Where the Summer Ends

•V•

It missed the morning papers, but the afternoon News-Sentinel carried Stryker’s book-jacket portrait and a few paragraphs on page one, a photograph of the wreck and a short continuation of the story on the back page of the first section. And there was a long notice on the obituary page.

Russ grinned crookedly and swallowed the rest of his drink. Mechanically he groped for the Jack Daniel’s bottle and poured another over the remains of his ice cubes. God. Half a dozen errors in the obituary. A man gives his whole life to writing, and the day of his death they can’t even get their information straight on his major books.

The phone was ringing again. Expressionlessly Mandarin caught up the receiver. The first score or so times he’d still hoped he’d hear Curtiss’s voice—probably growling something like: “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Eventually he’d quit hoping.

“Yes. Dr Mandarin speaking.”

(Curtiss had always ribbed him. “Hell, don’t tell them who you are until they tell you who’s calling.”)

“No. They haven’t found him yet.”

(“Hot as it is, he’ll bob up before long,” one of the workers had commented. Saunders had had to keep Russ off the bastard.)

“Yeah. It’s a damn dirty shame. I know how you feel, Mrs Hollister.”

(You always called him a hack behind his back, you bloated bitch.)

“No I can’t say what funeral arrangements will be made.”

(Got to have a body for a funeral, you stupid bitch.)

“I’m sure someone will decide something.”

(Don’t want to be left out of the social event of the season, do you?)

“Well, we all have to bear up somehow, I’m sure.”

(Try cutting your wrists.)

“Uh-huh. Goodbye, Mrs Hollister.”

Jesus! Mandarin pushed the phone aside and downed his drink with a shudder. No more of this!

He groped his way out of his office. That morning he’d cancelled all his appointments; his section of the makeshift clinic was deserted. Faces from the downstairs rooms glanced at him uneasily as he swept down the stairs. Yes, he must look pretty bad.

Summer twilight was cooling the grey pavement furnace of the University section. Russ tugged off his wrinkled necktie, stuffed it into his hip pocket. With the determined stride of someone in a hurry to get someplace, he plodded down the cracked sidewalk. Sweat quickly sheened his blue-black stubbled jaw, beaded his forehead and eyebrows. Damp hair clung to his neck and ears. Dimly he regretted that the crewcut of his college days was no longer fashionable.

Despite his unswerving stride, he had no destination in mind. The ramshackle front of the Yardarm suddenly loomed before him, made him aware of his surroundings. Mandarin paused a moment by the doorway. Subconsciously he’d been thinking how good a cold beer would taste, and his feet had carried him over the familiar route. With a grimace, he turned away. Too many memories haunted the Yardarm.

He walked on. He was on the strip now. Student bars, bookshops, drugstores, clothing shops and other student-oriented businesses. Garish head shops and boutiques poured out echoes of incense and rock music. Gayle Corrington owned a boutique along here, he recalled—he dully wondered which one.

Summer students and others of the University crowd passed along the sidewalks, lounged in doorways. Occasionally someone recognized him and called a greeting. Russ returned a dumb nod, not wavering in his mechanical stride. He didn’t see their faces.

Then someone had hold of his arm.

“Russ! Russ, for God’s sake! Hold up!”

Scowling, he spun around. The smooth-skinned hand anchored to his elbow belonged to Royce Blaine. Mandarin made his face polite as he recognized him. Dr Blaine had been on the medicine house staff during Mandarin’s psychiatric residency Their acquaintance had not died out completely since those days.

“Hello, Royce.”

The internist’s solemn eyes searched his face. “Sorry to bother you at a time like now, Russ,” he apologized. “Just wanted to tell you we were sad to hear about your friend Stryker, Know how good a friend of yours he was.”

Mandarin mumbled something appropriate.

“Funeral arrangements made yet, or are they still looking?”

“Haven’t found him yet.”

His face must have slipped its polite mask. Blame winced. “Yeah? Well, just wanted to let you know we were all sorry. He was working on a new one, wasn’t he?”

“Right. Another book on the occult.”

