And yet the fat bartender did remember me. Steve, or Vince, or Vinnie, or whatever his name. ‘Ain’t seen you in a long time,’ he said.

‘Not since Camilla,’ I said.

He clucked his tongue. ‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘Nice kid too.’ That was all. I drank another beer, then a third. He gave me the fourth, and then I bought for the two of us on the next round. An hour passed in that fashion. He stood before me, reached into his pocket, and drew out a newspaper clipping. ‘I suppose you already seen this,’ he said. I picked it up. It was no more than six lines, and a two line headline from the bottom of an inside page:

Local police today were on the lookout for Camilla Lopez, 22, of Los Angeles, whose disappearance from the Del Maria institution was discovered by authorities last night.

The clipping was a week old. I left my beer and hurried out of there and up the hill to my room. Something told me she was coming there. I could feel her desire to return to my room. Pulling up a chair, I sat with my feet in the window, the lights on, smoking and waiting. Deeply I felt she would come, convinced there was no one else to whom she could turn. But she did not come. I went to bed, leaving the lights on. Most of the next day and all through the following night I stayed in my room, waiting for the plink of pebbles against my window. After the third night the conviction that she was coming began to wane. No, she would not come here. She would flee to Sammy, to her true love. The last person of whom she would think would be Arturo Bandini. That suited me just fine. After all, I was a novelist now, and something of a short story writer too, even if I did say so myself.

The next morning I got the first of her collect telegrams. It was a request for money to be wired to Rita Gomez, care of Western Union, San Francisco. She had signed the wire ‘Rita’ but the identity was obvious. I wired her twenty and told her to come south as far as Santa Barbara, where I would meet her. She wired this answer: ‘Would rather go north thanks sorry Rita.’

The second wire came from Fresno. It was another request for money, to be sent to Rita Gomez, care of Postal Telegraph. That was two days after the first wire. I walked downtown and wired her fifteen. For a long time I sat in the telegraph office composing a message to go with the money, but I couldn’t make up my mind. I finally gave up and sent the money alone. Nothing I said made any difference to Camilla Lopez. But one thing was certain. I vowed it on the way back to the hotel: she would get no more money out of me. I had to be careful from now on.