"Is that an arrow in my back?" I quipped to KS, "or are you just glad to see me?"

My clients turned pale at the sight of their cousin.

"Karin!" Dusty said. "We've been looking all over for you."

"That's right, Kssy, it's true," Charlie said. He nodded frantically, like a bobble doll in the back window of a 76 Chevy."We've searched everywhere. The flophouses, the asylums, the vanity publishers--"

"Can it, coz," KS snarled. "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times--"

Taking advantage of her mental lapse, I rammed my elbow back into Karin's chest.

A grunt, a clang, a yowl.

"Ow!" I gripped my arm as hot shards of pain shattered my elbow. "What the--"

"Love your breastplate," Andi said, her eyes admiring the Amazon behind me.

"Ow, ow, ow!" I howled.

"Enough of this chitchat," KS snapped. "Everybody up. And bring the dough."

Cale and Rhoades stood up. Andi sashayed over to the table and started stuffing bills into the bodice of her cocktail dress.

"Lookin' good," I told Andi, as her bodice grew bigger.

KS jabbed me in the back with the arrow. "I'll keep my eye on the money," she said.

"Can't we both do that?" I asked.

"Okay, what now?" Andi listed forward like a barge with a glandular prow.

"To Schwaderers," Karin ordered.

"Where it all began," I murmured.

Making threatening gestures with her crossbow, she clustered us all together, and we started moving out the door and down the all, like the final episode of an MTM sitcom. Jim, the artist in the next office stuck his head out the door, and quickly ducked back into his office.

"You too, posterboy!" Karin snarled.

"But I don't have anything to--"

"Move!"

Meek as a teddy bear, Jim joined our merry band, and we headed downstairs.

The broad in the bathrobe eyed us blearily as we shuffled toward the outer door.

"Whasha doin'?" She gazed at her empty martini glass. "Party?" she asked hopefully.

"I see you've had a touch of the potato this evening," Andi said. She leaned over and fingered the lapel of the bathrobe. The weight of the bills in her bodice made her fall forward across the makeshift desk.

Whang!

"She shot an arrow in the air!" Cale cried. It fell to earth--I know not--

"Ow!"

I fell down, down, blackness swirling around me like a Saul Bass spiral in a Hitchcock montage.

                   ------------

I awoke, stretched out on a table, a circle of faces looking down at me. A hideous cacaphony throbbed in the backround and I clutched at my head. Until I realized that wasn't where the arrow had landed.

"Auntie Ev?" I whimpered.

I saw Andi, an enigmatic smile on her lips, and my clients, Cale and Rhoades. For some reason KS had finally let go of her crossbow. She seemed to be trying to neuter a dachshund with a butter knife. I averted my eyes.     

"I had the strangest dream." I groaned, and sat up on the table. "You were there," I pointed at Andi. "And you, and you." I looked at my clients.

I looked around. I was at Carol's place, and the din was unbearable. I realized that at least half of the unbearable din was coming from a small stage near the bar.

"Oh, God," I moaned. "Not them. Not tonight." I held my hands over my ears, but I could still hear them. The 'Leens of Meen, our local girl group, who specialized in three part disharmony. They were swaying around the stage in their black rubber dresses, snapping their fingers, each to a different song.

Carleen was wailing "Maybelline," Eveleen was crooning, "Kathleen Mavorneen," Eileeeeeen was belting out "Nadine."

"I can't stand it!" I scrambled off the table. I pulled some bills out of my pocket and flung them at my clients. "Here! Take your retainer back! I'm finished with this case! I'm finished with dizzy dames and sexy assistants and expired coupons and missing cousins--"

Andi grabbed for the bills before Charlie could get them. I didn't care. I'd had it.

I'd had it with Meen Street, with the lowlifes and the scum and the sleazy clients and the whole dick biz. There wasn't one inch of my body that wasn't sore--well, maybe a little spot near my left ear--and my soul was as bruised as a favorite grandson's cheeks.

"Yeah, that's right doll," I told Andi. "You keep the money. You keep everything. The business is yours. Go ahead, solve this damned case if you can. I'm gonna find me a nice houseboat and--"

"Vic," Andi said sweetly. "I've solved the case already. In fact . . . "

Her smile scared the hell out of me. I backed away from her, but the crowd in the joint was too dense to penetrate.

Andi spread her arms wide. "You may be wondering," she said, "why I called you all here tonight."

KS looked up from the dachshund. "You didn't call them here, I did."

"It was all so simple," Andi went on, ignoring her. She turned to the woman in the bathrobe, who was gesturing futilely to Judi, the bartender. "Ellen, honey, give me the robe."

"Okey doke." Ellen shrugged out of the robe, as the little group around our table screamed and turned away. But it was okay. She was quite decorously dressed--at least from the waist up, which was all I could see.

"Donna Karan," I said, before I could stop myself. Andi smiled again, and I felt a fist in my gut--though no one had thrown a punch. She reached into the pocket of the bathrobe, and pulled out the little golden statue.

"Viola!" she said.

"Don't you mean, voila?" a passerby said coolly.

"Whatever." Andi held up the wee ram. "There it is, boys and girls. The stuff that dreams are made of."

"But--but--"Jim began.

"That's with two "t's" the passerby said, "if you're talking about a member of the ovine family, otherwise, it's spelled--"

"'SHUT UP!" We chorused. KS held up the butter knife menacingly.

"BUTT it was never missing," Jim said.

"And our cousin isn't missing any more either," Rhoades pointed out.

"So there isn't any mystery," Cale said. "Give us back our money." He made a grab for Andi's bodice--truly the stuff that dreams are made of.

She smacked his hand.

"I went to a lot of trouble for you clowns," she said. "I earned every bit of your retainer--and more."

"YOU went to a lot of trouble?" I knew I shouldn't but I couldn't help myself. "I was the one who got beat to a pulp,in every chapter. I was the one who did all the Legwork. I was--"

"You was what, Vic?" Andi's eyes were dangerously narrow. "What have you always been?"

"Andi, no--" Again, I tried to back away, but there was no place to go, nowhere to run. The 'Leens of Meen had started a conga line around the joint, and the drunken Aussies were out of control.

"I've always been good to you," I said hoarsely. "I've always treated you like an equal--"

Andi burst into laughter. She laughed so hard that bills started spilling out of her dress. "Yeah, Vic, an equal. Sure. You've got the name on the door, I've got the dirty work. You've got the Dodge Neon, and I'm still waiting for the damned sedan chair you promised me three years ago."

She grabbed the crossbow from under the table. She raised it.

"Andi--no! Why?"

She aimed it right at my gut.

"Why, Vic? Because I've had it too. I'm sick of the pretense, the lying, the betrayal, the bimbos. I'm sick of covering up for you, of the whole sordid mess. Let it all come out, now, finally."

"Nooo!"

Whang!

"Andi---"I choked. I keeled forward over the table, clutching at the arrow in my heart.

Amid the pandemonium, the screams, the relentless rhythm of the 'Leens, the last words I heard were Andi's.

"And that's the real end of the mystery," she said. Her voice was fading, fading, but I still heard it.

"He never really got kicked in the balls, you know," she went on. Her voice was almost a whisper now.

"He couldn't have. You see, Vic---Victoria---was a woman."