The staked Goat

would be plenty.”
     
    Dale left a few minutes later. It is eerie to be alone in a strange house when you can’t make much noise. At the same time, it was the first time I had been on my own, and conscious, since getting on the plane in Boston. I wasn’t really sleepy after my nap earlier, but I was afraid calling Carol might strengthen a wrong impression.
    I tried to discharge my night-nurse duties toward Al Junior and Martha. Shortly after closing the door behind Dale, I tiptoed upstairs and looked in on them. Both seemed sound asleep in their respective rooms. I came back downstairs and found a science fiction paperback by Larry Niven and let my thoughts drift with his. I finished the book at 2:30 A.M. and tried to tote up what I knew so far about Al’s death.
    Murphy’s investigation confirmed that Al had come to Boston on business legitimately. Al had called me, seen his customers, albeit fruitlessly, and had one other appointment. He hadn’t told me he was in money trouble. He had told me he’d made a bet on the Bruins the night before and won. I couldn’t remember Al ever talking hockey before, and he had never been a gambler. Of course, a man in a money squeeze might try a lot of new ways to ease the pressure. Still, Al would have been too smart to trust some guy in a strange city to pay him off the next night. And I couldn’t quite picture a bookie killing Al by mutilation and passing it off as some ritualistic slaying to deflect attention.
    In fact, when you thought about it, what could have been worth what Al’s killer had gone through? I had to admit that a secret appointment suggested blackmail. Assuming the killer was Al’s secret appointment, why keep the appointment at all? Why not just run? Identities can be changed, passage and even sanctuary bought pretty easily. The killer must have had something more to protect than just his own skin. Maybe some illiquid asset or business operation. That would explain the pass-off method of killing. It would also explain the torture, the tossing of Al’s room, and the gander at my message. The visit to the motel room and desk were both risks, small risks to be sure, but nevertheless risks of being spotted, identified, and connected with Al and therefore with Al’s death. The killer would have run that risk only if his identity were subordinated to protecting something else. He preferred to risk being spotted in order to be sure something that tied him to Boston was secure.
    And about Al’s being so oblique with me on the telephone? He had to let me know he was trying something so the something wouldn’t be gone forever. But he also couldn’t drag me into it beforehand and therefore perhaps unnecessarily. No matter how pressed for money Al was, he would never have asked me to help him with something shady. He would have had to handle the someone alone.
    A someone who was good enough to take Al, who only a few months before was himself still good enough to cool a couple of stadium toughies. I didn’t think Al would have met someone like that selling steel gizmos to distributors or general contractors. But we had both met a lot of people like that somewhere else. I moved J.T.’s name up near the top of my list of tomorrow’s phone calls.
     

Twelve
     
     
     
    I BLINKED. T HE DIM SUNLIGHT OF A F EBRUARY MORNING in Pittsburgh slanted through the front window. I was lying on the couch. My teeth felt as though they would fall out if I didn’t brush them soon. I sat up, and my kidneys ached all the way to my shoulder blades. A full night’s sleep on a horizontal and firm mattress would do me a world of good.
    From the kitchen came some quiet tinkling of tableware and the scuffing sound of slippered feet. I walked into the kitchen.
    Martha was at the sink, her back to me, carefully stacking glasses on the dish rack. She had pulled on a turtleneck sweater with a hole in the left elbow. Her hair was drawn back into a bobbed ponytail. The clock above her head said 10:20 A.M.
    ”Good morning,” I said softly.
    She jumped but recovered nicely, reaching for a towel to dry her hands. ”Good morning, John. I wish we had a better place for you. How did you sleep?”
    ”Fine.” Her voice sounded steady and strong, with none of the false bravado high, or grief. ”You?”
    ”Uh,” she giggled, embarrassed, ”those pills must really be something. I remember Carol making me take two. I’d hate to think what more of them would...”
    The possibility