I said, "I don't believe it. That man is as innocent as the day he was born. Even if he has something to be guilty about, he's still innocent."

She looked at me-not challenging, just questioning. "What makes you say that?"

I was about to answer, Because I've been there and I ought to know. But I couldn't say that to her, not the way things were going today. So instead I said, "He's got too much dignity." It was lame, but I didn't have anything better to offer at the moment.

Ginny said, "Dignity covers a multitude of sins. I'd rather have proof."

"Yeah? I thought you were the one who said we didn't need proof."

She grinned quickly. "That's true. But I wouldn't turn it down if you offered it to me."

I loved that grin. "What're we waiting for? Let's go find some."

"Right." She went about three steps down the hall, then knocked at a door with a sign on it saying:

MRS. MARTHA SCURVEY BUDGET VICE-CHAIRMAN

From inside, a woman's voice snapped. "Go away. I'm busy."

Ginny opened the door, stuck her head in, then looked back at me with a sudden ferocity in her grin. She gestured for me to follow her.

"I told you to go away!" the woman said angrily.

When I got into the office-which was about the same size as Greenling's, but a hell of a lot neater-I found out why. The air was thick with sweet gray smoke. Martha Scurvey sat stiffly behind her desk with a hash pipe in her hands. Probably she didn't want anyone to come in until the air-conditioning cleared the air. Or maybe until she smoked a cigar to cover the odor.

"I'll tell you what, Ms. Scurvey," Ginny offered. "You give us a little of your time, and we'll forget what that stuff smells like." I could hear the grin in her voice.

"That's blackmail." Martha Scurvy was angry enough to pluck chickens, but she was also under complete control. A dangerous combination. She must've had a lot of charm on tap, or she wouldn't be sitting where she was. At the moment, however, it didn't show. The only thing she showed was stainless steel. I wondered where she picked up the hash habit. Offhand, she didn't look like the kind of woman who needed it.

"Not at all," Ginny said smoothly. "Just persuasion. The only thing we're interested in is a little talk."

Ms. Scurvey didn't want to talk. She wanted us to get the hell out of her life. But she knew how to concede without losing face. With a gesture that might've looked gracious if her eyes had backed it up, she offered us chairs. While we seated ourselves, she stashed her pipe, pouch, and matches in a briefcase, which she locked. Then she leaned her elbows on the desk and said, "I prefer Mrs., not Ms. I'm a married woman and proud of it."

That sounded as phony as her graciousness. How she felt about her marriage was irrelevant. She was just trying to get on top of the situation.

Ginny let her try. "Certainly, Mrs. Scurvey. We're not here to give you any trouble. As far as we know, you're in the clear."

I had to admire her. Ginny plays control games as well as anyone. Mrs. Scurvey had already been outmaneuvered, and she didn't even know it. "In the clear?" she asked. "I don't understand."

After that I stopped listening for a minute. I was distracted.

In a neat stack off to one side of her desk, Mrs. Scurvey had a pile of white writing paper. A handy size for notes- full sheets torn neatly in half. From where I sat, the paper looked like good twenty-pound bond.

I felt a childish urge to nudge Ginny and point, but I resisted it. Instead I shifted my weight, sneaked a couple of deep breaths, and went back to paying attention.

Ginny was saying, "-your opinion of Mr. Greenling?"

Mrs. Scurvey looked at her hands, checked her fingernails. "He's conscientious-very conscientious-but hopelessly out of date. His ideas of education have yet to reach the twentieth century. I'd love to do a strict cost analysis of his department, but he won't let me touch it. I'm expected to take his word for everything. At present." She made it clear that Astin Greenling wouldn't have the power to turn her down much longer.

"Do you know about his wife?"

"He doesn't talk about her, and I don't ask. I've heard she's ill. That's more than I want to know."

"What about Paul Stretto?"

"Paul is a forward-thinking educator with a keen appreciation for economic reality. He's brought this school system a long way toward facing the facts of life and doing the job it's supposed to do."

I was glad Ginny didn't ask what kind of job that was. The smugness in Mrs. Scurvey's tone made my scalp itch. I didn't like what it implied about her relationship with Stretto. Fortunately Ginny wasn't interested in theories of education. Instead of pursuing Stretto, she asked, "How do you feel about Julian Kirke?"

"Personally, I think he's odious. Professionally, he does great work. His new filing system will save us thousands of dollars a year-once he gets it into the computer."

