I must have gone to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow. Judy hadn’t been in her room, but I hadn’t expected she would be. The night was too clear and perfect to be closed in four small prosaic walls. Her car was gone from its place on the bridge over the river. I was glad she was with Cowboy Joe—with anybody, I thought as I turned off my light, but Kaye Gorman and Dex Cromwell and the gentleman known as Whitey.
The thought was still vaguely in my mind as I woke up. Without raising my head I could see the clock on the town hall across the Truckee beyond the River House, its hands dimly pointing to three. The light from the Riverside Hotel across the street went from yellow to rose to blue and back, lighting the night air half-a-dozen times before I realized that it was voices in t
