nce
for absently toeing a woman's dog. When he reached the corner he headed
downtown, humming "Kathleen Mavourneen" under his breath and trying to
figure out his next move.

He needed more than one move. He needed a whole series of moves. This
was not the usual kind of case. Burris had called it a vacation and, in
one way, Malone supposed, Burris was perfectly right. For once there was
no question about who had committed the crimes. It was obvious by now
that Mike Fueyo and his Silent Spooks had been stealing the Cadillacs.

It was even obvious that Mike--or someone with Mike's talent--had bopped
him on the head, and taken the red Cadillac he had been examining. And
the same gang probably accounted for the Sergeant Jukovsky affair, too.

Or at least it was reasonable to assume that they did, Malone thought.
He could see how it had worked: one of the Silent Spooks was a lot
smaller than a grown man, and the two cops who hadn't seen anyone in the
parked car just hadn't been able to catch sight of the undersized
driver. Of course, there _had_ been someone in the car when it had been
driving along the West Side Highway. Someone who had teleported himself
right out of the car when it had gone over the embankment.

That, of course, meant that there would be no secret machines found in
the red Cadillacs Leibowitz & Hardin were examining now. But Malone had
already decided to let that phase of things go on. First of all, it was
always possible that he was wrong, and that some such machine really
did exist. Second, even if they didn't find a machine, they might find
something else. Almost anything, he thought, might turn up.

And, third, it kept Boyd decently busy, and out of Malone's hair.

That had been an easy solution. And, Malone thought, the problem of who
had been taking the red Cadillacs looked just as easy now, if his
answers were right. And he was reasonably sure of that.

Unfortunately, he was now left with a new and unusual question:

_How do you catch a teleport?_

Malone looked up, jarred to a stop by a man built like a brown bear,
with a chunky body and an oval, slightly sloping head and face. He had
very short brown hair shot through with gray, and he gave Malone a
small, inquisitive stare and looked away without a word.

Malone mumbled: "Sorry," and looked up at the street sign. He was at
Forty-seventh Street and Park Avenue. He jerked a hand up to his face,
and managed to hook the chunky man by the su