Lewis commented on it. `The City Fathers are going crazy,' he said: `About that.' He jerked his thumb towards one spectacularly constructed girl in a tightly clinging pants suit.

`I thought it wasn't allowed.' Traditionally San Diego was free of hookers despite the large sailor population. Tijuana was just twenty minutes away; those services were usually provided across the border.

`Nothing they can do about it,' Lewis said. `Just in the last few hours they've all been coming in. Every damned hooker for a thousand miles is here. All the girls from Vegas and Reno and Tahoe. It's the Convention.'

`But the City Fathers don't like it.'

`The City Fathers hate it,' Lewis said, and grinned. It was a youthful grin, the grin of a person who still found sin amusing, risque, fun.

Graves could no longer find the fun in prostitution. Why not? he wondered. Was it age - or was it striking some uncomfortable chord in himself?

But he didn't pursue the thought. Lewis turned left, going up into the hilly section of town towards Wright's apartment.

HOUR 9

Lewis slowed as they approached a dry cleaning van advertising 24 HOUR SERVICE AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE and PLANT ON PREMISES.

`You want to talk to 702?' Lewis said.

`Yeah, for a minute,' Graves said.

Lewis pulled over. Graves got out. The driver in the van wound down his window.

`I hear you're rolling it up,' the driver said.

`That's right,' Graves said.

`When?'

`Later today.'

`What's proto until then?' Proto was slang for protocol.

`Business as usual,' Graves said. `Where's 703?F

'Off duty today.' The driver shrugged.

`Call them in. I want them to pick up the girl this morning.'

`Oh?'

`Yeah.'

`Anything else?'

`Yeah. You got some coffee in there?F

'Sure. Two cups?'

Graves looked into the sedan at Lewis. `You want coffee?'

Lewis shook his head.

`Just one,' Graves said. `Black with four sugars.'

The driver sighed and looked into the interior of the dry cleaning van. `Give the boss his usual,'.he shouted. A moment later a styrofoam cup was passed out to Graves.

`You're going to catch diabetes,' the driver said.

`This is breakfast,' Graves said, and walked back to his car. In the background he heard the van driver saying, `702 to 703. Over. 702 to 703. Over.'

Graves got in the car, slammed the door. To Lewis: `Let's go.'

`The apartment?'

`The apartment.'

Wright had taken a fashionable apartment in the hilly north-central section of San Diego, not far from the Cortez Hotel. His building looked out over the city and the harbour. At this hour people were leaving the apartment house, standing in front and waiting until the doorman brought their cars around from the underground garage. Graves had had some trouble getting used to that when he first came here. He was accustomed to the East, where people in cities walked to work or took public transportation. In California, everybody drove. Everybody.

Wright himself was an exception. He had a driver and a limousine. But then, Wright was always an exception, he thought.

Wright usually came out about 8:20. His girl for the night - one of five or six he saw with some frequency - preceded him by ten or fifteen minutes.

`There she is,' Lewis said.

Graves nodded. It was odd how you could yell Wright's irls. Even from across the street they co,zld be spotted instantly. Yet there was no particular physical type, no particular details of dress. They weren't professionals. But there was a certain quality about them, something blatantly erotic. They were the girls a man would choose if he wanted to be reassured. Graves watched this one, who wore a simple white dress and had very long legs, as she climbed into a Datsun sportscar and drove off.

`701 to 703,' he said, speaking into the intercom mounted on the dash.

There was a crackle of static. `703 here. I thought we could sleep in today.'

Graves ignored the complaint. `Red Datsun sportscar, convertible, California licence ZVW 348. Got it?'

`Got it. Out.'

A moment later, a Ford station wagon drove past them, and the driver gave them the high sign briefly. That was 703.

Graves slumped down in his seat, thinking. They had not bothered to interrogate Wright's girls in recent weeks. When they began, they had had dozens of interviews with the girls. Sometimes they had been straight interrogations; more often they were casually arranged meetings. In both cases the information was monotonously the same. John Wright was a nice and kind and generous and charming man. He was also nervous and definitely conservative. He sweated a lot, preferred the missionary style, kept the room dark, and always remained a little aloof.

Hardly valuable intelligence insight.

`Why do you want this one?' Lewis asked. And then he said, `Here comes the limo.'

A black Lincoln limousine pulled up in front of the apartment building. The chauffeur, George Marks, got out, buttoned his uniform jacket, and stood by the door of the passenger side.

Graves had never picked George up for questioning. It had seemed too risky. Now he wondered if that had been a mistake. But he could think of a hundred possible mistakes he had made, especially today. Especially when Wright was being arrested.

`Why are they going to arrest Wright?' Lewis asked. He hadn't got an answer on his previous question, so he was trying another.

Graves lit a cigarette. `Phelps is nervous.'

`But this computer-tapping business isn't enough -'

`Phelps is running scared just now. There's talk of closing down his division of Intelligence. In fact, the new Secretary is thinking of closing down all State Intelligence work.'

Lewis raised his eyebrows. `Where'd you hear that?'

Graves smiled. `I'm in Intelligence myself.'

Lewis glanced at him a moment, then looked back out the window. A man emerged from the apartment building - stocky, neatly dressed, moving purposefully.

`There's Wright,' Lewis said and started the engine of his car.

Graves had watched John Wright get into his limousine every morning for sixty-six days. He knew the routine well: George opened the door and tipped his cap; Wright nodded to him, bent over at the waist, and slipped quickly into the back seat. George closed the door, paused to tug at his leather gloves, and walked around to the driver's side. In the back seat Wright stared straight ahead or opened his newspaper to read.

But this time John Wright stared across the street directly at Graves. And he continued to stare until the limousine moved off in the hot San Diego morning.

Lewis was now very good at following in San Diego traffic; he kept pace - three cars back. After a time Lewis said, `He was looking at you.'

`He certainly was.'.

`Do you think he's on to us?'

`Impossible,' Graves said. He thought of the closet in his apartment. He had five distinctly different suits in that closet, and he rotated them on different days. He thought of the three sedans and the four delivery trucks that the Department used for surveillance work. Different manufacturers, different colours, and a new licence plate every week. He had never parked in the same place, never waited for Wright in the same way. He had never presented Wright with a recognizable pattern.

`Impossible,' he said again.

And then Graves thought of himself. If he were Wright, would he discover that he was being followed? Even with all the precautions, the safeguards, the changes? He liked to think that he would.

And if he would, why not Wright?

`He's deviating,' Lewis said, nodding at the limousine. Graves saw that it was true. Normally on Wednesday mornings Wright went to Balboa Park, where he walked in the gardens, fed the pigeons, and relaxed. But he wasn't doing that today.