competition. It's 
really pretty smart, and it involves leaving few—outworlders, you called 
them?—here. Maybe only one as a contact. Figure they originally thought of the 
replacement Little Jimmy for that, but when he got greedy on the payoff money 
and then didn't hit his double, he was out. Of course, they still have their 
original agent in place, the one that saw all this opportunity and put the 
wheels in motion."
Markham was interested. "What? Who?"
"The one who made Whitlock as a Company man, then was able to use the State 
College flag stop to get the other Whitlock—and whoever else he needed—in, and 
work this through. He'll be their chief agent here, with a pipeline into the 
Company's local operation, and organized crime as well. The one who'll 
eventually mastermind whatever bigger things this is leading up to. Right now we 
have the heads of the competition, which are untouchable because they're too 
removed to pin anything on. This Gritch character is obviously their agent in 
general charge of the operation, working with cohorts inside the Labyrinth 
system so he has nearly unlimited access. Those are your problem, or your 
superior's. Big Tony's successor is the end of the line. Sure, we can take him 
out, but will we ever really be certain that whatever successor Big Tony has 
isn't theirs? Only if ,we find this missing man, their resident agent."
"You know who it .is?"
"No, but there's only a handful of people it could be. You see, at some point 
he—or maybe she—had to emerge from that shell of protection because everything 
was going down too fast. The connections are Whitlock—and Brandy and me. If I 
can get a little strength, and you can spring us all, I think I can nail that 
agent."
Both of them were all ears. "Nail that agent and we'll know which mob leaders 
are theirs, now and in the future," Markham noted. "Also, we'll be able to trace 
and shut a nasty leak, maybe trace it right up close to the source."
"Yeah," I responded. I had some trouble with the ethics of all this—I didn't 
like the idea of being a mob P.I., no matter what mob it was, and it really 
didn't matter overall which side won to me, except that if I nailed this bastard 
they might stop trying to put holes in me. Still, I couldn't get out of my head 
this vision of a fancy Main Line home on an acre or three or four, with twin 
Mercedes out front, which would be a nice home for Brandy and me, or the vision 
of Spade & Marlowe's office suite on the top floor of the poshest office 
building in Philadelphia.
Damn it, I decided, Brandy had been right all along. Playing it honest and true 
had gotten us broke and desperate. Yeah, I don't think I could deliver innocent 
lives to these corporate multi-worldly mobsters, but so long as it was nailing 
one set of trash for the other, it didn't really matter. It was something to 
nail a bastard, even if other bastards were paying me to do it.
Out of ignorance, we'd been suckered into all this and fallen off a cliff. Well, 
we weren't ignorant anymore. We knew just who, and what, we were dealing with. 
It was time for Spade & Marlowe to show just what kind of detectives they really 
were.
By the next morning, Markham's people and money had sprung all three girls, and 
Nan had been taken immediately into the Company's protective custody for 
interrogation. She alone knew what our elusive Mr. Gritch looked like, and we 
wanted a composite. Brandy came to see me almost immediately, after getting a 
shower and a change of clothes.
"It was pretty bad in there, even by Camden standards," she told me. "You don't 
have no constitutional rights in a system like this. What the judge says goes. I 
thought this was a democracy!"
"It is. It just isn't our kind. Were they rough?"
"Standard good-guy-bad-guy routine, hours and hours, with threats of violence 
but no real violence. They wanted the truth, that's all, and I couldn't give it 
to 'em, if they'd have believed it anyway. The worst thing was, they made us 
stay in our bathin' suits. Can you believe that? And Jamie was drippin' wet when 
they took us in to book us! She fell in a couple times on that sailboat while 
tryin' to keep us in range."
I thought for a moment. "You see the dead girl's body? The shooter, I mean?"
"No, but they told me about it and I didn't want to. Five slugs, all in the 
back. A real mess. Not much blood, though, 'cause she fell in the water."
I sighed. "Brandy, I think it's time we went home."
"Huh? You mean Camden?"
"Or something like it. In a little more style. As soon as they say I can get out 
of here, we go. I think I now have as much of the story as it's possible to know 
without the guilty ones filling in the blanks. The trouble is, I can't prove a 
thing. I think it's time to take a leaf from old Phil Marlowe's book. Go get 
Bill Markham and tell him I also have to talk to Whitlock. I think I have a way 
to get him back in the good graces of modern society again."
"I usually follow right along with you," she noted. "Sometimes ahead. But I 
can't figure you now."
"Oh, let's just say that maybe if I can never love this line of work, I can at 
least be good at it."
 
9.
The Agent in the Muddle
 
It had been less than five weeks since this insanity had begun, at least on the 
world where it had started, and now the drama was drawing to a close, this time 
at a Holiday Inn off I-95 in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, just south of 
Philadelphia International Airport.
Agent Marshall Flynn Kennedy hadn't changed any in that time, not even his suit, 
and he walked into the lobby and directly back to the elevators and punched the 
up button, then got on and rode up to the eighth floor, then got off, walked 
down the hall, and knocked on 832.
"Who's there?" a muffled man's voice asked.
"Agent Kennedy, DEA, sir," the federal man responded.
The chain was slipped off the door, which opened to admit the agent. When it was 
closed again, the federal man shook hands with the real and authentic Martin J. 
Whitlock IV.
"We've had quite a time with you, Whitlock," Kennedy noted. "I'm glad to see 
you've gotten some sense. Frankly, we weren't sure if you were even alive. The 
last we heard, you had skipped off to the west coast dressed, ah, unusually."
"A friend, Mr. Kennedy. Two friends, both of whom resemble me because we're from 
the same family. I assure you this is the way I normally look, on and off the 
job. I'm just tired. I want to get this over with. My wife and kids must be 
frantic by now, and I miss them."
"You understand that it'll never be like it was. Turning state's evidence 
against mob figures makes you and yours a real target. Everybody will have to be 
relocated."
"I understand. What they do is up to them. I'm a target now, with no real place 
to go. At least this way I can see them, in protected circumstances, explain 
things to them, give them the facts and the choices. I have—alternatives—for my 
future." He gave a slight smile at that, as if it were some private joke.
"You are absolutely certain you can hand us Big Nose Norton as tight as we have 
Big Tony?"
"Tighter. I can trace and document his entire money laundry, start to finish, 
and hand you his entire distribution system as well, for all of central Jersey."
"Very well. I have a car and some protective personnel downstairs. We might as 
well go now and get this ball rolling."
"I—I thought we could handle much of it here, informally," Whitlock told him 
nervously. "I really don't want to be in some solitary cell guarded by officers 
until this is over. This was not part of our agreement over the phone, Mr. 
