As she rides by

worth it and I’ve been dreaming those old paranoid dreams again. Tell me something, Frank. Is this list cross-referenced?”
    “Like how?”
    “Like, could it pick out everyone who’s been drawing a pension for over ten years, say, or who lives in West Hollywood, say?”
    “It could if I asked it the right questions,” he said. “What are you up to now, Vic?”
    “But one last, desperate throw of the bones, old chap.”
    “OK, shoot,” he said.
    “Would you kindly ask our friend here to print us out a list of all the names of those drawing pensions that have the following three things in common: POB, CC, and the POB to be located within, say a hundred-mile radius of LA?”
    “No sooner said,” he said. He switched on a printer that was on the far side of the room, opened it up, checked inside, then came back to where I was and started tapping away. The suspenseful moments dragged on. Once he said a naughty word. Finally I got up and strolled over to the printer, which was just sitting there doing nothing, and gave it a dirty look. I noticed that its connector cable ran straight down from the back to a hole in the floor, and deduced that all the cabling had been cleverly laid under the floor to keep it from getting underfoot, and not having a printer on each desk meant that there was more room on each desk and also you didn’t need as many printers. Also you could keep all the paper in one place. Course, you did have the wear and tear on the linoleum continually walking from desk to printer and then back to desk again. And what if two people wanted to use the same printer at the same time? Who had precedence, the computer that had been with the company the longest? Did some printers have a soft spot for certain terminals and sneak them in first? I cleared my head of these highly un-Daniel-like whimsies.
    “Frank!” I called across the room. “What’s happening, pal?’ Are you asleep? Any progress?”
    “Any second now,” he said. And sure enough, almost immediately the printer woke up and back and forth it went, zip, zip, zip! There’s something eerie watching a machine that, unlike my old, trusty portable typewriter, can print backwards as well as frontwards; it’s almost cheating, if you ask me.
    Suddenly it stopped. I opened the lid, tore off the one page it had almost filled along those handy perforations, took it back to Frank, sat, and we both gave it the once-over.
    I counted the number of names; there were twenty-seven.
    “Frank,” I said then, “roughly, for once, not specifically, what’s the average pension come to?”
    “Well,” he said, “give or take, call it $25,000 annually.”
    “Frank,” I said, “what’s $25,000 times twenty-seven?”
    Without using his fingers, he said, “$675,000,” instantly.
    “Frank,” I said, “how long has Mary been working here; any idea?”
    “Absolutely,” he said. “Nine years. She’s held her present position seven, I believe.”
    “Frank,” I said, “what’s $675,000 times seven?”
    “$5,325,000,” he responded, again instantly. We looked at each other.
    “Think that’d be enough money, Frank?” I asked him.
    He nodded slowly. “Could well be,” he said. “Could well be. Could well be I’m out of a job, too, for letting it happen.”
    “Now, Frank, we don’t know for sure,” I said. “Let us not jump the gun. All we have is a list.”
    “What else do we need, then,” he wondered, “aside from a large, cold bottle of Stoly and a weekend to lose?”
    “Why, Frank,” I said. “I do believe you’re not just an accountant, you’re human as well. What we need, hombre, is two things: for me to visit the mortuary, which I can do tomorrow, and for me to go for a nice long drive in the country, which I won’t be able to do until Saturday.”

Chapter Eighteen

    I just know that pint-sized, flat-footed son of a woman-chasin’ fool,
    I know my viejo compadre is gonna keep the faith with me.

    T HERE.
    I typed in the last entry in G. Z. the mogul’s combination last report and final bill, then pulled down the appropriate menu, then politely asked my printer to please print me out two (2) copies. It did so without further delay, complaint, or further comment. Then I got my book of receipts out of the drawer and wrote one out for the Lubinskis. Then I got out my checkbook, paid a couple of bills, then, with King, strolled around the corner to the post office and mailed them off. A brief pause at the bank on the