"Have it your way."

He was quick, and he was good. He hit me once in the belly, doubled me over, and clipped my head with his knee as I went down. The pain burst in my cheek, and went to my neck. I tried to get up, and he gave me the knee again. This time I lay on the ground without moving.

"Get up," said Toothpick."

"Not me," I told him. "I like it down here."

They threw me into the cruiser and took me to the substation, one of them driving my car. They turned me over to a lieutenant named Ford. He was short and tubby, and he looked as if his shoes hurt. When he saw my face, he glared at the cops.

"I told you to run him," he said. "I didn't tell you to make hamburger out of him."

The two cops shifted uncomfortably. Toothpick put my ID on the desk. Ford stared at it, and said, "What the hell is this? The navy?"

Eddie said, "You said to run him, boss, but he wouldn't run."

"The fucking U.S. Navy?"

"He wouldn't run," Eddie repeated stubbornly.

Ford's mouth opened and closed a couple of times. He looked like an unhappy fish. He suddenly shouted, "Get out of here. Get the hell out of here."

The cops went out. Ford peered at my face. "That hurt much?"

"I can live with it."

"Sit down, sit down." He got a bottle of Wild Turkey out of a desk drawer, poured into paper cups, and handed me one. "That should take the edge off it. What the hell have we got here?"

"Your people tried to run me. I got sore, and I showed them the tin. Then the fun started."

"You working?"

"If I were, would I tell you?"

"No, I guess not. You should have let them run you. I mean, what the hell?"

"I know. Like I said, I got sore."

"Not so good in your line of work. If it is your line of work." He tapped my ID with a fingernail. "Take me an hour to check this out. If it's a phony, you could tell me now and save us some time."

"It's real, all right. Look, I'll show you. Port is left, starboard is right. That's sailor talk. Can I go now?"

"Jesus, one of those." He sighed, and pushed himself out of his chair. "Sit there like a good little sailor, and don't move."

He went out, and came back in a few minutes. "Like I said, about an hour."

"What do I do for an hour, just sit here?"

"You want to pass the time, you can tell me why you were staking out the Weiss house."

That didn't figure. I'd been parked up the street. "You've got me. What's a Weiss house?"

He sighed again. "Suit yourself."

He went to work on some papers, and ignored me after that. I sat back, stared at a wall, and wondered how I was going to explain this one to Sammy. He had to find out. The computer check would go to the ONI, but then it would be shunted to the Center. The check would come back confirmed, but Sammy would see the paperwork. Lie, I decided.

The check took less than an hour. After a while, a woman came in and handed Ford a printout. He read it, grunted, and gave it back to her. He pushed my shield and card across the desk to me. He leaned forward, and said quietly, "Okay, so you check out, but that doesn't mean that I can let you hassle Mr. Weiss. He pays his taxes just like everybody else around here."

I shook my head. "I'm not trying to hassle anybody, and I don't know any Weiss."

"Look, you think you're the first one who tried to get at him? You're the fourth, sailor, four that I can remember. One guy actually popped him as he was coming out the door, damn near broke his jaw. We stopped the other two, and now you come along."

"Is that why you tried to run me?"

"We keep an eye on that street, but that wasn't it. His wife called it in. She saw you from a window. So it doesn't make any difference what kind of a badge you're carrying. I want you out of town."

"I guess you know what you're talking about, but I'm still in the dark."

He sat back, and shrugged. "If that's the way you want to play it, but let me give you a piece of advice. If you can't control your wife, get rid of her, but don't try to settle it here on my turf."

"Is that what this is all about? Wives?"

"And husbands. Three of them, and now you."

"This Weiss sounds like quite a guy."

"From what I hear, he's the greatest cocksman since Errol Flynn, but what happens on board the Carnival Queen is none of my business." He gave me a steely cop look. "What happens here in town is very much my business, and I've got enough business to worry about without a bunch of angry husbands buzzing around that house. You understand? You've been warned."

"I understand, but you've got it wrong. I'm not even married." I stood up. "Am I free to go?"

"Sure, I've got nothing to hold you on. You want another piece of advice?"

"I already heard it. Get out of town."

"That definitely, but something else. There are two ways out of this station. You turn to the right, and you go out the front. You turn to the left, and you go out the back. I'd go out the back if I were you."

"Any particular reason?"

"Mrs. Weiss is waiting out front. She says she wants to see you. You don't want to see her, do you?"

"I don't even know the lady."

"Now you're talking." His eyes turned shifty. "What my boys did… can we keep that off the record?"

"I've been drinking your whisky, haven't I?"

He grinned. "Off you go, sailor."

I went out of his office, stood in the corridor, and looked at my watch. It was only eleven-thirty. Left or right, stupid or lucky? I wasn't sure which, but I had the feeling that I had exhausted my capacity for stupidity, at least for one day. I turned right.

She was waiting for me in the reception area, sitting on one of those wooden benches that they make for the cop shops, the hardest, saddest benches in the world. In an age of premolded plastics, they still make those seats of misery, or maybe the old ones never wear out.

She stood up when she saw me, and I knew that my luck had kicked in. She was a beauty, a tall and slender blonde. She was ten years past the best of it, and those years showed in her eyes, but she was still a beauty.

She stood in front of me, and said, "Mr. Slade, I'm June Weiss." Her voice was throaty, with a catch in it. "I've been waiting to see you."

"The lieutenant told me."

She stared at me with a concentration that was disconcerting. "I'm sorry, this must seem strange to you, but you're the first one I've ever seen. I never saw any of the others. I had to see what you looked like."

"Why?"

"It was important to me. Would you mind if we went someplace, and talked?"

"About what?"

She looked at the busy station. There were at least a dozen people in the room. She put a hand on my arm. "Not, here, I can't talk in a place like this. Please?"

She knew how to do it. Come close, touch you lightly, let you breathe her, and use that throaty voice to say please. It worked just fine on me. I felt a soft plum in the back of my throat, and I had to swallow hard.

We walked out into the sunlit street, and I managed to say, "Where do you want to go?"

"My car is right here. Will you follow me?"

To the ends of the earth, I thought, but all I said was, "Yes." I followed her car to an X-brand motel near the Interstate. It was a cheap-looking joint with a faded facade, and the parking lot was a checkerboard of weeds. The bar in the rear was called the Tropic Moon, and it stank of antiseptic. It didn't seem like her sort of place, but I told myself that I didn't know anything about her. We were the only customers in the room. She wanted a gin and tonic, I ordered a beer, and we sat at a table silently. She stared at her glass without drinking, and I wondered what she wanted. I could have gone into her head to find out, but I was reluctant to pry. Instead, I put it into words.

"What did you want to talk about?"