I have it on good authority that a certain type of man, upon getting divorced, will run out to buy himself a motorcycle and will then begin dating nineteen-year-old girls. Me, I had the dent taken out of my Karmann Ghia�s fender, had the entire car repainted a muted beige that blends well with the sand on Calusa�s beaches, and didn�t date anyone at all for the six months following the final decree. My partner Frank insists this was abnormal; he is the �good authority� who offered the Honda-cum-Pubescent-Girl Theory.

But the ritual postures of �dating� are not easily recalled or reenacted by a thirty-seven-year-old man who was married to the same woman for fourteen years and who himself has a daughter not too far removed in age from all those long-legged, long-haired nineteen-year-old beauties. Joanna � long-legged, long-haired, and beautiful in her own right � has just turned thirteen and has finally begun sprouting the breasts she�s been coveting for the past eternity of her life. I love her to death, but I get to see her only every other weekend and for half the duration of her school vacations.

I�m a lawyer by trade, but it was not I who negotiated the terms of my own divorce settlement. In law, as in medicine, there are so-called specialists: the real estate lawyer, the tax lawyer, the corporation lawyer, the copyright lawyer, the matrimonial or family relations lawyer, who � in the case of Eliot McLaughlin, at least � might better have been called a criminal lawyer in that he most certainly committed a crime of enormous severity when he allowed me to sign such an onerous separation agreement in a state noted for its liberal divorce laws. Eliot kept telling me, however, that I was the guilty party. This meant that my former wife Susan, while not quite discovering me in flagrante delicto, had nonetheless learned that I was having what is euphemistically known as �an affair� with a married lady named Agatha Hemmings, who has since divorced her spouse as well and who is now living in Tampa. All water under the bridge, as they say. There are a great many bridges in Calusa, Florida, and a whole hell of a lot of water.

My partner Frank says that Calusa is not a bad place in which to live if a man is recently divorced and suddenly finds himself footloose and fancy-free. For Frank, who is a transplanted New Yorker, than which there is nothing worse, this is a tremendously generous admission. He is obliquely referring, of course, to the plenitude of widows, divorc�es, and aforementioned teenyboppers who clutter Calusa�s splendid beaches seeking solace in the sunshine and who � according to Frank � are all ripe for the taking. I would be most reluctant to take any of those nubile nineteen-year-olds; in fact, I would be terrified. What do you talk about afterward? The latest Fleetwood Mac album? As for those blue-haired, tightly girdled widows in their late sixties and early seventies, I must confess they do little to stir my middle-aged blood. Middle-aged, yes. I figure my life expectancy to be somewhere between seventy and seventy-five (else why all those widows running around?), and thirty-seven is half of seventy-four, so there you are. The divorc�es are quite another matter. In the past few months I�ve discovered that they come in all sizes, shapes, and colors and that an ever-increasing number of them are between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-five, just about right for a man my age. Frank, in his partisan New Yorker way, says it�s truly unfortunate that most of them come from the Midwest. But that�s because if you draw a line due south from Columbus, Ohio, it will go straight through the center of Calusa. Frank says that Calusa is only Michigan on the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe he�s right.

The eastern rim of Calusa Bay is jaggedly defined by U.S. 41, more familiarly known as the Tamiami Trail. It is Frank�s belief that �Tamiami� is redneck for �To Miami.� Again, he may be right; if you follow 41 south, it eventually leads to Alligator Alley, which then crosses the Florida peninsula to the east coast of the state. There are five keys off Calusa�s mainland, but only three of them � Stone Crab, Sabal, and Whisper � run north-south, paralleling the mainland shore. Flamingo Key and Lucy�s Key are situated like massive steppingstones across the water, connecting the mainland first to Sabal and then to Stone Crab � which is where Victoria Miller was singing in the lounge of the newest restaurant on the beach.

It was one of those January nights rare for Calusa, eternally and extravagantly promised to the tourists, but only infrequently materializing. During Calusa�s long winter months the mean average temperature is sixty-two degrees, seventeen on the Celsius scale, but this only means that the daytime temperatures hover in the mid-fifties, much too chilly for swimming in ocean or unheated pool, and at night they sometimes plunge into the lower thirties, reason enough for the orange-growers to run scrambling for their smudge pots. But today the weather had been exactly what the snowbirds pray for � a combination of clear blue sky, brilliant sunshine, and temperatures in the high seventies. As I parked the Ghia in the lot behind the restaurant, a soft balmy breeze wafted in off the Gulf and a wisp of cloud brushed past the face of the moon; the blacktop underfoot was suddenly awash in molten silver. There was the sound of piano music in the distance. I began walking toward it.

The Greenery had opened at the start of the season in October. Each year in Calusa a dozen or more new restaurants make their bid for longevity, but if one of the dozen survives by the end of the season it�s a miracle of no small proportions. My partner Frank says that a class act hasn�t got a chance in Calusa; the migratory midwestern �clods,� as he calls them, are looking for places advertising family dinners at $4.95. The Greenery was a class act indeed, and by Frank�s reasoning it should have closed a month after it opened. The food and service were excellent, the cuisine Continental (certain death in a town where travelers driving campers are searching for pizzerias or hamburger joints), and the decor was nothing short of stunning, having been designed by a client of ours named Charles Hoggs, who was also responsible for the mall downtown at Riverpoint. The restaurant had, at one time, in fact been a nursery, and Charlie had used the existing greenhouse as the entrance, adding the lounge and main dining room behind it as a series of similarly glass-enclosed rooms. The Greenery was never open for lunch, so glaring sunlight wasn�t a problem. The owners had hired the services of a woman named Catherine Brenet, with whom I had had an unpleasant professional experience not too long ago, and it was she who kept the various rooms hung with fresh plants delivered on an almost-daily basis from her shop, Le Fleur de Lis, next door to the Royal Palms Hotel downtown on South Bayview. I hoped the Greenery made it � if only for Vicky�s sake.

She had sung hard rock back in the mid-sixties, but the music coming from inside the place now, louder as I approached the greenhouse entrance, was the sort of stuff the big bands used to play back in the late thirties and early forties, a little before either her time or mine. I myself was born in 1943, a year after my father went off to fight World War II. Actually, he did no fighting at all. As an attorney practicing before the Illinois bar, he was assigned immediately to the Judge Advocate General�s Office and spent most of the war as a commissioned officer at Fort Bragg. When he was discharged in 1945, it was with the rank of lieutenant colonel. The music I listened to as a teenager in Chicago was a music in transition from pop to rock. My heroes and heroines (in addition to Elvis, of course) were groups with names that by today�s standards sound demure if not downright prissy: The Elegants, The Everly Brothers, The Platters, The Champs, Danny and the Juniors, and so on. Victoria Miller did not erupt onto the scene until rock had taken a firmer hold, in 1965, when she had just turned twenty and I was twenty-two and studying law in my father�s footsteps at Northwestern. By that time I was presumably too mature, determined, and career-minded to notice any longer what was happening in the world of popular music; at our initial meeting three weeks ago, when Vicky mentioned the title of her first big-hit, million-copy, gold-record best-seller fifteen years back, I was hard put to remember it. The title, incidentally, was �Frenzy.� The name of her backup group was Wheat, and the song � later extracted as a hit single � appeared on an album pressed by Regal Records, a firm now defunct but which at the time had its headquarters in New Orleans.

There was a poster-sized photograph of Vicky in the lobby, on one of those wooden tripod affairs that look like artists� easels. The picture had undoubtedly been taken by a professional photographer, which meant that the long black hair framing Vicky�s face seemed altogether too sleek, the lips cradling her smile too glossy, her dark eyes sparkling with those phony little pupil-pinpoints of light professional photographers are taught to capture on film in order to make their subjects appear �alive.� She seemed, in the photograph, almost an abstraction of herself, all character smoothed and polished out of her face, as bland as bleached flour. She seemed, too, a great deal younger than her almost thirty-five years, and I wondered if the picture hadn�t been taken back in the heyday of her career, when she was enjoying the heady success of three gold-record albums in as many years. The script lettering on the photo�s white background announced: NOW APPEARING: VICTORIA MILLER, RECORDING ARTIST. She had not been a �recording artist� for almost twelve years now. She had opened here at the Greenery on Friday night, and this was Sunday, but I had spent the weekend with my daughter, Joanna, sailing down to Sanibel and back on my boat The Windbag � one of the few material possessions I�d salvaged from my marriage � and had dropped her off at Susan�s only half an hour ago. This was my first opportunity to catch Vicky�s act, and I was eagerly looking forward to it.

It was ten minutes to nine when a hostess in a long black gown slit to the thigh on the right leg led me to a table near the bandstand. In Calusa many of the �family� restaurants offered early dinners at discount rates to senior citizens. The codgers, as I used to call them whenever I wished to annoy my former wife, also enjoyed these discount rates in Calusa�s various movie theaters; catch the five o�clock show, and they let you in for $1.50. The Greenery, however, was a restaurant striving for a clientele somewhat more lofty than all those doddering ladies in their wedgies and their hapless mates in Hawaiian-print sports shirts. The dinner hour started at seven here. Vicky was doing one show each night, at nine o�clock, presumably timed to catch those diners who wanted an after-dinner drink in the lounge, or those customers intent on heavier drinking in the hours before midnight. There was only a handful of people in the room when I took my seat at the table; I did not consider this a very encouraging sign.

Almost every restaurant, bar, or lounge in Calusa offered some sort of �live� entertainment, but usually this consisted of a bearded kid strumming a guitar and singing either folk songs or �a little tune I wrote last summer while hitching through the beautiful mountains of North Carolina.� The man playing the piano in the glassed-in lounge, however, was a musician of some note (no pun intended), who had pursued a career as a concert pianist in New York before retiring and building a home on Sabal Key here in Calusa. He often accompanied visiting guest artists at the Helen Gottlieb Memorial Auditorium, and had previously tickled the ivories for the likes of Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills, and Marian Anderson. Apparently the Greenery was sparing no expense in trying to lure the dinner crowd from its many competitors; January was high season in Calusa, and if they didn�t make the big bucks now and in the several months to follow, they might very well be out of business the day after Easter.

At nine sharp the lights dimmed. Over the loudspeaker system a voice said, �Ladies and gentlemen...� Miss Victoria Miller.� Vicky appeared rather like an apparition in shimmering white, caught in the circle of a follow spot that led her relentlessly onto the small bandstand. She touched her accompanist briefly on the shoulder in greeting and, head ducked shyly, stepped swiftly into the curve of the grand piano. She lifted her head and tossed her long black hair. She smiled radiantly at the audience. The spot faded, to be replaced by a cool blue beam of light that turned her gown to glare ice. The piano introduction lingered. Vicky seemed to catch her breath. She brought the microphone to her lips and began to sing.

In all truth, she was awful.

My partner Frank calls Summerville and Hope the Old Curiosity Shop of the legal profession, this because we handle a great variety of cases and do not specialize in any one branch of the law. There are three lawyers in our office � Frank, myself, and a young man named Karl Jennings, who�d been admitted to the bar only a bit more than a year ago. Normally, we divide the work among us. If we find ourselves coping with a case requiring skills one or another of us doesn�t possess, we will turn the case over to an outside shop. Rarely will we handle litigation of any sort, preferring to defer in such matters to attorneys who regularly handle court work. The firm employs as well a receptionist, a file clerk, and a secretarial pool consisting of two secretaries shared by Frank, Karl, and me. Only once in our history have we been involved in a criminal case, the one we still refer to around here as the �Goldilocks� case. I was about to become personally involved in another one that Monday morning, but I didn�t yet know it.

The day started with an unannounced visit from a certifiable nut named Louis Dumont, whom I did not at first recognize as a lunatic. He arrived at ten minutes past nine, while I was still reading the morning mail. Cynthia buzzed from outside and said there was a man named Louis Dumont here to see me. I asked her to come in for a minute. Cynthia Huellen is a native Floridian with long blond hair and a glorious tan that she works at almost fanatically; never a weekend goes by that does not find Cynthia on a beach or a boat. She is easily the most beautiful person in the law offices of Summerville and Hope, twenty-four years old, and employed by us as a receptionist. Frank and I keep telling her to quit the job and go to law school instead. She already has a B.A. from the University of South Florida, and we would take her into the firm the minute she passed her bar exams. But each time we raise the possibility, Cynthia grins and says, �No, I don�t want the hassle of school again.� She is one of the nicest young people I know, and she is blessed besides with a keen mind, an even-tempered disposition, a fine sense of humor, and the kind of clean good looks that went out of style in the sixties. If I were twenty-eight, I would ask her to marry me, even considering the possibility that this might not sit too well with a daughter only eleven years younger than she is. The moment the door closed behind her, I asked, �Who�s Louis Dumont?�

�He says it�s about the Cummings property. You look terrible.�

�Thank you. Does he have an appointment?�

�No.�

�It�s nine o�clock in the morning, are you telling me he just walked in without an appointment?�

�It�s nine-fifteen, and yes, that�s what he did.�

�All right, bring me the Cummings folder, give me a minute to look at it, and then send him in.�

Louis Dumont was a man in his mid-fifties, I guessed, with a complexion that would have seemed pallid even in Minnesota but which made him appear positively moribund here in Florida. He was almost entirely bald, and he had a pencil-line mustache under his nose. His deep-set, restless brown eyes should have provided the first clue to his instability, but it was only a little past nine in the morning, and I wasn�t paying that much attention after less than four hours of sleep. He stood silently before my desk, looking me over, a short man in a suit too heavy and too somberly hued for Florida. I guess he was waiting for me to offer him a seat. I offered him one, and he took it. He spoke very slowly and very calmly, deceiving me completely. He told me that ten years ago the property in question was owned by his stepfather, Peter Landon, a widower who died intestate, leaving the building to Louis himself and his stepbrother John.

