ite right, too," Malone said solemnly.

"Oh," Bill said. "Sure." He fished in his pockets. "You dropped your
notebook, though, and I came to give it back to you." He located the
object he was hunting for and brought it out with the triumphant gesture
of a man displaying the head of a dragon he has slain. "Here," he said,
waving the book.

"Notebook?" Malone said. He stared at it. It was a small looseleaf book
bound in cheap black plastic.

"We found it in the gutter," Bill said.

Malone took a tentative step forward and managed not to fall. He stepped
back again and looked at Bill scornfully. "I wasn't even in the gutter,"
he said. "There are limits."

"Sure," Bill said. "But the notebook was, so I brought it along to you.
I thought you might need it or something." He handed it over to Malone
with a flourish.

It wasn't Malone's notebook. In the first place, he had never owned a
notebook that looked anything like that, and in the second place he
hadn't had any notebooks on him when he went for his walk. _Mine not to
question why_, Malone told himself with a shrug, and flipped the book
open.

At once he knew why the cop had mistaken it for his.

There, right on the first page, was a carefully detailed drawing of a
1972 Cadillac. It had been painstakingly colored in with a red pencil.

Malone stared at it for a second, and then went on to page two. This
page carried a list of names running down the left margin.

_Ramon O.

Mario G.

Silvo E.

Felipe A.

Alvarez la B.

Juan de los S.

Ray del E._

That made sense, of a kind. It was a list of names. Whose names they
were, Malone didn't know; but at least he could see the list and
understand it. What puzzled him were the decorations.

Following each name was a queer-looking squiggle. Each was slightly
different, and each bore some resemblance to a stick-figure, a
geometrical figure or just a childish scrawl. The whole parade reminded
Malone of pictures he had seen of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

But the names didn't look Egyptian, and, anyhow, nobody used
hieroglyphics any more--did they?

Malone found himself thinking: _Now what does that mean?_ He looked
across at the facing page.

It contained a set of figures, all marked off in dollars and cents and
all added up neatly. One of the additions ended with the eye-popping sum
of $52,710.09, and Malone found that the sum made him slightly nervous.
This was high-power