The Door to December

volumes had been plucked off the shelves and piled in the box. First, Dan examined the collection and saw that every one of the books was a nonfiction study of one branch of the occult or another. Then, still holding the gauze to his forehead with one hand, he pawed through the seven volumes in the carton and saw they were all by the same author, Albert Uhlander.
     Uhlander?
     He reached into an inner jacket pocket and pulled out the small address book that he had taken from the Studio City house last night, from Dylan McCaffrey's wrecked office. He paged to the U listings and found only one.
     Uhlander.
     McCaffrey, who was interested in the occult, had known Uhlander. Rink, who was interested in the occult, had at least read Uhlander; maybe he had known Uhlander too. This was a link between McCaffrey and Ned Rink. But were they on the same side, or were they enemies? And what did the occult have to do with this?
     His thoughts were spinning, and not merely because he had been clubbed on the forehead.
     Anyway, Uhlander was evidently a key to understanding what was going on. Apparently, the intruder had broken in there only to remove those books from the house, to conceal the Uhlander connection.
     Pressing the gauze to his forehead, Dan left the study. Like an electric current, the pain seemed to pass through the gauze, into his hand, up his arm, into his right shoulder, down to the middle of his back, up to his left shoulder, into his neck, along the side of his face, completing the circuit by returning to his forehead, starting all over again.
     Favoring his left knee, sorting through things with one hand, feeling like a big crippled bug, he searched the place perfunctorily and found nothing more of interest. Rink was a hit man, and hit men didn't assist police investigations by keeping handy little address books and paper records of their affairs.
     In the bathroom again, he removed the compress and saw that the superficial bleeding had, indeed, finally stopped.
     He looked like hell. But that was fitting, because he felt like hell too.
    21
    When Dan limped out to the curb, carrying the small box of books, George Padrakis was still behind the wheel of the unmarked sedan, sitting in darkness, his window half open. He cranked it all the way down when he saw Dan.
     'I was just on the squawk-box. Mondale wants ... Hey, what happened to your forehead?'
     Dan told him about the intruder.
     Padrakis opened the door and got out of the car. He looked and sounded like Perry Como, and he moved like him too: lazily, casually, with unconscious grace. He was even casual as he reached inside his coat and drew his revolver.
     'The guy's gone,' Dan said as Padrakis took a step toward Rink's house. 'Long gone.'
     'But how'd he get in there?'
     'Through the back.'
     'This street's been quiet, and I had my window down,' Padrakis protested. 'I'd have heard breaking glass, anything like that.'
     'I didn't find a broken window,' Dan said. 'I think he came in by the kitchen door, probably with a key.'
     'Well, hell, then they can't blame it on me,' Padrakis said, holstering his revolver. 'I can't be two places at once. They want to watch the back of the house too, they should have put two men on the place. You get a good look at the joker who jumped you?'
     'Not real good.' Dan returned the key Padrakis had given him. 'But if you see a guy with a badly mangled ear, that's him.'
     'Ear?'
     'I nearly tore his ear off.'
     'Why'd you do that?'
     'For one thing, because he was trying to bash my brains in,' Dan said impatiently. 'Besides, I'm sort of like a matador. I always try to take a trophy home with me, and this guy didn't have a tail.'
     Padrakis looked baffled.
     A gigantic motor home turned the corner, engine roaring, and lumbered down the block, like a dinosaur.
     Frowning at the box in Dan's hands, Padrakis raised his voice above the shrieking engine of the nature lovers' vehicle. 'What's that you've got there?'
     'Books.'
     'Books?'
     'Assembled sheets of paper with words on them, for the purpose of conveying information or providing entertainment. Now what about the squawk-box? What's Mondale,want?'
     'You taking those books with you?'
     'That's right.'
     'Don't know if