Sergeant Rider had called him at the motel around nine-thirty. How would he like to have a little confab with Miss Madera in Rider’s office at eleven?

“Fine,” Hook had said. “I’d like that fine.”

“We lucked out,” Rider explained. “The lady was on her way to the tennis club. But she graciously consented to push her date back till noon. Just for me. How about that?”

“Does she know I’ll be there?”

“I forgot to mention that.”

“Good.”

“I got to thinking the chemistry might be a little better with you here. If she’s lying, I think the lies will come harder. Anyway, it should be interesting.”

Yes, it would be that. Finishing his coffee, Hook left the courtyard café and went down one of the narrow shop-lined paseos to De la Guerra and walked to his car, again parked in the next block, across from the building where Jack Douglas and his associates worked the ground of public opinion. Getting in, Hook again settled back to watch the same front door on the second floor of the building’s west wing. He had no idea whether Elizabeth Madera would stop by on her way to the meeting with Rider, or even that it would be particularly significant if she did. Mrs. Rubin after all did work there, and she was just as involved in the case as Miss Madera. And Douglas, simply as their respective employer and lover, would naturally be interested in any new developments in the case, especially in view of his political aspirations. So it was only to be expected that she would contact them, though most likely by phone. But even if she were to come in person—what would it mean? Nothing. And he knew it. But he also knew that he would remain right where he was until he had to leave, just before eleven. He would try to arrive after she did, for fear she might see him outside the courthouse and be able to prepare herself psychologically for what lay ahead. And he wanted her defenses down. He wanted to see her true face as the letter hit her, as she read the last written words of this young man she claimed had nothing to live for, this deviate of her dream world.

Hook lit a cigarette and continued to wait. A young hippie couple with a baby sauntered past, barefoot and happy, the girl in a maxi-dress and the boy in ragged jeans and a deerskin jacket, with an Indian headband holding down his long hair. He was carrying the baby on his back, papoose-style. To Hook’s surprise the little family got into a brand new four-thousand-dollar Volkswagen camper bus parked up the street and drove off. It was a funny incident, a good sight gag, but Hook did not smile. He felt there was something sad about a generation for whom life increasingly was limited to play-acting and costumery. “I don’t like who and what I am, so I will be different. I will be an Indian. Ergo, I shall dress as an Indian dresses.” The only problem with this new tribe was that their daddies all had to be dentists or stockbrokers or plumbers—someone solvent enough to make payments on a camper bus.