“Always thought it was tragic when an author left his last book unfinished. Was it as good as his others?”

“I hadn’t seen any of it. I believe all he had were notes and a few chapter roughs.”

“Really a damn shame. Say, Russ—Tina says for me to ask you how about dropping out our way for dinner some night. We don’t see much of you these days—not since you and Alicia used to come out for fish fries.”

“I’ll take you up on that some night,” Russ temporized.

“This week maybe?” Blaine persisted. “How about Friday?”

“Sure. That’d be fine.”

“Friday, then. 6:30, say. Time for a happy hour.”

Mandarin nodded and smiled thinly. Blaine squeezed his shoulder, gave him a sympathetic face, and scurried off down the sidewalk. Mandarin resumed his walk.

The hot afternoon sun was in decline, throwing long shadows past the mismatched storefronts and deteriorating houses. Russ was dimly aware that his feet were carrying him along the familiar path to Stryker’s office. Did he want to walk past there? Probably not—but he felt too apathetic to redirect his course.

The sun was behind the old drugstore whose second floor housed a number of small businesses, and the dirty windows of Stryker’s office lay in shadow. Behind their uncurtained panes, a light was burning.

Mandarin frowned uncertainly. Curtiss never left his lights on. He had an obsession about wasting electricity.

Leaning heavily on the weathered railing, Russ climbed the outside stairway that gave access to the second floor. Above, a dusty hallway led down the center of the building. Several doorways opened off either side. A tailor, a leathershop, several student-owned businesses—which might or might not reopen with the fall term. Only Frank the Tailor was open for the summer, and he took Mondays off.

Dust and silence and the stale smell of disused rooms. Stryker’s office was one of the two which fronted the street. It was silent as the rest of the hallway of locked doors, but light leaked through the not-quite-closed doorway.

Mandarin started to knock, then noticed the scars on the door jamb where the lock had been forced. His descending fist shoved the door open.

Curtiss’s chair was empty. No one sat behind the scarred desk with its battered typewriter.

Russ glanced around the barren room with its cracked plaster and book-laden, mismatched furniture. Anger drove a curse to his lips.

Stryker’s office had always been in total disorder; now it looked like it had been stirred with a stick. Whoever had ransacked the office had done a thorough job.



•VI•

Through the Yardarm jukebox Johnny Cash was singing “Ring of Fire” for maybe the tenth time that evening. Some of those patrons who had hung around since nightfall were beginning to notice.

Ed Saunders hauled his hairy arms out of the sleeves of his ill-fitting suitcoat, slung the damp garment over the vacant chair beside him. He leaned over the beer-smeared table, truculently intent, like a linebacker in a defensive huddle.

“It still looks completely routine to me, Russ,” he concluded. Mandarin poked a finger through the pile of cold, greasy pizza crusts, singing an almost inaudible chorus of “down, down, down, in a burnin’ ring of far...” A belch broke off his monotone, and he mechanically fumbled through the litter of green Rolling Rock bottles for one that had a swallow left. Blackie the bartender was off tonight, and his stand-in had no conception of how to heat a frozen pizza. Mandarin’s throat still tasted sour, and he felt certain a bad case of heartburn was building up.

The bottles all seemed empty. He waved for two more, still not replying to Saunder’s assertion. A wavy-haired girl, braless in a tanktop, carried the beers over to them—glanced suspiciously at Saunders while she made change. Mandarin slid the coins across the rough boards and eyed the jukebox speculatively.

The city detective sighed. “Look, Russ—why don’t you let Johnny Cash catch his breath, what do you say?”

Russ grinned crookedly and turned to his beer. “But it wasn’t routine,” he pronounced, tipping back the bottle. His eyes were suddenly clear.

Saunders made an exasperated gesture. “You know, Russ, we got God knows how many break-ins a week in this neighborhood. I talked to the investigating officer before I came down. He handled it OK.”

“Handled it like a routine break-in—which it wasn’t,” Mandarin doggedly pointed out.

