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watching and thinking, I’d come to one firm conclusion. I was going to have to hospitalize the inch-long Microglanis parahybae bouncing himself on sand at the bottom of the community tank. Apparently he’d picked up some Ichthyophthirius .

5
    I yawned out of bed when the second alarm exploded clangorously, planted my feet on the bedroom’s black carpet, and swore dully.
    One reason I like to stay up all night is because awakening is such a severe shock to my nervous system, and probably to my spleen, kidneys, and bladder. And one reason it’s such a shock is because I so often stay up all night.
    I pressed my hands against my head and sort of molded it back into shape, put the coffee pot on to perk and prepared to face the new day, slowly gathering my strength. For breakfast I had three bites of gummy mush with four cups of coffee. And began feeling almost alive.
    This morning, after ablutions and shaving and such, I dressed in a lightweight, pale blue-green suit which, I knew, shimmered in the sunlight like clabbered electricity—which is more gorgeous than it may sound—added an appropriately lichenous tie, combed my hair with three fingers, and then checked my gun.
    Ordinarily I carry an empty chamber under the .38’s hammer since I would hate accidentally to shoot off a chunk of my latissimus dorsi or something even more desirable; but this morning I dug a box of cartridges from the dresser drawer and slid a sixth fat pill into the cylinder.
    It wasn’t that I had a premonition.
    There was no creepy “feeling” that I might need to use even one, much less six, slugs during the hours ahead. At least there was no conscious awareness of any below-the-mind’s-surface whispering.
    Oddly, though, I felt more comfortable, a little more at ease, when I pressed the fully-loaded Colt Special back into its holster.
    Then I phoned the L.A.P.D., got Homicide, and talked to Captain Samson for a minute. He knew about the Halstead murder, of course, but said there wasn’t much on it yet. I told him I’d be down within the hour, and hung up.
    On the way out I checked the two aquariums again. All was well in the small guppy tank, but my inch-long catfish in the big tank was clearly unwell. It was the Ick, all right: I could see the little white specks on his fins.
    Trouble, trouble. I was going to have to give a treatment to the whole damned tank. If I wasn’t careful, the little beggars could wind up with Saprolegnia . Then I would be in a pickle.
    I netted the brown and pinkish-gray scavenger and put him in a separate temperature-controlled bowl, added a teaspoonful of two-percent Mercurochrome to the water in the community tank and a couple drops to the sick bay, then turned the thermostat up a couple of degrees and headed for downtown L.A.
    Phil Samson, Central Division Homicide Captain, is more than just a good cop—though he is that, he for sure is that. He is also one of the most rigorously principled and finest men I’ve know in my thirty years. He’s hard-boiled, yes, tough, at times unrelenting; and he takes no guff from anybody. And he will give a hood not an inch or even a quarter of an inch if the hood deserves no extra measure. Thus he would not by today’s standards be judged compassionate, and today’s counterfeit Solomons would—and have—reviled him as “unfeeling” and brutal.
    There is not, however, a brutal or calloused cell in his big, hard body. He is simply efficient, dedicated, and abysmally honest, a man who believes justice is a virtue.
    Probably he’d had his usual five or six hours of sleep, but Sam nonetheless looked wide awake. And—as usual—as if he’d just finished shaving, his pink face healthily glowing, brown eyes sharp and alert.
    â€œAnd there he is,” Sam said, looking up from stacks of papers on his desk as I came in. “There he is, the only private detective-nudist in the Western