We went through the ice-machine alley and as we approached the room I said, “We’re not going inside, but make it look as if we’re headed for the room until we get parallel with the Jeep.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’ll drive around and ditch our friends, then go pick up Mike. I want to hide both of you out.”

She didn’t get inquisitive. We walked past the winch on the front bumper of the Jeep, walking as if we intended to turn into the room, but then I grasped her elbow lightly and gave her a half-turn, making it look as if I’d changed my mind at the last minute. I climbed into the driver’s seat and by the time I had fitted the key into the ignition, Joanne had walked around and got in. I backed out and headed diagonally across the concrete parking area, not wasting time but not in an obvious hurry. We drove around the back of the place to the far end and went out to the road there.

It would take the watcher in back a few moments to hot-foot through the alley to the front and alert Behrenman, who had the car. I didn’t want to make it obvious we were trying to shake them, so I didn’t pour it on when I pulled out on the road and headed south, toward the freeway interchange. It took us right past the front of the motel and of course by the time we started up the ramp Behrenman was rolling out onto the road. Now I knew where I’d seen him before. It was the same green sedan that had buzzed past when I’d driven out of the motel before noon. He’d probably spotted me coming out of the place, recognized either me or my Jeep, and made a U-turn beyond the cloverleaf to come back and investigate. That must have been when he’d picked up Joanne, phoned Madonna and then phoned Dr. Brawley.

The freeway had a moderate after-dinner traffic load. Teeny boppers and men from the nearby Air Force base cruised up and down the pavement in hopped-up cars, looking for competition for drag-race money. It was a good Southwest night, stars glistening, moon on the rise, the sky vast and velvet; at such times, under better circumstances, a vehicle as open all-around as a Jeep was worth twenty closed Detroit sedans.

But the Jeep wasn’t built for acceleration or speed. I couldn’t ditch Behrenman by running away from him; he had a big car with probably five times as much horsepower under the hood as he would conceivably need for any purpose short of breaking the land-speed record. Still, a freeway—particularly one going through the heart of a city with interchanges every quarter-mile—was virtually the ideal place to ditch a tail. Behrenman knew that; he was sticking much closer than is usually done—partly because he didn’t care if I spotted him, partly because he was afraid of losing us. Madonna had probably made it clear what would happen to him if he blundered.

I swung out in the far left lane—there were three lanes in each direction—and stayed there, doing sixty-five, judging the gaps in the traffic roaring along the two lanes to my right. I had to pass four interchanges before the cars were spaced right. A glance in the mirror placed Behrenman for me, and I was glad to see he was in my lane, separated from me by one car. With a little more experience and brains, he’d have known enough to stay in the middle lane, from which it would have been easier to maneuver.

It was simple. I waited till we were perilously close to the exit, then dodged into the center lane through a narrow gap in the long line of cars, cut sharply in front of a big semirig—earning a blat of his air horn—and squealed wobbling into the off-ramp. I had to hit the brakes hard to bring it down from sixty-five to thirty-five, and even at that we almost lifted two wheels off the ground on the sharp ramp turn. But the traffic had blocked Behrenman from getting to the right fast enough, and he would have to go on to the next exit. We had lost him.

I drove under the freeway and got back on, going in the opposite direction from my previous heading. We went east three quarters of a mile and got off to head north. I kept an eye on the mirror but we had no company. I turned into Las Palmas at nine forty-five and found the boarded-up hideout without too much trouble—a feat accomplished only because I’d spent most of my thirty years in this town and knew the back streets by heart.

We were going slowly enough so that Joanne could speak without fighting the wind. She said, “That was very neat.”

“Thank you, ma’am. For my next number I whistle and the Jeep gets up on its hind legs and dances in time to the music.”

“Are you as collected as you’re trying to make me think you are, Simon?”

“No,” I said shortly, and turned into the gap in the high oleander hedge.

The place was dark and silent, which meant nothing. When I turned the engine and lights off, I sat motionless long enough for him to get a good look at us from whatever crack he was using in the boarded-up windows. Then I got down and walked to the door, avoiding the broken glass easily by moonlight. The door was open, sagging. I waited outside and said, “Mike? It’s Simon. Joanne’s with me. Okay to come in?”

No answer; no sound at all. I went inside. It was black in there, I stayed near the door and lifted my voice—possibly he was asleep. “Mike!”

Finally I went back to the Jeep and got the flashlight from its clamp under the seat, told Joanne to wait, and went inside with the light. He wasn’t in the front room. I made my way through the rest of the place, picking a path carefully over piles of fallen ceiling plaster. After fifteen minutes I was satisfied he wasn’t there. It left me in a sour mood; I didn’t want to waste half the night tracking him down. I went back into the main room and flashed the light around once more, ready to leave; the flashlight beam picked up something out of place on the seat of the old couch and I went to have a look.

It was a piece of paper torn off the corner of a newspaper. On the white margin was written in pencil, in a crabbed hand, C—I’m going to your place. Meet you there. Mike.

I took the note outside, got into the Jeep and showed it to Joanne. She said, “I suppose ‘C’ is you?”

“I can’t think of anybody else it’s likely to be. But it raises a question or two. Why my place? And where could he have got transportation from here to there? He left his car up in the foothills.”

She said, “Something may have frightened him. That’s his handwriting, I guess, but it’s much shakier than I remember it.” She stirred, hugging herself; nights cool down fast in the desert. “Do you suppose he’s remembered something important?”

“We’ll find out,” I replied, and pushed the starter. Might as well head home, anyway, I thought; I needed a quiet place to think and if Madonna thought we were on the run after ditching Behrenman, my house was the last place he’d look for us.

I kept a careful eye out for surveillance on the way but spotted none. We took back streets and roads across town—the Jeep was too conspicuous. It took forty minutes to get to my dirt road, and when we passed Nancy Lansford’s lonely outpost I turned off the headlights and drove the rest of the way by moon and stars. It was no great feat, with the silver desert glowing with pale reflection.

From a mile away I could see there were no lights on at my place, and I applauded Mike for having that much sense. In some ways it doesn’t pay to have a home which is also a goddamn beacon. The view of the city from the house is marvelous; the view of the house from the city, of course, is equally distinct.

There was no car in the yard. “He must have hitched a ride. Who with, I wonder?”

We dismounted from the Jeep and I called out, “Mike?”

There was no reply. Joanne looked at me. I said in a murmur, “Stay put,” and went forward, pulling the Beretta out of my hip pocket, not liking the distant sensation that had begun to crawl through me—a feeling like ice across the back of my neck. I headed for the nearest corner of the house, got into the shadows where moonlight didn’t reach and sidled along the wall toward the door.