I went home and showered and shaved and changed clothes and began to feel clean again. I cooked some breakfast, ate it, washed up, swept the kitchen and the service porch, filled a pipe and called the phone answering service. I shot a blank. Why go to the office? There would be nothing there but another dead moth and another layer of dust. In the safe would be my portrait of Madison. I could go down and play with that, and with the five crisp hundred dollar bills that still smelled of coffee. I could do that, but I didn't want to. Something inside me had gone sour. None of it really belonged to me. What was it supposed to buy? How much loyalty can a dead man use? Phooey: I was looking at life through the mists of a hangover. It was the kind of morning that seems to go on forever. I was flat and tired and dull and the passing minutes seemed to fall into a void, with a soft whirring sound, like spent rockets. Birds chirped in the shrubbery outside and the cars went up and down Laurel Canyon Boulevard endlessly. Usually I wouldn't even hear them. But I was brooding and irritable and mean and oversensitive. I decided to kill the hangover. Ordinarily I was not a morning drinker. The Southern California climate is too soft for it. You don't metabolize fast enough. But I mixed a tall cold one this time and sat in an easy chair with my shirt open and pecked at a magazine, reading a crazy story about a guy that had two lives and two psychiatrists, one was human and one was some kind of insect in a hive. The guy kept going from one to the other and the whole thing was as crazy as a crumpet, but funny in an off-beat sort of way. I was handling the drink carefully, a sip at a time, watching myself. It was about noon when the telephone rang and the voice said: "This is Linda Loring. I called your office and your phone service told me to try your home. I'd like to see you.' "Why?" "I'd rather explain that in person. You go to your office from time to time, I suppose." "Yeah. From time to time. Is there any money in it?" "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I have no objection, if you want to be paid. I could be at your office in about an hour." "Goody." "What's the matter with you?" she asked sharply. "Hangover. But I'm not paralyzed. I'll be there. Unless you'd rather come here." "Your office would suit me better." "I've got a nice quiet place here. Dead-end street, no near neighbors." "The implication does not attract me—if I understand you." "Nobody understands me, Mrs. Loring. I'm enigmatic. Okay, I'll struggle down to the coop." "Thank you so much." She hung up. I was slow getting down there because I stopped on the way for a sandwich. I aired out the office and switched on the buzzer and poked my head through the communicating door and she was there already, sitting in the same chair where Mendy Menendez had sat and looking through what could have been the same magazine. She had a tan gabardine suit on today and she looked pretty elegant. She put the magazine aside, gave me a serious look and said: "Your Boston fern needs watering. I think it needs repotting too. Too many air roots." I held the door open for her. The hell with the Boston fern. When she was inside and I had let the door swing shut I held the customer's chair for her and she gave the office the usual once-over. I got around to my side of the desk. "You're establishment isn't exactly palatial," she said. "Don't you even have a secretary?" "It's a sordid life, but I'm used to it." "Mid I shouldn't think very lucrative," she said. "Oh I don't know. Depends. Want to see a portrait of Madison?" "A what?" "A five-thousand-dollar bill. Retainer. I've got it in the safe." I got up and started over there. I spun the knob and opened it and unlocked a drawer inside, opened an envelope, and dropped it in front of her. She stared at it in something like amazement. "Don't let the office fool you," I said. "I worked for an old boy one time that would cash in at about twenty millions. Even your old man would say hello to him. His office was no better than mine, except he was a bit deaf and had that soundproofing stuff on the ceiling. On the floor brown linoleum, no carpet." She picked the portrait of Madison up and pulled it between her fingers and turned it over. She put it down again. "You got this from Terry, didn't you?" "Gosh, you know everything, don't you Mrs. Loring?" She pushed the bill away from her, frowning. "He had one. He carried it on him ever since he and Sylvia were married the second time. He called it his mad money. It was not found on his body." "There could be other reasons for that." "I know. But how many people carry a five-thousand-dollar bill around with them? How many who could afford to give you that much money would give it to you in this form?" It wasn't worth answering. I just nodded. She went on brusquely. "And what were you supposed to do for it, Mr. Marlowe?' Or would you tell me? On that last ride down to Tijuana he had plenty of time to talk. You made it very clear the other evening that you didn't believe his confession. Did he g............