The John L. Davis School was an ancient red-brick building with an iron picket fence enclosing the schoolyard. As I went up the steps to the door, I could hear a class of small voices chanting something in unison. It was a sleepy, nostalgic, afternoon sound.

In the wide wooden hallway there were drinking fountains which looked absurdly low. A small boy came down the hall, tapping himself gently and wistfully on the head with a ruler. He gave me an opaque stare and continued on his way.

There was a nervous young woman in the outer office of the principal's office. She was typing and chewing her lip and when she looked up at me she was obviously irritated by the interruption.

"I'm trying to find a Miss Major who used to teach here. She taught eighth-grade subjects, I believe."

"We only go through the sixth. Then the children go to the junior high."

"I know that. But you used to have the seventh and eighth here."

"Not for a long time. Not since I've been here."

"Aren't there any records? Isn't there any place you could look?"

"I wouldn't know where to look. I wouldn't know anything like that."

"Are there any teachers here who would have been here when Miss Major was here?"

"I guess there probably are. I guess there would be some. How long ago was she here?"

"About twelve years ago."

"Mrs. Stearns has been teaching here twenty-two years. Third grade. Room sixteen. That's on this floor just around the corner."

"I wouldn't want to interrupt a class."

"Any minute now they'll all be going home. Then you could ask her. I wouldn't know anything like that. I wouldn't know where to look or anything."

I waited outside room sixteen. There was a lull and then somebody started a record player. Sousa filled the halls with brass, at peak volume. There was a great scurrying in all the rooms. The doors opened. All the small denizens marched into the hall and stood in impatient ragged double lines, stomping their feet in time to the music. The floor shook. Weary teachers kept a cautious eye on the lines. The upstairs rooms marched down the stairs and out the double doors. Then the main floor marched out, yelling as soon as they hit the sunlight. The school was emptied. Sousa blared on for a few moments and died in the middle of a bar.

"Mrs. Stearns?"

"Yes, I'm Mrs. Stearns." She was a round, pale woman with hair like steel wool and small, sharp, bright dark eyes.

"My name is Howard, Talbert Howard. Did you know a Miss Major who used to teach here?"

"Of course. I knew Katherine very well. That reminds me, I should stop by and see how she's getting along these days."

"She's in town?"

"Oh, yes, the poor thing."

"Is she ill?"

"Oh, I thought you knew. Katherine went blind quite suddenly about ten years ago. It was a shock to all of us. I feel guilty that I don't call on her more often. But after a full day of the children, I don't feel like calling on anyone. I don't seem to have the energy any more."

"Could you tell me where she lives?"

"Not off hand, but it's in the phone book. She's on Finch Avenue, in an apartment. I know the house but I can't remember the number. She lives alone. She's very proud, you know. And she really gets along remarkably well, considering."

It was a small ground-floor apartment in the rear of an old house. Music was playing loudly in the apartment. It was a symphony I didn't recognize. The music stopped moments after I knocked at the door.

Miss Major opened the door. She wore a blue dress. Her hair was white and worn in a long page boy. Her features were strong. She could have once been a beautiful woman. She was still handsome. When I spoke to her, she seemed to focus on my face. It was hard to believe those eyes were sightless.

I told her my name and said I wanted to ask her about a student she had had in the eighth grade.

"Please come in, Mr. Howard. Sit there in the red chair. I was having tea. Would you care for some?"

"No, thank you."

"Then one of these cookies. A friend of mine bakes them. They're very good."

She held the plate in precisely the right spot. I took one and thanked her. She put the plate back on the table and sat facing me. She found her teacup and lifted it to her lips.

"Now what student was it?"

"Do you remember Timmy Warden?"

"Of course I remember him! He was a charmer. I was told how he died. I was dreadfully sorry to hear it. A man came to see me six or seven months ago. He said he'd been in that prison camp with Timmy. I never could quite understand why he came to see me. His name was Fitzmartin and he asked all sorts of odd questions. I couldn't feel at ease with him. He didn't seem—quite right if you know what I mean. When you lose one sense you seem to become more aware of nuances."

"I was in that camp too, Miss Major."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Probably Mr. Fitzmartin is a friend of yours."

