"Funny how the person with the kicked-in teeth is always supposed to get saintly all of a sudden and forgive the heels that do it. Sympathetic friends all tell him to rise above it and turn the other cheek . . . if there's anything left of it."

"Oh, you're a martyr?"

Well, I'm a bit unemployed at the moment through no fault of my own. No one in my field would even be seen firing me now. I'll only have to leave town, change my name and start again from the bottom. Nothing to it."

"You're going away, Dave? Where?"

"I don't know. But it won't be for awhile. I've a little in the bank, I think, and unemployment insurance."

"And me."

"Uh, not too much you."

"Ah, he has his male pride."

"I have my good sense. You know the one that does the keeping always gets left."

"That's a chance we keepers have to take. What are you going to do in the meantime?"

"Cruise."

Ann tapped her cigarette many times, lighted it and blew out the flame with a cloud of smoke. She said, "Better tell me what kind you mean, my friend. There's cruising, and there's cruising."

"Honey doll, I'm not out for fish or boys. I'm going to see what I can dig up on little Joe."

"I see.

What makes you think you can do better than the police?"

They have thousands of cases. I've only one."

"Go on."

"And I want to find out who did it."

They don't?"

"Ann, there's no election coming up. And anyway why raise a ruckus tracking down a guy that did society a service? You saw how the papers handled this."

"Go on."

"Well, I know more about this than the police do."

"You held out on them?"

"Hell, no. It's just that I KNEW little Joe. I know where he liked to go and the types of people he liked. I remember little things he said. So I'm going to go where he went and watch the people he watched. I'll know when I'm getting warm and I've a feeling I'll know the guy the instant I lay eyes on him."

"I see."

"That means you don't."

Ann had been splitting a cardboard match with her thumbnail, peeling the thin layers apart up to the head. It looked like a tiny octopus with a black body and she looked at it as she spoke: "No, I don't. Not at all. Didn't they haul in every young bum in town? Every tramp with a muscle to his name was picked up. They did everything that could be done."

"Ann, I sat in on those questionings and I swear to God some of those guys were released with the silliest alibis a cocky thug ever got by with. They just went through the motions for the public."

"No police force likes unsolved crimes."

"Look, they'll shoot some burglar and blame it on his body. They'll question his corpse and get confessions for a dozen big unsolved crimes. You watch" Ann sat back, folded her arms and looked at him: "So you're going cruising. You're going to clear up the whole thing and bring in the guilty man all alone. You read too much."

"I said I'm going to look around."

"Don't put it cautiously. It's not like you. You're going killer hunting."

"All right. What's wrong with trying?"

"If you don't know, I haven't time to tell you. It would take weeks. For in-

one