pier said.

"Sure, pal," Jack said. Elmo turned and walked away. He stopped at the first cheap steak place he saw, ordered two steak dinners and devoured them both. With his change, he took a cab home.

He hurried to his garage. He had his first con-

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tract but how would he carry it out? What would he use to kill his victim?

He searched through his garage, overturning useless inventions until he found the item he wanted.

Wimpler had worked it out as a revolutionary new nutcracker, but it hadn't sold. It was a small hand-held compressor. After fitting it with a long slide arm that would allow it to hold something bigger than walnuts, Elmo tried it out on an old bowling ball in the garage. The compressor's arms reached around the ball, and when he pressed the trigger, the two arms closed together with a hiss. The bowling ball broke up into hundreds of pieces that fell to the floor.

Done. All he would have to do would be to spray paint it, and the invisible man would have his invisible weapon.

And then he went to sleep. The first good night's sleep he had had in months.

The next morning, he cleaned the black paint from the windshield and windows of his old car parked in the garage. Then he quickly painted over the invisible, black paint with a light-blue, spray enamel, letting the paint run in drippy, gooey masses, not caring how the paint job looked, but just wanting to make the car visible again, presentable for riding around the street.

Then he drove up to White Plains and rode past the large estate where the federal witness was being held. In the gathering dusk, he could see guards stationed near the door of the house and lounging about on the lawn.

But for some reason, he was no longer afraid.

Wimpler drove around for a while and when it

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was fully dark, he parked about a half-mile from the estate. Inside the auto, he changed into his invisible clothing, treated with what he now didn't mind calling WIMP—Wimpler's Invisible Metallic Paint.