Kennedy."
Kennedy reached in his coat and pulled out a .38 revolver. "I'm afraid I must 
insist, Mr. Whitlock," he said evenly.
Whitlock stared at the gun. "That's not necessary."
"I think it is. Now turn against the wall here, please, hands behind your back." 
The cuffs went on quickly and professionally. "Now, let's leave this room, nice 
and quiet-like. I don't want to make a mess here, or even a fuss, but I can be 
very painful if I have to be. And no heroic escape attempts, please. I have men 
at your home, looking after your wife. Her future depends on your cooperation."
Whitlock turned and stared at him. "You! It was you all along! Nail Big Tony and 
put Norton, your boy, in on the inner council. Why, you corrupt son of a bitch!"
Kennedy smiled. "Now, we both know it was more complicated than all that, but 
you have the general idea. There's nobody better placed for this than a federal 
officer, is there?"
"You're going to kill me!"
Kennedy shrugged. "Not right away. Savor the moments, Mr. Whitlock, not the 
expectation. We all have to go sometime. I couldn't just let you come in with 
all you know and blow Norton to hell in the federal record, now could I? This 
has been messy enough, but I can still grab the brass ring."
They went out and down the hall, reversing Kennedy's trail. There were some 
raised eyebrows in the lobby, but Kennedy just said, "Federal officer. This man 
is a fugitive from federal warrants. Don't worry, it's all over before it 
started," and continued on out the door.
A big blue sedan pulled up almost immediately, and Kennedy opened the door and 
Whitlock and he got in. There were two other men in the car, both real 
mean-looking.
"This is Georgio, and this is Frank," Kennedy told Whitlock as they drove off. 
"They are both highly reliable employees of Mr. Norton's with years of 
experience."
They drove north into the city, then took the Walt Whitman Bridge to New Jersey, 
and then up I—295 for a while before exiting to the west. They finally stopped 
at an old factory site, now abandoned, right on the Delaware River. They 
stopped, killed the lights, and then the three men and their handcuffed prisoner 
got out.
"Mr. Norton uses this place a lot," Frank explained. "It's nice and quiet and 
deserted, and there's big old oil drums over there right along the riverbank. We 
got a couple of eighty-pound bags of Sacrete in the trunk, but we don't like to 
start mixing until the barrel's already full and we're all right on the water. 
You understand."
"You're not going to get away with this, Kennedy," Whitlock said, sounding 
pretty brave. "The Company knows that Norton was the object. We know all about 
Gritch and the Nkrumah double. They'll take Norton out just like you took out 
Big Tony, only cleaner, and they'll just appoint my successor to handle the 
likes of you."
Kennedy chuckled. "Sure. Like you handled me, right? Hell, even I never expected 
you to just call up and walk into my arms, but I made myself the logical one, 
didn't I? As for Norton—he'll stay. My unit at DEA here is attached to the 
Federal Organized Crime Strike Force. Tsk tsk tsk. All you nasty mob types for 
me to handle. Norton gives us the Philadelphia council chairmanship and a seat 
on the inner council. We are well positioned to protect Norton, and also to nail 
anybody you might send up against him. He's not the only inner-council member 
we've got, you know. With maybe a little bloodletting, he tips the balance our 
way. Boys, I think it's time we got this over and done with. I promised my 
girlfriend I'd be in early tonight."
Car lights went on, illuminating the quartet, and I stepped out from behind one 
set. "Who created this whole crazy mess, Kennedy?" I asked. "Machiavelli?"
Kennedy's hand went to his shoulder holster, but the two mob men had theirs out 
first and rather noisily. Both of their guns were pointed not at me but at 
Kennedy, and he realized it almost immediately and relaxed.
"Horowitz! You son of a bitch, it's always you, isn't it? My biggest mistake in 
all this was not just throwing you in the slammer that first day at Whitlock's 
house."
I shook my head slowly. "No, no. You have much too big an ego, you're much too 
clever for that. That's your problem, Kennedy. It was just too damned 
complicated a scheme and involved too many people. It was so intricate it was 
bound to fail."
"It almost worked!"
"No it didn't. You blew it right off, when you didn't figure the drag-queen 
masquerade. It was so outrageous it confused the shit out of you. You didn't 
know if you had one Whitlock or two, and your pretty plans for replacing the 
eastern regional director of the Company with a double went right down the 
tubes. Then you decided to put the screws on Nkrumah when it all started coming 
apart, and he handed you Big Tony, just like you hoped. But you couldn't just 
finish him off. That got me wondering. Why let Nkrumah live, and why bring in a 
double who'd tell me just where he ran to? It hit me just the other day. You 
didn't just need information, you needed Nkrumah, because Big Tony had to be 
nailed legitimately. But old Marty, here, went to Nkrumah after your boy 
finished with Little Jimmy, and the big fart skipped the country. You were left 
without a live body to swear on those affidavits and give testimony before legal 
witnesses, so you imported a double for him to do that. But the double really 
was another Little Jimmy, heart and soul. He looked at the bills here and saw 
they were the same as the bills on his world, which must be pretty close to this 
one. He knew he'd do his thing here, then go back home—and he wanted Little 
Jimmy's restitution money, too. So he told me about Grand Cayman, hoping I might 
point the Company that way or maybe go there myself and get him knocked off. How 
am I doing?"
"Pretty fair. When you deal with trash, you have to expect treason and greed 
sometimes."
"So Little Jimmy Two runs down to pick up that payoff money and runs smack into 
Little Jimmy One," Brandy continued, picking up the story. "He knows he just 
should blow Little Jimmy One away, but he finds he can't do it. It's like 
blowin' himself away. So Little Jimmy One panics and runs for the Grand Cayman 
hideout. That's where it gets a little fuzzy. Why'd you keep him alive at all, 
let alone pay him off and send three girls to guard him?"
"Simple," Kennedy replied. "Big Tony's boys figured immediately who had fingered 
their boss and went gunning for him. They nailed our Little Jimmy thinking it 
was the original. That left me with only the original, and I was going to need a 
live body at the trial."
"So you told Gritch to get you three identical beauties to the ones Little Jimmy 
expected on his boat, and Gritch had already prepared a whole list of 
duplicates, if need be, from his world. Right?" I put in.
"You got it." Kennedy turned to the two mob toughs. "These are, I take it, not 
the same pair I've dealt with before."
Brandy grinned. "Yeah. Two can play at that substitution game."
"Can you tell me how you figured it was me?"
