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one carefully, dragging a magnifying glass out of the top drawer to take a closer look at a couple of them. He said, “Hah!” He said, “Humm.” His expression gave no indication that he thought anything in the pictures the slightest bit unusual. He went over to the bank of filing cabinets near the hall door and began pulling drawers out and leafing through the files, pausing to pull up an occasional picture and compare it with one of those in his hand.
    After a couple of minutes Schiff returned to his desk and, taking a thick, stubby fountain pen from his shirt pocket, printed a list of names on a sheet of yellow paper. “I have numbered the pictures in pencil,” he told me, “very small, on the back. Here are the names to go with the pictures; all but two. That is, I have identified all but two of the people, who are, let us call them, the primary subjects of interest in these pictures.” He held up one from the back. “I assume that in this one, while you might like the name of the young man with the large member, what you are primarily interested in is the woman’s name.”
    “Mr. Brass assumes the same thing,” I told him.
    “Good. It’s on the list. Leave these two pictures with me, and I’ll see what I can do about putting names to them.” He capped the fountain pen. “A notable assemblage. I assume that these photographs were taken for purposes of blackmail. Is that so?”
    “I don’t know,” I told him.
    Schiff folded the yellow sheet neatly in half and handed it and the pack of photographs to me. He shook his head. “Imagine that it was ingestion instead of fornication that was taboo,” he said. “Then people would have illicit trysts with ham sandwiches, and elderly men would be held up to ridicule for lusting after young, shapely Bartlett pears.”
    I put the photographs in my pocket. “And sharply dressed men would accost you on street corners,” I suggested, “offering hamburgers.”
    “Just so,” he agreed. “With not
too
French, french fries.”
    * * *
    I pulled the morgue file on each name on his list and took the assortment back upstairs to Brass. He was swiveled around in his chair facing the typewriter and staring with murderous intensity at the blank page. It would not be a good time to interrupt him. I left the files and the photos neatly on a corner of his desk and retreated to my own office to ponder the possibilities. There were six names on the list:
    Bertram Childers
Gerald Garbin
Ephraim L. Wackersan II
Pass Helbine
Suzie Frienard
Stepney Partcher
    It was quite an exclusive group of photographer’s models. Bertram Childers, senior senator from New Jersey, was regarded as a long-shot Republican contender for president in the next election. He couldn’t beat Roosevelt—hell, nobody could beat Roosevelt—but if FDR happened to have a heart attack, or was caught in bed with a teenager of either sex, or was proven to have Jewish blood or be a secret agent of the pope—a couple of dozen letters a week came into the paper accusing him of one or both of these high crimes—then Childers had a good shot against anyone else the Democrats could run.
    Gerald Garbin, naked playmate number two, was a judge of the New York State Superior Court, and had a reputation for strictness and severity. Felons sentenced by Judge Garbin could expect to spend an extended time away from home.
    Ephraim L. Wackersan, Junior, president and son of the founder of Wackersan’s Department Store, our number three, was a stickler for cleanliness and uniformity. His employees were checked every morning for personal hygiene and grooming. Hair on men had to be kept short, and on women, long. No facial hair was permitted.
    Number four, Pass Helbine, millionaire philanthropist, was working on his third marriage, but aside from this exercise in sequential polygamy—a minor character flaw in this day and age, when, as Cole Porter puts it, “Anything Goes”—his life was the stuff of which hagiographies