He took a deep breath and, resolutely, turned the page. "I've been working too hard," he informed himself loudly. "Way too hard. Now. Let's see, where was I going... right—escort services."
He found the heading and its page after page of garish and seductive display ads. Sure enough, none of them listed any addresses. Just for completeness, he flipped back to the M's, checking out the massage places. Some had addresses; others—the ones advertising out-calls only—had just phone numbers.
"Makes sense," he decided. "Otherwise the cops and self-appointed guardians of public morals could just sit there and scare all their business away. So what gives with this?" He started to turn back to the prostitute listing, his fingers losing their grip on the slippery pages and dropping the book open at the end of the M's—
And again he froze. There was another listing of names and addresses there, just in front of Museums. Shorter than either the prostitute or embezzler lists; but the heading more than made up for it.
Murderers.
He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. "This is crazy," he breathed. "I mean, really crazy." Carefully, he opened his eyes again. The Murderers listing was still there. Almost unwillingly, he reached out a finger and rubbed it across the ink. It didn't rub off, like cheap ink would, or fade away, like a hallucination ought to.
It was real.
He was still staring at the book, the sea of yellow dazzling his eyes, when the knock came at his front door.
He fairly jumped out of the chair, jamming his thigh against the underside of the table as he did so. "It's the FBI," he gasped under his breath. It was their book—their book of the city's criminals. It had been delivered here by mistake, and they were here to get it back.
Or else it was the mob's book—
"Radley?" A familiar voice came through the steel-cored wood panel. "You home?"
He felt a little surge of relief, knees going a little shaky. "There's paranoia," he chided himself, "and then there's para-noi-a." He raised his voice. "Coming, Alison," he called.
"Hi," she said with a smile as he opened the door, her face just visible over the large white bag in her arms. "Got the table all set?"
"Oh—right," he said, taking the bag from her. The warm scent of fried chicken rose from it; belatedly, he remembered he was supposed to have made a salad, too. "Uh—no, not yet. Hey, look, come in here—you've got to see this."
He led her to the kitchen, dropping the bag on the counter beside the sink and sitting her down in front of the phone book. The yellow bag still marked the page with the Prostitutes heading; turning there, he pointed. "Do you see what see?" he asked, his mouth going dry. If she didn't see anything, it had suddenly occurred to him, it would mean his brain was in serious trouble....
"Huh," she said. "Well, that's new. I thought prostitution was still illegal."
"Far as I know, it still is," he agreed, feeling another little surge of relief.
So he wasn't going nuts. Or at least he wasn't going nuts alone. "Hang on, though—it gets worse."
She sat there silently as he flipped back to the Embezzlers section, and then forward again to point out the Murderers heading. "I don't know what else is here," he told her. "This is as far as I got."
She looked up, an odd expression on her face. "You do realize, I hope, that this is nothing but an overly elaborate practical joke. This stuff can't really be in a real phone book."
"Well... sure," he floundered. "I mean, I know that the phone company wouldn't—"
She was still giving him that look. "Radley," she said warningly. "Come on, now, let's not slide off reality into the cable end of the channel selector. No one makes lists of prostitutes and embezzlers and murderers. And even if someone did, they certainly wouldn't try to hide them inside a city directory."
"Yes, I know, Alison. But—well, look here." He pulled the yellow bag over and slid it into her hand. "Feel it. Does it feel like plastic to you? Or like anything else you've ever touched?"
Alison shrugged. "They make thousands of different kinds of plastics these days—"
"All right then, look here." He cut her off, lifting up the end of the phone book. "Here—at the binding. I'm a printer—I know how binding is done. These pages haven't just been slipped in somehow—they were bound in at the same time as all the others. How would someone have done that?"
"It's a joke, Radley," Alison insisted. "It has to be. All the phone books can't have—Well, look, it's easy enough to check. Let me go downstairs and get mine while you get the salad going."
Her apartment was just two floors down, and he'd barely gotten the vegetables out of the fridge and lined them up on the counter by the time she'd returned.
"Okay, here we go," she said, sitting down at the table again and opening her copy of the phone book. "Prostitutes... nope, not here. Embezzlers... nope.
Murderers... still nope." She offered it to him.
He took it and gave it a quick inspection of his own. She was right; none of the strange headings seemed to be there. "But how could anyone have gotten the extra pages bound in?" he demanded putting it down and gesturing to his copy. "I mean, all you have to do is just look at the binding."
"I know." Alison shook her head, running a finger thoughtfully across the lower edge of the binding. "Well... I said it was overly elaborate. Maybe someone who knows you works where they print these things, and he got hold of the orig—oh, my God!"
Radley jumped a foot backwards, about half the distance Alison and her chair traveled. "What?" he snapped, eyes darting all around.
She was panting, her breath coming in short, hyperventilating gasps. "The...
the page. The listing..."
Radley dropped his eyes to the phone book. Nothing looked any different.
"What?
What'd you see?"
"The murderer listing," she whispered. "I was looking at it and... and it got longer."
He stared at the page, a cold hand working its way down his windpipe. "What do you mean, it got longer?" he asked carefully. "You mean like someone... just got added to the list?"
Allison didn't answer. Radley broke his gaze away from the page and looked at her. Her face was white, her breath coming slower but starting to shake now, her eyes wide on the book. "Alison?" he asked. "You okay?"
"It's from the devil," she hissed. Her right hand, gripping the table white-knuckled, suddenly let go its grip, darting up to trace a quick cross across her chest. "You've got to destroy it, Radley," she said. Abruptly, she looked up at him. "Right now. You've got to—" she twisted her head, looking all around the room—"you've got to burn it," she said, jabbing a finger toward the tiny fireplace in the living room. "Right now; right there in the fireplace."
She turned back to the phone book, and with just a slight hesitation scooped it up. "Come on—"
"Wait a minute, Alison, wait a minute," Radley said, grabbing her hands and forcing them and the phone book back down onto the table. "Let's not do anything rash, huh? I mean—"
"Anything rash? This thing is a tool of the devil."
"That's what I mean," he said. "Going off half-cocked. Who says this is from the devil? Who says—"
"Who says it's from the devil?" She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Radley, just where do you think this thing came from, the phone company?"
"So who says it didn't come from the other direction?" Radley countered.
"Maybe it was given to me by an angel—ever think of that?"
"Oh, sure," Alison snorted. "Right. An angel left you this—this—voyeur's delight."