"That wasn't so hard," I told him. "It had to be somebody who knew the whole 
tri-state mob scene intimately, and was in a position to make things happen in 
it. It also had to be somebody who could find out who we were working for, and 
pull that switch of Nkrumahs. We talked to nobody about Oregon until we were in 
Bend, and at Bend I made only two phone calls. One was to the phony Nkrumah, the 
other to you. It was you who told me that Little Jimmy didn't even appear on the 
federal warrants list. The only reason for that was if he was a state's 
witness—but I knew Little Jimmy was splitting because he'd just told me he was, 
and with his ripped-off money restored. You might offer protection, but not even 
Big Tony would be worth a two-and-a-quarter-million-dollar restitution. Then the 
fake Whitlock shows up in McInerney to blow away the real one, who isn't there, 
and with him is one of Big Tony's best soldiers. Now, who knew they were there? 
I only told Little Jimmy—and both the real and the phony split—and you. And, of 
course, there was Nan's composite of Gritch, supplemented by Bill's detective 
team up at State College and some old photos from the obit files. It was a long 
time ago, for me, but that guy sure looked like a dead ringer for that fellow in 
the car with you the first time we met, the one who never got out. I have a 
thing for faces."
"But you weren't positive," he noted glumly, "so you fixed up this charade. 
Whitlock offering to deliver Norton to us on a platter. It made sense, since the 
Company's only way of getting things back to normal was to block Norton in a way 
that didn't seem to directly involve them. I figured Whitlock planned to deliver 
the goods, then split to one of the other worlds. Big Tony was already out on 
bail and sure to fight, and he figured he'd bumped off Nkrumah so there'd be no 
star witness at his trial. Whitlock, here, could deliver both—but wouldn't. He'd 
just deliver Norton. We can hit Big Tony now, but without Norton it's nowhere. I 
had to take him out once and for all, like I tried to do from the start."
"Frank, can you get the key from old Kennedy here and get poor Mr. Whitlock 
outta them handcuffs?" Brandy asked. "Thanks."
"So now what do you do?" the agent asked us.
"First," I replied, "we go back to Philadelphia. I have to admit, if you hadn't 
taken the bait, or if you'd just let Whitlock come in and send Norton up, we 
were stuck. I didn't have a shred of concrete evidence on you, and we couldn't 
just take out a federal officer without getting things real messy. With Big Tony 
feeling free, and Norton poised for a hit and a takeover, though, I figured that 
handing you all you needed to wrap it up in a nice package would be damned near 
irresistible—and it was. We taped the hotel-room scene, by the way, and our 
people are in place now to get it. There's nothing said there about the Company 
or other worlds or anything. It's strictly a picture of a dirty cop about to 
blow away a major witness. The U.S. Attorney is going to love it. Spout all you 
want to about other worlds and doubles and all that. That might just get you an 
insanity plea that'll work, but I doubt it. But before we head for Philadelphia, 
we're going to stop by a few friends of ours from the Company and they're going 
to give you a little implant."
Kennedy looked nervous. "What are you talking about?"
"Well, as you may know, the way the Company makes sure its people are its own 
people is by implanting a tiny little encoder in the body. Brandy and I got ours 
a few days ago. It's painless. But you can also stick a code in there that will 
make the Labyrinth a mess to you. Your friends won't pull you out, because you 
blew it in spades; but even if they did, and you got to a flag stop and got in, 
it still wouldn't matter. The Labyrinth would kill you. You better get used to 
the idea that you're going to spend some time in Atlanta, Kennedy."
"Yeah," Brandy added. "About twenty years, but probably a lot less, since that 
place is just full of busted drug kings. You might even have sent some of 'em 
there. They're gonna just love you."
I had to laugh, and she looked at me oddly. "What's so funny?"
"Ever since I became a cop I had this fantasy of lining up a bunch. of folks in 
one place and explaining the case and the pleasure of unmasking the guilty 
party. This isn't exactly a drawing room, but, you know, that's just what we 
did."
"I'm glad you got to fulfill your ambition before you died, Sam," said a voice 
behind us. We all turned, and there was Jamie holding a semiautomatic rifle, an 
Israeli job we'd brought along in the car just in case. "Everyone just drop your 
guns on the ground—now!" Guns dropped.
"Jamie! Thank God!" Kennedy sighed, and made to move over to her.
"Hold it, Kennedy! You stay with them!" she ordered.
If anything, Kennedy looked more stricken now than he did when we turned the 
lights on him. "Jamie—what? We can still do it! Don't you see? These two pests, 
Whitlock, all out of the way. We can still win!"
"You idiot!" she snapped. "We lost our chance the moment Whitlock escaped. Who 
do you think we're fighting? Some little mob brain? It's the Company, you fool! 
This only had a chance of working if everything seemed to happen naturally. 
Whitlock going bad and skipping, Big Tony getting sent to prison by straight 
testimony of a middle-level hoodlum, all that. I don't think it ever had a 
prayer, considering that idiotic but effective drag-queen masquerade. These two 
are ten times the detective you are! You didn't even know about that business 
until it was already in motion, and then you couldn't penetrate well enough and 
quickly enough in two weeks to determine what these two could in forty-eight 
hours. We can't have this, Kennedy. You know too much."
"The last of the players in this particular little game," I said. "Good old 
Jamie. Too bad, Jamie. I was getting to like you."
"I was getting to like both of you, but that's neither here nor there. This 
isn't a time for friendships, Sam. This is strictly business, and I'm assigned 
to clean up this mess. This should do it. A mob hit where Whitlock was about to 
turn himself in to the feds. Sorry, everyone, I'm on a schedule." She pulled the 
trigger, and the night was filled with two seconds of horrible bursts and a 
tremendous amount of smoke that made the scene look eerie as it reflected the 
headlights. Kennedy dived for the ground, screaming in terror. The rest of us 
just stared at her as she pulled the trigger.
We were still staring when the clip ran dry, only Frank and Georgio had their 
own guns back, although it wasn't really necessary.
"They wanted me to bring an empty gun," I said, "but I figured you might notice 
an empty clip. You're good at that. So I had them find me some blanks. A whole 
box worth. It made better theater, anyway."
"You bastard!" she screamed.
"Hey! Do you know how tough it is to find a box of blanks for an Uzi 
semiautomatic?" I noticed her glancing about. "I switched the ones in your 
handgun, too, so don't try for the bag. Besides, even if you did, it wouldn't 
make any difference. Bill Markham has boys all over here, including the only 
exit."
She dropped the gun. "I should have known," she said. "I wondered why you didn't 
tell me about this until it was under way enough that I couldn't do anything but 
ride along."
"1 didn't want you tipping Kennedy. If he'd been a good boy, though, we'd have 
fed you something and seen who you ran to. Still, I can't take all the credit. 
