"Well," Malone said, "I mean--well, he isn't the sort of man who'd
fire somebody, because of--because of something like this?"

"You mean because I know an FBI man?" Lou said.

"I--"

"Never mind," she said. "I know what you mean. And he won't. He'll
understand." She came round to face him, and patted his cheek.
"Thanks," she said. "Thanks a lot, anyway."

"If there's anything I can do--"

"There won't be," Lou said. "You'll call me, though, about tonight?"

"Sure I will," Malone said. He hoped that the tentative date he'd made
with her for that evening wouldn't be broken up because of a sudden
onslaught of work. "I'll let you know before five, for sure."

"Fine," Lou said. "I'll wait to hear from you."

She turned to walk away.

"Hey," Malone said. "Wait a minute."

"What?" she said, turning again.

Malone looked judicious. "I think," he said weightily, "that,
considering all the fun we've had, and all the adventuring and
everything else, the least you could do would be to kiss me goodbye."

"On Fifth Avenue?"

"No," Malone said. He tapped his lips. "Here."

She laughed, bent closer and pecked him on the cheek. Then, before he
could say anything else, she was gone.

10

On the way to FBI Headquarters on 69th Street, he read the _Post_ a
little more carefully. The judge and his union suit weren't the only
things that were fouled up, he saw. Things were getting pretty bad all
over.

One story dealt with the recent factional fights inside the American
Association for the Advancement of Medicine. A new group, the United
States Medical-Professional Society, appeared to be forming as a
competitor to the AAAM, and Malone wasn't quite so sure, when he
thought about it, that this news was as bad as it appeared on the
surface. Fights between doctors, of course, were reasonably rare, at
least on the high hysterical level the story appeared to pinpoint. But
the AAAM had held a monopoly in the medical field for a long time;
maybe it was about time some competition showed itself. From what he
could find out in the story, the USMPS seemed like a group of fairly
sensible people.

But that was one of the few rays of light Malone could discern amid
the encircling bloom of the news. The gang wars had reached a new
high; the _Post_ was now publishing what it called a Daily Scoreboard,
which consisted in this particular paper of six deaths, two
disappearances and ten hospitalizations. The six deaths were evenly
s