The lieutenant pursed his lips and reached for the other beer—his second against Mandarin’s tenth. Maybe, he mused, it was pointless to trot down here in response to Mandarin’s insistent phone call. But he liked the psychiatrist, understood the hell of his mood. Both of them had known Curtiss Stryker as a friend.

He began again. “By our records, two of the other shops on that floor have been broken into since spring. It goes on all the time around here—I don’t have to tell you about this neighborhood. You got a black slum just a few blocks away, winos and bums squatting in all these empty houses here that ought to be torn down. Then there’s all these other old dumps, rented out full of hippies and junkies and God knows what. Hell, Russ—you know how bad it is. That clinic of yours—we have to just about keep a patrol car parked in front all night to keep the junkies from busting in—and then the men have to watch sharp or they’ll lose their hubcaps just sitting there.”

Mandarin reflected that the cessation of break-ins was more likely due to the all-night talking point now run by university volunteers at the community clinic—and that the patrol car seemed more interested in observing callers for potential dope busts than in discouraging prowlers. Instead, he said: “That’s my point, Ed. Routine break-ins follow a routine pattern. Rip off a TV, stereo, small stuff that can easily be converted into cash. Maybe booze or drugs, if any’s around. Petty theft.

“Doesn’t hold for whoever hit Stryker’s office. Hell, he never kept anything around there to attract a burglar.”

“So the burglar made a mistake. After all, he couldn’t know what was there until he looked.”

Russ shook his head. “Then he would have taken the typewriter—beat up as it is—or finished the half bottle of Gallo sherry Curtiss had on the shelf. Doubt if he would have recognized any of his books as worth stealing, but at least he would have taken something for his trouble.”

“Probably knew the stuff wasn’t worth the risk of carrying off,” the detective pointed out. “Left it to try somewhere else. Looked like the door on the leathershop was jimmied, though we haven’t contacted the guy who leases it. It’s a standard pattern, Russ. Thief works down a hallway room by room until he gets enough or someone scares him off. Probably started at Stryker’s office, gave it up and was working on another door when he got scared off.”

“Ed, I know Curtiss’s office as well as I know my own. Every book in that place had been picked up and set down again. Someone must have spent an hour at it. Everything had been gone through.”

“Well, I’ve been up in his office before, too,” Saunders recalled, “and I’d be surprised if anyone could remember what kind of order he kept his stuff in—if there was any order I don’t know—maybe the thief was up on his rare books. Say he was scanning title pages for first editions or something.”

“Then he passed up a nice copy of Lovecraft’s The Outsider that would have brought him a couple hundred bucks.”

“Did he? I never heard of it. I meant stuff like Hemingway and all— things you’d likely know were valuable. Or maybe he was just checking for money. Lot of people keep maybe ten or twenty dollars lying around the office for emergencies—stuck back in a drawer, behind a picture, inside a book or something.”

Mandarin snorted and finished his beer. He signalled for two more despite the other’s protest.

“Look, Russ,” Saunders argued gently, “why are you making such a big thing out of this? So far as we can tell, nothing was taken. Just a simple case of break and enter—thief looks the place over a bit, then gives up and moves on. It’s routine.”

“No, it isn’t.” Mandarin’s thin face was stubborn. “And something was missing. The place was too neat, that’s the conclusion. Usually Curtiss had the place littered with notes, pieces of clippings, pages of manuscript, wadded-up rough drafts—you’ve seen how it is. Now his desk is clean, stuff’s been picked up off the floor and shelves. All of it gone—even his wastebaskets!”

“Do you want to report a stolen wastebasket, Russ?” Saunders asked tiredly.

“Goddamn it all, can’t you put it together? Somebody broke into Curtiss’s office, spent a good deal of time gathering up all of his notes and pages of manuscript—all of it, even the scrap paper—then piled it into the wastebasket and walked out. Who’d stop a man who was walking down the alley with a wastebasket full of paper?”