Philadelphia is my turf, Jamie, and I already knew you were with them even 
before we left Georgetown."
"What?"
"I had to do something, just lying there in the hospital. My arm still hurts, by 
the way, thanks to you. So I thought, and I had it figured, particularly after 
Markham filled me in on the background of the Company wars. The plot I had 
mostly figured when we talked to Nkrumah. What didn't make sense was why the 
opposition would want to kill him, and the girls. He was worth more to Kennedy, 
here, alive than dead. He was better dead for the Company, but in that case I 
was the Company. Then it hit me. So long as we were talking, exchanging 
information with Little Jimmy, nothing happened. Nothing. But when we started 
fingering those girls, arid talking two of them into maybe switching over to our 
side—then the lights went out. Then when Bill and Tod sprung both of you, and 
Brandy complained that the cops had kept you in your bathing suits and that you 
had been wet, it fell right into place. I got Bill to insist on a full autopsy 
on the third girl, Suzy, the alleged shooter. With five big holes in her, and a 
coroner's office like they got in Georgetown, the cause of death was too obvious 
to be worth looking twice at her. You counted on that. But she hadn't died from 
gunshot wounds. That's why there wasn't tremendous bleeding. She'd been 
strangled. Strangled maybe fifteen minutes, maybe more, before she allegedly 
shot me and the others."
"As soon as that autopsy report came in, I had no trouble runnin' with Sam's 
logic," Brandy added. "When an operation this big goes bad, the only thing you 
can do is minimize your losses. Take out everybody who knows some thin' they 
shouldn't, leave a mess but a tidy mess, and get out."
Suzy had been in the bow for some reason when I'd come aboard, and she'd stayed 
there when Mike fired that shot, going below for her pistol and coming back out 
on top. Jamie had spotted her there and moved her sailboat close in. Suzy hadn't 
noticed, since her attention was entirely on us. Jamie was quick and agile. She 
had gotten up on the boat silently and caught Suzy by surprise, and swiftly and 
silently strangled her with some professional hold, then took her gun and 
remained. Nkrumah was irrelevant, but when the girls had not only begun to come 
over to our side, but had brought up Gritch and others they didn't know but had 
met, she knew she had to act, and fast. She emptied the clip through the 
windshield, hoping to get all of us, but the angle was wrong and the gun 
unfamiliar. Then she had to be convincing. While I was creeping forward, she 
lowered Suzy's body into the water, then took her own gun and shot it five 
times. She couldn't shoot it on deck because it would make holes and a bloody 
mess. Then she dived into the water to make the falling-body sound, and shouted 
back up to us.
"You got all but Nan, I have to give you that," I told her. "And Nan you planned 
to take care of, if and when possible, but the cops were too tight, too quick, 
and too strict. It all didn't matter, because both Brandy and I survived and we 
already had some of the information. That meant a total clean-up. When we headed 
back for Philadelphia, you just waited, contacting Kennedy and alerting him that 
we were there. We were on your list, but last, since we were doing the dirty 
work of unearthing your victims for you." I looked off in the darkness. "Bill, 
you want to come in and take charge now?" I shouted.
To be perfectly frank, I almost expected another double cross, another hail of 
bullets, this time real, but it didn't happen. Markham and his people were right 
there and very professional.
We sat around a posh office on the fourteenth floor of one of the newest office 
buildings in Philadelphia. The one office we were in was bigger than both our 
old office and our old apartment combined, and was only part of a complex that 
went two floors down and two floors further up. This was the eastern regional 
office of G.O.D., Inc. The irony was that most of the people who worked here 
knew nothing more about the Company than that it sold mail-order merchandise by 
phone and that it had large investments in other areas worldwide. Still, the 
remarkable thing was that almost everything that went on here was totally 
legitimate, and exactly what would be done if it were just the company it 
pretended to be. Only a very few knew the truth here, and, most remarkably of 
all, there were none here that were not native to our own version of Earth. Only 
in Oregon and, we were led to believe, in Japan and Mongolia, were there any 
permanent party personnel who were not natives.
Bill Markham sat there, along with Dr. John Koken, the vice president of the 
eastern office. Koken ran the legitimate side, while Whitlock ran the darker 
side of the business from his bank. Whitlock, too, was there, along with Brandy 
and myself. Curiously, in the hierarchy of the Company, Koken was senior and set 
policy for the whole region; Whitlock was in effect his deputy, while Markham 
was one of the top men running the eastern security apparatus on both sides.
"It was quite audacious, really," Koken noted, sipping coffee. "We have a lot of 
weaknesses, the greatest being our sheer size, but we tend to forget that they 
have weaknesses as well. They are far fewer than we, and that is their major 
problem. Like the terrorist, they can cause a disproportionate amount of trouble 
and tie up resources, but also like the terrorist they have few clear-cut 
victories. I think they needed a clear victory, if only to energize the others 
who must labor in slower and less productive mischief. The only way a small 
group gains that sort of victory against a major force is by sheer audacity."
"But it failed," Brandy noted. "It was so much of a mess, I just can't see how 
it could have succeeded."
"It almost did succeed," Whitlock pointed out. "It still almost worked. They 
managed to remove me and indict Big Tony, as well as cripple Big Tony's business 
and foul up ours. The truth is, you two really turned it around. It was sheer 
luck, in the end, that kept things from going bad."
"I can't believe we were the decider here," I responded. "I mean, this thing was 
blown from the start when they couldn't replace Mr. Whitlock, here, with their 
man. They missed killing him, and they failed to trace him or to figure out that 
crazy ruse. The other Whitlock figured that at the start; and so, really, did 
Kennedy, who ordered them to stiff Little Jimmy and pressure him to turn over 
Big Tony. The trouble was, they picked a slick but greedy bastard, and, thanks 
to seeing double, an unreliable goat. It fell apart from that point. The most 
they had was a temporary victory. They had nobody to make the charges against 
Big Tony stick, and if Norton tried to muscle in while Big Tony was fighting 
this, the whole council would have crushed Norton. The ones behind this knew it, 
too, the moment they got the real picture, and that's when they decided to send 
Jamie in to clean up the mess and get out before you went too far and learned 
too much."
"What's gonna happen to her?" Brandy asked. "Or is that better not said?"
