you that much,” I told her. “Except for one thing.”

“What?”

“The dynamite,” I said. “Did you forget the dynamite, Rhona? You tried to kill me!”

That time I didn’t slap her. It would have been superfluous. She reacted as though someone had belted her but good.

“The dynamite,” I said. “It didn’t make any sense at the time. I couldn’t figure out why Zucker would use a cockeyed routine like that to get you out of the way, or how he knew where you were, or any of it. The dynamite had to be all your idea. Maybe you were afraid I would sell you out for Carr’s ten-grand reward. Maybe you thought I was guessing too much about you.

“Anyway, you decided to get rid of me. And you were cute about it, too. You knew I’d come over here sooner or later. You left the apartment, figuring I’d eventually wander over to the closet. Then the dynamite would go off and I’d be out of your hair.

“And you would be in the clear. You were subletting the place under a phony name, and once I blew myself to hell you would just disappear, rent another apartment somewhere else. Nobody could tie you to me. You’d be all alone in the clear.”

“Ed, I must have been crazy—”

“You still are if you think you can talk your way out of this, Rhona.”

“Ed, I’m sorry. Ed—”

She was making sexy movements, slithering toward me. But I saw what she was really doing, moving toward the table next to the couch, heading toward her purse. I could have stopped her then and there, but I wanted to give her more rope to hang herself.

She got her hands on the purse. She was talking but I wasn’t listening to a word she was saying. I watched her hands move behind her back, opening the purse, dipping inside.

She never managed to point her gun at me. My timing was too good. She dragged it out of the purse and I slapped it out of her hand and it sailed across the room and bounced around on the carpet. A .22, a woman’s gun. They can kill you too.

Then she was beaten, and she knew it. I took out my own gun and pointed it at her, but I didn’t even need it. She stayed put while I picked up the phone. It was too late to get Jerry Gunther at Headquarters. I called him at his home.

“Call downtown,” I said. “Tell them to get a pickup order out for Phillip Carr and Abe Zucker. And get over here”—I gave him the address—“and make an arrest of your own.”

He whistled softly.

“This is going to get a lot of unsolved ones off your books,” I said. “Maybe I’ll let you do the buying during our next vital conference.”

He said something unimportant. I hung up. Then I stood pointing the gun at Rhona while we waited for him.

ELEVEN

It was Thursday, and I was having dinner at McGraw’s, a favorite steakhouse of mine. I wasn’t eating alone. There was a girl across the table from me, a girl named Sharon Ross.

She chewed a bit of steak, washed it down with a sip of Beaujolais, and looked up at me with wide eyes.

“The girl,” she said. “Rhona. What’s going to happen to her, Ed?”

“Not enough.”

“Will she go to jail?”

“Probably,” I said. “It’s hardly a sure thing, though. She was a blackmailer, and there’s a law against that sort of thing, but she’s in a position to turn state’s evidence and help them nail the lid on Zucker and his buddies. And, as she said, she never killed anyone. Only tried.”

I shrugged. “And she’s a girl. A pretty one. That still makes a difference in any case where you have trial by jury. The worst she can look forward to is a fairly light sentence. She could even get off clean, if she has an expensive lawyer.”

“Like Phil Carr?”

“Like him, but not Carr. He won’t be practicing much law anymore. He’ll be in jail for everything the D.A. can make stick. And Zucker will stand trial, too.”

I’D CALLED SHARON A DAY OR TWO after the whole thing was wrapped up, and after she had cooled off from the broken-date routine. And, over our steaks, I had filled her in on most of the story. Not all of it, of course. She got the expurgated version. You never tell one girl about the bedroom games you played with another girl. It’s not chivalrous. It’s not even