As she rides by

inched on its fat belly over to the gutter, preparing to pounce. My boy, without opening his eyes, let out one growl from the back of his throat. The feline immediately assumed an innocent expression and began licking one paw. Which proves once again the superiority of canine over feline—cats maybe can see in the dark, but dogs can see with their eyes closed.
    “It wasn’t Hollywood calling, you jerks,” Tex said, puffing a little from the steps. “It was Norwalk .” He came up the last few steps and sank down beside Tom on the bench. “Had this little thirty-six-track studio down there and it was going to waste. Know how much a thirty-six-track studio costs these days?”
    “Must be a couple of hundred bucks, at least,” I said. “What is a thirty-six-track studio?”
    “It is a recording studio,” Tom said, “in which there is an elaborate piece of electronic instrumentation commonly known as the board which is capable of recording and retaining thirty-six separate tracks, or tapes, which the engineer will then reduce down to one master track, from which millions of records can be made.”
    “Got ‘cha,” I said. “I have a one-track machine myself in the office. A Sony. Nifty little thing.”
    “Which probably does all sorts of tricky and underhanded maneuvers like recording through walls and in cocktail lounges unbeknownst to the person sitting opposite you,” Tom said.
    “Why, the very idea!” I said, trying to look offended. In fact, he was right on, it did all that, and more. Phil the Freak out in Glendale recently demonstrated to me a parasitic transmitter, speaking of bugs and suchlike, that a few years ago would have been dismissed as pure science fiction. What I was visiting him for was, I had a client who was almost paranoically afraid of his offices being bugged, especially because, following modern architectural trends, they were mostly constructed of glass. And we all know about windows these days—a laser bounces a light beam off one, picking up even the faint vibrations people make when they talk, and the beam, packed chock full o’ sound, rebounds to a computer that analyzes the noises and reconstructs the dialogue. And if this beam is being transmitted by spread spectrum, which means across a wide band of radio frequencies, it’s just about impossible to detect. So what do you do, aside from putting heavy drapes outside all the walls and windows, which probably wouldn’t work anyway, and would also look pretty silly? Easy, if you’re Phil the Freak. He sold me a dozen little weeny electric motors to attach to all outside walls, and what they do is produce their own vibrations and the poor old computer can’t unscramble their vibes from the ones produced by conversation. Yet.
    When I rejoined our conversation, Jerry was saying, “Which brings us rather neatly to the point.”
    “Well, I have been listening, chaps,” I said. “I think I can manage to put all the pieces together. Tex , here, wants to dust off his thirty-six-track board and start you two recording again.”
    “How does he do it!” Tom said in awe.
    “You two, given your past history, are wary, or chary, or highly suspicious of music business moguls; whether rightly or wrongly, of course, is not for me to say.”
    “I will,” Tom said. “Rightly, mate.”
    “Therefore,” I said, “one can only presume that you would like a highly trained, discreet investigator of complete professionalism— whose rates are surprisingly reasonable, by the way—to examine the business ethics of ol’ Tex here, no insult intended.”
    “Almost,” Jerry said. “Except that it is ol’ Tex here who wants you to investigate the business ethics, if any, of ol’ Tex here.”
    “Well, stone the crows!” I exclaimed, demonstrating that, if pressed, I could speak Limey with the best of them. “That’s a new one on me. Although there was this time a suspicious husband tried to hire me to find out who was billing and cooing with his adorable, dusky wife, but I had to turn him down.”
    “Why?” Jerry asked.
    “It was me,” I said. “Talk about your conflict of interests.”

Chapter Three

    I dunno what he’s waitin’ for, it could be just mañana,
    Or a car with a drunken millionaire who’s gonna stop one day...

    W e kicked it around for a while longer, then I said that as I had to leave shortly, perhaps everyone would excuse me if I got a touch businesslike. All but Tom said they would. I wrote down in my