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“How would you feel about an indecent proposal?” she asked.

“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,” he said.

“What I was thinking was that you would put the uniform back in your car, and go upstairs and pack a few little things in a bag for tomorrow,” Louise said.

He freed himself and turned to look at her.

“When I was in my place, alone . . .” Louise said. “Remember what I said about a mistake? I was frightened. I don’t want to be alone there, tonight.”

“You could stay here,” he said.

“I thought about that,” she said. “But I have to do the eleven o’clock news, which means I would have to come all the way out here again. Please, Peter.” Then she smiled, and offered, “I’ll blow in your ear.”

“Sure, why not?” Peter said. Sure, why not? Jesus, the most beautiful girl you have ever known asks you to spend the night and you say “Sure, why not?”

“It won’t take me a minute,” he said. “You want to come up?”

“No,” she said. “You’re obviously the kind of man who would take advantage of an innocent girl like me.”

He went in the apartment, put underwear and a white uniform shirt, his uniform cap, and his toilet things in a bag. Then, as an afterthought, he added his good bathrobe (a gift from his mother, which he seldom wore) and bottle of cologne in with it.

When he went back downstairs, she was behind the wheel of the Jaguar.

“The idea was to leave this car here,” he said.

“We’ll come back before we go downtown,” she said. “What I want to do is go out in the country with the wind blowing my hair and eat in some romantic country inn.”

“Where are you going to find one of those?”

“How about a Burger King?” she said. “Get in, Peter.”

He got in beside her, and she drove off, spinning the wheels as she made a sweeping turn.

She headed out of town, driving, he decided, too fast.

“Take it easy,” he said.

“If you don’t complain about my driving,” she said, “I won’t say anything about you looking hungrily at my knees.”

He felt his face color.

“My God!” he said.

She pulled her skirt farther up her legs.

“Better?” she asked.

****

As Stanford F. Wells III crossed the marble-floored, high-ceilinged, tastefully furnished lobby of the Warwick Hotel toward the reception desk, two men rose from a couch and intercepted him.

“How are you, boss?” the older of them said. He was short and stocky, with a very full head of curly pepper-and-salt hair.

“Who’s minding the store, Kurt?” Wells asked, smiling, obviously pleased to see Kurt Kruger.

“Well, since I was here, I thought I’d wait and say hello and then go home,” Kurt Kruger said. “Stan, this is Richard Dye. He’s on the Chronicle. He used to work for the Ledger here. I thought he could be helpful, and he was. He’s one hell of a leg man.”

Wells gave the younger man his hand.