Amazon.com description: Product Description: Excerpt: ..."That's a list of my clothing sizes. Get another list from B-Miss Wilson." Boyd nodded. Malone thought he detected a strange glint in the other man's eye. "Don't measure her yourself," he said. "Just ask her." Boyd scratched his bearded chin and nodded slowly. "All right, Ken," he said. "But if we just don't get anywhere, don't blame me." "If you get anywhere," Malone said, "I'll snatch you baldheaded. And I'll leave the beard." "I didn't mean with Miss Wilson, Ken," Boyd said. "I meant in general." He left, with the air of a man whose world has betrayed him. His back looked, to Malone, like the back of a man on his way to the scaffold or guillotine. The door closed. Now, Malone thought, who does that beard remind me of? Who do I know who knows Miss Thompson? And what difference does it make? Nevertheless, he told himself, Boyd's beard (Beard's boyd?) was really an admirable fact of nature. Ever since beards had become popular again in the mid-sixties, and FBI agents had been permitted to wear them, Malone had thought about growing one. But, somehow, it didn't seem right. Now, looking at Boyd, he began to think about the prospect again. He shrugged the notion away. There were things to do. He picked up the phone and called Information. "Can you give me," he said, "the number of the Desert Edge Sanatorium?" The crimson blob of the setting sun was already painting the desert sky with its customary purples and oranges by the time the little caravan arrived at the Desert Edge Sanatorium, a square white building several miles out of Las Vegas. Malone, in the first car, wondered briefly about the kind of patients they catered to. People driven mad by vingt-et-un or poker-dice? Neurotic chorus ponies? Gambling czars with delusions of non-persecution? Sitting in the front seat next to Boyd, he watched the unhappy San Francisco agent manipulating the wheel. In the back seat, Queen Elizabeth Thompson and Lady Barbara, the nurse, were located, and Her...