The Father Hunt

no photographs, which is fantastic. The letters and other papers, a washout. If we fed them to a computer I would expect it to come up with something like so what or tell it to the marines. It would have been a pleasure to find for instance a newspaper clipping about a man, no matter what it said, but nothing doing. Did I mention that Amy has no photograph of her mother? We'll have to snare one somehow." I shut the notebook and tossed it on the desk. "Questions?"

He said, "Grrrhh."

"I agree. Oh, you asked me last evening if Amy is interested not so much in genes but in gold. Does she think that a father who could be so free with bank checks must have a barrel of it and she would like to dip in? I passed, and I still do. After spending three hours with her I doubt it, and anyway, does it matter? To us?"

"No." He put his cup down and pushed it back. "Monday should be more fruitful. You're off, I suppose."

I nodded. "I was expected last evening, as you know." I rose. "Shall I put that in the safe?"

He said no, he would, and I gave him the key to the box, put the notebook in a drawer, whirled my chair and pushed it against my desk as always, and went-out and up to my room to change and pack a bag. I had phoned Lily that I would make it in time for dinner.

It was a quarter to three when I left the house, walked around the corner to the garage, got the Heron, and headed up Tenth Avenue. At Thirty-sixth Street I turned right. The direct route would have been left on Forty-fifth Street for the West Side Highway, but I don't like to have something itching me when I'm stretched out at the edge of Lily's swimming pool and flowers are smelling and birds are flying and so on. On East Forty-third Street parking was no problem on Saturday afternoon.

Entering the Gazette building, I took the elevator to the twentieth floor. For the file I could have gone to the morgue instead, but Lon Cohen might know of some recent development that the Gazette hadn't had room for. When I entered his room, two doors down from the publisher's corner room, he was talking to one of the three phones on his desk and I sat on the one other chair, at

the end of the desk, and waited. When he hung up he swung around and said, "After what happened Thursday night how did you get here? Walk? You sure didn't have taxi fare."