It had been some fight, he thought. But the full meaning didn’t strike him right away. All he could think of at the moment was how those bastards had taken his car.

He put his pistol back on the seat beside him and sat there picking his nose.

Two cops in a prowl car with the lights out slipped quietly up beside him. They were on the lookout for that particular car. But when they saw him, sitting there in his coonskin cap, looking as unconcerned as though he were fishing for eels underneath the bridge, they didn’t give the car a second glance.

“One of the Crocketts,” the driver said.

“Don’t wake him,” the other replied.

The car slipped noiselessly past. He didn’t see it until it had pulled ahead.

Trying to catch some whore hustling, he thought. Mother-rapers come along and steal my car and all these cops can do is chase whores.

The bar ran lengthwise, facing a row of booths. It was crowded. People were standing two and three deep.

Sassafras went ahead of Mister Baron, elbowing through the jam. She stopped and turned around.

“Where is the phones?”

“In the restaurant,” Mister Baron said. “We have to go all the way to the back.”

“You go ahead,” she said, pulling aside so he could pass.

A joker on a bar stool reached out and tugged the tassels of her cap.

“Little Red Riding Hood,” he cooed. “How about you.”

She snatched her cap from his hand and said, “How about your baby sister?”

The man drew back in mock affront. “I don’t play that.”

“Then pat your feet,” she said.

The man grinned. “What you drinking, baby.”

Her glance had caught the smoky oil paintings of two brownskin amazon nudes reclining on Elysian fields above the mirror behind the bar. She tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it.

The man followed her glance. “Hell,, baby, you don’t need much as what they got.”

She gave herself a shake. “At least what I got moves,” she said.

Suddenly she remembered Mister Baron. She started off. The man grabbed her by the arm.

“What’s the rush, baby?”

She tore herself loose and squeezed hurriedly to the rear. Glass doors opened into the restaurant, and she bumped into a waitress going through. The phone booth was to the rear on the left. The door was closed. She snatched it open. A man was phoning, but it wasn’t Mister Baron.

“’Scuse me,” she said.

“Come on in,” the man said, grabbing at her.

She jerked away and looked about wildly. Mister Baron was nowhere in sight.

She stopped the waitress coming back.

“Did you see a little prissy man with wavy hair come through here?” she asked.

The waitress looked her over from head to feet.

“You that hard up, baby?”

“Oh shoo you!” she cried and dashed through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

“Did a man come through here?” she asked.

The big, sweating, bald-headed cook was up a tree.