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"Wendy used a firned her apartment lease The firm doesn't seem to exist"

"Why did you think I would have heard of it?"

"Just a shot in the dark I've been taking a lot of theood cook?"

"Wendy? Not as far as I know Of course she e I wouldn't know about that When she was living at ho more ambitious than a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich Why?"

"No reason"

His other phone rang, and he asked if there was anything else I started to say that there wasn't and then thought of what I should have thought of at the beginning "The postcards," I said

"What about them?"

"What's on the other side?"

"The other side?"

"They're picture postcards, aren't they? Turn them over I want to knohat's on the other side"

"I'll see Grant's Tonored the sarcasm "That's New York," I said "I'm more interested in the Miami one"

"It's a hotel"

"What hotel?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake I didn't even think of it that way It could , couldn't it?"

"What hotel, Mr Hanniford?"

"The Eden Roc Does that give you an ier at the Eden Roc and told hi a fraud case I had hiistration cards for the month of September 1970 I was on the phone for half an hour while he located the cards and went through theistration in the name of either Hanniford or Cottrell He came up empty

I wasn't too surprised Cottrell didn't have to be the man who took her to Mian his real naistration card It would haveabout Wendy Hanniford's life and death had been simple so far, and I couldn't expect a sudden rush of simplicity now

I poured another drink and decided to let the rest of the day spin itself out I was trying to do tooto sift all the sand in the desert Pointless, because I was looking for answers to questions my client hadn't even asked It didn't much matter who Richie Vanderpoel was, or why he had drawn red lines on Wendy All Hanniford wanted was a hint of the life that late she led Mrs Gerald Thal, the former Miss Marcia Maisel, would provide as much tomorrow

So until then I could take it easy Look at the paper, drink 's when the walls of my room moved too close to one another

Except that I couldn't I lass and put ay bar in the middle of a weekday afternoon you wonder why they don't call it so and cruising, there is a very real gaiety in the air It may seem forced, and you may sense an undercurrent of insufficiently quiet desperation, but gay then is about as good a word as any But not around three or four on a Thursday afternoon, when the place is down to a handful of serious drinkers with no place else to go and a bartender whose face says he kno bad things are and that he's stopped waiting for theet better

I made the rounds A base white hair and a waxedrooe athlete crowd, sawdust on the floor and Greek-letter pennants on the exposed brick walls In all, half a dozen gay bars within a four-block radius of 194 Bethune Street

I got stared at a lot Was I a cop? Or a potential sexual partner? Or both?

I had the newspaper photo of Richie, and I showed it around a lot to whoever illing to look at it Alnized the photo because they had seen it in the paper The hborhood, and heterosexuals have no nized the picture, and quite a few had seen hihborhood, or said they had, but nobody recalled seeing him around the bars

"Of course I don't come here all that often," I heard more than once "Just drop in now and then for a beer when the throat gets scratchy"

In a place called Sinthia's the bartender recognized me and did an elaborate double take "Do my eyes deceive me? Or is it really the one and only Matthew Scudder?"

"Hello, Ken"

"Now don't tell h of a shock when I heard you left the pigpen If Matthew Scudder's come around to the belief that Gay is Good, why, I'd be properly devastated"

He still looked twenty-eight, and he must have been almost twice that The blond hair was his own, even if the color caot up close you could see the face-lift lines, but from a couple of yards away he didn't look a day older than when I'd booked hi to the delinquency of a minor I hadn't taken much pride in the collar; the minor had been seventeen, and had already been more delinquent than Ken had ever hoped to be, but the minor had a father and the father filed a coot hies were dropped

"You're looking good," I told hi"

"Ever see this young lad?" I dropped the news photo on top of the bar He looked at it, then gave it back

"Interesting"

"You recognize hi chap as so nasty last week, isn't it? Ghastly story"

"Yes"

"Where do you come in?"

"It's hard to say Ever see him in here, Kenny?"