"No, he's not."

"That's a relief. Now don't tell me you came here to ask odd questions too, Mr. Howard."

"Fairly odd, I guess. In camp Timmy spoke about a girl named Cindy. I've been trying to track her down for—personal reasons. One of your other students, Cindy Kirschner, told me that you wrote a skit based on Cinderella for the eighth grade when you had Timmy in the class. Timmy wasn't—very well when he mentioned this Cindy. I'm wondering if he could have meant the girl who played the part in the play."

"Whatever has happened to Cindy Kirschner, Mr. Howard? Such a shy, sweet child. And those dreadful teeth."

"The teeth have been fixed. She's married to a man named Pat Rorick and she has a couple of kids."

"That's good to hear. The other children used to be horrible to her. They can be little animals at times."

"Do you remember who played the part of Cindy in the skit?"

"Of course I remember. I remember because it was sort of an experiment. Her name was Antoinette Rasi. Wait a moment. I'll show you something." She went into the other room. She was gone nearly five minutes. She came back with a glossy photograph.

"I had a friend help me sort these out after I learned Braille. I've marked them all so I know this is the right one. It's a graduation picture. I've kept the graduation pictures of all my classes, though what use I have for pictures, I'll never know."

She handed it to me and said, "I believe Antoinette is in the back row toward the left. Look for a girl with a great mass of black hair and a pretty, rather sullen face. I don't imagine she was smiling."

"I think I've found her."

"Antoinette was a problem. She was a little older than the others. Half French and half Italian. She resented discipline. She was a rowdy, a troublemaker. But I liked the child and I thought I understood her. Her people were very poor and I don't think she got much attention at home. She had an older brother who had been in trouble with the police and I believe an older sister. She came to school inadequately dressed when the weather was cold. She had a lot of spirit. She was a very alive person. I think she was sensitive, but she hid it very carefully. I can't help but wonder sometimes what has happened to the child. The Rasis lived north of the city where the river widens out. I believe that Mr. Rasi had a boat and bait business in the summer and did odd jobs in the wintertime. Their house was a shack. I went out there once after Antoinette had missed a whole week of school. I found she hadn't come because she had a black eye. Her brother gave it to her. I gave her the part of Cinderella in an attempt to get her to take more interest in class activities. I'm afraid it was a mistake. I believe she thought it was a reflection on the way she lived."

"Was Timmy friendly with her?"

"Quite friendly. I sometimes wondered if that was a good thing. She seemed quite—precocious in some departments. And Timmy was a very sweet boy."

"He could have called her Cindy because of the skit?"

"I imagine so. Children dote on nicknames. I remember one poor little boy with a sinus condition. The other children made him unhappy by calling him Rumblehead."

"I want to thank you for your help, Miss Major."

"I hope the information is of some use to you. When you find Antoinette, tell her I asked about her."

"I'll do that."

She went with me to the door. She said, "They're bringing me a new Braille student at four. He seems to be a little late. Mr. Howard, are you in some kind of trouble?"

The abrupt non sequitur startled me. "Trouble? Yes, I'm in trouble. Bad trouble."

"I won't give you any chin-up lecture, Mr. Howard. I've been given too much of that myself. I was just checking my own reactions. I sensed trouble. An aura of worry. As with that Mr. Fitzmartin I detected an aura of directed evil."

When I got out in front, a woman was helping a young boy out of a car. The boy wore dark glasses. His mouth had an ill-tempered look, and I heard the whine in his voice as he complained about something to her.

I felt that I had discovered Cindy. There had been a hint as to what she was like in the very tone of Timmy's voice. Weak as he was, there had been a note of fond appreciation—the echo of lust. Cindy would know. The phrasing was odd. Not Cindy knows. Cindy would know. It would be a place known to her.

I sat in my car for a few moments. I did not know how long my period of grace would last. I did not know whether I should continue in search of the elusive Cindy or try to make sense of the relationship between Fitz and Grassman. It came to me that I had been a fool not to search the body. There might have been notes, papers, letters, reports—something to indicate why he had been slain. Yet I knew I could not risk going back there, and it was doubtful that the murderer would have been so clumsy as to leave anything indirectly incriminating on the body itself.