"Do you see him socially, know anything about him?"

Mrs, Scurvey gave Ginny a withering stare and said, "No." Kirke was probably too low for her. He wasn't chairman of anything.

"Who works on the files with him?"

"Three of his girls," she said stiffly. Mabel, Joan, and- and Connie? I think that's her name."

"What do you know about them?"

"What should I know about them? They're his girls. Ask him."

"Do they ever do any work for you?"

"Just routine typing."

"They don't help you with the files?"

"When I want something out of the files, I get it myself." Mrs. Scurvey was running out of endurance. Her tone would've curdled milk. All of a sudden, I guessed that she didn't smoke hash because she liked it. She smoked it because she needed it. She was brittle inside and didn't want anybody to know.

Before I could think about it, I asked her, "How long has your husband been dead, Mrs. Scurvey?"

Milk, hell. She practically curdled me. "That's none of your business."

Which told me what I wanted to know. Now she made sense to me. Her high-pressure approach to her job, her relationship with Stretto, the hash-she was running away from grief. I half wanted to ask Ginny to leave her alone. A married woman, and proud of it. It's a hard life when you lose everything that used to tell you who you are.

But Ginny was almost through anyway. "Just one practical question, Mrs. Scurvey. What's the phone setup around here?"

"The phone-? I don't understand."

"If I wanted to call you, could I reach you directly, or would I have to go through one of the secretaries?"

"Through the secretaries."

"And when you want to make a call?"

Mrs. Scurvey sighed. "Through the secretaries."

"So they can make calls that you don't know about, but you can't make or receive any calls that they don't know about. Right?"

Mrs. Scurvey was hugging herself with her arms. "Are you finished?"

"Yes, I'm finished," Ginny said. "Just let me make a note of that." Before Mrs. Scurvey could stop her-if Mrs. Scurvey wanted to stop her-she reached over and took a sheet off the stack of white paper. She got a pen out of her purse, scribbled something on one end of the sheet, then put it and the pen back in her purse.

"Thanks for your time. We're sorry we troubled you.

"Come on, Brew." Thirty seconds later, we were out of the school board offices and walking down the halls of Central High.

I wanted to see that sheet of paper. But Ginny didn't seem to be in any hurry to look at it, so I asked her, "What was all that about the phones?"

"Just fishing," she said. "Whoever we're looking for doesn't work alone. One way or another, I think there have to be at least two of them. It's hard for me to picture somebody who works here moonlighting as a pusher successfully. Too many things could go wrong. I figure we're looking for somebody who gets the information, then passes it to somebody else. Somebody else who handles the girls."

I stopped her. "They wouldn't be stupid enough to call each other at work."

"That depends." She pushed open a door, and we went out into the glare of the parking lot. The asphalt swam with heat. "Greenling or Scurvey wouldn't because their calls go through the secretaries. But that doesn't apply to the secretaries."

When we reached the Olds, she put her purse on the hood and took out the sheet of paper.

Sure enough, it was twenty-pound bond. Neatly torn along one edge. The watermark matched all the other notes.

"Damn it," Ginny muttered under her breath.

"For sure." I couldn't figure out what Martha Scurvey was doing with paper like this. She wasn't supposed to be one of our suspects. She'd only been on the board a year.

But Ginny was cursing something else. "I should've grabbed a sheet from Greenling, too. I wasn't thinking." She stuffed the note angrily back into her purse. "I swear to God, Brew," she rasped, not looking at me, "some days I don't know what I use for brains."

The frustration in her voice surprised me. I tend to get so involved in my own inadequacies that I sometimes forget she's human, too. Judging from the sound of things, finding this paper in Martha Scurvey's office must've broken one of Ginny's intricate logical chains. Ruined a theory or two and left her feeling stupid. "Don't complain to me," I said quietly. "I'm the guy who lost the notes, remember? I didn't even see that paper on Greenling's desk."

"Yes, well," she said, jerking open the door of the Olds, "that's a big consolation."

That crack irked me. But I didn't snap back. Reciprocity-it was my turn to stay cool. I got into the passenger seat, watched her while she took us out of the parking lot in the direction of her office. When I got tired of looking at her scowl, I said, "So who cares about your brains? It's your body I'm interested in."

For a second there I thought she was going to let go of the wheel and clobber me. But then suddenly the scowl broke. She threw back her head and laughed.

