They went in. The place smelled of stale beer and spilled Thunderbird.
    "'Ave a seat. The cops just said they found the body. He must've been murdered if you're here."
    "Do you know what he was up to? Since he'd gotten out?"
    "He was a good boy," she mumbled. "He came in, I saw him for a day, he said—said he was going straight, he said he was going straight, he'd served his time and that was it, he was just gonna go meet with, with his lady and she was, she was gonna set him up and he was gonna be fine, he was going straight."
    "His lady?"
    "He had this lady, oh man, he just like fell over her. This was like back before... y'know. He had three years with her and she was nice. Drink?"
    "No, thank you," he declined.
    "You want a beer?" she asked Stevie.
    "No," Gravedigger answered for him.
    "No," he agreed meekly.
    "Anyway, where was I?"
    "Three years with her," Gravedigger prompted.
    "Oh yeah. Blond girl, long blond hair, really striking. What was her name? Belle." She giggled and took another drink. "Striking Belle. She sure rung him. Three years, and I kept saying, you gotta propose to her, you gotta make an honest woman out of her, gotta stop—stop just messing around, and he kept saying Mom, it's not like that, we're just good friends, like I don't know from good friends, but she's... anyway, so then he... got stupid and went up to jail, but he said that this was, after that I went up and saw him and he was going straight, that was it, he was just gonna go see Belle and, and everything was gonna be great and he was gonna be legit from there on in and we wouldn't have to worry about a thing."
    "Belle is the last name?"
    She sighed. "I don't know, he just always called her Belle." Another drink. "I don't know, there might be something in his room, I didn't touch his room the whole time he was gone."
    "May I?"
    "If you're here that means someone killed him. If someone killed him, I want...." She gave him a beseeching look.
    "Thank you." He walked down the hall she indicated.
    "Do you have a bathroom, ma'am?" Stevie asked.
    "Yeah, it's over there."
    True to her word, it looked as if the place had not been touched in seven years. Tiny hadn't been much of a writer. No little black book, no list of phone numbers. Clothes that would have been too small to fit the man by the time he came out of prison.
    He did find a shoebox in the back of the closet. It held a couple of newspaper clippings about the Elsa Turnbull kidnapping ten years before, and a map of upstate New York with a circle drawn on it, a location a couple of hours away.
    The bathroom, Stevie discovered, was filthy, even by his standards. He looked around wondering what he could safely touch.
    "You okay in there?"
    "Yeah, ma'am. I'm fine."
    "You're really cute," she drawled.
    "Thank you ma'am," he decided was the safest reply.
    "You sure you don't want a beer?"
    "Um..." He thought about it. "M-maybe. Maybe." Damn, if only his voice would stop cracking.
    "Well, you gotta come out of the bathroom first."
    "Oh. Okay." He finished up and came out. "Um, boss? Mr. Digger?"
    "Yes?"
    "How much longer we gonna be, do you know?"
    "We're done." He'd conducted a rapid search of the standard hiding places and found nothing else of interest.
    "Um. Uh. Well, thank you very much ma'am. Y—you're very cute, too," he ventured.
    "He's such a nice boy," she mumbled. "You remind me of...." She started getting teary-eyed again and downed the rest of her drink.
    "Why can't I have a beer?" Stevie wanted to know as they walked back toward the car.
    "Not when working."
    "Working?" His chest inflated somewhat at the intimations of that statement. "You got it, boss! Not when working."
    Gravedigger unfolded the map. "Do you know how to get here?"
    "Yeah. Yeah." At least he had a vague idea, and he wasn't about to admit there was anything he didn't know in front of the man.
    
    "Are you able to fly?" Astro-Man asked Horus.
    "Yes." Aside from the case itself, he was intrigued by the novelty of working with another member of the fraternity, and interested in observing Astro-Man's powers, which did not appear to be magical in origin.
    "You fly, and I can hang from your hands. It's very strange, I can only use one of my powers at a time," Astro-Man explained. "If you fly me over the city, I can use my advanced hearing to listen below for screams or sounds of a scuffle."
    Horus raised his eyebrows. "I suppose...." Thank goodness I can make us invisible, he thought. This could otherwise do damage to the dignified image he liked to present. Perhaps I should work on that flying carpet I've been meaning to build. Jasper flew along some distance behind, making his usual smart-ass comments.
    They flew above the city, Astro-Man in the aspect of Uranus, listening for signs of trouble, while Horus kept an "ear" out for those he had identified as the Ray's victims. Petty criminals and prostitutes plying their trades in Manhattan that night tended to hear a voice that seemed to come from right beside them, saying, "Stop that!" as the Californian exercised his power.
    Several extremely dull hours later, they knew no attack would take place that night; the extorters could only strike while businesses were still open.
    "Anything else we can do?" Astro-Man wondered.
    "You were acquainted with the Turnbulls, is this correct?"
    "Not really," he lied.
    "I had made that assumption. Hm."
    "I just have some background information on them from a special source."
    "Ah. As someone who has a special source myself, I entirely understand," he smiled. "Do you know anything about the kidnapping of their daughter?"
    "Actually I don't, just that it happened."
    "I am curious; it shows some of the same hallmarks of extraordinarily careful planning and execution that accompanied the Ray's recent activities."
    "Disturbing."
    "It would mean that the same person has been active here for a good ten years now, and remains not only uncaptured but unsuspected. Clearly they are far above the police ability to deal with."
    "Why would the Ray focus on the Turnbulls? Disturbing," he repeated. "Of course, there's not necessarily a connection, it could just be a horrible coincidence. Can't over-hypothesize here."
    "This is very true. If he... if he did have something to do with them both...." He was merely thinking out loud.

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