“Get out of here, you insensitive clod.”

“I don’t care what you call me,” Quinn said. But she was talking to a closed door.

She had left the top down on her convertible and the seat and back and dashboard were as wet as if someone had turned a hose on them. There was a blanket in the trunk which she could have used to wipe off the seat but she didn’t bother. She sat in the little puddles of water, feeling the moisture seep through her skirt and into her bones. By the time she reached the apartment house the chill had spread up her spine and into her head.

The parking lot was full as usual, so she parked her car in one of the slots reserved for the customers of Longo’s Fish and Chips. Then, shivering, teeth chattering, she went into the café by the rear door, sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a bag of chips.

She drank the coffee while she was waiting for the chips to cook.

Mr. Longo watched her through his thick glasses.

“This don’t entitle you to park all night,” he said. “One hour’s the limit. One. Like in numero uno. Savvy?”

“I can hear.”

“Your boyfriend drive a white Porsche?”

“Yes.”

“He took off right after you did. I guess he didn’t catch up with you. You don’t look beat up to me.”

“Don’t I?”

“Unless you got bruises where they don’t show.”

“If I have, you’re not going to see them. Savvy?”

She ate the chips with a sprinkle of vinegar and a dash of salt. Mr. Longo kept watching her as though he’d never seen anybody eat before.

“So you got bruises where they don’t show, huh?”

“What’s it to you?”

“It kind of interests me. I wonder where they are.”

“Keep wondering.”

“Oh, I will. Count on it.”

“You owe me a month’s free parking just for the way you’re looking at me, you old goat.”

“Shit. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen.”

“Okay, here’s a dime. Get yourself a dozen and leave me alone.”

The chips tasted rancid, the counter bore water stains and cigarette burns, Mr. Longo’s apron was dirty. She half closed her eyes and tried to picture her future with Ben, the church wedding, the big house with the happy noisy children. But she couldn’t see past Mr. Longo’s dirty apron and grease-spotted glasses.

She left the café without paying. Mr. Longo didn’t say a word.

When she returned to the apartment she found a man who was a stranger to her standing in the hall outside the door marked QUINN, YORK. He was a tall thin man with graying hair and a shabby brown suit. His face looked rather shabby too, as if he’d worn it too many times without pressing.

Quinn said, “That’s my place.”

“You’re Miss Quinn?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Michael Dunlop, a friend of Mr. York. Mrs. Hyatt called me and asked me to come over and talk to him.”

“He’s not here.”

“Perhaps I could wait for him.”

“It won’t do much good,” she said, but she unlocked the door and went inside and switched on a couple of table lamps. She didn’t ask him in so he stood in the doorway.

“When do you expect him, Miss Quinn?”

“I don’t.”

“Even if you had an argument he has to come home sometime.”

“Home? You call this dump a home?”

“He lives here, doesn’t he?”

“That’s not the same thing.” She turned on the wall gas heater and stood in front of it, massaging her hands to warm them. “He doesn’t live here. He parks his butt here like he parks his Porsche. Home.” She repeated the word as though it had the rancid taste of Mr. Longo’s chips. “Home is the kind of place Mrs. Hyatt lives in. He’d like to live there too but he never will. I fixed it so he never will.”

“How did you do that, Miss Quinn?”

“I told her a few things about him. A very few, considering what I could have told her.”

“It’s chilly out here in the hall,” Michael said. “Do you mind if I come inside?”

“Why bother? It won’t do any good to wait for him. He’s not coming back, not tonight anyway. He’ll find some bar, have a few drinks, then go for a long fast ride maybe with some chick he’s latched on to. If he gets picked up by the cops on a five-oh-two and needs someone to bail him out, he won’t call you or the Hyatts or any of their crowd. He’ll call me because I’m his real friend, I’ll come up with the money, no questions asked.”

“You sound as though that’s what you’re expecting to happen.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Michael went in and closed the door after him. “So you consider yourself his best friend, Miss Quinn.”

“We’re also lovers.”

“Some of the things you implied about him to Mrs. Hyatt were neither friendly nor loving.”

“I was mad.”

“So you were speaking as a jealous woman rather than as a concerned citizen willing to go to the police and repeat the allegations.”

“The police? Are you crazy? Why would I want to mess with them?”

“In the interests of justice.”

“Justice? Why, they couldn’t even find my car when it was stolen. And when it turned up in Bakersfield and my mother had to drive me over to pick it up, they wouldn’t even pay for the gas. Some justice. And it had two flat tires.”

“I don’t think you’re aware of the seriousness of some of your allegations concerning Mr. York.”

She stared at him in silence for some time, her full mouth getting thinner and thinner until it became a straight ugly line. “You can’t make me go to the police. And if you send them here I’ll clam up, I won’t say a word. I won’t even be here. I’m getting out.” A tear trickled down her left cheek and she slapped it away with the palm of her hand as if it were a fly. “Let him wait for me for a change. Let him wonder what bar I’m in and who I’m picking up.”

“Miss Quinn—”

“Let him think the same rotten thoughts I’ve had to think.”

“Miss Quinn, more is involved here than a quarrel between you and Mr. York. If you know of any suspicious incident involving him and the Hyatt girl, you owe it to her parents to speak up.”

“I owe nobody nothing,” she said and slapped at another tear. “Now leave me alone. I got to think. I got to think.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“You can help me. Bug off.”

“All right.”

He went out into the hall. Through the closed door he could hear her sobbing and slamming things around. She was a noisy thinker.

Driving home he listened to the six o’clock news. The outside world hadn’t changed much in the past twenty-four hours. The situation in Poland was worsening. Labor unrest in Western Europe was increasing. An earthquake had shaken Chile and a typhoon had hit the Philippines. The county Board of Supervisors was split on a growth, no-growth decision. An attempted downtown bank robbery had been thwarted. There was a twenty percent chance of rain in the mountain areas and a local woman had received a telegram from the President congratulating her on her hundredth birthday. A white sports car driven at a high rate of speed had gone over the cliff into the ocean on Miramar Road. The occupant or occupants were presumed dead. Rescue work could not begin until daylight.

There was no funeral. The coffin was a plastic box with a handle like a suitcase, and the taped organ music could hardly be heard above the laboring engine of the burial boat, Valhalla, as it fought a heavy sea to get beyond the two-mile limit. Coast Guard regulations for a boat that size permitted no more than five mourners, and of these, two were seasick before the boat left the dock. The captain of the Valhalla had wanted to postpone the trip until a calmer day but Howard, the executor of Ben’s estate, insisted that the ashes be disposed of as soon as possible.