Saunders decided he’d have that third beer—if for no better reason than to keep the psychiatrist from downing it. “Russ, it seems to me you’re ignoring the obvious. Look, you’ve been gone for a few days, right? Now isn’t it pretty’ likely that Curtiss just decided to tidy the place up? So he goes through all his stuff, reorganizes things, dumps all his scrap paper and old notes into the wastebasket, sets the wastebasket out to be picked up, and takes the stuff he’s working on for the moment on home with him.”

“That place hasn’t been straightened out in years—since the fire inspectors got on his ass.”

“So he figured it was high time. Then later some punk breaks in, sees there’s nothing there for him, moves on. Why not, Russ?”

Mandarin seemed to subside. “Just doesn’t feel right to me, is all,” he muttered.

“So why would somebody steal Curtiss’s scrap paper, can you tell me?”

Mandarin scowled at his beer.

“Morbid souvenir hunters? Spies trying to intercept secret information? Maybe it was ghosts trying to recover forbidden secrets? Hell, Russ— you’ve been reading too many of Stryker’s old thrillers.”

“Look, I don’t know the motives or the logic involved,” Russ admitted grandiosely. “That’s why I say it isn’t routine.”

The detective rolled his eyes and gave it up. “All right, Russ. I can’t go along with your half-assed logic, but I’ll make sure the department checks into this to the best of our ability. Good enough?”

“Good enough.”

Saunders grunted and glanced at his watch. “Look, Russ. I got to make a phone call before I forget. What do you say you wait around and after I get through I’ll run you on back to your place?”

“My car’s just over at the clinic.”

“Are you sure...”

“Hell, I can drive. Few beers don’t amount to anything.”

“Well, wait here a minute for me,” urged Saunders, deciding to argue it later. He lifted his sweaty bulk from the chair’s sticky vinyl and made for the pay phone in the rear of the bar.

Mandarin swore sourly and began to stuff the rinds of pizza crust into one of the empty bottles. Heartburn, for sure. He supposed he ought to get headed home.

“Well, well, well. Dr Mandarin, I presume. This is a coincidence. Holding office hours here now, Doctor?”

Russ glowered upward. A grinning face leaned over the table. Russ continued to glower.

Natty in double-knit slacks and sportshirt, Brooke Hamilton dropped onto Saunder’s vacated chair. “Rather thought I’d find you here, actually,” he confided. “Believe you and the old man used to drop by here regularly, right?”

Hamilton was drinking beer in a frosted mug. It made an icy puddle on the cigarette-scarred tabletop. Mandarin had a private opinion of people who drank beer in frosted mugs.

“Really a shock hearing about old Stryker,” Hamilton went on. “Really too bad—though I’m sure a man like Stryker never would have wanted to die in bed. A man of action, old Curtiss. A living legend now passed on to the realm of legends. Yes, we’re all going to miss the old man. Not many of the old pulp greats left around. Well, sic transit.” He made a toast.

Mandarin did not join him. He had met Hamilton at various cocktail parties and writers’ symposiums around the University. He was quite popular in some circles—taught creative writing, edited several “little magazines” and writers’ projects, was prominent at gatherings of regional writers and camp followers. His own writing consisted of several startlingly bad novels published by various local presses—often after Hamilton had cornered their editors at some cocktail affair.

Stryker had loathed him—calling him at one such gathering an ingratiating, self-serving, conceited phoney. Hamilton had been within earshot, but chose not to hear. Their admiration was mutual. Since Hamilton was in the habit of referring to Stryker as an over-the-hill pulp hack, Mandarin was not moved by the man’s show of grief.

“Where’s the funeral, Dr Mandarin—or do you know?”

Mandarin shook his head, measuring the distance to the other man’s Kirk Douglas chin. “No body found yet,” he said.

“Well, I suppose they’ll have some sort of memorial service before long, whatever. Give the writers’ community opportunity to pay our last respects to the old man. Professor Kettering has asked me to act as spokesman for the University. A little tribute for the school paper, and I suppose I’ll say a few words at the memorial service. Old Stryker is going to be missed by those of us who carry on.”

“I’m sure.”