Bill Markham sighed. "Information is more critical than examples and lives to us 
at this stage. Over the years we've learned that, and we've established a 
consistent policy. Anybody who's caught and can deliver really substantive new 
information of real value to us, higher-ups and the like, and is totally 
cooperative, can buy his or her life. I don't care if it's Hitler or who, it's 
absolute. We don't promise a rose garden, but we promise life and integration 
into some society. Jamie's been very cooperative. Very cooperative. She was 
simply young and very, very ambitious and very impatient about climbing the 
ladder. Our system was slow and she thought she was underused and 
underappreciated. They look for ones like that, and they offer them more 
adventure, more thrills, and more automony and authority. Instead of being a 
resident agent on a series of worlds, she willingly became a free-lance assassin 
and clean-up artist. She has absolutely no loyalty to anyone but herself. She's 
buying a future."
"Yeah, what kind of future?" Brandy pressed. "Alone in the Garden or something 
like that?"
"No. Right now we're thinking of a world that's been more or less culturally and 
technologically stuck in the tenth century since, well, the tenth century. In 
that world, the Islamic empire wasn't stopped at the gates of Vienna, and 
overran Europe and much of Asia as well as Africa. It's an old-line, old-time 
fundamentalist Islam that keeps a rigid system and breeds its conquered 
opponents out of existence. There's a sheik, a prince, deep in the Songhai 
Empire on the Niger River to whom we owe a minor favor. He finds white-skinned 
women exotic, and he has a pretty good harem. We're inclined to ship her there 
and treat her with a blocking code so she's stuck there. If she can make her way 
in that world, fine. We think she'll be in hell for a while, then crack and 
accept it. That's only fair. She has a lot of blood on her hands and she was 
pretty cold about it. Even now, her only remorse is that she failed."
"And Gritch?" I asked.
"We haven't got him yet, but we have enough information now that we've 
identified the world they're using. It's only nine away from this one, which 
means it's pretty damned close to ours. I think, once we have some of the major 
players in the game there reined in, we'll find the network and how it works, 
and take it over."
Brandy licked her lips nervously. "Are—we there? Sam and me?"
Markham cleared his throat. "It's not always a good idea to know those things."
"I want to know," she replied.
He sighed. "All right. You're there but Sam's not. He was killed in a riot in 
the Phillipines when in the Air Force."
I felt a chill. That scene was always with me, in my dreams, my nightmares, and 
even awake. All those white bastards stood back, not willing to risk their lives 
for a Jew, and that one black sergeant took control and saved my ass. How 
everything turned on little things. Had somebody given that sergeant trouble? 
Had somebody in that world who was white inflicted a serious psychic wound that 
was not delivered here? One that stayed his hand, kept him from risking his own 
neck to drag me out of there?
"What am I—there?" Brandy pressed. She was really adamant. "Are my parents still 
alive? Did I finish school, or what?"
"All right, then, here it is. Your mother died, same as here, same way and same 
problem. You were even wilder there than here, but when your father found out he 
gave you an ultimatum to shape up a hundred percent or get out and never come 
back. You went across town at age seventeen and became a hooker on a pimp's 
string. You still are, with a big heroin habit to feed."
"My daddy woulda killed me if I did that!"
"No, ma'am," Markham replied. "He killed himself, instead." He paused a moment 
while an extreme pall set in over the room. "I told you it's best not to know. 
Somewhere, somewhen, almost everything that might have happened did. Somewhere, 
too, your father, maybe even your mother, are still alive, have a successful 
agency, and you're a college grad with a career, husband, and maybe kids."
That cheered her a little. "What about Sam and me? How many worlds do you think 
we got together on?"
"Very few. I can say that without checking. The odds are just astronomical 
against it. More than one, sure, but I'd be surprised if it was a dozen out of 
hundreds or more where both of you are alive. The funny thing is, Kennedy says 
he actually called for a switch team on you two, but then you showed up trim, 
lean, different looking from the time on the siding. There was no match; and 
since you had nothing here, and the real you were with the Company, there was no 
percentage and no way to do it, even if they could have recruited and briefed a 
pair in that length of time. They had doubles for most of the others prepared, 
but nobody figured on Nkrumah hiring you, not even Nkrumah Two. It wouldn't and 
couldn't, because in that world everybody else was the same, but Sam was dead 
and you were a hooker, so there was no detective agency to think about going to. 
See?"
I did see. "Variables," I said. "Too many variables. All the big shots were the 
same, or real close to the same, but we were the one thing in this world that 
related to them that they didn't have. Our presence hadn't affected their 
development up to then; we were zilch. We only took on any importance when 
Little Jimmy came to us here."
"Even then, who knows what woulda happened if that old switchman or whatever he 
was hadn't sent us to the Garden?" Brandy mused. "I mean, a lot of these things 
are dead ends, right? We coulda rotted there. Only 'cause we happened to be 
there and I happened to wake up and hear it when they opened up that Labyrinth 
gateway, did we get out at all."
"That, in fact, is what we're here to discuss," Markham told us. "It was no 
accident, Brandy. You were meant to hear it, see it, and escape in it. That 
'garden,' as you call it, is a dead-end siding."
I sat up at that one. "Now, hold on. Who was that seven-foot snow-white girl in 
the kimono, then?"
"That was when you were back on the main track. It's a short siding. You see, 
they needed you. They looked over the mess and they decided it was going down a 
failure, and the only thing they could do was send somebody in to take out those 
who knew too much, protect Kennedy if possible—waste him, too, if his cover was 
blown— and make sure nobody went any further than here. For that, they needed a 
way to get Jamie here, as a company agent, so she'd have the resources and cover 
to track these people down and know what we knew. The old switchman's report was 
filed with the nearest full station, as is procedure, so immediate action could 
be taken if need be. Otherwise, the station is supposed to send the report on 
down the line. They didn't. Instead, they arranged for one of their own to work 
the nearest switch set and convincingly send you to them with no record being 
filed."
"The dog-faced woman," I said.
"Uh-huh. We didn't know that for sure, since even Jamie wouldn't know the 
switching personnel, but we inferred it, and when we found she'd been recently 
certified and changed to that switch and watch, it was pretty easy to figure."
I nodded. "I figured if Jamie was their hitter, then her boss had to be 
Cranston. Too bad, with a name like that."
"That beach house, which in our world would be on the Sonoma County coast north 
of San Francisco, is a training center for younger operatives. He runs it 
because it's a quiet world and a stratified one, and so it's pretty easy to 
train people there without much danger of exposure. Now that I think of it, it's 
kind of odd that Cranston seemed happy there for so long and never pressed for 
promotion or reassignment, but that's hindsight. We probably have a large 
percentage of senior staff that get in a life they really like and want to 
stay."
"Cranston had it pretty good," I noted. "With some amenities hidden from the 
rest of the folks, I could get used to that lifestyle myself."
