It was the Fourth of July and the only thing interesting about the assignment was the strawberry blonde I'd met that afternoon in Public Relations. I'd brought her along to keep me awake.

"You know," she smiled, looking at me through her eyelashes, "you're the laziest reporter I've ever met."

"I'd fancied myself a paragon of industry," I rejoined, glancing up at the speakers' stand, where my briefcase was unobtrusively taping the predictable phrases of Mayor Stryder. We'd spread our blanket on the grass next to the platform and, fortified with a thermos of vodka martinis, were prepared for a minor siege.

Cathy Rogers laughed. She was in her early twenties and I was roughly fifteen years her senior, a fact we both were pretending to ignore. She was still somewhat awed by me, but at least she was now beyond the "Mr. Shaffer" stage and was calling me Ted, which augured well for the future. I'm not often the subject of such breathless adulation and I was enjoying it tremendously. The floodlights of the football field glittered on Stryder's wheelchair as he neared the end of his speech. Hardly anyone was listening, and the Mayor knew it. They'd all come here to watch the fireworks. Being an astute politician, Stryder limited himself to about two hundred words and then wheeled back to his place on the stand.

The floods winked out and the Fallbrook Fire Department's annual extravaganza was underway. About three rockets later I remembered the briefcase and got up to retrieve it, turning it off in the process. Then I groped my way back to the interesting proximity of Miss Rogers.

The body was discovered when the lights went on again.

At first it was just a minor commotion on the speakers' stand. Then I heard a hysterical shriek and someone saying, in a voice tremulous with shock and incredulity, "Good Lord! He's dead!"

I spun around to see a group clustered around the shiny wheelchair, and vaulted onto the stand.

Bob Clough and Councilman Jim Davis were bending over the Mayor's body, which was slumped in the wheelchair. Clough, as coroner and mortician, had taken charge instantly.

Stryder's wife was lost in a paroxysm of hysteria, the brim of her huge picture hat flopping incongruously with each outburst; it was hard to tell if she was laughing or crying. City Treasurer Tom Richards was attempting to comfort her.

Fire Chief Dan Marsh and I, from opposite sides, scrambled onto the platform. Clough stepped away from the body to ask Marsh to summon the meatwagon; Mrs. Stryder's hysteria stopped abruptly as she beard the word.

I presented myself to Clough, who was unwrapping an antacid tablet.

"Bob," I said. "What did he die of?"

Clough looked at me blankly for a moment, popping the pill into his mouth. "Oh, it's you, Shaffer." His professional reflexes had only partly taken over; he was obviously stunned by Stryder's death. "I don't know yet. Stroke, I guess, but of course I can't tell for sure until I've made an examination. Call me in about an hour. I'll know more then."

"Sure," I said, and spent the next three minutes finding a phone booth.

Howdy Jackson, night editor at the Bulletin, was shocked at the news. "Stryder? Dead? I'm sorry to hear that, Ted."

"Howdy, you surprise me. I thought you voted against him in the last two elections."

"I did. But he was colorful and human. How'd it happen?"

I told him what little I knew, adding: "I'll come in with it later but I thought you'd like to get started."

I returned then to Cathy and noted that she'd folded the blanket and had stowed the thermos out of sight.

"It'll take maybe five minutes more," I informed her, "and then we can go. Sorry this had to happen."

"I'll wait," she said.

A knot of the curious had formed around the stand. Grabbing the briefcase, I thumbed the tape back into service and shouldered through to the stand again. Marsh assured me nervously that this was the first fatality ever to be associated with the Fourth of July celebration in the department's history. Councilman Jim Davis, who'd had the honor of introducing Stryder to the crowd, practically implied that on all future Fourths of July the flags would fly not only in observance of Independence Day but to commemorate the death of a great and courageous American.

The Mayor's widow, I noted, had been removed to a less emotionally taxing spot, Coroner Clough was missing, and Dan Marsh was presiding over the body.

Satisfied that I had all the material I'd be able to get right then, I collected Cathy and we hurried to my car, some two hundred yards away.

Apparently, the Mayor's death had dimmed the stars in Cathy's eyes, for she sat silently on her side of the seat, clutching the folded blanket in her arms, while I fought traffic.

As it was now after ten-thirty, and the Bulletin goes to bed at eleven, there was no time to return Miss Rogers to her apartment.

"Join me," I invited, "and watch a great reporter at work."

"I think I'd rather go straight home," she said. "But if you really insist..."