�Uh-huh,� I said. As he spoke, I was rummaging through the Cummings folder again, looking for the probate record on Peter Landon�s estate.

�So you see,� he said, �the building still belongs to me and my stepbrother.�

I now had the probate record in my hands. I read it over silently and looked across the desk. �According to this,� I said, not for a moment realizing what violent effect my words would have, �Peter Landon died leaving only one child, a son named...�

Dumont leaped to his feet as though I�d touched him with a cattle prod. I saw those eyes then, burning unpredictably bright in his head. �You�re just like all the rest!� he shouted, and then put both hands flat on the desk and leaned on his arms, the elbows locked, and yelled in a shower of spittle, �Why won�t you recognize my claim? Why are you trying to cheat me out of my inheritance? You fucking sheeny Jew cocksucker shyster, I want what�s coming to me!�

I�m not a Jew, and I have never sucked even a tiny little cock in all my life, and to the best of my knowledge I�m an honest practitioner of the law. But I was scared to death that if I denied any of Dumont�s accusations he would lean farther across the desk and strangle me with his bare hands.

�Mr. Dumont,� I said, �I�m basing my response only on what the probate record...�

�What the fuck does the probate record know?� he shouted. �Does it tell you how Peter took in an orphan and raised him as his own?�

�Well, no, it...�

�I was that orphan!� he shouted.

�Mr. Dumont, please try to...�

�He raised me as his own son! And when he died, he left that property to me and that rotten bastard John!�

�Well, I...� I can find no record of that, Mr. Dumont.�

�Records!� he shouted.

�That�s all we have to go on,� I said. �If the records...�

�Records!� he shouted again.

�Mr. Dumont, however close you may have felt to this man who took you in as an orphan...�

�He did!�

�Nor am I denying it. But however close you may have felt to him and the rest of the family...�

�Not that bastard John!�

�Not John, of course not John, but Mr. Landon himself perhaps, and perhaps his wife when she was alive.�

�I never met his wife! What the fuck are you talking about?�

�My point is that in the absence of other evidence...�

�Evidence!�

�... I�m afraid you have no claim as an heir to Peter Landon. In any event, sir, the property has changed hands four times since Mr. Landon died, and the present owner�s obligation...�

�Obligation!� he shouted. �Don�t tell me about obligation! I know all about those fucking sales and conveyances, I know all about titles and real estate, too, I know all about them, and I know my rights. If I have to bring an ejectment action to get my share of that million dollars...�

�Mr. Dumont, we�re selling the property for three hundred thous��

�It�s worth a million, and I want my share! And I�ll tell you something else, you fucking sheeny Jew cocksucker shyster, I�ll kill any lawyer or judge who tries to keep me from getting what�s mine!�

�Mr. Dumont,� I said, �you�re beginning to annoy me. On behalf of my client, I�ll offer you five hundred dollars to sign a release and a quitclaim deed. Otherwise, we�ll simply disregard your claim. What do you say? Do you want the five hundred?�

�I want my share of the million!�

�Your share of the million is five hundred dollars, take it or leave it.�

�I�ll take it,� Dumont said.

�Fine.�

�I�ll take it, you cocksucker.�

�You go wait outside while I have the papers and the check drawn.�

�I want it in cash,� Dumont said.

�No, you�ll take it by check. I want a record of payment in settle��

�Records!� he shouted.

�Go sit outside,� I told him. �And watch your language in front of that young girl out there.�

�You cocksucker,� he said, but he left the office.

That was the beginning of my Monday. Ten minutes later I got a call from a man who owed nine hundred dollars to another of my clients, a surgeon who�d performed a gall bladder operation for him. The man�s name was Gerald Bannister. He started the conversation by saying, �What�s this all about?�

�It�s about nine hundred dollars, Mr. Bannister.�

�So what�s the matter? Ralph thinks I�m not going to pay him?�

�If by Ralph you�re referring to Dr. Ungerman, yes, he�s afraid that all he�s going to get out of this is your gall bladder.�

�Ha-ha, that�s very funny,� Bannister said. �Of course I�m going to pay him. Tell him to stop dunning me, okay? My gall bladder, that�s very funny. What�s he got it in a jar or something?�

�Mr. Bannister, when do you plan to pay Dr. Ungerman?�

�I�ll pay him, don�t worry.�

�I am worried. When will you pay him?�

�I can�t pay him now.�

�When can you pay him?�

�I can�t pay it all right now is what I mean.�

�How much of it can you pay right now?�

�A hundred.�

�What about the remaining eight hundred?�

�I�ll pay him a hundred a month.�

�That�s not good enough.�

�It�s the best I can do.�

�You�ll have to do better.�

�I can�t do better than two hundred a month.�

�You didn�t say two hundred, you said a hundred.�

�I meant two hundred.�

�A hundred now, and two hundred a month for the next four months, is that it?�

�That�s it.�

�All right, I�ll need you here to sign the notes. And remember, Mr. Bannister, you�re the one who�s setting this schedule...�

�I know I am.�

�I�m simply warning you that any future delinquency won�t be tolerated.�

�Thanks for the warning.�

�I�ll prepare the notes. When can you come here to sign them?�

�Next week sometime.�

�Make it tomorrow.�

�I can�t make it tomorrow.�

�When can you make it?�

�Thursday.�

�All right, nine o�clock Thursday.�

�One o�clock Thursday.�

�One o�clock, fine.�

�I never been dunned like this in my life,� Bannister said, and hung up.

It was almost ten when Cynthia buzzed to say that Frank wanted to see me in his office. There are people who say that Frank Summerville and I look alike. I cannot see any resemblance. I�m six feet two inches tall and weigh a hundred and ninety pounds. Frank�s a half-inch under six feet, and he weighs a hundred and sixty, which he watches like a hawk. We both have dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank�s face is rounder than mine. Frank says there are only two types of faces in the world � pig faces and fox faces. He classifies himself as a pig face and me as a fox face. There is nothing derogatory about either label: they are only intended to be descriptive. Frank first told me about his designation system more than a year ago. Ever since, I�ve been unable to look at anyone without automatically categorizing him as either pig or fox.

He took one look at me now and said, �Look what the cat dragged in.� I did not believe I looked all that awful. It was true that I�d had very little sleep last night, but I had felt vaguely refreshed after showering and shaving this morning, and moreover I was wearing one of my best suits, an English tropical I�d had hand-tailored for me at Chipp in New York. That was before the divorce. Since the divorce I have not been able to afford any hand-tailored suits.

�The Downings are coming in about those wills,� Frank said. �I don�t know what to advise them, Matt. I hate to be put in the middle of this.�

�What�s the problem?�

�They�re taking a six-month cruise around the world, and they want to sign new wills before they take off. But Sally�s reluctant to make her brother-in-law the alternate executor of the will...�

�You mean if Howard predeceases her?�

�Right. She doesn�t like her brother-in-law, plain and simple. She feels that if Howard dies first and then she goes, her no-good brother-in-law will make a mess of the estate.�

�Has she any reason to believe that?�

�The man pissed away his half of the fortune Howard�s father left them. Sally�s afraid he�ll do the same with their estate once both of them are dead.�

�So? Who does she want as alternate executor?�

�Her brother.�

�Then what�s the problem?�

�He�s no better than Howard�s brother. A two-bit gambler from what I understand, running up to Miami every weekend to play the dogs or the frontons.�

�So where�s King Solomon?� I said.

�They�ll be here in twenty minutes. What do I tell them?�

�Would she accept one of us as executor?�

�She might.�

�Or a bank? What�s their bank?�

�First Union.�

�They�ve got a good trust department, why don�t you suggest them?�

�She�s dead set on her brother.�

�How does Howard feel about it?�

�He�s holding out for his brother.�

�Then tell them to cancel the goddamn trip,� I said.

�I�ll suggest First Union.�

The buzzer on his desk sounded. Frank clicked on.

�Yes?� he said.

�There�s a policeman here to see Mr. Hope,� Cynthia said.

�You expecting the fuzz?� Frank asked.

�No,� I said.

He was waiting in the reception area, a beefy young man with china-blue eyes and sandy-colored hair. He introduced himself as Sergeant Halloway and politely asked if I would mind coming along with him.

�What for?� I said.

�You�re Matthew Hope, aren�t you?� he said.

�I�m Matthew Hope,� I said.

�Mr. Hope,� he said, �a woman named Victoria Miller was found dead early this morning by the colored lady come to clean her house. People live across the street said a tan Karmann Ghia bearing the Florida license plate HOPE-1 was still parked in deceased�s driveway there at three in the morning. Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles says that�s your car, Mr. Hope. Also, it seems a baby-sitter named Charlene Whitlaw was introduced to a man named Mr. Hope in deceased�s house at around midnight last night, which puts you at the scene of the crime for at least three hours. So what they want to do is ask you some questions is all. You think you�d like to come with me?�

I could not shake the feeling that I was at least partially responsible for Vicky�s death and her daughter�s abduction. I did not even know little Allison�s last name, and this oversight caused in me a remorse almost as deep as the lingering guilt. My partner Frank maintains that the three guiltiest minority groups on the face of the earth are Jews, Italians, and Divorced Men. I cannot speak for either of the two ethnic groups, but I can certainly affirm that guilt played a large part in my signing the settlement agreement proposed by Susan�s attorney and later offered to me by my own attorney, Eliot McLaughlin. Susan has never allowed me to forget the fact that I was �whoring around,� as she puts it, with a woman crazy enough to have attempted suicide over me, and that if it had not been for my �adolescent behavior� my daughter would not now be shuttling back and forth between two homes but instead would be enjoying a bona fide family relationship �like all the other little girls in Calusa.� Susan forgets that the divorce rate in Calusa is roughly what it is in the rest of these United States: forty percent of all married couples get divorced here annually. Most of my daughter�s close friends, in fact, are the victims of � well, there I go. Victims. It is difficult to resist Susan�s propaganda, especially when each time I arrive to pick up Joanna she will say, �It�s your father,� in a tone of voice that makes it clear she is really saying, �It�s your son-of-a-bitch, no-good, philandering father.� Frank says this feeling of guilt will never pass. He tells me he knows men who have been divorced for ten or more years who still dream nightly about their former wives. I have dreamt about Susan only once since the divorce last June. That Monday morning, as I left the Public Safety Building and began walking the ten blocks to our offices on Heron and Vaughan, I had the feeling I would be dreaming about Vicky and about what had happened last night for a long, long time to come.

It was going to be another beautiful day. The digital clock on top of the Southern Florida Bank and Trust Company building flashed the hour � 11:20 a.m.�� and then the temperature: it was seventy-two degrees already, and the sun was still forty minutes from its zenith. The sky behind the building was cloudless and blue; the early morning mist that had been there when I�d made the drive downtown in Sergeant Halloway�s radio motor patrol car had burned off completely. In Calusa the cops patrol one man to a car, and they hang their hats on a hook over the visor on the passenger side. From the rear the hanging circle of the hat looks like a person�s head and creates the illusion of a second officer in the car. The illusion works only with the tourists; any resident of Calusa, including the thieves, knows there is only one cop in that car. As I waited for the light to change in front of the Harris Brothers Department Store on U.S. 301, a patrol car went by. The driver�s hat was hanging as usual over the passenger seat. The driver turned to look at me, and so strongly did my sense of guilt return that for a moment I believed there actually were two patrolmen in that car, and that both of them were closely scrutinizing me. The light changed to green. I crossed the street in the hot morning sun.

There was yet another feeling, almost as difficult to dispel as the one of guilt. I could not forget that when Vicky came out of her house last night to tell me her daughter was coming down with something, I�d immediately thought she was lying. I tried to rationalize this now as I had last night. I�d been disappointed, I�d been rejected (or so it seemed at the time), and so I�d chosen to believe that Vicky was inventing an excuse to spare my feelings: she hadn�t wanted to be alone with me at my place, and a concocted cough and attendant fever seemed the easiest way out of it. But that was before she�d invited me in, that was before we�d shared the joints and the cognac and the tumultuous acrobatics in her bed. So if she hadn�t been lying as a way out of prolonging our evening together, why had she been lying?

She had entered that house promising she�d be gone only as long as it took �to get the grass and to look in on Allie.� Three or four minutes later she had returned with what I felt certain was a false story. It seemed reasonable to assume that in those three or four minutes she had learned something that had caused her to change her mind about leaving her young daughter alone in there with a sitter. It seemed further reasonable to assume that fifteen-year-old Charlene Whitlaw might know just what that something was.

Unless a kid is lucky enough to get into Calusa�s exclusive public high school �for the gifted,� officially called Bedloe by the School Board but snidely referred to as �Bedlam� by the parents of children who have not passed the stringent entrance exams; or unless a kid is rich enough to afford one of the area�s two private preparatory schools � St. Mark�s in Calusa itself, and the Redding Academy in nearby Manakawa � then the secondary school educational choices are limited to three schools, and the selection is further limited by that part of the city in which the student happens to live. It would be nice to report that white parents in Calusa dance joyously in the streets when faced with the possibility of their children attending Arthur Cozlitt High, which has an unusually high percentage of black students. This, alas, is not the case. I have had at least a dozen irate parents trotting into my office in the past several years, asking if there was not some sort of legal action they might take to effect a transfer from Cozlitt to either Jefferson or Tate, each with a more normally balanced ratio of black to white students.

