Suddenly it became very important to Zack Meadows that he impress Flossie. He went to the kitchen table, swept aside the debris with his arm, and picked up a yellow pad and a ballpoint pen that commemorated the opening of a new ribs joint on Twenty-third Street.

"What are you doing?" Flossie demanded.

"Important case. Got to put it all down."

"Oh, yeah. The Lippincott case," she said.

8

"It really is," said Meadows. He wondered why he went to such lengths to please Flossie, who had been a stripper till she got old and a prostitute till she got fat, and then was just a barfly hanging around the West Side bars, cadging drinks, when Meadows met her. She held the space in his heart that some men filled by owning a dog. Meadows didn't trust dogs; they seemed always to be conniving, preparing to bite him. And if Flossie's disposition wasn't exactly the unquestioning devotion of a Great Dane, it wasn't bad either. Meadows had always mistrusted women, but somehow he felt sure that Flossie wasn't about to go tipping on him.

And besides, her dirty little apartment was only two blocks from his office and it was a good place to flop when he didn't want to ride the subway home.

He worked on his notes for two hours, trying to write out the story Jasper Stevens had told him. The floor near the table was covered with crumpled yellow sheets that Meadows threw away because they didn't have just the touch he wanted.

"What's that?" Flossie asked. "A Tan letter to Elmer Lippincott?"

"Business," Meadows said.

"Yeah, sure," Flossie said. Meadows heard her flicking channels on the TV set, looking for the most insipid of the game shows, turning up the volume to annoy him. He smiled to himself; she wanted him to pay attention to her, that was all.

But he had other things to do.

When he was finally done with the letter, whicH turned out to be half the size he expected it to be, he stood up and looked over at her with a triumphant smile.