Parker spent two weeks on the white sand beach at Biloxi, and on a white sandy bitch named Belle, but he was restless, and one day without thinking about it he checked out and sent a forwarding address to Handy McKay and moved on to New Orleans. He took a room in a downtown motel and connected with a girl folk singer the first night, but all she did was complain how her manager was lousing up her career, so three days later he ditched her and took up with a Bourbon Street stripper instead.

But he kept being restless. After a week, he split with the stripper and went down to the waterfront one night and kept walking around till two guys jumped him for his shoes. When he noticed he was prolonging the fight for the pleasure of it, he got disgusted and finished them off and went back to the hotel and packed. He sent the new address to Handy McKay and took an early-morning plane to Las Vegas.

Vegas was a bad idea, because he wasn't a gambler. He was restless all the time and couldn't seem to stop going after women. One afternoon and evening he had three of them, and called the third one by the first one's name. She stuck around anyway, but it told him he was getting too distracted, so the next day he took a plane to San Diego and put down a week's rent on a beach cottage south of the city, to be alone for a while. He sent out the new address, as usual, and lay down on the beach in the sun.

He couldn't stop thinking about women, but he knew what that meant; it was just his nerves wanting him to go to work again. But it was stupid to think about work now, and Parker didn't like to be stupid. He still had more than enough left from the last job, and a lot salted away in different places around the country, so there was no need yet to take on something new. When work got to be its own reason for happening, that was trouble.

Still, he lay alone and restless on the beach, his eyes closed against the sun while his mind ran around and around about women, and his nerves didn't ever want to quiet down. He told himself he'd stay out his week's rent, no matter what, and not go after any women while he was here. He spent a lot of time in the cold ocean water, and in the evenings sat and looked at the fuzzy television set that had come with the cottage, and all the time the nerves kept jumping just below the surface of his skin.

The fifth day, he walked down the beach and picked up a thirty-year-old divorcée from somewhere in Texas, who'd come out to the Coast because she'd been hearing this was where the action was and she wanted to find out what the action was before it was too late to do anything about it. He took her back to the cottage and broke the seal on a pint of Scotch and gave her an hour of talk so she wouldn't feel like a pickup. The hour was just about up when the phone rang.

It was Handy McKay's voice, spinning along the wire all the way from Presque Isle, Maine, saying, "Hello. You busy?"

"Hold on," Parker said, and turned toward the divorcée with a smile different from any smile she'd seen on him before this, and he told her, "Go home."

Parker lay in the dark on his hotel-room bed and waited to be contacted. Lying there, he looked like a machine not yet turned on. He was thinking about nothing; his nerves were still.

When the knock sounded at the door, he got up and walked over and switched on the light, because he knew most people thought it strange when somebody lay waiting in the dark. Then he opened the door and there was a woman standing there, which he hadn't expected. She was tall and slender and self-possessed, with the face and figure of a fashion model, very remote and cool. She said, "Mr. Lynch?"

That was the name he was using here, but he said, "You sure this is the room you want?"

"May I come in?"

"Maybe you want some other Lynch," he said.

Her mouth showed impatience. "I really am from Billy Lebatard, Mr. Lynch," she said. "And it would be better if we didn't talk in the hall."

He shook his head. "Try another name."

"You mean Lempke?"

"That's the one," he said, and stepped back from the doorway, motioning her into the room.

She came in, still unruffled and self-possessed, saying, "Is all that caution really needed at this point?"

He shut the door. "I didn't expect a woman," he said.

"Oh? Why not?"

"It's unprofessional."

She smiled slightly, with one side of her mouth. "It doesn't sound like a very rewarding profession."

Parker had no patience with pointless games. He shrugged and said, "What happens now?"

"I drive you to the meeting."

"What meeting?"

She allowed herself to be surprised. "The meeting you're here for. Did you think you'd just do it without any plan at all?"

Parker hadn't yet decided whether or not he would do this one, but there was no point saying so; she was just a chauffeur. Besides, if she was any indication of how things would be handled here, he'd be out of it anyway.

But he would go to this first meeting, just to see the lay of the land. At the worst it was a chance to renew a couple of old touches. It was tough in this line of work to keep current with old friends, but the only way to build the right string for any job was to know who was available.

So he slipped into his suit jacket, pocketed his room key, and said, "All right, we'll go have a meeting."

They left the hotel and she led him around onto Washington Street and over to a green Buick station wagon, where she said, "Do you want to drive?"

"You know this town?"

She shrugged and made a face and said, "Fairly well." As though what she meant was, more than I like.

"Then you drive," he said, and walked around to the passenger side and got in.

She looked after him in surprise, then opened the driver's door herself and slid in behind the wheel. She put the key in the ignition, but instead of starting the engine she sat back and began to study him, frowning to herself.

Parker waited, but she just kept sitting there and looking at him as though she was trying to read something written on the inside of his head, so after a while he said, "Okay, get it over with."

"I'd just like to know," she said.

"Ask."

"Are you just naturally rude, or are you trying to antagonize me for some reason?" Parker shook his head. "All you do is drive the car."

"In other words, I don't matter."

"Right."

She nodded. "Fine by me," she said. "It just took me by surprise, that's all."

There was nothing to say to that, so Parker faced front and got out his cigarettes. He lit one for himself while she was starting the engine, and then sat back and watched Indianapolis slide by. It was a little after midnight of a Wednesday night and the streets were deserted. They were also very wide and very brightly lit, so it was like driving through a recently abandoned city, except that here and there neon lights flashed in the windows of closed drugstores and supermarkets. Parker watched all that emptiness outside the windshield, and it seemed to him this should be a good town for a late-night haul.

It was good to be thinking right again. His mind had snapped into shape two days ago, the instant he'd heard Handy McKay's voice on the telephone, and he'd been cold and solid and sound ever since.

The conversation had been brief, once the astonished and disgruntled divorcée had been gotten rid of. Handy said,...