He'd get a lawyer! Larry had connections and maybe....

There were footsteps outside the cell door and a moment later it swung open. The man who opened it wasn't a guard—at least he didn't dress like one, Stan thought. Just a man in a blue suit. Smiling and urbane and what the ad writers would call dapper.

Except for his eyes. The same kind of cold eyes that an executioner might have. Eyes that had watched people die—slowly.

Stan shivered.

Death. In a blue serge suit.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up," the man said pleasantly. He held out his hand. "My name's Fred Tanner. You...."

Stan didn't take the hand. "I want to know what's coming off here! Where's the joker who brought me here? Where's...."

"Somebody else can tell you all you want to know," the man said easily. "Just follow me."

Stan didn't move.

"You coming?"

It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Tanner stood there, his head half cocked, watching Stan curiously, like somebody might watch an ant or a bird. Stan started to say something but the words died in his throat. Tanner was no weakling. He had thick wrists and a bull neck and a feeling of power that he wore like a suit of clothes.

He was the type, Stan thought coldly, who could break you in two if he wanted.

He shrugged and followed Tanner down the corridor for a hundred feet and then into a room about the size of his own cell. There was an oval shaped desk in one corner and a tubular chair by it, both of the same metal as the walls and the floor. The whole assembly looked like it had been punched out of one sheet.

The man behind the desk looked like an ex-football player ten years later, Stan thought. A husky man, just starting to go to fat, with thick lips and thinning hair.

Tanner pushed Stan forward. "Here's the boy, Mr. Malcolm."

Stan wet his lips. "I ... I'd like to know what this is all about, sir."

"Fred," the man behind the desk said in a bored voice. "He lacks manners."

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