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drinking.”

“Are you? I thought perhaps you might.” She shot more liquor into her glass. She didn’t

bother with the Whiterock this time.

“Who looks after Maureen during the day?” I asked as she made her way back to the settee.

“Nurse Fleming. You wouldn’t like her. She’s a man-hater.”

“She is?” She sat beside me, hip against hip. “Can she hear us?”

“It wouldn’t matter if she did, but she can’t. She’s in the left wing, overlooking the garages.

They put Maureen there when she started to yell.”

That was exactly what I wanted to know.

“To hell with all man-haters,” I said, sliding my arm along the back of the settee behind her

head. She leaned towards me. “Are you a man-hater?”

“It depends on the man.” Her face was close to mine so I let my lips rest against her temple.

She seemed to like that.

“How’s this man for a start?”

“Pretty nice.”

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I took the glass of whisky out of her hand and put it on the floor.

“That’ll be in my way.”

“It’s a pity to waste it.”

“You’ll need it before long.”

“Will I?”

She came against me, her mouth on mine. We stayed like that for some time. Then

suddenly she pushed away from me and stood up. For a moment I thought she was just a kiss-and-good-bye girl, but I was wrong. She crossed the room to the door and turned the key.

Then she came back and sat down again.

III

I parked the Buick outside the County Buildings at the corner of Feldman and Centre

Avenue, and went up the steps and into a world of printed forms, silent passages and old-young clerks waiting hopefully for deadmen’s shoes.

The Births and Deaths Registry was on the first floor. I filled in a form and pushed it

through the bars to the redheaded clerk who stamped it, took my money and waved an airy

hand towards the rows of files.

“Help yourself, Mr. Malloy,” he said. “Sixth file from the right.”

I thanked him.

“How’s business?” he asked, and leaned on the counter, ready to waste his time and mine.

“Haven’t seen you around in months.”

“Nor you have,” I said. “Business is fine. How’s yours? Are they still dying?”

“And being born. One cancels out the other.”

“So it does.”

I hadn’t anything else for him. I was tired. My little session with Nurse Gurney had

exhausted me. I went over to the files. C file felt like a ton weight, and it was all I could do to

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heave it on to the flat-topped desk. That was Nurse Gurney’s fault, too. I pawed over the

pages, and, after a while, came upon Janet Crosby’s death certificate. I took out an old

envelope and a pencil. She had died of malignant endocarditis, whatever that meant, on 15th

of May 1948.

She was described as a spinster, aged twenty-five years. The certificate had been signed by

a Doctor John Bewley. I made a note of the doctor’s name, and then turned back a dozen or

so pages until I found Macdonald Crosby’s certificate. He had died of brain injuries from

gunshot wounds. The doctor had been J. Salzer; the corner, Franklin Lessways. I made more

notes, and then, leaving the file where it was, tramped over to the clerk who was watching me

with lazy curiosity.

“Can you get someone to put that file back?” I asked, propping myself up against the

counter. “I’m not as strong as I thought I was.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Malloy.”

“Another thing: who’s Dr. John Bewley, and where does he live?”

“He has a little place on Skyline Avenue,” the clerk told me. “Don’t go to him if you want a

good doctor.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

The clerk lifted tired shoulders.

“Just old. Fifty years ago he might have been all right. A horse-and-buggy doctor. I guess

he thinks trepanning is something to do with opening a can of beans.”

“Well, isn’t it?”

The clerk laughed.

“Depends on whose head we’re talking about.”

“Yeah. So he’s just an old washed-up croaker, huh?”

“That describes him. Still, he’s not doing any harm. I don’t suppose he has more than a

dozen patients now.” He scratched the side of his ear and looked owlishly at me. “Working

on something?”

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“I never work,” I said. “See you some time. So long.”

I went down the steps into the hard sunlight, slowly and thoughtfully. A girl worth a

million dies suddenly and they call in an old horse-and-buggy man. Not quite the millionaire

touch. One would have expected a fleet of the most expensive medicine men in town to have

been in on a kill as important as hers.

I crawled into the Buick and trod on the starter. Parked against the traffic, across the way,

was an olive-green Dodge limousine. Seated behind the wheel was a man in a fawn-coloured

hat, around which was a plaited cord. He was reading a newspaper. I wouldn’t have noticed

him or the car if he hadn’t looked up suddenly and, seeing me, hastily tossed the newspaper

on to the back seat and started his engine. Then I did look at him, wondering why he had so

suddenly lost interest in his paper. He seemed a big man with shoulders about as wide as a

barn door. His head sat squarely on his shoulders without any sign of a neck. He wore a

pencil-lined black moustache and his eyes were hooded. His nose and one ear had been hit

very hard at one time and had never fully recovered. He looked the kind of tough you see so

often in a Warner Brothers’ tough movie: the kind who make a drop-cloth for Humphrey

Bogart.

I steered the Buick into the stream of traffic and drove East, up Centre Avenue, not

hurrying, and keeping one eye on the driving-mirror.

The Dodge forced itself against the West-going traffic, did a U-turn while horns honked

and drivers cursed and came after me. I wouldn’t have believed it possible for anyone to have

done that on Centre Avenue and get away with it, but apparently the cops were either asleep

or it was too hot to bother.

At Westwood Avenue intersection I again looked into the mirror. The Dodge was right

there on my tail. I could see the driver lounging behind the wheel, a cheroot gripped between

his teeth, one elbow and arm on the rolled-down window. I pulled ahead so I could read his

registration number, and committed it to memory. If he was tailing me he was making a very

bad job of it. I put on speed on Hollywood Avenue and went to the top at sixty-five. The

Dodge, after a moment’s hesitation, jumped forward and roared behind me. At Foothills

Boulevard I swung to the kerb and pulled up sharply. The Dodge went by. The driver didn’t

look in my direction. He went on towards the Los Angeles and San Francisco Highway.

I wrote down the registration on the old envelope along with Doc Bewley’s name and

stowed it carefully away in my hip pocket. Then I started the Buick rolling again and drove

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down Skyline Avenue. Halfway down I spotted a brass plate glittering in the sun. It was

attached to a low, wooden gate which guarded a small garden and a double-fronted bungalow