"I'm not taking you anywhere," Marc said. "I'm taking myself. You just happened to be here." "Oh," the woman said, not, it seemed, without a touch of disappointment. There was another lapse of silence. "Do you know where there's a cop?" Marc asked, after a few more blocks. "If I did," the woman said, "I'd be with him instead of you. What do you want with a cop?" "I've got to find one," Marc said anxiously. "It means everything." By this time the woman had resigned herself to the unhappy fact that she was out for a spin with a raving lunatic. She nodded sagely, as though agreeing with this last remark entirely. "Sure," she said, "sometimes I feel that way myself. Cops are everything. It just sweeps over me all of a heap." "What sweeps over you?" Marc asked absently. "Cops," the woman said. "Do you think you ought to be making these little confessions to a total stranger?" Marc asked distastefully. "Or do you mean your husband is a cop?" "Of course not," the woman said. "My husband is a butcher. What's that got to do with it? I was just saying that sometimes cops just seem to surge over me." She giggled with nervous desperation. "A sort of blue serge, you might say." "Well," Marc said, "since you seem to know all these cops so well, you ought to be able to tell me where they hang out." "I don't know all these cops," the woman said. "You mean they're a bunch of total strangers?" Marc asked, thoroughly shocked. "My word!" "Couldn't we just drop the subject?" the woman asked defeatedly. "I'm all confused somehow." "I should think you would be confused," Marc agreed. His voice trailed away on a rising inflection as he spotted a police car parked at the curb across the street. "Cops!" he breathed. He glanced ahead. "You see that green sedan up ahead with the black limousine beside it?" The woman nodded vaguely. "The one that just cut up over the sidewalk? What about it?" "Keep your eye on it," Marc instructed, "while I get the cop's attention. It's a matter of life and death." * * * * * The green sedan, as it turned out, was eminently worth keeping an eye on. Toffee, beleaguered as she was with the mechanics of keeping the vehicle in motion, had come upon other problems. Early in the game, feeling vague stirrings at her side, she had looked around to see George's dismembered head yawn thickly and open its eyes. Then, as if this wasn't loathsome enough, a set of fingers wriggled to the edge of the seat, gripped it and boosted the halved torso around so that the disjointed feet dropped to the floor. George, rising from unconsciousness had hauled himself into a sitting position. Toffee looked on this development without favor. "Stay down, George," she hissed. "Get back where you were." The head swiveled around hideously, a wounded look in its eyes. "Oh, it's you, is it?" he said sadly. "You hit me." "And I'll hit you again," Toffee promised, "if you don't get down."