"Still has, but not for long," Markham noted. "So far we've covered all the 
entrances and exits, and he hasn't been tipped that Jamie was caught. If he 
finds out, he'll skip, and he has the means to do it. He's pretty wary; I doubt 
if we could con him into coming down to headquarters line, since he's always had 
to fight to get an appointment there before, and he's sticking pretty close to 
his house until this is done. He built the place, and it has a staff of 
twenty-four plus various students. We have no idea how many are really 
competition, and we don't know what's built into that house, but he has a flag 
stop in there, that we know. That's how he got you two back here. Our worry is, 
if we slip-up and can't take him, he can use that flag to enter the Labyrinth. 
We don't know how desperate he'll be. Some of them are pussycats, some are 
kamikazes. We don't want to lose him if we can avoid it. We want his boss, and 
he's the only one who knows who that is."
"But you're going after him."
"Sure. Want to come? We sure can't use anybody from the local organization 
there. We don't know who's who."
Brandy looked at me. "Want to go?"
"I shrugged. "More getting shot at. Yeah, all right. I can see that you do. I 
have a bad feeling about this, though. Every time we've gotten involved in this 
activity, something nutty happened. We've been lucky so far, but how long can it 
last?"
"Don't mind him," Brandy told them. "He's always like that. That's his way of 
saying he wouldn't miss it for the world."
I looked at him. "The fact that we're invited seems to imply a few. things. 
First of all, you really don't expect to nail him alive, so you can afford a 
couple of rank amateurs along. Second, you want to check us out."
"You're wrong. I do want him alive. I could have him killed pretty easily. 
That's why this is delicate. He is under no such restrictions."
The place was heavily guarded, but we had enough people to take out the major 
spotters and replace them convincingly with our own people. The trouble was, 
there were so many people in and around the house, and so many potential traps, 
that a full reconnaissance just wasn't practical. For the same reason, we 
couldn't come in through his basement flag stop, since we didn't know his alarms 
there and couldn't know what signals the automated equipment would give if an 
entry were made. What we could do, however, was issue a command that effectively 
shut down the flag stop from the Labyrinth side. Since McInerney and his cult 
were never in on Cranston's treason, since they deliberately remained ignorant 
of what was proper and what was not, we used the Oregon station for our own 
entrance, then had that temporarily shut down as well just in case.
Cranston's beach house location had been ideal for hiding the Company school and 
Company activities, but its very isolation in this world also made it relatively 
easy to cut off. Brandy and I were again dressed all in black, but this time 
professional outfits that were a lot nicer than that plastic, which the Company 
had been shipping to some other world from ours, that had gotten us into the 
plant at the start.
It was quiet and fairly still, but we slipped into the main hall and saw one of 
those liveried butlers making his way downstairs with a tray full of dirty 
glasses and dishes. We crept up to him, and I held him while Brandy took the 
tray and set it down. The gun in his back made him very cooperative.
"Company security," I whispered. "Cranston still awake?"
He nodded. "Y—yes."
"You have an intercom or speaking tube to reach him?"
"Yes—in the pantry."
"Anybody else in the pantry?"
"No, not at this time of night. Please—what is this all about?"
"If you have to ask, then you wouldn't believe the answer or you already know 
it. Either way, just don't sweat it, and do what you're told. If anything bad 
happens to us because of you, something awful's going to happen to you first. 
Understand?"
I had real hopes it'd be the guy who slipped us the mickey, but you can't have 
everything. The kitchen and pantry area was dimly lit and deserted as promised, 
though, and the tubes were all there—and all nicely labeled. He could still 
double-cross us if Cranston wasn't in his study and somebody else was, but it 
was his funeral if he did and he knew it.
"Mr. Cranston, this is Jameson," the butler said into the tube after giving a 
whistle, "I think you had better come down to the library, sir. There's 
something wrong that I think you'd best attend to in person."
"You said that just like we told you," I said approvingly. "Good night."
He looked puzzled. "Good night?" he echoed, and Brandy hit him with the juice 
right in the rump through all those clothes. That stuff, whatever it was, was 
quick. Maybe three or four seconds and he was down for the count.
We hurried into the library and concealed ourselves behind the drapes, guns at 
the ready. Cranston might just as likely send his people in first and we knew 
it. He didn't, though, coming down the stairs and walking straight into the 
library. He stopped and looked around, puzzled. He was wearing that same silk 
dressing gown we'd seen him in on the train.
"Jameson?" he called.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" I asked, stepping out, pistol 
pointed at him.
"De shadow do," Brandy responded, and stepped out herself, also armed.
"I thought it was Helen Gurley Brown," I responded.
"Horowitz?" Cranston was genuinely surprised. I think he might have expected 
somebody, but not me. "Both Horowitzes?" He paused a moment, then sighed. "I 
surmise from this that Jamie blew it. She always was a hotheaded little 
psychopath, but she had the most experience in a world similar to yours of 
anyone available to me right then. I assume the house is surrounded?"
"Yes."
He sighed again. "Mind if I get dressed first, then? Where can I go?"
"Yes, I mind, and I don't want to find out where you can go. Hands where I can 
see 'em, please. Now, just turn and walk the eight feet or so to the front door, 
and the nice men outside will take care of you."
Brandy glanced at me. "Pussycat," she whispered.
At that moment a series of shots rang out, ricocheting all over the library. We 
jumped and tried to find the source, but in that split second Cranston was gone.
We ran out into the hall after him. There was the sound of people moving around 
upstairs, and lots of queries and complaints, but I was pretty sure Cranston 
hadn't gone back up. He was headed for the flag stop, and as we saw in the 
pantry, you got there through the wine cellar.
Our own people were entering and taking up positions, so that left us to give 
chase. I had no idea who'd fired those shots, but whoever it was, wasn't 
apparent, and also, thankfully, was a lousy shot. It was probably some kind of 
automatic device triggered somehow by Cranston.
We had just entered the wine cellar when the bottles started to vibrate and 
there was the sound of loud and very big machinery beyond them. One of Markham's 
men came in behind us. "That thing's been shut off! He can't be going in!"
"Well, he's doing it!" Brandy shouted back.
"Don't lose us!" I said to the agent. "And make sure your switches are secure! 
I'm going in after the son of a bitch!"
"We're going in!" Brandy responded, and we went down the corridor, smashing some 
wine on the way, just in time to see the figure of a man in a silk gown enter 
what was unmistakably a small version of the Labyrinth. There was a fair amount 
of electronic equipment here, and some panels were exposed that had been built 
into the cellar wall. Somehow, Cranston had broken the seal and reopened the 
siding, giving him an opening to the first switch point. Brandy and I ran right 
into the blue lines of folding and twisting squares, running at full speed.
The trick was to keep Cranston in sight, because if we lost him he could go 
anywhere. That meant keeping no more than one cube length behind him. 
