“By phone. He left a number for me to call. His answering service. So he’s probably in town, and if you want me to set him up—”

“We’re not looking for him.”

For an awful moment I thought I must have spoken to Durkin during my blackout, that one of us had called the other and I didn’t remember it. But he went on talking and I realized that hadn’t happened.

“We had him over at the station house and we sweated him,” he explained. “We put out a pickup order but he wound up coming in on his own accord. He had a slick lawyer with him and he was pretty slick himself.”

“You let him go?”

“We didn’t have one damn thing to hold him on. He had an alibi for the whole stretch from several hours before the estimated time of death to six or eight hours after. The alibi looks solid and we haven’t got anything to stack up against it. The clerk who checked Charles Jones into the Galaxy can’t come up with a description. I mean he can’t say for sure if the man he signed in was black or white. He sort of thinks he was white. How’d you like to hand that to the D.A.?”

“He could have had someone else rent the room. Those big hotels, they don’t keep any track of who goes in and out.”

“You’re right. He could have had someone rent the room. He also could have had someone kill her.”

“Is that what you figure he did?”

“I don’t get paid to figure. I know we haven’t got a case against the son of a bitch.”

I thought for a moment. “Why would he call me?”

“How would I know?”

“Does he know I steered you to him?”

“He didn’t hear it from me.”

“Then what does he want with me?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

It was warm in the booth. I cracked the door, let a little air in. “Maybe I’ll do that.”

“Sure. Scudder? Don’t meet him in a dark alley, huh? Because if he’s got some kind of a hard-on for you, you want to watch your back.”

“Right.”

“And if he does nail you, leave a dying message, will you? That’s what they always do on television.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Make it clever,” he said. “but not too clever, you know? Keep it simple enough so I can figure it out.”

I dropped a dime and called his service. The woman with the smoker’s rasp to her voice said, “Eight-oh-nine-two. May I help you?”

I said, “My name’s Scudder. Chance called me and I’m returning his call.”