"I don't," said Crumley. "This is your picnic. I was all set to head for Yosemite this weekend, and you show up like a film producer who improves the flavor of screenplays by peeing on every other scene. I'd better run for Yosemite right now; you got that look of a wild rabbit with intuitions."

"Hold on." For he was starting to move. "Don't you want to prove or disprove which of these names are still kicking or which dropped dead?"

I grabbed the book, then tossed it back so he had to catch. It fell open at one page with a more-than-enormous crucifix by an almost-circus-banner name. Crumley scowled. I read the name upside down: Califia. Queen Califia. Bunker Hill. No address. But there was a phone number.

Crumley could not take his eyes off it, scowling.

"Know where that is?" I said.

"Bunker Hill, hell, I know, I know. I was born a few blocks north of there. A real free-for-all stewpot of Mexicans, Gypsies, stovepipe-out-the-window Irish, white trash and black. Used to go by there to look in at Callahan and Ortega, Funeral Directors. Hoped to see real bodies. My God, Callahan and Ortega, what names, right there in the middle of Juarez II, Guadalajara bums, dead flowers from Rosarita Beach, Dublin whores. Crud!" Crumley suddenly yelled, furious at listening to his own travel talk, half selling himself on my next expedition. "Did you hear me? Did you listen? God!"

"I heard," I said. "So why don't we just call one of those red circle numbers to see what's aboveground or below?"

And before he could protest, I seized the book and ran up the dune to Rattigan's outdoor pool, brightly lit, with an extension phone on a glass-top patio table, waiting. I didn't dare look at Crumley, who had not moved as I dialed.

A voice answered from long miles away. That number was no longer in service. Damn, I thought, and then, Wait!

I dialed information swiftly, got a number, dialed it, and held the phone out so Crumley could hear the voice: