As she rides by

way home to deposit the Lubinskis’ check, and a couple of useful others. A query elicited the welcome information that Tex ’s check had cleared. Then back to the office again to wait for Benny the Boy, who putted up not long thereafter in his nondescript old Ford.
    Had he remembered to bring a passport-sized photo of himself?
    He had.
    Had he remembered to attire himself in a manner fitting the occasion?
    He had, in neat brown suiting, brown brogues, metal-framed glasses, and center part.
    And was he fully prepared and sufficiently psyched up to carry out his part in the master plan?
    He assured me he was, despite the earliness of the hour (ten a.m.) and a slight distaste for the methodology involved.
    “Your name,” I said, writing it in neatly in his “for amusement purposes only”—but were we not being amusing, after all?—new I.D., “is Andrew Rodriguez, called Andy, and you are now up at Kaiser with a slice out of your lung.”
    “Am I?’’ he said. “Just don’t bring me grapes, unless they’re seedless; the seeds stick in my teeth.” He watched as I glued his photo in the upper right-hand corner of the card. Then I asked him if he happened to have an iron on him to seal the laminated sleeve. He confessed that he did not. So, after a moment’s thought, with him trailing behind, I stopped in three doors along from me at Mrs. Morales’s taco/burger palace, said muy buenas, ordered two coffees to go, and requested a short loan of her waffle iron.
    “¿Como no?” she said. “You make your own lonch now, Veec?” I laughed merrily.
    Back at the office, I plugged in the waffle iron and when it was well heated up, stuck one edge of the card in, and closed ‘er up. Perfect. I did the same with the other edges. Perfect.
    “How did the Bard put it?” I wondered aloud to my friend. “There are more ways under the smoggy sun, Horatio, than thou hast ever dreamed of to seal a fake I.D.”
    “Something like that,” Benjamin said.
    A few minutes later, off he went, with all his props, to the Riverside Theater, then me and my boy hit the road that Wednesday morning, that Wednesday morning in the San Fernando Valley with the Dodgers still six and a half out.
    First stop was chez Wade, Willy, and Cissy. Wade was in his garage-studio developing, the red light over the door informed me. Cissy was out talking to a ladies’ group about natural childbirth, Willy told me. He also told me he had all the stuff, so come out back. I went out back, where Wade’s common-law live-in cohabitant girlfriend, or whatever you have to call it these days, was combing the tangles out of their old sheepdog, Rags, who was lying with his legs up in the air.
    “King, meet Rags and Suze,” I said.
    “Hi, Vic and King,” she said, with a broad smile. Rags rolled over and got up. “What the hell, that’s good enough,” she said. “Go play.” Off went the dogs. Suze headed back to the house. Willy and I headed for his workshop down at the bottom of the garden, saying hello to the mice on the way. Once inside, he gave me a large wooden box with two holes in the lid, a small cardboard box with no holes in the lid, and a cork-stoppered test tube with no holes in the lid, at which I looked dubiously.
    “To be used with extreme care,” he said. “Got any gloves?”
    “Not on me. In fact, not even not on me.”
    “We’ll nick a pair of Cissy’s,” he said. “Pierce outer capsule before using. Dispose of instantly.”
    “Got you,” I said. “What I have for you is this.” I handed him over a slip of paper with the address of the P.C.A.C. Co.’s Sunset Boulevard movie house on it. “Show starts promptly at two o’clock, so don’t be late. Rendezvous back at my office anytime after five-thirty and we’ll compare notes.”
    “I’m quite looking forward to it all, I must say,” he said.
    “Oh, must you?” I said. “Well I must say I thank you, Prof., for everything, and I also must say I must be off.”
    We went back up the path to the house, collecting the dogs on the way. I hoped we could sneak into the kitchen, nick the gloves, and then get out of there unfed, but no way, Suze was lying in ambush with a freshly brewed pot of herbal tea and a plate of cold slices.
    “Ah,” I said, as Willy rummaged in a drawer beside the sink, coming up with a pair of rubber washing-up gloves. “Wonder what that could be?”
    “Last night’s Venezuelan vegetable pie,” she said. “Try a piece.”
    “Sure