"Ah, Brew," she sighed after a minute, "if I ever figure out what to do with you, you're going to be in big trouble."

"Take your time," I said. "I can wait."

We chuckled together, and while it lasted I felt better.

About a mile from the Murchison Building we stopped for a quick lunch. As we ate, Ginny looked at me abruptly and asked, "How did you know Mrs. Scurvey's husband was dead?"

"Intuition," I said. "She doesn't have any kids. She's having an affair with Mr. Paul M. Stretto. I don't know how I knew. It just came to me."

"Are you sure you didn't figure it out from the name on her door? It didn't say, 'Mrs. George-or-whatever Scurvey.' It said, 'Mrs. Martha.' "

"That," I said flatly, "never occurred to me."

She shook her head. "You're not a well man. You ought to see a doctor. Maybe there's a treatment for it."

I didn't try for a comeback. Her eyes were focused somewhere else, and her voice had an abstract sound. She wasn't even listening to herself. Instead she was groping for something, some kind of link that would tie this case together. I knew better than to distract her.

When we were finished eating, we went on to her office.

While she called her answering service, I started a pot of coffee. But after that I didn't have anything to do except sit and watch her think some more. I didn't mind at first. Ginny thinking is Ginny making progress. But after half an hour or so I started to get restless. I was just about to interrupt her when she reached a decision. Without warning, she came back from wherever it was she'd been and pulled the phone toward her. "The hell with him," she muttered. "I can't wait any longer."

There was a kind of suppressed violence in the way she dialed, and when she started talking her face was knotted in a grimace, but she managed to keep her voice tolerably smooth. Once she got past the people who fronted for him to Smithsonian himself, she put the call on the speaker so that I could hear him too.

Even over that tinny amplifier he had the kind of voice that makes you want to wash your hands. Oily and sticky. You'd have to be a bank president to like it. "What's the matter, Fistoulari?" he asked. "No patience? I told you I'd call at three. You can't crack this case without me?"

Ginny picked up a metal letter opener, set the point in the blotter on her desk, and slowly twirled it with her fingers. "Of course not, Lawrence." Somehow she kept the acid out of her tone. "You know I'm helpless without you."

"That's probably true." He couldn't have sounded more self-satisfied if he'd just been propositioned by Miss America. Ginny stopped twirling the letter opener and began slowly pushing it into the blotter. The expression on her face said, Why am I talking to this asshole? "Under the circumstances," he went on, "I won't keep you hanging. I have most of the information anyway. The only one I'm not satisfied about is this Stretto character."

"What have you got on him?"

"Nothing you want. For a politician, he looks pretty clean. But I always double-check politicians. He keeps a higher profile than he can afford on board of education money, but right now it looks like it comes out of his campaign organization. Rumor is that it's clean money. Maybe it was born clean, and maybe somebody washed it. I'll know later on, probably by tomorrow."

Well, it was still possible that Stretto supplied files to someone who supplied him with money. But I didn't believe it. He'd been too quick to call the commissioner.

"How about the others?" Ginny asked.

"Scurvey and Kirke are clean. Martha Scurvey is a society broad"-the letter opener was starting to bend- "and she probably has more cash in her purse than she gets paid in a year. Her husband was Matthew Scurvey, the computer biggie. He left her enough to buy her own public school, if she wants it." He paused, then said, "It's possible she's one of Stretto's private contributors."

"I already know that," Ginny said. With malice aforethought. But she kept her voice bland.

"Yeah?" Smithsonian growled. He didn't like it when people already knew what he was telling them. "Then maybe you already know about Kirke, too."

"Not a thing. I can't get close to him."

"Well, then." Smithsonian mollified. "He's clean. He lives within his means-which aren't that much, let me tell you. His apartment has a certain amount of class, and he drives a car with a hefty price tag. A Citroën-Maseratti. But his bank financed the car. Take the payments on that, plus rent and taxes, out of his salary, and you still have enough for food, with something left over for a trip to Mexico every once in a while. Unless you're trying to support a little action on the side. He isn't. Absolutely no money he can't account for."

Ginny absorbed that for a minute. So did I. I hated to cross Kirke off the list, but at the moment I didn't see any way around it. About the only thing I was sure of in this mess was that whoever was kidnapping these girls and pumping them full of junk was making money out of it. Considering what can happen to you if you're convicted for kidnapping, it had to be a lot of money.

