And what a total muttonhead I was being! Had my interval on Rita’s sofa really turned my once-mighty intellect into such a quivering heap of sentimental mush? How could I be thinking such absurdities? Why wasn’t I trying to devise a plan to escape marriage instead? No wonder I couldn’t get away from Doakes’s cloying surveillance—I had used up all my brain cells and was now running on empty.

I glanced at my watch. Fourteen minutes of time wasted on absurd mental blather. It was close enough: I lifted the radio and called Doakes.

Sergeant Doakes, what’s your twenty?

There was a pause, then a crackle. Uh, I’d rather not say just now.

Say again, Sergeant?

I have been tracking a perp, and I’m afraid he made me.

What kind of perp?

There was a pause, as though Doakes was expecting me to do all the work and hadn’t figured out what to say. Guy from my army days. He got captured in El Salvador, and he might think it was my fault. Pause. The guy is dangerous, he said.

Do you want backup?

Not yet. I’m going to try to dodge him for now.

Ten-four, I said, feeling a little thrill at getting to say it at last.

We repeated the basic message a few times more, just to be sure it would get through to Dr. Danco, and I got to say ten-four each time. When we called it a night around 1:00 AM, I was exhilarated and fulfilled. Perhaps tomorrow I would try to work in That’s a copy and even Roger that. At last, something to look forward to.

I found a squad car headed south and persuaded the cop driving to drop me at Rita’s. I tiptoed over to my car, got in, and drove home.

When I got back to my little bunk and saw it in a state of terrible disarray, I remembered that Debs should have been here but was, instead, in the hospital. I would go see her tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d had a memorable but exhausting day; chased into a pond by a serial limb-barber, surviving a car crash only to be nearly drowned, losing a perfectly good shoe, and on top of all that, as if that wasn’t bad enough, forced to buddy up with Sergeant Doakes. Poor Drained Dexter. No wonder I was so tired. I fell into bed and went to sleep at once.

Early the next day Doakes pulled his car in beside mine in the parking lot at headquarters. He got out carrying a nylon gym bag, which he set down on the hood of my car. You brought your laundry? I asked politely. Once again my lighthearted good cheer went right by him.