Calusa is a city of a hundred and fifty thousand people, a third of them black, a tiny smattering of them Cubans who have drifted over to the West Coast from Miami. There used to be a restaurant called Cuban Mike�s on Main Street, and it made the best sandwiches in town, but it closed last August when someone fire-bombed the place. The whites blamed the blacks; the blacks blamed the rednecks; and the handful of Cubans in town kept their mouths shut lest fiery crosses appear on their lawns one dark night. One of these days Calusa is going to have a racial conflagration that will blow the town sky-high; it is long overdue. In the meantime everyone here pretends that this is still the year 1844; I think Frank and I may be the only people in all Calusa who notice that at any performance given at the Helen Gottlieb, only half a dozen people in the audience will be black � in an auditorium that seats two thousand.

Charlene Whitlaw lived on Citrus Lane in the southeastern part of the city, which meant that she normally would have attended Cozlitt High. But a call to the School Board � on the brief stop I made at my office � garnered the information that she was a student in her sophomore year at the highly prized Bedloe on Tantamount and Crane. I told Cynthia I would be going there before lunch and would be back in the office at three, in time for my only afternoon appointment.

Cynthia asked me what had happened at the police station. I told her, and she promised to fill Frank in when he returned from Globe Title and Guaranty. The Ghia had been baking in the sun all morning; the black vinyl seats were hot to the touch. I drove southward on Oleander, an avenue paralleling 41, but not as well known by the tourists, and then turned east on Tarpon and began a series of jigs and jogs in an attempt to avoid traffic lights; full-stop signs were easier to cope with in Calusa, and left turns onto busy highways were to be avoided at all costs.

It was a little past twelve-thirty when I pulled into Bedloe�s parking lot on Tantamount. The kids were all outside eating lunch in the sunshine. I asked a bosomy seventeen-year-old in cutoffs and a tight pink sweater where the main office was, and she directed me to a low, white-stucco building in a cluster of similar buildings that sprawled leisurely across the campus. On the playing field a dozen or more boys and girls were yelling too loud as they played a game of pick-up volley ball. A fussy secretary with a pencil in her hair told me that Charlene Whitlaw was at present on her lunch hour � as was every other Bedloe student � but that she was scheduled for an English class in Building Number Four, the one with the purple door, at one o�clock. Belatedly, she asked me who I was. I told her I was Charlene�s uncle.

The kids began ambling back to their classes at ten minutes before the hour. Charlene was wearing the same blue jeans and man�s tailored shirt she�d had on last night; I wondered if she�d slept in her clothes. She recognized me the moment she came around the side of the building, and a frightened look darted into her eyes. She had, after all, been interviewed by the police sometime early this morning, and it was she who�d told them a man named Mr. Hope had come into Vicky�s house last night at eleven-thirty. She must have thought for a moment that I was there to do to her what I had done to Vicky, or at least what she assumed I�d done to Vicky.

�Charlene,� I said at once, �it�s all right, I just want to ask you some questions.�

�I didn�t tell them anything,� she said, and began backing away from me.

�I�ve already been to see the police...� �

�Just your name,� she said.

�Yes, that�s okay, I�m a lawyer,� I said, �there�s no problem.�

Telling people you�re a lawyer seems to have a soothing effect on them, in direct contradiction to the inescapable fact that the nation�s prisons are full of hundreds of lawyers who have committed unspeakably heinous crimes. My words seemed to calm Charlene. She took a tentative step closer.

�I didn�t think you did it,� she whispered.

�You�re right, I didn�t.�

�Was it Mr. Bloom you talked to?�

�Yes.�

�He scared me,� Charlene said.

�He shouldn�t have, he�s a very nice man.�

�It was terrible what happened, wasn�t it?�

�Awful.�

�Who do you think did it?�

�I don�t know.�

�The man who called?�

�What man?� I said at once.

�The one who called last night.�

�Did he give you his name, Charlene?�

�No. He just said to tell Vicky he�d be stopping by to collect.�

�Collect what?�

�He didn�t say.�

�Did he say money, or...�

�No.�

�Or...� anything at all? What the something might be that he was coming to collect?�

�No, he just said, �I�ll be stopping by to collect,� that�s all.�

�When was this, Charlene?�

�Well, actually he called three times.�

�Last night?�

�Yes. The first time was just after the taxi picked up Vicky to take her to the Greenery. That was about...�

�Yes, what time was... ?�

�About ten to eight, just after I got there.�

�But she�d already left when he called, is that right?�

�Oh, sure, she had to sing at nine, you know.�

�Yes, I know that. What did he say that first time?�

�He just said he wanted to talk to Vicky, please, and I told him she wasn�t there just then. I never tell people who call when the people I�m sitting for�ll be back. That�s a bad mistake. I saw this movie once where a person who�s planning to rob a house makes a call and the sitter answers and he finds out from her when everybody�ll be home and all, and that way he knows there�s just the sitter in the house, you see. So he can come rob it.�

�Uh-huh. When did he call the next time?�

�About ten-thirty.�

�And what�d you tell him then?�

�I told him she was out walking the dog just then, and couldn�t come to the phone. She doesn�t even have a dog, but I didn�t want him to know she�d be back late �cause then he�d know I was all alone in the house. With just Allison, you know. Who�s only six, you know.�

�And the last time?�

�When he called again, you mean?�

�Yes.�

�About a quarter past eleven, just before you guys got back. That was when he said to tell her he�d be stopping by to collect.�

�But he didn�t say what that might have been? Money, or trash, or laundry, or...�

�No.�

�And he didn�t leave his name? Or a number where he could be reached?�

�No. I asked him who should I say called, but he said to just give her the message.�

�What did he sound like, Charlene?�

�Gee, I don�t know.�

�Well, what kind of voice did he have? Did he sound young or old or... ?�

�Gee, I really couldn�t say. I mean, he didn�t sound really old, you know. I mean, not like you or my father.�

�Uh-huh.�

�But he didn�t sound like a teenager, either, if that�s what you mean.�

A loud bell sounded somewhere on campus. The kids lounging around outside began filing in through the purple door. The doors on the other buildings, I now noticed, were all painted in different colors. This was a school for the gifted, but it was apparently necessary to color-code the doors so that the students could find their classrooms. My partner Frank, in his inimitable fashion, once said that a school for the gifted in the State of Florida was the equivalent of a 600 school in New York City. A 600 school, I think, is a school for slow learners.

�I have to go to class now,� Charlene said.

�Just a few more questions,� I said.

�Okay, but really I do have to...�

�Was Allison coughing a lot last night?�

�Allison? No. Who said she was coughing?�

�Did you give her some Nyquil to put her to sleep?�

�No. I gave her a glass of milk and some graham crackers at ten o�clock. Vicky said she could stay up late to watch her favorite show on television, but that she had to go to bed right after it. So I gave her the milk and graham crackers and put her to bed.�

�But no Nyquil.�

�No.�

�And no coughing.�

�None at all.�

�Did you tell Vicky you thought Allison might have a fever?�

�No, why would I have told her that?�

�Did you tell her about those various phone calls?�

�Oh, sure, of course.�

�Charlene,� I said, �thank you. You�d better hurry up, you don�t want to get a late slip.�

�Did they have late slips when you went to school, too?� she asked, as if amazed that such a practice had been in effect during the days of the Holy Roman Empire.

�Yes,� I said. �Charlene, thanks a lot.�

�I hope they get him,� she said.

She seemed not to know that little Allison had been abducted. I did not tell her otherwise. I watched as she opened the purple door and went into the air-conditioned classroom, and then I walked back to where I�d parked the Ghia, wondering if I should tell Morris Bloom what I�d learned about the mysterious phone calls last night. As Bloom had informed me, though, this was not a movie. I decided to share with him everything I knew.

He was not too terribly appreciative.

He told me, first of all, that this was a homicide he was investigating here, not to mention a kidnapping, and that whereas he could maybe understand my wanting to follow up on something I thought might be pertinent to the investigation, he nonetheless would hate to think that an amateur (the word rankled) by conducting his own investigation might somehow give the killer an edge he certainly didn�t need. He reminded me that in accordance with Section 1201, Subsection (b) of the Federal Kidnapping Statute, the failure to release a victim within twenty-four hours after he�d been unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnapped, abducted, or carried away would create a rebuttable presumption that such person had been transported in interstate or foreign commerce, which meant that the FBI could be called in on this at nine o�clock tomorrow morning, which would be twenty-four hours from when the maid had found Victoria Miller dead and her daughter missing. Until that time the case was the sole province and responsibility of the Calusa Police Department, which would get all kinds of heat if something should happen to that little girl, something maybe as bad as what had happened to her mother.

�Now, Counselor,� he said (and the word �Counselor� rankled, too, because it was more often than not used sarcastically, even among contesting attorneys in a courtroom), �we do not know why this man � if it was a man � took that child. In most kidnappings there is a ransom motive involved, but you don�t kill a woman and then hope to get ransom money from her. We�ve learned from the murder victim�s father � and I�m telling you all this so you can understand my position, Counselor � a man named Dwayne Miller here in Manakawa, that his daughter�s former husband is a man named Anthony Konig who lives in New Orleans, and we�ve been trying to reach him all day to determine whether the killer has contacted him with a ransom demand. He would seem the only likely person to contact, unless the killer thinks this Dwayne Miller is also a candidate, in which case...�

�Did you ask Miller whether he�d been contacted?�

�Yes, and we�ve also set up equipment at his house to handle a trace, should anybody call there. He understands this is a matter of life and death, Counselor, and he loves his little granddaughter and wouldn�t want any harm to come to her, so he knows better than to talk about this to anyone, even though the tendency in a tragedy is to share it with neighbors and friends. The present strategy up here is to cool the kidnapping, wait for the man who took that kid to make the first move. We�ve informed the papers and the television stations in Tampa and Manakawa about the murder, but we haven�t said word one about the kid being missing. We want the killer to make the first move, you understand? Maybe he thinks we don�t even know yet that a child was involved here, maybe he thinks we think she was off visiting a friend or something, and we don�t yet know she�s gone. We want him to make the call, either to the little girl�s father, this Anthony Konig who I now got the New Orleans cops trying to locate so we can get the telephone company in there, in his house there, to install their stuff, or else to the kid�s grandfather, who�s ready and waiting to keep the guy talking forever, or else to us, or the newspapers � which God forbid I hope he doesn�t call because they would like nothing better than to get involved here and maybe screw up the whole thing even if it means endangering the kid�s life. We�re going to be ready and waiting when he calls, if he calls, and we�ve got the edge if he thinks none of us know anything and he has to explain it all at great length while the phone company is trying to trace the call.

�So, Counselor,� he said, �it would be nice to have your word that from this minute on you won�t be running all over the city of Calusa questioning anybody you think might have some connection with this case, as I would hate to have the blood of a six-year-old girl on my hands if I were you, Counselor.�

�I thought this wasn�t a movie,� I said.

�It isn�t.�

�Then stop talking to me as if I�m a fucking Los Angeles private eye.�

There was a long silence on the line.

�Okay,� Bloom said at last, �I�m sorry.� He was silent again. �I don�t like kidnappings,� he said. �I�ve got a daughter of my own.�

�So have I.�

�Okay, I said I was sorry, I�m sorry, okay? But please do me the favor, okay? Stay out of it. We already knew about those phone calls last night, the sitter told us all about them when we talked to her this morning. Okay, Mr. Hope? Please?�

�Okay,� I promised, �I�ll stay out of it.�

But that was before Anthony Konig came to visit me at four o�clock that afternoon.

My three o�clock appointment was with a client whose next-door neighbor�s driveway was encroaching on his property by a full two feet. He didn�t want to force the man, whom he genuinely liked, to rip up the driveway, but at the same time he wanted to know if there was any danger in permitting the encroachment to continue. I told him there was indeed danger of the neighbor�s later asserting rights to the land by virtue of the location and continued use of the driveway. I told him we would have to prepare an agreement that would permit the encroachment but wherein the neighbor would agree not to assert any rights in the future. He seemed doubtful. I assured him everything would be fine and there was nothing to worry about. He still looked doubtful when he left at three-fifteen.