“Thought I might get you to fill me in on a few details of his career, if you don’t mind. After all, you saw a lot of the old man here in his last years.” Hamilton glanced pointedly at the litter of beer bottles. “But I can catch you another time.”

Mandarin grunted noncommittally.

“One thing I did want to ask though. Has old Stryker finished that last book he was working on?”

“No, he was still working on it last time I saw him.”

“Oh, you don’t think he did. Christ, isn’t it tragic to think of all the unfinished work his pen will never take up again. And just when Stryker was as popular with readers as he ever was in the golden age of the pulps.”

“Damn shame.”

Hamilton nodded gravely. “Yes, it is a shame. You know, I was over at the Frostfire Press this morning, talking with Morris Sheldon about it. Christ, they’ re all so down about it over there. But we got to talking, and Morris suddenly came out and said: ‘Brooke, how’d you like to edit a memorial volume for old Stryker? ’ You know, sort of an anthology of his best stuff, and I’d write the introduction—a short biography and criticism of his work. Well, I told him I’d be honored to do it for old Stryker, maybe even edit a few of his last, unfinished works for publication.

“Well, this started Morris thinking still further, and all of a sudden he came out and said: ‘Brooke, there’s no reason Stryker’s public has to be deprived of these last few masterworks. He always made extensive notes, and you were always close to him as a writer and friend...”

“You son of a bitch.”

“How’s that?”

“You ass-kissing, cock-sucking son of a bitch.” Mandarin’s voice was thick with rage.

Hamilton drew himself up. “Now hold it there, Mandarin.” In his egotism it had not occurred to him that Mandarin might resent his assumption of role as Stryker’s literary heir. But he was confident of his ability to destroy the other man in any verbal duel—his wit, termed variously “acid” or “rapier,” had dazzled his fans at many a social function.

Heads were turning, as both men came to their feet in an angry crouch.

“You ass-licking fake! You couldn’t write your name and phone number on a shithouse wall! And after all the snotty condescension you had for Stryker, you’re stealing his name and his work before his grave’s even been spaded!”

“I don’t have to take that—even from a drunk! ” Hamilton snarled. “Although I understand I’m not likely to ever find you sober.”

The distance to his movie-star chin had already been noted. Mandarin reached across the table, put a fist there.

Hamilton sat down, hard. The rickety chair cracked under him. Arms flailing, he hit the floor in a tangle of splintered wood. The beer stein smashed against the dirty concrete.

Anger burned the dazed look from his eyes. Accustomed to urbane exchanges of insults at cocktail parties and catfights, Hamilton had not expected the manners of a barroom brawl. “You goddamn drunk!” he spat, struggling to rise.

Mandarin, who before medical school had spent a lot of Saturday nights in Montana saloons, was not a gentleman. He waited until Hamilton had risen halfway from the wreckage of his chair, then put another straight right to his chin. Hamilton went down again.

The writer shook the stars from his head and came up frothing mad. He was only five years or so older than Mandarin and of approximate physical size. Regular workouts at the faculty health club had hardened his body into the finely tuned fighting machine of the heroes of his novels. Now he discarded his initial intent of dispatching his drunken opponent with a few precisely devastating karate blows.

The beer stein had shattered with a jagged chunk still attached to its handle. Hamilton rolled to his feet, gripping the handle in his fist like a pair of brass knuckles.

Mandarin, unhappy that he had not had more on his punches, cleared the end of the table with no apparent intention of helping the other man to his feet. Hamilton’s fist with its jagged knuckleduster slashed at his face.

Rolling under the punch, Russ blocked Hamilton’s arm aside and threw a shoulder into his chest. They smashed to the floor, Mandarin on top with a knee planted in the other man’s belly.

Breath whooshed from the writer’s lips as his head cracked against the floor. Mandarin took the broken stein away from him, grinned down at his pinned opponent. Hamilton gave a hoarse bleat of fear.

“Jesus H. Christ! Russ, stop it!”

Saunders shouldered through the crowd, caught Russ’s arm in a shovel fist, hauled the two men apart. His interference was booed.

