Survival... ZERO!

What you think happened won't cut any grass with that bunch. Even the shooting at Lippy's won't help any. That could have been staged too. You try using the witness you got there and all you'll get is a cold laugh and a kiss-off. Even your own lawyer wouldn't touch them.'

'Okay, what do you want from me?' I asked him.

'Who's your witness, damn it!'

I grinned and shrugged my shoulders. 'You know, you forgot to advise me of my rights, Captain. Under that Supreme Court decision, this case could be kicked right off the docket as of now.'

Pat let those red eyes bore into me for ten seconds, his teeth clamped tight. Then suddenly the taut muscles in his jaw loosened, he grinned back and shook his head in amazement.

'I don't know why I'm bothering with you, Mike. I'm acting like this is the first homicide I ever stumbled over. After all the nitheaded times you and I ... oh, shit.' He swabbed at his eyes with his hands and took a deep breath. 'The whole damn country's in line for extermination and I'm letting you bug me.' He dropped his hands, his face serious. 'Anyway, by tomorrow you wouldn't even make the back page.'

I didn't say anything. His face had a peculiar, blank look.

Finally, Pat dropped his voice and said, 'They found a canister at the bottom of the Ashokan Reservoir. It was a bacteriological device timed to open six days from now.'

I couldn't figure it. I said, 'Then why the sweat if you got it nailed down?'

Pat brushed some torn remnants off the arm of the chair and lowered himself down to it. 'The guy found dead in the subway was the same one those honeymooners spotted, all right. They searched the area where they saw him and came up with the cannister.' His eyes left the window and wandered over to mine. 'It must have been the last one he planted. It was marked #20-ashokan. Someplace scattered around are nineteen others like it, all due to release in six days.'

'And the papers got this?'

'One of the reservists in the group that handled the stuff was a reporter fresh out of journalism school. He figured he had a scoop and phoned it in. He didn't know about the other nineteen they didn't find.'

'There's still time to squelch the story.'

'Oh, they're on that, don't worry. Everybody connected with that guy's paper is in protective custody, but they're screaming like hell and they're not going to be held long. There's a chance they might have spouted off to their friends or relatives, and if they did, it's panic tune. People aren't going to hold in a secret like that.'

'Who's handling it ... locals?'

'Washington. That's how big it is.' Pat reached for his hat and stood up. 'So whatever you do doesn't really matter, Mike. You're only an interesting diversion that keeps me from thinking about other things. Six days from now we can all pick out a nice place to sit and watch each other kick off.'

'Brother, are you full of piss and vinegar tonight.'

'I wish you'd worry a little. It would make me feel better.'

'Crap,' I said sullenly. There was no mistaking Pat's attitude. He was deadly serious. I had never seen him like that before. Maybe it was better to be like the rest of the world, not knowing about things. But what would they be like when they found out?

'Six days. When it happens you can bet there's going to be some kind of retaliation, or expecting it, the other side fires first. A nuclear holocaust could destroy this country and possibly the bacteria too. If I were on the other side I'd consider the same thing.' Pat let a laugh grunt through his teeth. 'Now even the Soviet bunch is thinking along those lines. I heard they all tried to get out of the country when we found the thing, but the Feds put the squeeze on them. In a way they're hostages for six days and they'd better run down a lead before then or they've had it too.'

'Sounds crazy,' I said.

'Doesn't it?' Pat waved me to the door. 'So let's have a coffee like it all never happened and then we'll check into the ballistics report on those slugs that tore up your buddy Beers.'

I lay stretched out on the bed, not quite awakened from the druglike sleep I had been in. The window was a patch of damp gray letting the steamy smells of the city drift into the room through the open half. The clock said ten after two, and I pulled the phone down beside me and dialed the office number. Nothing. Velda's apartment didn't answer either.

Where the hell was she? Until now Velda had always called in at regular intervals, or if necessity warranted it, longer ones, but she always called. Now there were only two answers left. Either she was on a prolonged stakeout or Woody Ballinger had found her. I tried another half-dozen calls to key people I had contacted, but none of them had seen Woody or any of his boys. All his office would say was he had left town, but Chipper Hodges had gone into his apartment through a window on a fire

escape and said his bags were in a closet and nothing seemed to be missing.

Pat had slept in his office all night and his voice was still a hoarse growl with no expression in it at all. 'Sorry, Mike,' he said, 'still negative. Nobody's seen Ballinger around at all.'

'Damn it, Pat ...'

'We'd like to see him, though. Ballistics came up with another item besides those slugs in Beers coming from that same gun that shot at you in Lippy's apartment. That same gun was used to kill the cop who stepped into the cross fire when he was raiding that policy place uptown. Supposedly one of Woody's places.'

'And now you got men on it.'

'Uh-huh. As many as we can spare. Don't worry, we'll find Ballinger.'

'He might have Velda. There isn't much time.'

'I know,' he told me softly, 'not for any of us,' then hung up.

Back to that again, I thought. Six days ... no, five days left. In a way there was almost a comic angle to the situation. The ones who didn't know what was impending couldn't care, and those who knew about it didn't. A real wild world, this. Trouble was coming in from so many sources that another one, no matter how big, was no more than an itch to be scratched. Maybe the world wouldn't give a damn either if it did know. Nobody seems to think that big. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof. How long since Hiroshima and Nagasaki? You sit on a time bomb so long you get to ignore it. The object of destruction gets to be a familiar thing and one more wouldn't matter anyway. Defusing the problem was somebody else's job and somehow in some way it would be taken care of. That's what we have a government for, isn't it? So why worry, have another beer and watch the ball game. The Mets are ahead.

I picked up a paper at the stand on the corner and riffled through the pages. The News had a two-column spread on page four about how the special Army teams in their exercise maneuvers upstate had located a possible contamination source in the Ashokan Reservoir, and although the water supply to New York City and adjacent areas had been temporarily curtailed, there was no actual shortage and the Army experts were expected to clear the matter up shortly.

Further on was another little squib about a certain Long Island newspaper suspending operations temporarily

due to a breakdown in their presses. Washington was putting the squeeze on, but good. I wondered how Eddie Dandy was making out, wherever he was. By now he must have a mad on as big as his head. Somebody was going to catch hell when they released him, that was for sure.

Little Joe was working his trade on Broadway, pushing himself along on a homemade skateboard. For a beggar he was ahead in his field, peddling cheap ball-point pens instead of pencils, gabbing with all the familiar figures who kept him in business with the daily nickels and dimes.

I drew his attention by fluttering a buck down over his shoulder into his box and he spun around with a surprised grin when he saw me. 'Hey, Mike. Thought I just got me a big spender. You want a pen?'

'Might as well get something for my dollar.'

He held up his box. 'Take your pick.'

I pulled out two black ones and dropped them in my pocket. 'Velda told me she saw you,' I said.

'Yeah,' Joe said, craning his neck up to look at me. 'She was looking for that dip I saw with old Lippy.'

A curious tingle ran across my shoulders. 'She didn't say what he was. You didn't know, either.'

'That was then. Me, I ain't got much to do except look, and besides, you two always did get me curious. So I look and ask a few people and pretty soon I get a few answers. Since Lindy's closed