I did not know where to start. I didn't think anything could be gained by going to Fitzmartin, facing him. He certainly would answer no questions. Why had it been necessary to kill Grassman? Either it was related to Grassman's job, or it was something apart from it. Grassman's job had apparently been due to Rose Fulton's conviction that her husband had come to some harm here in Hillston.

Prine's investigation had evidently been thorough. He was satisfied that Fulton and Eloise Warden had run off together. He had a witness to the actual departure. Yet Grassman had been poking around the cabin the Wardens used to own. I could not imagine what he hoped to gain.

I could not help but believe that Grassman's death was in some way related to the sixty thousand dollars. I wondered if Grassman had somehow acquired the information that a sizable sum had disappeared from the Warden business ventures over a period of time, and had added two and two together. Or if, in looking for Fulton's body, he had stumbled across the money. Maybe at the same time Fitz was looking for it. Many murders have been committed for one tenth that amount. There was only one starting place with Grassman. That was Rose Fulton. Maybe Grassman had sent her reports. She was probably a resident of Illinois.

I wondered who would know her address. It would have to be someone whose suspicions would not be aroused. I wondered if there was any way of finding out without asking anyone. If the police investigation had been reported in the local paper, Fulton's home town would probably have been given, but not his street address.

I realized that I did not dare make any effort to get hold of Mrs. Fulton. It would link me too closely to Grassman.

Antoinette Rasi then. I would look for her.

The shack was on the riverbank. It had a sagging porch, auto parts stamped into the mud of the yard, dingy Monday washing flapping on a knotted line, a disconsolate tire hanging from a tree limb, and a shiny new television aerial. A thin, dark boy of about twelve was carefully painting an overturned boat, doing a good job of it. A little dark-headed girl was trying to harness a fat, humble dog to a broken cart. A toddler in diapers watched her. Some chickens were scratching the loose dirt under the porch.

The children looked at me as I got out of the car. A heavy woman came to the door. She bulged with pregnancy. Her eyes and expression were unfriendly. The small girl began to cry. I heard her brother hiss at her to shut up. The woman in the doorway could have once been quite pretty. She wasn't any more. It was hard to guess how old she might be.

"Is your name Rasi?" I asked.

"It was once. Now it's Doyle. What do you want?"

"I'm trying to locate Antoinette Rasi."

"For God's sake, shut up sniveling, Jeanie. This man isn't come to take the teevee." She smiled apologetically at me. "They took it away once, and to Jeanie any stranger comes after the same thing. Every night the kids watch it. No homework, no nothing. Just sit and look. It drives me nuts. What do you want Antoinette for?"

"I've got a message for her. From a friend."

The woman sniffed. "She makes a lot of friends, I guess. She doesn't hang around here any more. She's up in Redding. I don't hear from her any more. She never gets down. God knows I never get up there. The old man is dead and Jack is in the federal can in Atlanta, and Doyle can't stand the sight of her, so why should she bother coming down here. Hell, I'm only her only sister. She sends money for the kids, but no messages. No nothing."

"What does she do?"

She gave me a wise, wet smile. "She goes around making friends, I guess."

"How do I get in touch with her?"

"Cruise around. Try the Aztec, and the Cub Room. And try the Doubloon, too. I heard her mention that. You can probably find her."

It was sixty miles to Redding, and dark when I got there. It was twice the size of Hillston. It was a town with a lot of neon. Lime and pink. Dark, inviting blue. Lots of uniforms on the night streets. Lots of girls on the dark streets. Lots of cars going nowhere too fast, horns blowing, Bermuda bells ringing, tires wailing. I asked where the Aztec and the Cub Room and the Doubloon were. I was directed to a wide highway on the west edge of town, called, inevitably, the Strip. There the neon really blossomed. There wasn't as much sidewalk traffic. But for a Monday night there were enough cars in the lots. Enough rough music in the air. Enough places to lose your money. Or spend it. Or have it taken away from you.