Groggily, Hamilton came to his feet, his face astonishingly pale. He glared at Mandarin, struggling to break away from the burly detective, decided not to risk a punch against him.

“Call the police!” he said shakily. “This man attacked me!”

“I’m a policeman, buddy!” Saunders growled. “What I saw was this man disarming you after you tried to jam a busted bottle in his face! Want to take out a warrant?”

The writer composed himself, massaging his bruised chin. “A policeman? Yes, I believe I recognize you now. One of the late Curtiss Stryker’s night school proteges, I recall. No doubt you learned more effective ways of writing parking tickets, officer—although it’s always encouraging to see one of your sort trying to improve his mind.”

“Ask him if he’s stolen any good wastebaskets lately,” Mandarin suggested, wriggling out of the detective’s grasp.

“Very clever, aren’t we,” Hamilton sneered. “I wonder what the state medical association will say about an alcoholic psychiatrist who gets into barroom brawls?”

“I wonder what the English department will say about faggot faculty members who try to chop a man’s face up with a busted beer stein?” Saunders wondered.

Hamilton brushed himself off, his smile supercilious. “Well, I can see there’s no point taking out a warrant when the arresting officer is a personal friend of the guilty party.”

He turned to the onlookers. “You see the kind of police protection our community enjoys. I leave you to judge!”

“Hit him again, Doc!” Someone yelled from across the bar.

“We’ll keep the pig from pulling you off before you’re finished!”

Hamilton’s face turned pale again.

“I think you’d better get going,” Saunders warned. “Russ, get back here!”

“We shall, of course, take this up again when we aren’t immersed in the rabble,” Hamilton promised, moving for the door.

“Oh, to be sure!” Mandarin mimicked.

The writer swept out the door to a chorus of catcalls.

“OK, what started that! ” Saunders demanded, picking up his coat.

The wavy-haired barmaid had brought Mandarin another beer. He was toasting her with a pleased expression on his stubbled face. Despite his annoyance, Saunders reflected that it was the first smile he’d seen from the psychiatrist since the accident.

“That son of a bitch Hamilton, “ Mandarin informed him, “that piece of shit—he’s talked Stryker’s publisher here into letting him edit Curtiss’s last work—do a memorial volume and shit like that! Hell, you know how he and Curtiss felt about each other. Ed, get your fingerprint men up to Stryker’s office. You’ll find Hamilton’s sticky little fingers were all over the place.”

“Let’s not get started on that one again,” Saunders told him wearily.

“Bet you dollars to dogshit, and you can hold the stakes in your mouth.”

“Come on, Russ. I’ll drop you off.”

Protesting, Mandarin let himself be led away.



•VII•

“What’s the matter?”

Mandarin had paused with his hand on the door of Saunders’ Ford. He stared out across the parking lot. “Somebody’s following us. Just saw his shadow duck behind that old VW van. If it’s that son of a bitch Hamilton looking for more trouble...”

Saunders followed Mandarin’s gaze, saw nothing. “Oh hell, get in, Russ! Jesus, you’re starting to sound paranoid!”

“There’s somebody there,” Russ insisted. “Followed us from the Yardarm.”

“Some damn hippy afraid of a bust,” Saunders scoffed. “Will you just get in!”

His expression wounded, Mandarin complied.

Backing the Ford out of the parking place, Saunders turned down Forest Avenue. Mandarin took a last swig from the Rolling Rock he had carried with him from the bar, then struck his arm out and fired the green bottle in the general direction of his imagined skulker. From the darkness came the rattle of breaking glass. “Ka-pow!” echoed Russ.

Saunders winced and drove on in silence.

“Hey, you went past the clinic,” Russ protested several blocks later.

“Look, I’ll run you back down in the morning.”

“I can drive OK.”

“Will you let me do this as a favor?” Saunders asked, not making it clear whose favor he meant it to be.

Mandarin sighed and shrugged. “Home, James.”

Pressing his lips tightly, the detective turned onto Kingston Pike. After a while he said: “You know, Russ, there’s several on the force who’d really like to put your ass in a sling. Drunken driving is a really tough charge.”