In the next forty-five minutes I placed or answered a dozen phone calls to or from: 1) a man in the Mortgage Department at Florida National who informed me that a former client of ours named Jonas Carlton had just sold a house subject to their mortgage and that the mortgage called for the entire note to be paid upon sale or conveyance of the property; the bank now wanted to call the note due; 2) Jonas Carlton, first at his office and then at 3) his home on Sabal Key. I got no answer at either place. It occurred to me that he might have moved in the time we�d handled the original purchase of the house for him, so I called 4) Florida National to ask if they had a number for him that might be different from the one in my files. Indeed, they had. I then called 5) Jonas Carlton again, in Manakawa this time, seventeen miles to the south of Calusa. I got no answer there, either, so I made a note to try him again in the morning. That was when the phone rang with 6) a man from the Internal Revenue Service who told me that a client of mine was claiming a two-thousand-dollar tax reduction on the purchase of a new home in 1978, and could I provide them with a certificate from the builder, stating that the transaction complied with the requirements for the reduction. I told him I could, and then buzzed Cynthia to ask for the file. She informed me that I had a call waiting from 7) a man whose name she couldn�t pronounce. That was because the man�s name was Kajchrzak. He spelled it for me, and then said that he had been born Frederick Wilson, but that he had been adopted by the Kajchrzak family when he was just an infant and had been known as Frederick Kajchrzak for the past thirty-four years. He now wanted to change his name back to Frederick Wilson, but his adoptive parents resented his lack of loyalty to the family name and had told him they would oppose any application for change. I asked him to come see me, and we made an appointment for the following week. Cynthia buzzed again to say she had the file I wanted. I asked her to come in. She put the file on my desk, and told me that another call was waiting on three. This one was from 8) a client named Arthur Lorring who told me his son had been charged with doing ninety miles an hour in a clearly posted thirty-mile-an-hour zone on a motorcycle with a young lady on the back seat. I told him I suspected this might be considered something more than a simple speeding violation, and gave him the name of a colleague who might handle such a matter better than Summerville and Hope. I then called 9) Benny Weiss, who is a criminal lawyer. I told him to expect a call from Lorring and filled him in on what the kid had done. He confirmed that this would be considered a violation of Chapter 316.192, Reckless Driving, and that Lorring�s son would undoubtedly go to jail for ninety days and would be lucky if he got off without paying a fine as well; in Benny�s opinion, the kid deserved ninety days. I then returned a call from 10) a client of ours who was buying a liquor store, and who had called while I was out to say that the seller�s attorney wanted the value of the liquor inventory to be determined by the shelf price less twenty percent. I told him I wanted the book value to be the basis for determining the value of the inventory, since this was the customary method, and suggested that I call the seller�s attorney. He said I should go ahead, so I called 11) Abraham Pollock, known in the profession as Honest Abe, and told him the retail price was unacceptable to us. He moaned and groaned and said, �Have a heart, Matthew,� more times than I could count, but he finally agreed on the wholesale price plus twenty percent. The call I made just before Cynthia buzzed to announce Mr. Konig was to 12) my dear daughter Joanna.

Susan answered the phone.

�Hello, Susan,� I said. �May I speak to her, please?�

�She�s not home from school yet,� Susan said.

�Oh. Well okay, I�ll...�

�She had Choir today.�

�Right, I forgot.�

�But I�m glad you called.�

This surprised me. Susan was rarely, if ever, glad I had called.

�Oh?� I said.

�Yes. Are you busy this weekend?�

I did not say anything. Was Susan about to extend an invitation to a party? A brunch? A walk on the beach? A beheading?

�Because if you�re not,� she said, �do you think you could take Joanna again? I know you just had her, but this is important.�

This, too, surprised me. Normally, Susan didn�t even like the idea of my seeing our daughter once every other weekend.

�I�d be happy to,� I said.

�What it is,� she said, �I�ve been invited to the Bahamas for the weekend.�

�For the weekend?� I said. The Bahamas seemed a long way away for just a weekend.

�Yes. Georgie Poole is flying down in his plane on Friday afternoon, and we�ll be spending all day Saturday and Sunday on his boat, and then flying back to Calusa again on Sunday night. So can you pick up Joanna at school on Friday? And then take her back again on Monday morning, on your way to work?�

�Sure,� I said.

�Thanks,� she said. �I�ll tell her you called.�

She hung up. I stared at the phone receiver. Georgie Poole was one of the richest men in all Calusa, a bachelor in his mid-forties who, it was reputed, had a penchant for television cuties in situation comedies, hence his frequent trips to Los Angeles where, it was further reputed, he had vast real estate holdings on the Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently, his eye had now fallen upon my former wife, a cutie in her own right, and I felt so sorry for the poor bastard that I thought I might send him a dozen roses in consolation. Well, that wasn�t quite true. Susan might have begun behaving like a bitch the moment she�d learned about Aggie and me (God, that seemed like a century ago!), but she hadn�t always been that way, and it was impossible now to forget the many good times we�d enjoyed together. The problem between us � aside from my philandering, which was a secondary problem created by the major problem � was not that one of us had grown up while the other stayed immature; when people give that as a reason for divorce, I always assume they�re lying. Instead, it was that we�d both grown up � but in opposite directions. Somehow the people we�d been when we first got married had evolved into people neither of us knew fourteen years later, and that was unfortunate, that was genuinely sad. I did not like exchanging harsh words with Susan. I did not like the edge to her voice whenever I called the house I used to share with her. I did not like the unkind things she said about me to Joanna, which Joanna repeated as a dutiful and loving daughter. But neither did I like suppressing the frequent sympathy (guilt, Frank would call it) I felt for her. I had once loved her more than life itself. As I replaced the receiver on the cradle, I silently wished her well. A woman could do worse than Georgie Poole.

The intercom buzzed again. It was four o�clock on the longest Monday I�d ever lived through. I flicked the toggle and Cynthia told me there was a man named Anthony Konig waiting to see me.

�Who?� I said.

�Anthony Konig. He doesn�t have an appointment. Nobody today seems to have an...�

�Send him right in,� I said.

The first impression Konig made was of size. He was a man of about fifty-eight or � nine, I guessed, with a massive head that matched his enormous girth; I estimated his height at about six four and his weight at close to two hundred and fifty. His hair was thick and white and worn rather long, spilling recklessly onto his forehead and over his collar. His suit was as white as his hair, and his pastel pink shirt was fronted with a narrow black tie fastened with a simple gold tie tack. Pig-faced, with pale blue eyes magnified behind thick-lensed glasses, he possessed as well a veined, rather bulbous nose and a surprisingly delicate mouth with a Cupid�s-bow upper and a somewhat pouting lower lip. He extended one fleshy hand and said without preamble, �I�m Victoria Miller�s husband, I have a letter from her I think you should see.�

�Her husband?� I said.

�Her former husband.�

�What sort of letter?�

�About wanting me to have Allison in case anything happened to her. Said I should contact you.�

�Contact me?�

�Yes. If anything happened. You�re her attorney, aren�t you?�

�No, sir, I�m not.�

�Then what the hell are you?� he asked.

�A friend.�

�A friend?�

�We saw each other socially a few times. That was the extent of our...�

�Then why the hell did she say I should contact you?�

His voice, until now, had been the well-modulated, evenly inflected vocal instrument of an educated Southerner. A bit whiskey-seared and therefore somewhat rumbling, it nonetheless had revealed not the slightest trace of an accent. Now, as he became more agitated, his face reddening, his white eyebrows pulling into a frown, the regional roots became more apparent.

�Mr. Konig,� I said, �perhaps she�d only planned to talk to me about...�

�No,� he said, �she told me she�d already taken care of it. I have her letter right here in my pocket, where�s that damn letter?� he said, and began fumbling at the inside pocket of the white suit, pulling out first a black pocket-sized checkbook, and then an empty eyeglass case, and finally a letter which he first wagged in the air and then plunked on my desktop. �Well, go ahead,� he said, �read the damn thing.�

The envelope was addressed to Mr. Anthony Konig on St. Charles Avenue, in New Orleans� Garden District. I pulled the letter free and unfolded it. It was dated January 7; that would have been last Monday. I read it silently:

I looked up at him.

�Well?� he said.

�I�m sorry, Mr. Konig,� I said, �but I see nothing here that would indicate...�

�Let me see that damn letter,� he said, and lurched out of the chair and virtually snatched it from my hands. �Here,� he said, skimming it, �what does this mean if not what I�ve been telling you? I�ve been seeing this man named Matthew Hope...�

�Yes, that�s certainly...�

�... and he is the one you should contact.�

�Yes, but she doesn�t say I�m her attorney.�

�She says you�re an attorney, she says so right here.�

�I am an attorney. That doesn�t make me her attorney.�

�Damn it, the meaning is clear. She talks first about wanting me to have Allison, and then she says I should contact you if the need should arise, those are her exact words, if the need should arise. Now what the hell does that mean if it doesn�t mean you�ve got a paper from Vicky saying I�m to have custody?�

�I have no such paper, Mr. Konig. Perhaps, as I said earlier, she planned to discuss the matter with me, and then in the press of rehearsals for her opening, or...�

�Then why�d she write me if it wasn�t something she�d already taken care of?�

�I don�t know. Did you correspond regularly?�

�Well, yes, but it was always just chit-chat and never anything serious. This letter...�

�Yes, this letter sounds serious.�

�Worrying about something happening to her and all, and then something does happen, she gets herself murdered...�

�Yes.�

�So I�ve got to believe she was afraid of it happening and left instructions for my daughter to come live with me and not somebody else.�

�She left no such instructions with me, Mr. Konig.�

�You keep saying that, but the letter tells me otherwise.�

�I know nothing about her wishes concerning custody.�

�Your name�s right here in this goddamn letter!�

�I know it is. She said we were seeing each other, and that�s true. But as for any specific instructions, either written or verbal, regarding custody of Allison in the event...�

�Well, sir, I don�t understand it,� Konig said.

�Neither do I.�

�I simply do not understand it.�

�In any event,� I said, �I�m certain instructions in a letter wouldn�t be binding on a court.�

There was a long silence. We stared at each other across my desk.

�I want my little girl,� Konig said. �I don�t have a lawyer here in Florida, he�s up in N�Orleans where I live. If you�ll represent me on this, find out exactly what the law says about custody, I�d be grateful.�

�I�d be happy to, Mr. Konig. Would you mind if I held on to this letter?�

�Not at all.�

�Where can I reach you here in Calusa?�

�I�m at the Breakwater Inn, got down here late Saturday, caught Vicky�s second night there at that restaurant on Stone Crab.�

�You�ve been here since Saturday?� I said.

�Yes, sir. Drove down from N�Orleans early Friday morning.�

�Mr. Konig, there�s something I think you should know...�

�What�s that?�

�... but I�m not sure I�m the one who should tell it to you. Maybe you ought to go see the police.�

�What for? I�ve never yet met a policeman worth the tin in the badge on his chest. Are the police going to make sure nobody else gets custody of my daughter? I�ve wanted her all these years, Mr. Hope, I�ll be damned if I�ll let anyone else have her now that Vicky�s gone. What is it you have to tell me?�

I took a deep breath.

�Your daughter�s been kidnapped,� I said.

�What?� he said.

�I�m sorry.�

�Oh my God,� he said. �Oh my God. What...� who do I...� what...� oh my God!�

On one of my cards I wrote down Morris Bloom�s name and the address of the Public Safety Building. Then I buzzed Cynthia and asked her if she was free to drive Mr. Konig downtown. He was still shaking when he left my office, and he looked ten years older than when he�d come in.

I did not get home until a little before six. I snapped on the television set and then went to the wall bar to mix myself a double martini � it had been too long a day. I was stirring the Beefeater and vermouth when the Six O�Clock News came on. My partner Frank says that in New York (and I gather he considers this a sign of sophistication) there are so many murders committed every day that the newspapers and television will cover only the goriest of them; to make headlines in New York, you�ve either got to kill a cop or else use a meat ax on your entire family and the upstairs neighbor as well. Calusa has its share of homicides, but we�re not quite that jaded about our response to them; our newspapers and television stations will rarely ignore even an inconsequential .22-caliber killing. �It doesn�t take much to attract a crowd in Calusa,� Frank says dryly. Frank sometimes gets on my nerves, but he is a very good lawyer, and I guess the closest friend I have in the world.

The news commentator now, despite Bloom�s earlier warning to me, reported both the murder and the kidnapping. Either the killer had already made contact or else the police strategy had changed since last I�d spoken to Bloom. I wondered if Konig�s visit to him had had anything to do with the decision to release the news. I also wondered what Konig�s reaction had been when he�d learned about his daughter. He had seemed a volatile man, and men like that can sometimes�

The thoughts that came to me next were sudden and chilling.

Vicky had written a letter that seemed to state she�d made specific plans for her former husband to have custody of their child in the event anything happened to her. If indeed she�d been afraid that someone was about to harm her, the someone couldn�t have been Konig; she�d have been crazy to have written him. But if Konig had wanted custody of his daughter �all these years� as he�d told me in my office just a little while ago, and if he�d already learned from Vicky that she planned to give him custody in the event of her death...

The telephone rang.

I poured the martini glass almost to the rim, and began walking with it toward the bedroom. The phone kept ringing. Outside on the bayou behind the house, a heron � startled by the sound � took sudden wing. I sat on the edge of the bed, the martini glass in one hand, and lifted the receiver.

�Mr. Hope? Tony Konig.�

�Yes, Mr. Konig, how are you?� I said.

�Fine,� he said. �Well, considering. They don�t seem to have much to go on yet. They want to put some equipment in my house back home, trace a call should he make one. Do you think he�ll call, Mr. Hope? They usually call in cases like this, don�t they?�

�Yes, usually.�

�In any event, have you looked up the law for me? I�ve got to keep thinking they�ll find her, you see. I�ve got to keep thinking this�ll all be over one day soon, Allison�ll be back one day soon.�

�I had someone in the office do some checking for me, and I also called Hopkins and Cole � they�re a big shop here in town, they do a lot of custody work.�

�What�d you find out? Does that letter from Vicky mean anything?�

�Not as regards custody. As I suspected, it might serve as evidence of intent, but it wouldn�t be binding on a court.�

�A court? Why does this thing have to go to court?�

�I�m not saying it does. But if someone challenged your right to custody...� well, let me take this in order, Mr. Konig, if that�s all right with you.�

�Go right ahead.�

�The letter�s virtually meaningless. Would you know whether Vicky left a will?�

�I don�t know, I�m sorry. Why? Would a will be binding on a court?�

�It would be highly persuasive, yes, and would most likely control unless you were found an unsuitable parent. But even if Vicky died intestate � without leaving a will, that is � you�d undoubtedly get custody of your daughter. In the large majority of instances, the courts have awarded custody to the natural father rather than the maternal grandparents, say, or an aunt, or an older sister, or what have you. Tell me, is there anyone who might challenge your custody?�

�Sure. Vicky�s father. Dwayne Miller.�

�Why?�

�Because he�s a crazy old bastard who thinks he runs the world.�

�Would he have grounds for such a challenge?�

�Like what?�

�Could he claim you�re an unfit father?�

�Ridiculous.�

�Could he say your home�s an unsuitable place in which to bring up a little girl?�

�Utter nonsense.�

�Were you making support payments for Allison?�

�Each and every month.�

�Ever miss any of them?�

�Never.�

�Ever been in trouble with the law?�

�Few parking tickets...� and once for speeding, three, four years ago.�

�Do you see Allison regularly?�

�At least once a month, and usually over the entire summer.�

�Has Allison ever lived with her grandfather?�

�No.�

�Well, let me give you some actual rulings, Mr. Konig. Torres v. Van Eepoel, 1957, right here in Florida: A natural parent has a right to the custody � by the way, she is your natural child, isn�t she?�

�What do you mean?�

�She wasn�t adopted? She wasn�t the child of any former marriage Vicky may have...�

�No, no, this was a first marriage for both of us. Allison�s mine, that�s for sure.�

�Okay, Torres v. Van Eepoel: �A natural parent has a right to the custody of his or her children absent conduct or conditions that justify a deprivation of the right in the interest of the welfare of the children. This legal right is one that should not be regarded lightly.��

�Damn right,� Konig said.

