“I don?t know.” She hesitated before she went on. “It?s about my brother Tony. I?m very worried
about him but I can?t go to the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she said, “he may be involved in something wrong.”
“You mean against the law, that kind of wrong?”
She nodded.
The din in Casablanca had become hazardous to the health. The music kept getting louder, the dancers
more frenetic, and the special effects more surreal. The lights went out, strobes reflected off smoke
and fog, lasers crackled from one side of the room to the other.
1 got that weird feeling in the back of my neck again. This time when 1 turned I thought I saw
someone, but it was a momentary flash through light spasms and haze.
DeeDee shrugged her shoulders as though a cold wind had blown by her.
“I?m sorry,” she said. “I guess all the noise and----”
“Why don?t we get out of here,” I suggested. “I?ll call a cab. We can go someplace and talk over
coffee.”
“I have my car,” she said. “That was part of the deal. Lark would get your buddy and the car, I?d get
you and keep mine.”
“Did you rehearse this act long?”
She laughed. The idea of leaving seemed to brighten her. I paid the bill and we elbowed through the
crowd and left.
The street was empty except for the eerie gas lamps flickering along the river?s edge through the mist.
The hazy figure of a man stepped briefly through one of the halos, half a block away.
Barely audible over the din from Casablanca, a car door opened and closed.
We started toward the circular iron stairway that led up to the promenade. The street echoed with the
throbbing of the music. The damp fog settled over us. Our footsteps sounded like horse?s hoofs on the
cobblestones.
I heard the car start. Then the stick dropped into place. It started to move, slowly at first.
No headlights.
Through the mist I could see the mouth of an alley thirty feet away.
I said to DeeDee, “Listen to me carefully. When we get to that alley, I?m going to shove you in. Start
running. I?ll be right behind you.”
“What—” she started, but the tires behind us bit into the cobblestone street and squealed to life.
“Let?s go!” I yelled, and started running, pulling her beside