When Mandarin started to argue, Saunders shouted him down. “Look, Russ. I know this is rough on you. It is on all of us who knew Curtiss. But damn it, this isn’t going to make it any better for you. I thought you finally learned that for yourself after Alicia...”

“Goddamn it, Ed! Don’t you start lecturing me now!”

“OK, Russ,” his friend subsided, remembering the hell Mandarin had gone through three years before. “Just wanted to remind you that you’d tried this blind alley once before.”

“Ed, I drink only socially these days.” He waited for the other to say something, finally added: “Except for an occasional binge, maybe.”

“Just trying to make a friendly suggestion.”

“Well, I can do without friendly suggestions.”

“OK, Russ.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Saunders expected the psychiatrist to drop off, but the other sat rigidly upright all the way. Too much adrenaline, Saunders decided.

He pulled into the long driveway of Mandarin’s Cherokee Hills estate. It was a rambling Tudor-style house of the 1920s, constructed when this had been the snob residential section of Knoxville. Although most of the new money had now moved into the suburbs, Cherokee Hills had resisted urban decay with stately aloofness.

“I’ll give you a ring in the morning,” Saunders promised.

“It’s all right; I’ll call a cab,” muttered Russ.

Saunders shrugged. “Good night, Russ.”

He climbed out of the car. “Sure.”

Saunders waited until he was in the front door before driving off.



The phone started to ring while Russ was dropping Alka-Seltzers into a highball glass. Holding the frothing glass carefully, he picked up the receiver.

“Hello.” He wondered if he could finish the conversation before the tablets finished their dancing disintegration.

“Dr Mandarin?”

“Speaking.” He didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Morris Sheldon from the Frostfire Press. Been trying to get in touch with you this evening.”

“Yeah? Well, what can I do for you, Morris old buddy?”

“Well, I know you were close to poor Curtiss Stryker. I believe he mentioned to me that you were giving him some medical opinions relative to the research he was doing on this last book.”

“I was,” Russ acknowledged, taking time for a swallow of Alka-Seltzer.

“Do you know how far along he’d gotten before the accident?”

“Well now, you probably know better than I. All I’d seen were several of the early chapters.”

“I’d wondered if you perhaps had seen the rough draft of the chapters you were involved in.”

“The poltergeist house? No, didn’t know he’d had time to put that in rough draft yet.”

“Yes, he had. At least he said so in our last conversation.”

“Well, that’s news to me. I was out of town the last couple days.” Mandarin downed the last of the seltzer. “Why do you ask?”

Sheldon paused. “Well, frankly I’d hoped Curtiss might have passed a carbon of it on to you. He didn’t send me the typescript. And we’re rather afraid it was with his papers when the accident occurred. If so, I’m afraid his last chapter has been lost forever.”

“Probably so,” Russ agreed, his voice carefully civil. “But why are you concerned?”

“Well, as a friend of Curtiss’s you’ll be glad to know that Frostfire Press had decided not to let his last book go unfinished. We’ve approached his close friend and colleague, Brooke Hamilton...”

“Oh,” said Mandarin, revelation dawning in his voice. “Hey, you mean his confidant and bosom pal, Brooke Hamilton, hopes to use Stryker’s notes and all for a posthumous collaboration?”

“That’s right,” Sheldon agreed. “And naturally we want to locate as much of Stryker’s material as we can.”

“Well, then you’re in luck, Morris old buddy. Stryker’s dear friend, that critically acclaimed writer and all around bon vivant, Brooke Hamilton, was so overcome with grief at his mentor’s death that he wasted no time in breaking into Stryker’s office and stealing every shred of Stryker’s unpublished writing. Just give him time to sort through the wastebasket, and dear old Brooke will keep you in posthumous collaborations for the next ten years.”

“Now wait, Dr Mandarin! You mean you’re accusing Brooke Hamilton of...”

“Of following his natural talents. And may the pair of you be buggered in hell by ghouls! Good night, Morris old buddy.”