�Modacsi v. Taylor: �The love and affection of another person, no matter how great, is not sufficient to deprive a fit and proper parent of his child.��

�Keep on reading, Mr. Hope.�

�Behn v. Timmons � this was a recent one, 1977, also here in Florida: �The parent has a natural God-given right to enjoy the custody, fellowship, and companionship of his offspring; except in cases of clear, convincing, and compelling reasons to the contrary, a child�s welfare is presumed to be best served by care and custody by the natural parent.��

�Mr. Hope, you�ve already earned your fee,� Konig said. �I can�t tell you how relieved I am. What do I have to do next?�

�Nothing.�

�Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?�

�Once Allison is found...�

�I�m praying that�ll be soon, Mr. Hope.�

�You can simply pack her up and take her home with you.�

�Just like that?�

�Just like that.�

�Well, fine then, everything seems to be in order. Mr. Hope, I can�t thank you enough for...�

�Few other things, Mr. Konig. Are you sure Vicky never mentioned a will to you?�

�Never. Anyway, what difference would it make? You just told me...�

�Yes, I feel you�re safe as regards guardianship of Allison�s person. I�m talking now about guardianship of her property. Even if Vicky died intestate, her lineal descendant � your daughter, in this case � would normally inherit. I�d like to know whether or not anyone�s been designated guardian of her property. If not, a court would have to appoint one.�

�Well, I don�t know if there�s any will. Is there some way you can find out for me?�

�I�ll check around. The legal community in Calusa is a relatively small one. If Vicky had a will drawn...�

�Yes, please check for me,� Konig said.

�I�ll be happy to.� I hesitated. �Mr. Konig,� I said, �before we end this conversation, and in fact before I do any further work for you, there�re a few things I�d like to know. I hope you won�t take offense, but the questions have got to be asked.�

�What are they?�

�First...� did you kill Vicky?�

�What?�

�I said...�

�You can�t be serious.�

�I�d like an answer, if you will.�

�I did not, sir. I loved that woman with all my heart.�

His voice sounded on the edge of tears. I hesitated before asking the next question, but it was another essential one, and it could not be postponed, not if I was to continue representing him.

�Mr. Konig,� I said, �if what you�ve just told me is true...�

�It is the God�s honest truth.�

�Then I�m going to assume, and you correct me if I�m wrong, that you don�t already have physical custody of your daughter.�

�Already have... ?�

�Yes, that you didn�t just come up to my office as a smokescreen, asking me about custody when you�d already taken Allison away from that house...�

�I just told you...�

�... taken her away from there after Vicky was killed � if what you say is true, that you�re not the one who killed her.�

�I didn�t kill her. And I didn�t kidnap my own daughter, either.�

�Did you try to reach Vicky last night by telephone?�

�No, sir, I did not.�

�You didn�t call the house there three times last night?�

�I did not, sir.�

�You didn�t tell the baby-sitter there that you�d be stopping by to collect?�

�No, sir. Did someone do that?�

�Yes, Mr. Konig,� I said. �Someone did that.�

�It wasn�t me.�

�All right,� I said. �All right, I�ll start asking around tomorrow morning. About the will. Are you still at the Breakwater Inn?�

�Yes, I�ll be here till after the funeral Wednesday.�

�And after that?�

He started to give me his home phone number in New Orleans, and then thought better of it; the police would be monitoring that phone, hoping to hear from the kidnapper. He gave me his office number instead and said I could leave word there with his secretary. He�d be checking with her from time to time and would get back to me as soon afterward as he could. He thanked me again and then said good night. There was still that edge of sorrow to his voice.

But I couldn�t stop thinking of his massive size and of what Bloom had said to me this morning: We figure it had to be a man because of the sheer power involved.

I called Jim Sherman at ten o�clock on Tuesday morning.

Jim was one of the two owners of the Greenery, a tall, rather muscular man in his late thirties, whose hair had gone prematurely white when he was only twenty-two. Blue-eyed and tanned to a rich burnished bronze, he worked very hard at creating the image of a dissipated beach boy, even though he owned a million-dollar restaurant and three spacious condominium apartments out on Whisper Key � renting, I�d been told, for a cool two thousand each for every month in season. His partner, Brad Atherton, was somewhat older than he, forty-five or � six, I guessed, with dark hair getting a bit thin on top, and eyes as startlingly blue as Jim�s. He was shorter than Jim, though, less flamboyant in style and dress, and somewhat soft-spoken, a combination of characteristics that perhaps accounted for the rumor that he and Jim were sharing a homosexual relationship, with Brad the passive or �female� partner. I had no evidence that either of them were what popular opinion held them to be, and frankly I didn�t care what their sexual persuasions were. When Anita Bryant began quoting the Bible as source material for her vicious crusade against homosexuals, I stopped drinking the orange juice she was advertising on television. I knew Jim wouldn�t be at the restaurant that early in the morning, so I called him at his home on exclusive Flamingo Key.

�Hullo?� he mumbled, and I knew at once that I�d awakened him.

�Jim,� I said, �this is Matthew Hope. I�m sorry to be calling so early in the morning.�

�No, no, not at all,� he said, but I visualized him peering bleary-eyed at a bedside clock.

�I�m sure you heard about Vicky Miller...�

�Awful,� he said. �Terrible shock. Police were at the restaurant last night, asking questions. God, such a lovely girl.�

�Yes,� I said. �Jim, the reason I�m calling, I know you must have made some sort of contract with Vicky...�

�For the singing engagement, do you mean?�

�Yes. There was a contract, wasn�t there?�

�Do you need it for some reason?�

�No, no. I was simply wondering who might have represented her. Was there an attorney who handled it for her?�

�Yes, there was.�

�Who, can you tell me?�

�Some firm downtown with a dozen names. Let me think a minute. Jackson, Harris, does that sound right? Jackson, Harris, Something, Something and...�

�Would it be Blackstone, Harris?�

�Blackstone, Harris, right.�

�Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock?�

�That�s the whole crowd,� Jim said.

�Would you know who Vicky�s attorney there might have been?�

�I�m sorry, no. This was a simple thing, Matthew. I handed Vicky the contracts, asked her to have her people look them over, and she brought them back to me signed two days later.� He paused. He was wide awake now. �Who do you think did this, Matthew?�

�I don�t know.�

�Beat her to death, huh?�

�Yes.�

�The son of a bitch,� Jim said.

�Yes. Jim,� I said, �thanks for the information, I want to get moving on it.�

�Glad to be of help,� he said, and hung up.

I called Honest Abe Pollock, with whom I�d had a conversation only yesterday concerning my client who was trying to buy a liquor store. The first thing Abe said was, �Have a heart, Matthew. It takes a little while to figure what a whole inventory cost.�

�I�m calling about something else,� I said.

�Thank God,� he said. �Make it an easy one, it�s still too early in the morning.�

�Victoria Miller,� I said. �The woman who was killed Sunday night.�

�What about her?�

�I understand your firm looked over the contract she made with the Greenery. For her singing engagement there.�

�That�s news to me,� Abe said.

�Can you find out who did it for her?�

�You know how many lawyers we have here, Matthew?�

�How many?�

�I don�t even know myself,� Abe said. �A lot, believe me. More than a lot. When do you have to know?�

�Now.�

�When you say now, do you mean now now, or do you mean ten minutes from now, or do you mean tomorrow morning now? Define your terms, Matthew.�

�I�d like to talk to whoever was her attorney, Abe. If you can help me locate him...�

�What�s so important about a singing contract?�

�That�s not the important thing.�

�Then what is?�

�Whether or not she left a will.�

�You want me to look for a will, too? Have a heart, Matthew.�

�Just find out who represented her up there, and I�ll go bother him, okay?�

�Just a second,� Abe said. �I�m putting you on hold, I�m not hanging up.�

�Thanks,� I said.

I waited.

Cynthia came in with a cup of coffee for me. She was wearing dark blue tight-fitting slacks, high-heeled blue pumps, and a pastel blue blouse. I looked at her in surprise; she rarely wore slacks to the office, preferring instead skirts that showed to good advantage her long, eternally tanned legs. She caught my look.

�What?� she said.

�I�m surprised is all.�

�No good?�

�Very nice,� I said.

�Then what?�

�You usually wear skirts.�

�For a change,� she said, and shrugged. �Is there a rule?�

�Of course not.�

�Good. Frank says I look terrific.�

�Ah, but Frank is not a leg man.�

�Chacun son go�t,� she said. �Do you know you�re holding a telephone in your hand?�

�I�m waiting for Abe Pollock.�

�He always takes forever,� she said. �We�re out of real cream, I put Dari-Rich in it.�

�Fine, thank you, Cyn.�

�De nada,� she said, and breezed out of the office.

I kept waiting. When Abe finally came back onto the line, he said, �Matthew, this is going to take a while. There�s a big meeting going on up here, another one of our usual multimillion-dollar deals...�

�Yeah, yeah.�

�... and I can�t get hold of anybody. Are you going to be in the neighborhood any time later?�

�I have a closing at Tricity in about twenty minutes.�

�Good, that�s right next door. Can you stop in here after you�re done? I�ll know who was handling this by then, and you can talk to him directly.�

�It may not be till twelve, twelve-thirty, Abe.�

�I�ll be gone, I have an early lunch. But I�ll leave word for you, and I�ll ask him to wait till you get here, okay?�

�I�d appreciate it.�

�No problem. On this other thing, give us till the end of the week sometime. Just between you, me, and the lamppost, my client can�t add two and two, it�s going to take him forever to go through those books and dig out the wholesale prices on all that booze. Will Friday be okay?�

�Fine, Abe.�

�I would say �Have a nice day,� � Abe said, �but I think it�s going to rain.�

In Calusa, during the rainy season, you can usually expect a thunderstorm along about three or four every afternoon, at which time the humidity and the heat have combined to leave the suffering citizenry virtually limp. The rain, when it comes, mercilessly assaults the sidewalks and the streets, but only for an hour or so. During that short while, the torrential downpour brings at least a semblance of relief. But once the rain stops, you�d never know it had been there at all. Oh, yes, the gutters are running with swift-flowing muddy water, and there are huge brown puddles everywhere, and here and there a truly flooded street � but the heat and the humidity follow as closely behind the brief storm as does a rapist his victim. Within minutes you are sweating again. That is during the rainy season. January was not supposed to be the rainy season. We were not supposed to get rain in January. As Abe had predicted, though, it began raining very hard along about noon, just as I was leaving the closing at Tricity, and I was soaking wet after the short run from the bank to the front door of Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock.

Most law offices with tongue-twisting firm names will allow their switchboard people to answer with a curt �Law offices,� or an even briefer �Legal,� but not the firm of Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock. As I stepped liquidly into the huge carpeted reception area beyond the massive oaken entrance doors, the blonde behind the desk across the room was chirpily reciting into her telephone mouthpiece, �Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock, good morning.� Making my way soddenly across the room, shaking water from my hair and the sleeves of an expensive jacket I was certain was about to shrink to my daughter�s size, I heard the receptionist saying apologetically, �No, it isn�t a very good morning, is it, sir?� She listened again. �Well, that�s right, sir,� she said, �it isn�t even morning anymore, is it, it�s already afternoon.� I was standing at her desk now. She looked at me, rolled her eyes heavenward, and then said into the mouthpiece, �And not a very good one at that, no, sir, whom did you wish to speak to, sir?� She nodded, said, �One moment, please,� and then plugged in one of her rubber snakes. �May I help you, sir?� she asked me.

�Abe Pollock said he would leave a message for me. I�m Attorney Hope.�

I don�t know why lawyers announce themselves that way to other lawyers or to people who work for law firms, but we do. I guess it is a sort of secret password that tells the other guy it isn�t a truck driver or a bill collector or a garbage man calling on the phone or in person � this is a lawyer, an exalted �attorney� like himself. Anyway, it�s what we do. At my local bank I�m Mr. Hope. In the law offices of Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock, I was Attorney Hope.