I went to the Aztec and I went to the Cub Room and I went to the Doubloon. In each place I asked a bartender about Antoinette Rasi. On each occasion I received a blank stare and a shrug and a, "Never heard of her."

"Dark-haired girl?"

"That's unusual? Sorry, buster."

The cadence of the evening was beginning to quicken. All three places were glamorous. They were like the lounges of the hotels along Collins Avenue on Miami Beach. And like the bistros of Beverly Hills. The lighting was carefully contrived. There was a Las Vegas tension in those three places, a smell of money. Here the games were hidden. But not hard to find.

The way Mrs. Doyle had spoken of her sister gave me reason to believe I could get assistance from the police. They were in a brand new building. The sergeant looked uncomfortable behind a long curve of stainless steel.

I told him what Mrs. Doyle had said about how to find her.

"There ought to be something on her. Let me check it out. Wait a couple minutes."

He got on the phone. He had to wait quite a while. Then he thanked the man on the other end and hung up. "He knows her. She's been booked a couple times as Antoinette Rasi. But the name she uses is Toni Raselle. She calls herself an entertainer. He says he thinks she did sing for a while at one place. She's a fancy whore. The last address he's got is the Glendon Arms. That's a high-class apartment hotel on the west side, not too far from the Strip. Both times she was booked last it was on a cute variation of the old badger game. So cute they couldn't make it stick. So watch yourself. She plays with rough people. We got rough ones here by the dozen."

I thanked him and left. It was nearly ten when I got back to the Strip. I went into the Aztec first. I went to the same bartender. "Find that girl yet?" he asked.

"I found she calls herself Toni Raselle."

"Hell, I know her. She comes in every once in a while. She may show here yet tonight. You an old friend or something?"

"Not exactly."

I tried the other two places. They knew the name there also, but she hadn't been in. I had a steak sandwich in the Doubloon. A girl alone at the bar made a determined effort to pick me up. She dug through her purse looking for matches, unlit cigarette in her mouth. She started a conversation a shade too loudly with the bartender and tried to drag me into it. She was a lean brunette with shiny eyes and trembling hands. I ordered a refill for her and moved onto the bar stool next to her.

We exchanged inanities until she pointed up at the ceiling with her thumb and said, "Going to try your luck tonight? I'm always lucky. You know there's some fellas I know they wouldn't dare try the crap table without they give me some chips to get in the game."

"I don't want to gamble."

"Yeah, sometimes I get tired of it, too. I mean when you just can't seem to get any action out of your money."

"Do you know a girl around town named Toni Raselle?"

She stopped smiling. "What about her? You looking for her?"

"Somebody mentioned her. I remembered the name. Is she nice?"

"She's damn good looking. But she's crazy. Crazy as hell. She doesn't grab me a bit."

"How come you think she's crazy, Donna?"

"Well, dig this. There's some important guys around here. Like Eddie Larch that owns this place. Guys like Eddie. They really got a yen for her. A deal like that you can fall into. Everything laid on. Apartment, car, clothes. They'd set you up. You know? Then all you got to do is be nice and take it easy. Not Toni. She strictly wants something going on all the time. She wants to lone wolf it. And she keeps getting in jams that way. My Christ, you'd think she liked people or something. If I looked like her, I'd parlay that right into stocks and bonds, believe you me. But that Toni. She does as she damn pleases. She don't like you, you're dead. So you can have hundred-dollar bills out to here, you're still dead. She wouldn't spit if your hair was on fire. That's how she's crazy, man."

"I think I see what you mean."

Donna sensed she'd made some sort of tactical error. She smiled broadly and said, "Don't take me serious, that about parlaying it into stocks and bonds. I'm not that type girl. I like a few laughs. I like to get around. My boy friend is away and I got lonesome tonight so I thought I'd take a look around, see what's going on. You know how it is. Lonesome? Sure you wouldn't want to see if you're lucky?"

"I guess not."

She pursed her lips and studied her half-empty glass. She tried the next gambit. "You know, at a buck a drink, they must make a hell of a lot out of a bottle. If a person was smart they'd do their drinking at home. It would be a lot cheaper."

"It certainly would."