Fortunately, he'd stumbled very early on that dressing gown, while we were in 
good shape and dressed for this. We had sight of him, but we had been warned not 
to fire a shot in the Labyrinth unless we were in the same cube as Cranston and 
couldn't miss. Otherwise, the bullet would exit into some world and keep going 
until it was spent or hit something—or somebody.
Cranston reached the switch point, the same point where we'd been directed to 
him by the dog-faced woman, and that was what I was counting on. No matter what, 
he'd have to run in place for a while until the switch was set and thrown, and 
that would give us a chance to be in the same cube as him. He'd thought of that, 
though. Now he stopped, turned, and showed that we weren't the only ones with 
guns. His was a shiny, crazy-looking thing but I had no doubt that it was lethal 
and that Cranston would have no moral compunctions about shooting into an 
adjacent cube.
I hesitated, but Brandy stopped, braced, and fired anyway, disregarding 
instructions. Then, again, better a chance of a stray shot somewhere than a shot 
in me, I thought, and stopped to aim my own.
Brandy's volley struck home at least once, though. Cranston reeled and fell 
back, his own shot, an emerald-green beam, going wild, and when he recovered 
there was an ugly red stain on his left side. He'd finally have to get a new 
dressing gown, after all.
And then he was gone, exiting through one of the intersecting cubes, and we 
rushed forward. Brandy again saved me, because she immediately saw that the only 
way Cranston could have turned his stop back on, let alone made it past here, 
was if somebody in his crew had taken over the switch again. She ran in and 
immediately fired her last shots in the clip at the transfer cube, not even 
looking at who she might be shooting. By the time I got there, there was the 
figure of a small, middle-aged man reeling back with a number of holes in him, 
while another figure lay slumped over the controller board.
Cranston had to have his own communications channel through the Labyrinth; he'd 
activated it as a precaution before coming downstairs, and obviously when he 
reached the cellar he gave the orders to take out the switchman. We should have 
covered that, but we'd been assured by those who were supposed to know that the 
flag stop was closed off.
Brandy pointed up, unable to convey sound in the medium, and I looked and saw a 
fleeing figure, tiny but in the cube. We concentrated on it and went for it, 
entering just as he exited to the next spot.
Now, though, it was getting tougher. There were worlds showing on some of the 
cube-faces, worlds that were dark, worlds that were green, worlds that were 
desert, worlds that were blasted heaths. There were sometimes as few as six 
facets, sometimes many more, showing, but all but two always showed worlds, 
exits into reality. The Labyrinth twisted and wound about, but there was only 
one way to go, to stay in it. We only kept up because Cranston had been slowed 
by his wounds. He was losing blood fast, and he couldn't keep this up very long. 
He knew it too, better than we, and he risked a look back to see us gaining on 
him.
Then, unexpectedly, a very dismal and dark cube-face came up to his right and he 
took it. We ran in, now only twenty or thirty seconds behind him, and exited out 
onto a world. Wherever it was, the exit point was outdoors and in the midst of a 
violent thunderstorm with tremendous wind gusts and driving rain. It was warm, 
but that didn't make it any less miserable.
Thunderstorms, I thought as the rain soaked through me in a moment. Why is it 
always thunderstorms?
We were on a beach with tremendous waves coming in, and up between the beach and 
dense growth was maybe a couple of hundred feet worth of driftwood. It was a sea 
of dead trees, jagged and twisted and not very wet. I never saw anything quite 
like it, but it sure as hell made it hard to spot Cranston. We both stopped.
"It must be a safe house, something like that, for them!" I shouted to her over 
the roar of the storm. The lightning and thunder were fierce. "Somewhere here 
he's got enough to hole up until his buddies check here and pick him up!"
"Not without a doctor, he don't!" she shouted back. "Move in and get some 
shelter behind that driftwood! So long as we're between him and the Labyrinth, 
he'll have to come to us. No use trackin' him in this storm!"
She was right; we could do nothing until the storm passed, but we were in better 
shape than he was. Even if there was a superhospital just beyond the jungle line 
over there, he'd never get through with that wound in his side, not in this 
crap. I doubted if even we could. He was just taking a breather and trying to 
get some temporary treatment for his wound. I knew how he felt. My left arm was 
still killing me off and on— mostly on, right now—and this hadn't done it any 
real good. They'd told me to keep from using my left arm for a while and not to 
get the bandages wet.
Our shelter was more theoretical than real, and that storm showed no signs at 
all of letting up. Only the realization that there were green trees here kept me 
from thinking that this was a world of perpetual storms. I couldn't even tell if 
it was light or dark, but the frequent and violent lightning flashes, some 
hitting within our line of sight, gave the whole place an eerie sort of 
strobe-light effect.
Then, slowly, the storm started to fade, the wind going down to less-than-gale 
force, the lightning growing more intermittent and further away, and the rain 
almost completely stopping. Brandy took her reserve clip off its belt clasp and 
pushed it into the pistol-grip bottom. She looked up at the sky. "It's still 
night," she said. "I think we wait 'til mornin'."
"Suits me fine," I replied.
"I'm sorry, but I cannot wait that long," came the gasping voice of Lamont 
Cranston from above us. We turned as one and looked up at him, as he stood 
there, that crazy gun pointed down at us. He had removed the dressing gown and 
tied it around his midsection in an attempt to stem the bleeding, and it wasn't 
doing the full job. If we looked like hell, Cranston looked like a walking dead 
man.
"If you want to commit suicide, go ahead," I told him, "but don't include us in 
this." His gun was wobbling, and he looked strangely not quite at us, a fact 
Brandy, too, couldn't miss.
"I'll make it," he gasped. "I've been worse off than this before. Just throw the 
guns out there in the sand."
We did it. It didn't seem worth a move. I was wondering how much longer he could 
remain perched on that huge driftwood log. The rain had stopped, but the logs 
were wet and there was a really strong runoff at the bottom. I wasn't sure which 
would kill us first—Cranston's gun or possibly the shifting logs.
"I know a little about wounds, Cranston," I said. "Air Force training and police 
training. I can help you a little. Maybe keep you alive until help arrives. You 
may have been worse off before, but you were younger then, and in much better 
shape."
"Maybe—I won't—make it," he managed, wavering, "but I'm—going to do—what I 
should've done—when I first—laid eyes—on you."
He was right above us, very close, but Brandy and I were both in a depression 
between the logs in front of him. I slowly moved my hand toward my belt and got 
my own backup ammo clip. Brandy, noticing, suddenly moved away from me to my 
left, and I took the clip and threw it at Cranston as hard as I could. It hit 
his chest and bounced off, but it made him, for the slightest moment, forget his 
balance. He fell, backward, away from us, and we heard him cry out. I went for 
the guns, but Brandy moved to one side, climbed up, then looked down. "Forget 
it, Sam, unless there's wild animals around."