He slammed the receiver over Sheldon’s rejoinder, and swore for a while.

Returning to the sink, he carefully rinsed his glass, then added a few ice cubes. There was bourbon in the decanter.

Sipping his drink, he collapsed on the den couch and glared at the silent television screen. He didn’t feel like watching the idiot tube tonight. Nor did he care to go to bed, despite extended lack of sleep. His belly felt sour, his head ached. He was too damn mad and disgusted to relax.

Ghouls. All of them. Gathering for the feast. More Haunted Houses of the South, by Curtiss Stryker and Brooke Hamilton. Probably they’d already approached Stryker’s agent, set up a contract. Stryker would spin in his grave. If he ever reached his grave.

Mandarin wondered if he ought to phone Stryker’s agent and protest—then remembered that he had no idea who his agent had been. No, make that was, not had been. As a literary property, Curtiss Stryker was suddenly more alive than before.

Sheldon would know who the agent was. Maybe he should phone and ask. Russ discarded the idea. Who was he to protest, anyway? Just another obnoxious “friend of the deceased.”

His thoughts turned to Stryker’s unfinished book, to the missing last chapter. Curtiss had promised to give him the carbon. Probably Hamilton had made off with that along with his other tomb spoils.

Maybe not.

Stryker kept a file of all his more recent manuscripts. A big filing cabinet in his study at home. Sometimes he worked there at night—when he was pushed by a deadline, or really caught up in something.

Russ hauled himself to his feet. A picture was taking shape. Stryker, due at a friend’s home for dinner, knowing he wouldn’t be back until late. But too interested in his new chapter to leave the material in his office. Instead he brings his notes home and works on the manuscript until time to leave. Had anyone thought to check his study?

Someone would soon—if they hadn’t already. Climbing the stairs to his bedroom, Russ fumbled through his dresser. There it was—in a box crammed mostly with cufflinks, tie-tacs and spare keys. The key to his house that Stryker had given him once when the author left for several months knocking about Mexico.

A look of angry resolve on his black-stubbled jaw, Mandarin snatched up the key and stalked to the garage. The battery was low in the old GTO that he’d kept because it had been Alicia’s favorite car, but the engine caught at the last moment. With an echo of throaty exhaust, he backed out of the garage.

His plans were only half formulated, as he carefully steered the rumbling Pontiac through the downtown streets. He meant to check Stryker’s study immediately, however. If the chapter manuscripts were there, he’d take it to read, and Brooke Hamilton could go to hell. And if he didn’t find the manuscript— maybe that would be because somebody had already broken into the house. A horrid grin twisted Mandarin’s face. He’d like for that to be the case. Like to show the evidence to Saunders, place charges against Brooke Hamilton for stealing from a dead man.

It was past 11, and traffic was thinning out—for which Russ was grateful. With far more caution than was his custom, he overcame his impatience and made the short drive out Lyons View Pike without mishap.

He turned into the empty drive and cut his lights. Stryker’s house, an old brick farmhouse laid out in a T, hunched dark beneath huge white pines. The windows were black against the brick from the front; the remainder of the house was shadowed by the looming pines from what little moonlight the clouds hadn’t kept.

Mandarin remembered a flashlight in the glove compartment and dug it out. The beam was yellow and weak, but enough to see by. Suspiciously he played the light across the front of the house. Seeing nothing untoward, he started around back.

The front of the house was two storeys and contained living quarters. Like the stem of a T, the rear section came out perpendicularly from the rest—a single-storey wing that housed kitchen and storage. A side porch came off from one side of the kitchen wing, where Stryker and Russ had spent many a summer evening, slouched in wooden rockers and with something cold to drink.

Having seen nothing out of the ordinary, Russ crossed the unscreened porch to the kitchen door, jabbed his key at the lock. As he fumbled for the knob, the door nudged open.

Mandarin brought up his flashlight. The old-fashioned latch had been forced.

He breathed a silent curse. Stealthily he pushed open the door, stepped inside.

Thunder spat flame from across the room. Russ pitched backward onto the porch, and the flame burst across his skull.