Stephen Marlowe

I made a considerable dent in the bourbon reserves of three bars. Maybe I couldn’t quite walk a straight line after that, but I was still thinking up a storm and getting nowhere. I switched to Calvert’s the way the ads tell you, with no better results. I thought maybe if I got in touch with Doc Kincaid and asked him for a list of people who had answered his questions I’d be able to find out if the killer had broken his code. It seemed like a fine idea, but I wasn’t buying any of that, either. It was the professional way to go about things and it might bring results in a month or two or twenty, but I didn’t have the time. I’d drink myself into an alcoholic ward long before that. But Tad Barrett might like the idea and might be able to do more about it with a whole staff of trained operatives. Jason Chase, you are a genius. You must drink to this brilliant idea. You must. You will. But the barman shook his head. “What do you mean, I’ve had enough?” “I mean, I don’t think you ought to take another. Not here.” “That’s ridiculous, my good sir.

It was us they were talking about, with the objectivity of businessmen completing a routine transaction. In Barrett there wasn’t even the hint of remorse or conscience. Some folks, they say, are born incapable of those things. Often they behave beyond suspicion, those sick people, until it’s too late. Sometimes they’re good-looking, charming, intelligent. Maybe they liked to pull the wings off flies more than other kids. But boys will be boys. If they served in the Army they made lousy soldiers, complaining and griping all the time about discipline, until they got a taste of combat. They often won medals, then, and were afraid but didn’t go stiff and inadequate with fear like some of their buddies. They felt above the crowd. They were arrogant. Laws didn’t apply to them. They could kill you with an absolute lack of concern if it suited them. They were called psychopathic personalities, P.P.’s, and Barrett was one of them. It looked as if we were going to die.

To live and know yourself, to strive, aware that life is short and one must die, to do what you can, to do what you must, this is man's life and his fulfillment.