“Lately? Nothing. Mess around and sleep. This will give me something to do. You’ll be using the car. It will need gas, and have the oil and water checked. I want you to use the Cadillac because I’m going to sell the Chevy and I don’t want anything to happen to it.”

“Wendell said something about a party Friday night.”

“He asked you? Good. You have to come. His parties are part of the folklore around here.”

He thought he had covered himself. “I heard the radio while I was shaving. Was there any word on the Shoftel case?”

“They’re still searching. Why?”

“First I want to say hello to my father, and he’s in the center of the action.”

“I see. On my time,” she said, and laughed.

Dr. Roberts had not distorted the truth in his telling of her calls to him yesterday. As long as she had attention, she functioned beautifully.

From the badly sprung club chair in his father’s office he could look through the dusty window behind the desk over the rooftops of one-story factories to the large black sheds projecting into the bay. Without moving his head, all he could read of a sign on a wall were the orange block letters of COAL CO., INC. If he bothered to look for the rest he would end up annoying himself, because he did know whose COAL CO., INC. it was, having seen it from this seat a hundred times, but he could not put the names together. He wanted to think INGALL’S, but that was wrong. From four or five blocks away carried the dim, sporadic ratcheting of a pneumatic hammer. In his private bathroom, Leland’s father was shaving with an electric razor.

“I didn’t really expect you until late afternoon,” his father called. “Give your mother a ring. If you catch a meal with her I’d appreciate it. I was home yesterday, but she was up to her sister’s.”

“Okay, Pop.”

“The reporters see you?”

“Yeah. One of them asked me if I was on this thing.”

His father laughed. The razor switched off and he stepped into the room. He was in his undershirt and his suspenders looped about his waist. Gray hair standing up like wire, he was an approximation of what Joseph Leland expected of himself when he was sixty. Captain Leland wound the razor cord. “Schoenstein is a good boy. He’s organized and he knows what he’s doing.”

That was high praise. “Downstairs they said he went home for a couple of hours.”

“He’ll get a break soon. That fellow Scanlon had about thirty dollars when he left town. He did leave. They canvassed the rooming houses, the flops, the bus stations—the whole business. There’s a drawing in today’s paper. Did you see it?”

“No. I’ll pick it up.”