Then Ginny asked, "What about Astin Greenling?"

"Ah, Mr. Greenling," Smithsonian said, "the man with the sick wife. I took a good look at him. Medical expenses cause more crime in this country than anybody knows about. You can bet he doesn't pay his bills with his salary. And the kind of hospitalization the board carries is nothing special. I was a little surprised to learn that in fact Mr. Greenling does pay his bills.

"How? you ask. I'll tell you how." Smithsonian was enjoying himself. "That sucker is up to his ass in loan sharks."

"Loan sharks." Ginny sat up straight, tossed the letter opener aside. I could almost see her thinking, How does he pay them back? Maybe he pays them with something besides money. Maybe he pays them with information. "How long has that been going on?"

"About two years." Smithsonian chuckled. "I don't know why they haven't broken his arms yet."

"After two years? How do you think he's handling it?"

"Hard to tell without actually talking to him. No doubt every time one of them gets nasty he goes to another and borrows enough to save his skin for a while. If that's what he's doing, he's digging himself a hole they'll bury him in." "All right, Lawrence," Ginny said. "You're giving me exactly what I want. Now I have some more names for you."

"More?" he barked. "You think you're my only client? I don't have better things to do than this-?"

Ginny cut him off. "I'll pay. Whatever it is. Just send me a bill."

"Believe it, Fistoulari. I'll send you a bill." He paused to give us a chance to feel like we were being threatened, then said, "So tell me the names."

"Mabel Alison," Ginny said promptly. "Connie Mousse. Joan Phillips. They're all secretaries for the board. And Jon Gren." She spelled out the names for him. "Gren is Joan Phillips' fiance. An intern at University Hospital."

"Do not call me," he said heavily. "I'll call you. Tomorrow. Around noon." He paused again, probably waiting for Ginny to tell him how wonderful he was. When she didn't say anything, he hung up with a bang.

She switched off the speaker, and we stared at each other for a minute. Or rather I stared at her, and she looked through me into empty space. I stood it as long as I could. Then I got up. "Let's go."

Her gaze didn't shift an inch. "Where?"

"Back to the school board. Or over to Greenling's house, talk to his wife. Somewhere. We can't just sit here."

She wasn't listening. "I've missed something. There's something here. Something that gives it all away. But I can't pick it up. Damn and blast! What's the matter with me?"

I said, "You're trying too hard."

I don't know why I bothered. It didn't register with her at all. "I'm going blind," she insisted. "It's right here in front of me, but I can't see it."

I didn't see it either, so I took a deep breath and said, "Acton."

That reached her. She looked up, and her eyes came into focus on my face. "What did you say?"

"Acton."

"What is that? More intuition?"

"No. I'm just trying to shake you up a little. You're in a rut. You've got Greenling on the brain."

She leaned back in her chair, put her hands behind her head. "You still don't believe he's the one?"

"Who, me? Do you think I'm crazy? Of course he's the one. Who else could it be?"

Her eyes narrowed, until I almost couldn't see the fighting gleam in them. "All right, ace. Maybe I'm in a rut. She's your niece. What do you think we should be doing?"

"I think we should go shake down Jon Gren."

"Wonderful. Try it with my blessing. Only there's one thing you ought to keep in mind. Hospitals don't keep heroin around. Morphine, yes. Heroin, no. He's just Joan Phillips' fiance-that's all you've got on him."

What could I say to that? "Well then, let's talk to Mrs. Greenling." Trying not to sound defensive. No point in telling her that she'd just shot down the only theory I had.

She sighed. "That may be a good idea." Reluctantly she got to her feet. "So why do I feel like you're asking me to go hurt a sick woman?"

Under other circumstances, that would've made me mad. After all the things I'd done in the past three days without helping Alathea even a little bit, I was in no mood for her to turn finicky. But I was saved by the phone.

She snatched it up. "Fistoulari Investigations."

While she listened, all the blood drained out of her face and something else took its place-something that looked like murder. Then she said, "Hang on. We'll be right there."

She put the receiver down.

If I hadn't known better I might've thought that it was me she wanted to kill.

In a tight voice, she said, "That was Lona. She's over at University Hospital. The cops just brought in Alathea. She's still alive, but she's in a coma. OD."

Maybe she wanted some kind of reaction from me. Maybe there was something she wanted me to say. I didn't know, and I didn't care. I was already on my way out to the elevator.