"You know, if we could get a bottle, I got glasses and ice at my place. We could take our hair down and put our feet up and watch the teevee and have a ball. What do you say?"

"I don't think so."

"My boy friend won't be back in town until next weekend. I got my own place."

"No thanks, Donna."

"What do you want to do?"

"Nothing in particular."

"Joey," she called to the bartender. "What kind of place you running? You got a dead customer sitting here. He's giving me the creepers." She moved over two stools and wouldn't look at me. Within fifteen minutes two heavy, smiling men came in. Soon she was in conversation with them. The three of them went upstairs together to try the tables. I hoped her luck was good.

After she was gone the bartender came over and said in a low voice, "The boss gives me the word to keep her out of here. She used to be a lot better looking. Now she gets drunk and nasty. But when he isn't around, I let her stay. What the hell. It's old times, like they say. You know how it is."

"Sure."

"She can sure get nasty. And she won't make any time with that pair. Did you dig those country-style threads? A small beer says they don't have sixteen bucks between the pair of them. She's losing her touch. Last year this time she'd have cut off their water before they said word one. Old Donna's on the skids."

"What will she do?"

He shrugged. "I don't know where they go. She can always sign for a tour." He winked. "See the world. See all the ports in S.A. I don't know where they go."

I wandered back to the Aztec. My bartending friend told me that Toni Raselle was out in the casino in back, escorted by a general. He said she was wearing a white blouse and dark-red skirt, and had an evening scarf that matched her skirt.

I tipped him and went out into the casino. I bought chips through the wicket just inside the door. The large room was crowded. It was brightly, whitely lighted, like an operating amphitheater. The light made the faces of the people look sick. The cards, the chips, the dice, the wheels were all in pitiless illumination. I spotted the uniform across the room. The general was big-chested. He held his face as though he thought he resembled MacArthur. He did a little. But not enough. He had three rows of discreetly faded ribbons.

Antoinette Rasi stood beside him and laughed up at him. It was the face of the high-school picture, matured, not as sullen. Her tumbled hair was like raw blue-black silk. She held her folded rebozo over her arm. Her brown shoulders were bare. She was warm within her skin, moving like molten honey, teeth white in laughter against her tan face. Wide across the cheekbones. Eyes deep set. Nose broad at the bridge. Feral look. Gypsy look. A mature woman so alive she made the others in the room look two dimensional, as though they had been carefully placed there to provide their drab contrast to Toni's look of greedy life.

They were at the roulette table. I stood across the table. The general was solemnly playing the black. When he lost Toni laughed at him. He didn't particularly like it, but there wasn't much he could do about it. I had twenty one-dollar chips. I began playing twenty-nine, and watching her instead of the wheel. I won thirty-six dollars on the fourth spin. I began to play the red, and kept winning. Toni became aware of my interest in her. So did the general. He gave me a mental command to throw myself on my sword. Toni gave me a few irritated glances.

Finally the general had to go back to the window to buy more chips. They didn't sell them at the table. As soon as he was gone I said, "Antoinette?"

She looked at me carefully. "Do I know you?"

"No. I want a chance to talk to you."

"How do you know my name?"

"Antoinette Rasi. Through Timmy Warden. Remember him?"

"Of course. I can't talk now. Phone me tomorrow. At noon. Eight three eight nine one. Can you remember that?"

"Eight three eight nine one. I'll remember."

The general came back, staring at me with bitter suspicion. I went away, taking with me the memory of her dark eyes and her low, hoarse, husky voice.

I drove back through the night to Hillston. It was well after midnight when I got there. I wondered if they would be waiting for me at the motel. But the No Vacancy sign was lighted and my room was dark.

I went to bed and went to sleep at once. An hour later I awakened abruptly from a nightmare. I was drenched with sweat. I had dreamed that Grassman rode my back, his legs clamped around my waist, his heavy arms around my throat. I walked down a busy street with him there, asking, begging for help. But they would scream and cover their eyes and shrink away from me. And I knew that Grassman's face was more horrible than I had remembered. No one would help me. Then it was not Grassman any more. It was Timmy who rode there. I could smell the earth we had buried him in. I woke up in panic and it took me a long time to quiet down again.