�Yes, sir,� the receptionist said. �I have it right here,� She handed me a memo slip with Abe Pollock�s name printed on the top of it. In his scrawling hand, he had written:

�Would you let Attorney O�Brien know I�m here, please?� I said to the receptionist. �I�m expected.�

�Yes, sir,� she said, and plugged into her switchboard. She waited a moment, and then said, �Attorney Hope to see you.� She nodded, said, �Right away,� and then said to me, �You can go right in, sir, it�s through that door and the third office on your left.�

�Thank you,� I said.

As I went through the door leading to the inner offices, her switchboard lit up again, and I heard her saying, once again, �Blackstone, Harris, Gerstein, Garfield and Pollock, good afternoon.� I was beginning to feel like a member of the firm: at least I had passed the first test, memorizing the name. I found the third office on the left and peeked in. A woman in her late twenties, I guessed, was sitting behind a secretary�s desk in a little anteroom beyond which was a closed, walnut-paneled door. She was searching for something in the top drawer of the desk, her head bent, but she heard me the moment I approached, and looked up at once.

�Oh, hi,� she said.

Her hair was the color of fall leaves, a reddish-brown that evoked for me suddenly and inexplicably the seasonal changes I missed so much here in Calusa. Her eyes were predictably green, the only imaginable color to complement that russet hair, the green of a lush tropical glade, summer in her eyes and autumn in her hair, springtime in the clean fresh look of her generous mouth, no lipstick on it � where was winter to make her complete? A spate of freckles spilled from her high cheekbones onto her fox-faced nose. A pair of oversized eyeglasses were perched on top of her head like skylights on a rusting roof. She squinted at me for a moment and then pulled the glasses down over her magnificent eyes and smiled radiantly � and my heart stopped. I knew at once that I would ask her to go to Brazil with me as soon as my business with O�Brien was finished, or perhaps the Gal�pagos, or Alaska or Hawaii or Russia or the moon, perhaps even before my business with O�Brien was concluded, perhaps right this minute, right here and now before I even saw O�Brien.

�You�re Mr. Hope,� she said.

�Yes,� I said. I was staring at her shamelessly. �Mr. O�Brien�s expecting me.�

She stared back at me. Behind her glasses, those hypnotic green eyes blinked. She said nothing. Neither did she reach for an intercom switch or a telephone receiver. She just sat there behind her desk, staring at me. I thought perhaps she hadn�t heard me. I thought, Just my luck, I meet the most beautiful woman in the world and she has a hearing problem, I will have to shout, �I love you,� in her good ear, whichever one that happens to be.

�Mr. O�Brien�s expecting me,� I said again, a little louder this time.

�I�m Dale O�Brien,� she said.

I looked at her. She could have been a Dale O�Brien, I supposed. Her hair and her eyes were the hair and the eyes of a Dale O�Brien, or certainly some kind of an O�Brien. Not to mention the freckles. There had once been a Dale Carnegie, of course, and he�d been a man, and there was at present a Dale Robertson, who was also a man albeit an actor, but there was also a Dale Evans, who was a woman married to Roy Rogers, whose horse�s name was Trigger. At the moment I felt like Trigger�s backside.

�I�m sorry,� I said. �Abe didn�t tell me.�

�Don�t apologize,� she said, �it fools almost everyone. I�m a male chauvinist trap. So�s my friend Dana. She�s a surgeon at Ben Taub General in Houston. Dr. Dana Canfield, right? So everyone automatically thinks of Dana Andrews, who�s a man, but does anyone think of Dana Wynter, who�s a woman? Being any kind of professional only compounds the felony. How can I help you, Mr. Hope? Come on inside, I was out here looking for some paper clips.�

She rose from behind the desk in one swift motion, gracefully unfolding what had to be at least five feet nine inches of big-boned, well-padded femininity, long russet hair cascading to her shoulders, green eyes bright and amused and intelligent behind the oversized glasses, good breasts swelling the lapels of her brown suit jacket. She stepped around the desk. The matching skirt to the suit, slit on the left side to just above her knee, revealed a beautifully proportioned leg that tapered gently to a narrow ankle in a tan high-heeled pump.

I could not take my eyes off her. I felt like a schoolboy.

�Well, do come in, Mr. Hope,� she said, and laughed a small embarrassed laugh. Her cheeks, I noticed, were beginning to flush beneath their faint dusting of freckles.

Her office was simply furnished. A large cluttered desk with a leather swivel chair behind it, two similarly upholstered chairs angled in front of it, bookcases lining three of the walls. The framed diplomas on the wall told me she�d got her B.A. from the University of California and her law degree from Harvard. There were two certificates of admission to the bar: one for the State of California, the other for Florida. She went behind her desk, sat in the swivel chair, tented her hands like a proper attorney, and said, �You want to know about Vicky�s contract.�

�Is that what Abe told you?�

�He caught me on the fly. Isn�t that it?�

�I really want to know if she�d drawn a will before her death. Is it Miss or Mrs.?�

�Pardon?� she said.

�Your marital status.�

�It�s Ms.,� she said pointedly and with a smile, �but I�m not married, no.�

�Will you have dinner with me tonight?� I asked.

�Pardon?� she said again.

�Dinner,� I said. �Tonight. With me. Attorney Hope.�

�Well, yes,� she said, sounding very surprised.

�Phew,� I said.

There are very few so-called intimate restaurants in Calusa; in fact, many of the eateries here serve their dishes on bare Formica-topped tables, and the napkins are more often than not of the paper variety. Billy Banjo�s was a notable exception to the rule. Situated on Calusa Bay, behind the luxurious Trident Tower Hotel on Route 41, the plant itself was a long, low, elegantly modern, wood-and-glass structure that hugged the shoreline and afforded a splendid view of Flamingo, Lucy�s, and Stone Crab keys across the water. Not quite on the same cuisinary level as the Greenery, it compensated instead with damask tablecloths and napkins, highly polished silver, and stemware that glistened in the warm glow of tapered candles.

Dale had told me in her office that afternoon that she, at least, had not drawn a will for Vicky, and that if one existed she was unaware of it. We both suspected that if any Calusa attorney had prepared such an instrument for her, the Probate Court would be hearing about it soon enough. There was really no further business to discuss; we both understood we were together now for a purely social evening. Dale, in fact, was dressed somewhat resplendently for the occasion, wearing a green, sarong-wrapped skirt with a matching top piped in red at the sleeves and tied at the waist with a rolled red scarf. Her russet hair was swept up tidily on top of her head, and her green eyes behind their oversized glasses echoed the deeper green of her outfit. She was wearing small diamond earrings as well and a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand.

The ring caused me several moments of panic until she explained it had been her mother�s engagement ring, and she saw no reason why she shouldn�t wear it. I suggested she might wear it to better advantage on her right hand, although even this might � in our primitive symbolistic culture � signal either a broken engagement or a temporary hiatus in a long-standing relationship. She confessed then that wearing it on the telltale finger of her left hand was a gesture not entirely without malice aforethought. Had she possessed the necessary courage, in fact, she�d have worn her mother�s inherited wedding band as well � both rings combined might have served even more formidably to keep the wolves away from her pantry door. She explained, in more detail than I might have hoped for, how waitresses wearing wedding bands had discovered that their tips were lower than those whose fingers were not so adorned. Similarly, she herself had learned in the six years since she�d begun practicing law, first in California and next in Florida, that the engagement ring � albeit her mother�s � immediately announced to any male client that she was �spoken for,� and put matters on a simple businesslike basis from the word go.

�What about males who aren�t clients?� I asked.

�I take off the ring,� she said simply.

�But you�re wearing it tonight,� I said.

�Only because it matches the earrings,� she said, and smiled in what I thought was an encouraging manner.

Since my divorce I had discovered that many women � in an attempt to impress or to inspire trust or even simply to keep a conversation going � would inundate me with intimate trivia about their various tastes and prejudices. I had listened to women telling me what their favorite colors were, which movies they had adored or despised, which television shows they watched on a regular basis, which perfume they wore, whether they preferred to paint their toenails or leave them au naturel, and on and on ad infinitum. Not so with Dale O�Brien.

She was, I began to suspect, a more reticent sort of person, perfectly content to tell me where she�d gone to college (University of California in Santa Cruz, which I�d already learned from one of the framed diplomas in her office), and then law school (Harvard, again already learned from the other framed diploma), and where and when she�d begun practicing law (back in San Francisco in 1974, at a starting salary of $22,000), and how long she�d been practicing here in Florida (it would be four years in June), but unwilling to reveal very much about her personal self as opposed to her professional self. In the beginning I might have been a client seeking advice on a legal matter, eliciting credentials in passing. Well, wait a moment. She did tell me she was thirty-one years old; I had guessed wrong in assuming she was still in her late twenties. She also told me that she owned the house I�d picked her up at earlier, a pristine Mediterranean gem on Whisper Key, which had � coincidentally � been designed by our client Charlie Hoggs. But more and more I suspected that Dale O�Brien was the sort of woman who would reserve any exchange of confidences for when she was securely tucked into a man�s bed, and then only after they had made love (a consummation devoutly to be wished), at which time the flood of intimacies would pour forth as from a burst dam.

I kept waiting for an opportunity to probe a bit more deeply. It did not come until she mentioned, casually, that she shared her house with a cat named Sassafras, who�

�I used to have a cat who loved listening to music,� I said at once.

�Oh? What kind of music?�

�Jazz mostly. Miles Davis. Oscar Peterson. He used to stretch out on the living room floor, exactly midway between the two speakers. His ears used to twitch in time with the beat. The Modern Jazz Quartet, he loved the Modern Jazz Quartet.�

�What happened to him?�

�He died just about when my marriage did. I sometimes think of him as a metaphor for the divorce.�

She hesitated, as though debating whether or not she was willing to move the conversation on to this more intimate level. Her eyes met mine. �Was it very painful for you?� she asked.

�Someone once told me that divorce is a kind of killing. I think it may very well be.� I shook my head. �I sometimes feel I�ve done my daughter a great disservice. It might�ve been easier to have stayed married, kept the family together at any cost.�

�No,� Dale said.

�People do make arrangements,� I said.

�Was there someone else involved?�

�Yes.�

�On whose part? Your wife�s or yours?�

�Mine.�

�What happened?�

�She�s divorced now, too.�

�Do you ever see her?�

�No. She lives in Tampa.�

�Tampa�s not that far away.�

�I don�t think it would matter if she lived right around the corner.�

We were silent for several moments. Again she seemed weighing whether she should switch the conversation back to safer ground. At last she said, �Was your marriage failing otherwise?�

�If you�re seeing someone outside your marriage, then I would say it�s failing, yes.�

�Okay,� she said, and smiled. �End of direct examination.�

She spooned sugar into her cup. She seemed preoccupied with stirring it into her coffee. Her head bent, she said, �I was almost as good as married myself, once upon a time.�

�When was that?�

�When I first began practicing. In San Francisco. I lived with an artist out there.� She lifted her head; her eyes met mine again. �He used to paint these cutesy-poo pictures of animals with big eyes and lolling little tongues. I thought they were marvelous. I left him the minute I realized they were crap.�

�When was that?�

�Four years ago, on the fifteenth of May. That�s when I moved out. I came to Florida the following month.�

�And you still remember the date, huh?�

�Oh, sure. Biggest decision I ever had to make in my life. I mean, I�d been living with him for two years, that�s a long time. And I loved him, you know. I suppose I loved him. Until...�

She shrugged.

�Until you found out you didn�t like his paintings.�

�No, that came after I found out I didn�t love him. I can remember the exact moment, isn�t that strange? We were in Los Angeles one day, walking in MacArthur Park, it was a Sunday, and I mentioned how much I loved the lyric in that song, the one about MacArthur Park, the lyric about someone having left a cake out in the rain, you know the lyric. And he said he�d never understood what the hell that song was all about. I looked at him. He was walking along with his hands in his pockets, he was a great big shambling bear of a man, with a beard, and he wore these little Benjamin Franklin eyeglasses, and he was looking down at his feet as we walked through the park � it was one of those miserably smoggy Los Angeles days � and he had just told me he had never understood a song that for me had only summed up a whole generation! I didn�t say anything. We just kept walking through the park, and when we got back to the apartment we sat around smoking dope, and then he wanted to make love, and for the first time in my life I told somebody I had a headache, I told this man I�d been living with for two years, this man I thought I adored, that I had a headache and could we wait until later, please? I moved out two weeks after that.�

�You didn�t just...�

�No, no, I didn�t leave a note tacked to the bathroom door or Scotch-taped to the refrigerator, nothing like that. We talked about it, a week after our walk in the park, talked about it like mature, sensible adults, while inside my heart was breaking because I didn�t love him anymore. I think I was more hurt than he was. We talked about it all night long that night, and then we did make love, we finally made love for the first time since that day in MacArthur Park when all the cool green icing melted down, and even the lovemaking wasn�t any good anymore. He gave me one of his paintings when I moved out. I still have it someplace. I never look at it.�

�So,� I said, �here we are.�

�Alone at last,� she said, and smiled.

We lingered over coffee and a sinfully rich concoction called Chocolate Coconut Supreme; it was a little after ten when I paid the check and walked Dale out toward where I�d parked the Ghia. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still overcast with threatening clouds, and the temperature had dropped drastically. In Calusa, whenever you mentioned how cold it was, or how rainy it was, or how suffocatingly hot it was; whenever, in short, you mentioned how absolutely shitty the weather could be here at times, the natives (and this included all those transplanted migrants from the north) would invariably say, �Ah, yes, but think how bad it is anyplace else.� Anyplace else apparently included such idyllic spots as Barbados or the Virgin Islands or Antigua or Acapulco. Why the snowbirds bothered coming to Calusa at all was something I would never be able to fathom. When it gets cold in a warm climate (and please remember that Calusa is only on the northernmost fringes of the subtropics) it can seem colder than four below in Utica, New York. It felt that cold right this minute.