"Huh? What?"
I returned, but with the guns, and climbed carefully up on the logs and looked 
down at Cranston. He'd fallen on a sharp, slightly twisted tree limb and it had 
gone right through his chest. He looked pretty gruesome, but he also was very 
dead.
"It's a mercy," I told her. "He was walking dead anyway and he knew it."
She sighed. "G.O.D. just wasn't on his side," she said.
I helped her down, and we started back toward the Labyrinth. I took Brandy's 
hand and squeezed it. "Case closed, babe. End of the line. But it sure was a 
hell of a ride."
She squeezed my hand back. "Sure was. I'm sorry I had to kill him, though. It 
ends the trail to the big boys."
"Doesn't matter. You don't nail that type with Cranstons. Not in this league. 
It's like Big Tony. He took over when somebody killed Larry Groziana. Norton was 
ready to take over from him, and there are a hundred Nortons in the wings 
waiting for anyone of 'em to slip. They're like weeds. That type's the worst 
that's in all of us, but you can't even pull 'em out by the roots. No matter 
what, they always grow back, and the little guys never notice the difference. A 
hundred loan sharks will take up where Little Jimmy left off. A hundred 
Cranstons, and their Jamies, will rush in to fill that void. In the meantime, 
the dope's still sold, the girls still sell themselves, the gamblers still get 
taken. I think that, deep down, is what makes some cops go on the pad and others 
quit like me. It's when you wake up one day and you realize that it never ends. 
Only the faces change, and the victims."
She stopped. "This beach never ends, either."
"Huh?"
"Sam—we didn't come this far in that storm. There ain't no Labyrinth no more."
I stopped, and looked up and down the beach. It was light enough now to see 
pretty far, and she was right.
"I wonder if this place has apple trees?" Brandy asked no one in particular.
No, it didn't have apple trees, but it did have coconuts, and bananas, and other 
kinds of fruit. It appeared to be an island somewhere in the tropics, not very 
big but big enough for two. There were exotic birds, and some mean-looking 
insects, but no people. None that we could find.
It wasn't, however, quite as primitive as the last time. We found a hut on the 
third day, not far inside the tree line, constructed of bamboo or some kind of 
wood or plant. It wasn't much, but there was a medical kit, a map of the island, 
something that looked like instructions which were unfortunately in a language 
like no other we'd ever seen, as well as some blankets and straw mats. Clearly 
this was where Cranston had been heading, and where he never had the strength to 
make, particularly in that storm. We hung up the clothes and went back to 
nature, but we kept the guns loaded and at the ready, including Cranston's 
oddball. The hut was too far from the Labyrinth point and too well concealed to 
be official. If Bill Markham's boys couldn't trace us with those gadgets they 
implanted in us, then sure as hell somebody from the other side would be along 
to see whether old Lamont was ready to go. There was no way anybody could know 
which of us survived.
"You know, it's almost a shame that's true," Brandy remarked. "This place is one 
I could get used to. Tropical warmth, plenty of food, ocean breezes and the 
ocean to play in, and no Cranstons, Jamies, Little Jimmys, or nobody else. Only 
one person who talks English better than me, and I still got you to myself with 
no competition."
We used the hut, but didn't sleep in it except during the occasional storm. We 
wanted to see them before they saw us, and we'd spent a year in more primitive 
conditions than this, only ending that two months or so before this. It was 
almost like coming home.
But this time it was only a few days before the Labyrinth opened again. Four 
figures stepped out, all dressed in black as we had been, and fanned out along 
the beach. One of them had some kind of gadget, and discovered Cranston's 
decomposing body where we'd left it in about five minutes. They looked at it, 
then they turned and looked the other way.
"Hey! Horowitzes! You can come home now! All is forgiven!"
It was Bill Markham.
"Over here, Bill!" I shouted. "If we'd known it was going to be you, we'd have 
dressed for the occasion!"
There were a lot of handshakes and then a tour of the island, including the hut. 
The writings weren't foreign to Markham"s expert.
"It's a general guide to the island," she told us. "Says what's good to eat and 
what to avoid, how to use medicinal herbs for this or that, and all that kind of 
thing. Done on a laser printer. Impossible to trace."
"We weren't sure which crew would come," I told them. "We were ready for the 
worst."
"Yeah, only this time we weren't gonna jump back in that damned hole," Brandy 
nodded.
"We'll stake the place out now in case anybody does show up from the other 
side," Markham told us. "The only thing we can do." He sighed. "Well, I was 
afraid Cranston might be tough. Too bad you had to nail him, but at least you 
nailed him. Okay, you passed. Now you got a decision to make."
"Come again?" I said.
"You can stay here and forget about everybody and everything except yourselves. 
We'll monitor any entries, but we'll never interfere. This place is somewhere in 
the Hawaiian chain, we figure, only real north of the state, up toward Midway. 
Not a bad place to be."
"Or?" Brandy asked.
"Or, you can come take a ride on my railroad. Be warned, though—this train's 
strictly for employees only."
I looked at him. "And what do we go back to?"
"An office in the city. Nicer than the ones you're used to. A full agency, maybe 
with staff, that can handle independent cases, but has one prime client on 
permanent retainer. I think, between Whitlock and the Company, we can steer a 
bunch of needy clients your way. Some real training, though, before that 
happens, in the less orthodox areas of detection you seem pretty good at, with 
the understanding that you'll be called upon now and then to use that training 
for your fat retainer. Interested?"
I put my arm around Brandy and looked at her. "Interested?" I asked her.
"Couldn't be otherwise," she replied. "Can't go against no act of G.O.D."
I looked out over the waters, where clouds formed strange shapes in the western 
sky, and I swore I saw them, saw them all, there in the clouds. Saw them looking 
down at us and smiling. Spade, the Op, Marlowe, Archer, McGee, all of them were 
there, and they all understood.
I looked at Brandy. "You know, Mrs. Charles, we ought to have a dog. After all, 
we're joining the upper classes now."
"Oooh, Nicki! You say the most wonderful things," she responded.
Bill Markham stared at us, half convinced we'd gone mad. I looked at him and 
gave him my best Bogart.
"Louie," I said, "this could be the start of a beautiful relationship."
Brandy frowned. "He wasn't a private eye in that one."
I pulled her close and kissed her long and hard. When we broke for air, I said, 
"It ain't the job that grabs ya, baby. It's the romance. . . ."