Moira's little Mercedes followed us closely all the way. Ricky stopped in a parking lot, and Moira pulled up alongside. Getting out, under Tony's gun, I discovered we were in the lot where I had parked the truck some hours earlier. Well, that figured, vaguely. Moira said good-bye to Sheik, and we all proceeded into the same hotel, although by a different door.

A private elevator bore us smoothly upwards, there was no telling how far. The door opened and let us out into an ordinary hotel corridor, like any other hotel corridor, except that there were a couple of men lounging on a leather sofa in a nearby alcove. One of them rose and came up.

"He's in the office, waiting," this man said. "What kept you?"

"We've been staked out at the motel, where her car was. They didn't get back until ten minutes ago," Tony said.

The man jerked his head towards Moira. "Who said anything about bringing her?"

"She did."

"Just a minute." The man went away and came back. He spoke to me. "This way… You, too, Miss Fredericks." When the two youths who'd brought us started to follow, he gave them a look of surprise. "Who invited you? Stay here."

We walked down the corridor to an unmarked door. Our escort opened it and stepped back for Moira to enter. Then he shoved me in after her and closed the door behind us, remaining outside. There were two men awaiting us in the room. One I'd already seen elsewhere in this hotel. Martell was standing just to the left of the door.

One glance was enough to show that I'd made an error in judgment. He'd let, Fredericks send a couple of juveniles to bring me in, all right, but it wasn't because he didn't know who I was or why I was there. His voice was very soft, reaching only to me and maybe the girl beside me. It was a smooth, cultured voice with a slight accent: not the voice of a gangster named Fenn.

"Greetings, Eric," he murmured. "Any friend of Paul's is welcome."

Well, anyway, I knew now why Paul had tried too hard to reach me before he died. He'd wanted to warn me that, under duress, he'd talked. He'd told all about me- and Martell was just the man to do something about the information, or get Fredericks to do it for him.

Chapter Twelve

MARTELL STEPPED BACK, to a point from which he could cover us safely, and it was time for me to forget him, for the moment, and turn my attention to the other man, sitting behind the desk.

He was a big man, a dark man, a man who'd have to shave twice a day and use plenty of talcum powder between times. He was an ugly man, with too-small features in a face that had spread out around them; particularly below the chin. He had a pug nose that I'd seen before, in a much refined and more attractive edition, but the mouth and eyes weren't familiar-she must have got those from her mother's side of the family, lucky girl.

"Hello, Dad," Moira said.

The funny thing was, my first feeling was a kind of embarrassment I hadn't felt in years, not since I was young enough to be taking girls to dances, after one of which we'd gotten bogged down on a dirt road where we'd had no business being-none that we cared to talk about, anyway-and it wasn't until close to four in the morning that I got my date home, muddy and disheveled, to find her parents awake and waiting.

This man was Big Sal Fredericks: he was a racketeer and worse, but he was also a father, and his daughter was standing beside me, after a night in my company, with her wonderful red-gold hair, as usual, tumbling down around her ears, with her expensive kid pumps ruined by rocks and thorns, with her smart piquй dress wrinkled and far from clean. Even her youthful resilience had its limits, and she'd passed them during the night. At least her costume had.

She looked very young like that, like a dressed-up baby at the end of a tough birthday party, and I was ashamed of myself. I wouldn't have wanted another man to bring my daughter home like that-particularly not a man so much older than she was. There was a moment in which I really wanted to apologize, quite sincerely. But Sally Fredericks put me at ease at once.

He got up and looked at us. He walked around the desk and approached his daughter and looked her up and down. Then he struck her hard across the face with his open hand.

"You slut!" he said.

He turned to me. He used his fist on me. It was quite a punch, slow but with lots of power. I managed to roll with it or he might have broken my jaw. I went down. It seemed like a good idea to let him think he'd really hurt me, and as a matter of fact, he had. He still wasn't satisfied. He came over and kicked me hard in the side. Then he went back around the desk and sat down, rubbing his knuckles proudly.

After catching my breath, I looked at Martell, who jerked his head to let me know it was all right to get up. In a way, it was nice to be dealing with at least one professional. With amateurs, you've got to watch every minute that they don't do by mistake what they could never do on purpose. I know of at least one good operative, behaving himself perfectly, who was killed by a jittery farm boy with no more sense than to rest his finger on the trigger of a shotgun.

But with Martell around, you knew you'd never be killed accidentally-for what it was worth. I thought I could see a kind of malicious amusement in his eyes. He didn't mind a bit watching Fredericks work me over, knowing that, to stay in character, I had to take it meekly… I got up and looked at the kid standing there with her hand to her cheek and hatred in her eyes, as she glared at her father, behind the desk.

"Who's this creep?" Fredericks demanded. "Another of those barflies you keep picking up? Haven't I told you-',

"You've told me," she said. She took her hand down, revealing a reddened area along the cheekbone that might go away, but might also color up into a real bruise. Her voice was level and cold and adult. "I'm supposed to stay home all day and watch TV."

"Nobody's talking about what you do in the day!"

"All night, then," she said.

"I warned you what I'd do to any jerk who-" He drew a long breath, and said, "I've tried to do what I should. I've tried to be both parents to you since your mother-"

"Let's not bring Mother into this!"

He said, "I've sent you to the best schools, given you money and clothes and cars, and what do you do? First you get yourself mixed up with a married fellow and then you come back here and shame me by trying to act like the town tramp-my daughter! Why didn't you stay back east like I told you and find yourself some nice socialite fellow your own age-"

"I did," she said, "but you know, it's funny how they always seemed to lose interest when they learned my dad was Sal Fredericks, the big hotel man. I guess there's kind of a prejudice against the hotel business these days."

He flushed, and controlled himself. "Why do you do it, baby?" he asked, and for a moment he was human and I could feel a little sorry for him. "Why do you do it? Look at you, my daughter that I've tried to bring up nice, like a lady, standing there looking like you'd been sleeping in your clothes-"

"I have," she said bluntly. "With him. Twice."

We weren't there any longer, Martell and I. They were alone in the room, the two of them, swinging at each other with spiked clubs, drawing real blood. She didn't look at me as she said it, and he didn't look at me as he heard it; he'd get to me later.

"Why, baby?" he asked again.

"Because he was the only man I could find who had the guts! Who wasn't scared of you!"

"We'll see about his guts," Fredericks said. "Now you go home and clean yourself up-"

She said, "You're not going to touch him! You're not going to lay a finger on him!"

He said, "Fenn, take her home!"