Dale took my arm and moved in close to me. We both ducked our heads against the wind and braved our way across the parking lot. Inside the car I turned on the heater � the first time I�d done so since last February. I also turned on the radio, twisting the dial till I found the station I was looking for, a program originating in Manakawa and promising �Music for Us.�

The music was completely wasted on at least one of us.

At Dale�s front door, she thanked me for a lovely evening, and then offered her hand in farewell. I told her I�d call her again soon, if that was all right with her (�Yes, please do, Matthew�) and then I walked through the raging wind to my car. As I crossed the Timucuan Bridge and headed for the mainland, Artie Shaw�s �Stardust� flooded the automobile.

I found it small solace.

Wednesday morning dawned cold and gray and bleak. The temperature on the thermometer outside my kitchen window hovered at the thirty-one-degree mark, which meant it was one degree below freezing � point five below zero on the Celsius scale. The cable-television forecast from the National Weather Service in Ruskin, Florida, reported winds from the southwest at twenty-seven knots, seas to twelve feet, and a zero possibility of precipitation. Temperatures in the Tricity Area (which included Tampa, Sarasota, and Calusa) were expected to rise no higher than the mid to upper forties. It was altogether a rotten day for a funeral.

There were seventy churches of varying denominations in Calusa, ranging from Catholic to Baptist to Jewish (Orthodox and Reform) to Presbyterian to Lutheran to Seventh Day Adventist and including two for the Mennonite sect, its followers identified by the black clothing and beards worn by the men, and the plain dresses and simple white caps worn by the women. The services for Victoria Miller, born and raised in the South�s Bible Belt, were held at the Bay Ridge Baptist Chapel on Bay Ridge Road and Williamdale Avenue. There were perhaps three dozen people listening to the memorial service that day, among them reporters from Calusa�s morning and afternoon newspapers, and a man sent up from Time�s regional office in Miami. It was perhaps a comment on the impermanency of fame that the Time reporter was not accompanied by a photographer; neither were the pair from the Calusa Herald-Tribune and the Calusa Journal.

The service was brief. The mourners filed out of the low white building afterward, following the coffin, wearing an odd assortment of outer garments. When the temperatures dropped in this part of Florida, no one seemed prepared for the sudden cold, even though it had in recent years become the rule rather than the exception. Winter overcoats stored in mothballs were pulled out of dusty trunks, mackinaws made reluctant appearances, but for the most part the citizens were underdressed, wearing raincoats that served them well during the months of July, August, and September but did little to protect them in the frequently harsh winter months. The mourners walked briskly to their automobiles, coat collars raised, hands thrust into their pockets, faces raw and red from the wind. Overhead, a gray canopy of clouds moved restlessly across the sky. There was only one limousine � for Anthony Konig and a man I assumed to be Vicky�s father, Dwayne Miller. Although Konig had earlier described him as a �crazy old bastard,� he seemed to be no older than fifty-five or-six � a bit younger than Konig, in fact � a tall, powerfully built man who hurled his enormous bulk into the waiting car as if it were a side of beef. The hearse moved out. We began following it to the cemetery.

I was surprised to see a police car parked just outside the cemetery gates. As the cortege approached, the door on the passenger side � distinctively marked with the City of Calusa�s gold seal and the word POLICE in blue against the white background � opened, and Detective Morris Bloom stepped out. He was wearing a heavy black overcoat, a gray fedora, a maroon muffler, and black leather gloves, as though he were still dressed for the wilds of Nassau County up there in New York State. It occurred to me as I pulled the Ghia in alongside the wrought-iron fence that he was the only one here today who was properly dressed for the bitter cold and the biting wind. He spotted me as I got out of my car, and immediately walked over.

�I owe you an apology,� he said.

�What for?�

�The private eye shit.�

�You already said you were sorry. On the phone.�

�It�s always better in person,� he said, and smiled unexpectedly. �I apologize.�

�I accept,� I said, and returned the smile.

�I�ve got the FBI crawling all over my office,� he said, �giving me orders like I�m a Meter Maid. If there�s anything I hate worse �n the narcs, it�s the feds.�

�Any word from him yet?�

�Not a peep. It doesn�t make sense, does it? This is Wednesday, he took that little girl on Sunday night, but no ransom demand yet. No sense at all.�

�Nobody says a murderer has to make sense.�

�Ah, but they do,� Bloom said morosely. �They do, Mr. Hope. You get the craziest fucking bedbugs�� He glanced around quickly, fearful his obscenity might have been overheard, especially here in so sacrosanct a place as a cemetery. But we were walking several yards behind the rest of the mourners, trailing them on a gravel path that ran straight as an arrow through rows and rows of grave markers. He lowered his voice nonetheless. �You get these lunatics, they�re raving about God knows what, but at the same time they know exactly why they committed bloody murder. They�ve got the grievances all ready to spill out, chapter and verse, in detail you could set your watch by. Whyever this guy did it � if he is a guy � he can tell us all about it, all his grievances, didn�t like the kind of songs she sang, didn�t like the way she did her hair, who the hell knows with these fucking lunatics?� he said, and this time he did not check to see if he�d been overheard.

�I�ll tell you what bothers me,� he said. �She divorces her husband, but he comes all the way from New Orleans to see her perform here. That bothers the hell out of me, I�ve got to tell you. When he came to see me Monday, he told me he�d been in town since late Saturday. That puts him here a day before the murder. I don�t like that.�

�Well, he had a legitimate reason for being here,� I said.

�Yeah, what? To see his wife do her act? They�ve been divorced for, what is it, five years? Why such loyalty?�

�She wrote to him last week...�

�Oh?�

�Said she wanted him to have custody of the child in case anything happened to her. He may�ve wanted to discuss that in person.�

�Where�s that letter?�

�I have it at the office. I�ll send it over by messenger if you like.�

�Yeah, do that. Custody of the little girl, huh? That�s interesting. I�ll tell you, Mr. Hope��

�Make it Matthew,� I said. �Or Matt if you prefer.�

�I prefer Matthew,� Bloom said. �He was one of the good guys.�

�Good guys?�

�In the Bible.�

�So was Matt.�

�In the Bible?�

�On Gunsmoke.�

�I still prefer Matthew. You call me Morrie, okay? Except when we�re downtown and there�s brass around. Then it might be better to go with the Detective Bloom shit, okay?�

�Okay,� I said.

When we reached the end of the path, the coffin had already been lifted over the open grave, and the hydraulic equipment was ready to lower it into the earth. The minister stood with a Bible in his hands, squinting into the wind, facing the assembled mourners who had taken seats on folding chairs set up before a white lattice bower. The bower covered the poised coffin and the open waiting grave. Baskets of flowers carried from the funeral home had been placed on either side of the grave. Some of them had been blown over by the wind, strewing blossoms onto the ground. There were no folding chairs left when Bloom and I approached the bower. We stood off to one side as the minister opened his Bible.

�O sing unto the Lord a new song,� he read, �for he hath done marvellous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. The Lord hath made known his salvation...�

His words carried on the wind, blowing over the heads of the mourners and northward toward the Trail. Konig and Miller were sitting on chairs in the first row; whatever their differences, they seemed united now in grief. Sitting to Konig�s right, also in the first row, were Jim Sherman and his partner at the Greenery, Brad Atherton.

�Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord...�

The girl sitting at the end of the first row, just alongside Brad, looked familiar. She was perhaps twenty-two or � three, a slight girl with enormous brown eyes and dark hair blowing in the wind now, wearing a wrinkled black overcoat that looked as though it had been rescued from the bottom of a cardboard valise carried south in the year nineteen aught two when Calusa � by approval of its fifty-seven voters � first incorporated as a town. She sensed my eyes upon her, jerked her attention sharply from the minister, turned to the left where I was standing alongside Bloom, and suddenly nodded. I must have expressed surprise. She nodded again, her dark eyes beseeching response. Puzzled, I nodded back. Apparently satisfied, she turned again to where the minister was concluding his recitation.

�Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity. Amen.�

�Amen,� the mourners repeated in ragged unison.

�Oh, God, Jesus, no!� someone shouted. �Not yet!�

The words hung on the air like an exhalation of vapor, drifting up and beyond the man who had spoken them. He alone was standing now in the midst of the seated mourners, a man of about thirty-eight or � nine, I guessed, some six feet tall and weighing at least a hundred and eighty pounds, his face twisted in torment, blue eyes streaming tears, long black hair worn the way hippies used to wear theirs in the sixties and early seventies. His clothes, too, seemed the attire of someone from a bygone time, threadbare blue jeans and a faded denim jacket, beads hanging on his blue T-shirted chest, a beaded Indian band across his forehead � Woodstock reincarnate here and now in Calusa, Florida. Almost before the gathering had located him, almost before they had pinpointed the source of the vocal explosion, he was in motion, moving past the others in the second row of folded chairs and walking swiftly to the coffin where it was poised for imminent descent now that the minister had finished.

�Don�t do this yet,� he said to no one. �Please don�t put her in the ground yet,� and he moved toward the suspended coffin as though wanting to throw himself across it protectively, a maneuver that might have sent both him and it tumbling together to the ground. Anthony Konig was on his feet at once, moving surprisingly fast for such a big man, stepping between the outmoded hippie and the shining black coffin, seizing his left arm, swinging him around and saying in a hoarse sharp voice that knifed through the keening of the wind, �Eddie, get hold of yourself!� Vicky�s father followed not a beat behind, coming around on the other side of the man and grabbing his right arm as he was preparing to swing it at Konig. �Calm down,� he said. �Now jess calm down, boy!�

�Who the hell is that?� Bloom whispered beside me. Together, Vicky�s father and her former husband began walking the man away from the grave and up the path toward the parked automobiles. �Better see what that was all about,� Bloom said, and lifted the collar of his coat, and began walking after them.

The other mourners were rising. There was the clatter of wooden chair legs scraping against the gravel. The wind persisted. Beneath the wind I heard the murmuring hum of the hydraulic mechanism as it began lowering the coffin into the grave. The dark-haired girl in the wrinkled black overcoat suddenly materialized at my side.

�I have to talk to you,� she said.

The wind tossed her hair across her forehead and across her wet brown eyes. Behind her, Jim Sherman was shaking the minister�s hand, and his partner Brad was telling him what a fine service it had been earlier in church and how appropriate had been the psalm here at graveside. I kept searching the girl�s face, trying to place her.

�I�m Melanie Simms,� she said, �I work at the Greenery. I waited on you the night you came to hear her sing. Do you remember?�

I remembered only vaguely, but I nodded, anyway.

�I saw you with her later, I know you were a friend of hers, Mr. Hope. There�s something you�ve got to know.�

She was talking in a whisper, I could barely hear her under the louder sound of the wind. I leaned closer to her. In the distance, up near the black limo, I could see Bloom in conversation with the man who�d almost jumped on the coffin.

�Just before she was killed...� Melanie said, and suddenly cut herself off, and turned sharply to look over her shoulder. Jim and his partner were approaching, Jim�s white hair blowing in the wind, Brad wearing a green felt hat that hid his balding pate, their footfalls crunching on the gravel path. �I�ll call you,� she said, and turned away, and began walking swiftly toward the parked cars.

�It was a nice service, don�t you think?� Jim asked.

�Yes,� I said. I was still watching Melanie. She turned once to look at me, nodded again as she�d done while the minister was speaking, and then opened the door of a yellow Mustang and climbed in behind the wheel. The engine caught. She looked at me again through the closed window and then backed the car out of its space and nosed it toward the cemetery gates. Together, the three of us began walking up the gravel path.

�Did you locate that attorney?� Jim asked.

�Yes, I did, thank you, Jim.�

�What attorney?� Brad asked.

�Vicky�s attorney. The one who looked over the contract we made with her.�

�Why?� Brad said, looking suddenly worried. �Was there something wrong with that contract?�

�No, no, everything in order,� I said.

At the end of the path we shook hands, and Jim and Brad went to the car they�d come in together. The black limo was gone now, and so were Konig and Miller. But Bloom was still standing alongside the wrought-iron fence, talking to the man who�d tried to jump on the coffin. I walked over to them and caught him mid-sentence.

�... should have been notified is all I�m saying.�

He stopped talking, looked at me, and then looked at Bloom questioningly.

�It�s all right,� Bloom said, �this is Vicky�s attorney, Matthew Hope.� Bloom knew this was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, but I recognized why he felt it was necessary. �This is Eddie Marshall, used to be Vicky�s producer when she was with Regal.�

Marshall looked at me again, appraisingly this time. �Oh, right,� he said, �they mentioned your name in the paper. You were the last one to see her alive.�

�Yes,� I said.

He studied me more closely, nodded, apparently decided it was okay to include me in the conversation, and then said to Bloom, �They may not even know she was killed is what I mean. They were the group, they should�ve been notified.�

�He�s talking about the band,� Bloom said to me.

