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had had visitors before. Eventually, a copy of the sheriff’s report was going to reach someone who remembered a sharpshooting incident in south Florida. Someone who was going to put two and two together. Hazel was going to have more visitors, and I wanted to talk to her first.
    Her call back to me came within ten minutes. “I can’t get there till after midnight,” she said. “One A.M . Is that too late?”
    “That’s fine. Walk right through the terminal out to the cabstand.” I’d have to make sure she wasn’t being followed, although it was a little early for that. “You’ll see me.”
    “Not driving a cab, I hope?”
    “Are you demeaning honest labor, woman?”
    She snickered. “What should I bring in the way of clothes?”
    “The legal minimum.”
    She snickered again. “You certainly do make it easy on a girl.”
    “See you at one A.M .” I said, and hung up.
    I went upstairs to the room. I opened the briefcase, which contained only two items—the .38 and a shoulder holster. I removed my jacket, strapped on the holster, and replaced the jacket. I practiced with the gun until it was drawing freely. Then I sat down and turned on the television set.
    At 4:55 I took the elevator down to the lobby again and stood in the doorway of the men’s bar. Half a dozen scattered figures sat on the stools in the tranquility of the dim lighting. There were as many more at the tables.
    Slater wasn’t hard to locate. He didn’t look like I remembered him, but he looked like Slater ought to look ten years later. Burly, square-jawed, dour-looking. Menacing. Definitely older-looking but still capable.
    I backed away from the doorway to a battery of nearby house phones that permitted me to keep an eye on the end of the bar where Slater sat. I watched him for five minutes to make sure he wasn’t exchanging hand or eye signals with anyone else in the room. If he was, I couldn’t detect it. I picked up the phone.
    “Ring the bar and have Mr. Slater paged, please,” I told the hotel operator when she came on the line.
    The page call didn’t carry out to the lobby, where I was standing, but I saw Slater’s head come up when he heard it. He slid from his bar stool and walked out of my line of vision toward a phone indicated by the barman. “Yeah?” the same gruff voice as the previous night said in my ear.
    “The bar is too public,” I said. “I’m upstairs in Room 529.”
    “Suits me. I’ll be right there.”
    Slater came back to his drink, picked it up, and drained it. His back was toward me as he set his empty glass down slowly, then walked out into the lobby without a backward glance. He passed within six feet of me on his way to the elevators, but I remained where I was and kept my eyes on the bar stool Slater had just left.
    In seconds a huge blond man with walking-beam shoulders moved to the stool and sat down. The barman started in his direction, but the Viking snapped his fingers as though he’d just remembered something. He left the stool and went toward the lobby.
    Before he cleared the doorway, I was walking toward the same bar stool. I didn’t even need to sit down. Boldly traced in the moisture on the bar top were the figures 529. Slater had left a message.
    I made it back into the lobby in time to see the Viking step aboard an elevator. The indicator of the one alongside it marked it as being at the fifth floor. I stationed myself in front of it. Sure enough, it started downward. I glanced around. There was no one standing near me in front of the bank of elevators. When the shining bronze doors opened, I was standing directly in front of Slater. His features were flushed and angry-looking.
    He started to move around me. I put both hands against his chest and pushed. He went backward into the elevator cab, his face comical in its surprise. I stepped aboard and jabbed the control button, which closed the elevator doors behind us. In the same moment I crowded Slater so he could feel the outline of