�Wheat,� Marshall said, nodding again, �the group that backed her. Did anybody even think of contacting them? I mean, they were the ones who were closest to her. So where are they today when we�re putting her in the ground? Vicky was saying good-bye to this fuckin apple, and Wheat wasn�t here to send her off. That wasn�t right. I just couldn�t help myself, I had to say something.�

�Well, I�m sure the band must�ve heard about it,� Bloom said gently. �It was on network television Monday night.�

�Sure, if they were watching.�

�It�s in all the newspapers, too, Mr. Marshall. If they�d wanted to be here, they�d have been here.� He paused, and then said, �How�d you hear about it?�

�The newspapers.�

�When?�

�Late last night. I�m on vacation, I work in Georgia, I�m a DJ at a radio station up there. Left last Friday to go fishing on the Keys, didn�t learn about Vicky till I read the story last night, big follow-up story on her career. Are you familiar with the Keys?�

He was referring, of course, not to Calusa�s less celebrated keys, but to the Keys, the ones that meandered westward from Florida�s southernmost tip, leisurely sprawling into the Gulf of Mexico from Key Largo to Key West, where Ernest Hemingway once made his home, and where Tennessee Williams still does.

�Yes,� Bloom said, �it�s nice down there.�

�Borrowed a boat from a friend of mine in Islamorada Sunday, when I got there. Stopped off at Disneyworld first � have you ever been to Disneyworld in Orlando?�� drove right on down afterward and went out on the water.�

�What�s your friend�s name?�

�Jerry Cooper.�

�Is that a man or a woman?�

�A man.�

�So you left Georgia last weekend, is that it?�

�Yes, on the eleventh, last Friday.�

�And got to Islamorada when?�

�Sunday afternoon.�

�And went right out on the boat.�

�Yes. Didn�t come back in till last night. Didn�t even know Vicky was planning a comeback, learned all about it in the paper. I�d have been down here in a flash if I�d known, fuck Disneyworld, fuck the Keys, I�d have come straight to Calusa to catch her opening.�

�When did you get here?�

�Early this morning. Hopped right in the station wagon last night and started driving.�

�These other guys in the band...�

�The group.�

�Yeah, Wheat,� Bloom said. �Can you tell me their names?�

�The way I can tell you my own. Geoff Hamilton on lead guitar, Georgie Krantz on bass, and Neil Sadowsky on drums.�

�Got any idea where I can find them?�

�Geoff runs a music school in El Dorado, Arkansas. Teaches guitar mostly, but I think he gives mandolin and uke lessons, too.�

�How about the others, whatever their names are?�

�Georgie�s a piano tuner up in Falmouth, on the Cape. Cape Cod. Got a wife and three kids. Plays a gig every now and then, locally or in Boston, but what he really makes his living at is the tuning.�

�And the last one, what�s his name?�

�Neil Sadowsky, drummer with the group. I don�t know where he is now. He was living in New York last time we talked, oh, six months ago.�

�Spell those names for me, will you?� Bloom said, and took out his notebook. Marshall spelled all the names for him, and Bloom wrote them down in a neat, precise hand.

�Where are you staying here in Calusa?� he asked.

�No place yet, I just got here this morning.�

�Here�s my card,� Bloom said. �If you remember anything about where this Sadowsky guy might be, give me a call.�

�If I�m still here,� Marshall said. �I�m not due back till Monday morning, but after what happened...� He shook his head.

�Cutting the vacation short, huh?�

�Maybe.�

�Yeah,� Bloom said, and nodded. �Terrible thing. Well, I got to go,� he said. �Keep in touch, Matthew.�

�I will,� I said.

He spread his hand in a farewell fan, smiled over it, and then walked quickly to where the police car was parked.

�Have you got a minute, Mr. Hope?� Marshall asked. �Or are you in a hurry?�

�No hurry,� I said.

�I�ll walk you to your car.�

We began walking. The wind howled around us.

�I wanted to ask you...� Marshall said, and hesitated. �The newspaper suggested you�d been seeing Vicky regularly...�

�Well, not really.�

�Well, whatever,� Marshall said, �that�s none of my business. I�m saying � in light of what happened afterward � it�s good to know she might have had someone she could trust. Were you there at the opening?�

�No, I didn�t get to see her till Sunday night.�

�At Greensleeves, is that the name of the place?�

�The Greenery.�

�How�d she sound?�

�Not very good.�

The Ghia was where I�d parked it against the wrought-iron fence, its nose facing us. In the State of Florida you get only one license plate when you register your automobile and you affix this to the rear holder. This saves the state a lot of money each year, but it leaves the motorists with an empty holder at the front of the car. I had filled the emptiness on the Ghia with a metal plate that read: I�D RATHER BE SAILING. Marshall stopped at the car, glanced at the front plate, and said, �You�re a sailor, huh?�

�Yes,� I said.

�Me, too. Loved those couple of days I spent out on the water.� He shook his head. �So she was bad that night, huh?�

�Yes, I�m afraid so.�

�Yeah, well, that was Vicky, all right. I loved her to death, but she had a voice like a nasal drip, monotonous, persistent, annoying as hell. It took every ounce of musical knowledge I possessed to make those albums sound like money, you know what I mean? Her looks didn�t hurt, either, she was really gorgeous back then. The picture I used on the �Frenzy� sleeve � that was the first album � I poured her into this red sequined gown slit down to her navel and halfway up the leg. She had magnificent breasts and we showed everything but the nipples, believe me, great legs too, it was a stunning picture, we had it taken by a guy in New Orleans who used to work for Life magazine back in the forties and early fifties. What we were trying to sell, Mr. Hope, was youth and sex and a feeling of wildness, do you know, frenzy, Vicky in that red gown with her head thrown back and a wide smile on her face, one hand on her hip, lots of breast and leg and thigh showing. We were trying to make her a symbol for the sound I�d manufactured in the studio, beefed up her voice, used every trick I knew, made Wheat sound like the Beatles and the Stones all rolled together and blowing at the same time! They ate it up, wanted to eat her up as well, believe me, we had more damn calls � television shows, nightclubs, Vegas, New York, concert tours, everybody wanting her to make personal appearances, fat chance. That would�ve been the end of Victoria Miller, dead on the spot, the end of Wheat, too, the end of the whole big dazzling ball of wax.� He shook his head. He had delivered all this with such speed and intensity that, paradoxically, it left me feeling somewhat breathless.

�Poor darlin,� he said. �What�d she sing that night?�

�All the golden oldies.�

�Wrong choice. What was she wearing?�

�A white gown.�

�Slinky?�

�Slinky.�

�Low cut?�

�Not very.�

�But I�ll bet she looked terrific, didn�t she?�

�Yes, she looked beautiful.�

�What�d the critics have to say? Were there any reviews?�

�One, but I haven�t seen it yet.�

Marshall shook his head again. �She never should have tried it,� he said. �Not that way. If she�d wanted to make a comeback, all she had to do was pick up the phone, let me know what she wanted, I�d have dropped everything and come running. But the way she��

�Did she know where to find you?�

�Oh, sure.�

�Then you�ve been in touch over the years?�

�Christmas cards. With little notes scribbled on them, how are you, what�re you doing, like that.�

�Did she send you one this past Christmas?�

�Never missed a Christmas.�

�But she didn�t mention the opening.�

�No, I only learned about that last night. God, if I�d known, I�d have been here in a minute! Me miss her opening? After all we�d been through together? No way. Did she seem worried that night? When you went to see her, I mean?�

�I didn�t think so at the time, but later, yes, it seemed to me she was troubled about something.�

�Did she say what?�

�Not really. We talked mostly about how it had gone that night, the show. She wanted to know if there�d been an unusual amount of chatter in the audience, thought she�d detected...�

�Yeah, that can be death, people talking during a performance, poor darlin.�

�I told her I hadn�t noticed anything out of the ordinary.�

�Well, good for you, I thank you for that.�

�By the way, she mentioned that you were the one who hadn�t allowed her to make any public appearances. In the past, I mean. When you were working together.�

�Ah, then she did mention me, huh?�

�Yes. She said � well, I really can�t remember her exact words, but it was something about Eddie not letting her perform live, and when I asked her who Eddie was, she said you�d been her producer at Regal.�

�That�s what I was, all right,� he said. �And a lot more, I guess.�

�Like what?�

�Mentor, adviser...� he said, and let the words trail.

�This must be hitting you pretty hard.�

�Yes.�

�I�m sorry.�

He nodded bleakly, and then took from his pocket one of those leather cigarette cases with a lift-off top. I thought he was lighting a cigarette at first � until I caught a whiff of the smoke drifting on the air.

�Is that dope?� I asked.

�Little bit of grass,� he said. �Want a stick?�

�No, thanks.�

�Don�t you smoke?�

�I smoke.�

�What is it then? Are they tough on pot down here?�

�Let�s say they frown upon smoking it in public.�

�Who cares?� he said, and shrugged. �You sure you don�t want one? I�ve got a dozen more in the wagon, you won�t be depriving me.�

�No, thanks,� I said, �that�s okay.�

He sucked on the joint, let out a slow stream of smoke, and said, �You were telling me she seemed worried about something.�

�Yes.�

�Did she say what?�

�No.�

�Had someone threatened her, do you think?�

�I don�t know.�

�Well, did she mention any threats?�

�No.�

�A threatening letter maybe?�

�Nothing. Although...�

�Yes?�

�Someone did call Vicky on the night she was murdered.�

�Who?�

�I don�t know, the sitter took the calls. The man wouldn�t leave his name.�

�It was a man then?�

�Yes.�

�What�d he say?�

�Well, nothing the first two times.�

�How many times did he call?�

�Three. And all he said the last time was �Tell Vicky I�ll be stopping by to collect.� �

�Collect what?�

�I don�t know.�

�Well...� did Vicky owe him something? Money or...� I don�t know...� what does a person come by to collect?�

The name leaped into my mind without warning, �Allison,� and came from my mouth before I even realized I�d thought it, �Allison,� and hung on the air to bring her to vivid recall for only a moment, a six-year-old darling in a granny nightgown, showing me her finger paintings and later sitting at my feet while she scribbled with her crayons � Allison.

�No, I don�t think so,� Marshall said, shaking his head. �People don�t say they�ll be coming by to collect a child. They�ll pick up a child, or...�

�I�ve heard the expression,� I said. �To collect someone. Especially when it�s a child.�

�Well...� who would have been coming by to collect Allison? Was Tony Konig in town?�

�Yes, but...�

�He wouldn�t have been coming by for a six-year-old child at that hour of the night, would he?�

�No, that doesn�t sound likely.�

�Maybe Vicky arranged to have...� I don�t know...� something picked up. A rug to be cleaned, a vacuum to be repaired, a toaster, a lamp, who knows? And this was the serviceman calling to say he�d be stopping by to collect it.�

�At night?�

�No, the next day, whenever. Got the message on his answering service, called her back to let her know he�d be stopping by for whatever it was.�

�Maybe,� I said, and looked at my watch. �Mr. Marshall... I really have to get back to the office.�

�I�m sure that�s what it must have been,� Marshall said.

�Most likely,� I said. We shook hands. �It was nice meeting you,� I said. �Good-bye, Mr. Marshall.�

�Good-bye, Mr. Hope,� he said, and smiled forlornly.

Although I�d promised to call Anthony Konig as soon as I decided what to do with the information he�d given me about Vicky�s father, I didn�t talk to him again till Thursday afternoon, after I�d concluded my one o�clock meeting with Gerald Bannister, the delinquent gall-bladder patient. I was, in fact, just about to dial the 504 New Orleans area code when Cynthia buzzed to say Konig was waiting on three. I punched the lighted button in the base of the phone.

�Hello, Mr. Konig,� I said.

�You promised you�d call.�

�I�m sorry, things got a bit hectic around here yesterday. Where are you now?�

�Still at the Breakwater, looks like I�ll be here through the weekend at least. I�ve got to see about ordering a stone for Vicky, and I want to make some sort of arrangement with a florist, get fresh flowers put on the grave every now and then. Have you checked those banks yet?�

�Yes, sir, someone in the office did. Vicky had a checking account and a small savings account at Calusa First, but no safe-deposit box.�

�How about the other banks in town?�

�Nothing at any of them.�

�So we still don�t know, am I right? About a will, I mean.�

�That�s right. But I�ll keep checking with Probate, you needn�t...�

�I think you ought to go see Vicky�s father.�

�What for?�

�If anyone�d know about a will she left, it�d be Dwayne.�

�What�s the rush, Mr. Konig?�

I was thinking the man�s daughter had been kidnapped, most probably by the same person who�d killed his former wife, and all he was worried about was a will which � if it existed � might name him as guardian of whatever his daughter would inherit. It seemed to me that Anthony Konig should have been less concerned about his daughter�s goddamn property and more concerned about her safety.

�I like to get all my ducks in a row,� he said.

�Why don�t we first get Allison back,� I said. �Then we can start worrying about...�

�Well, that�s just the point. When we do get her back, I want to know where I stand. If I�m her designated guardian...�

�Mr. Konig, forgive me, but I�m sorry I even mentioned that possibility. If there is a will, and if you are the named guardian, there�ll be plenty of time to do what needs to be done later. In the meantime...�

�I�d like you to go see Dwayne,� he said.

I said nothing.

�Mr. Hope?�

�I hear you, Mr. Konig.�

�Will you go see him?�

�If you feel it�s that important.�

�It�d set my mind at ease. And while you�re there, you might fish around a little, see if it isn�t true what I told you.�

�I�d rather not do that.�

�Well, then just find out whether there�s a will or not. I�ve got nothing personal to gain by this, Mr. Hope, I hope you realize that. I don�t imagine I�d have free hand as guardian to do whatever I wanted to do with Allison�s property...�

�As a matter of fact, you wouldn�t. The court would require a very strict accounting.�

�Which is what I thought. But I�d sure as hell hate to think Vicky may�ve named her father as guardian. So if you could find out for me whether he knows about any will, I�d appreciate it.�

�I�ll do what I can.�

�Thank you,� he said, and hung up.

He had not told me where I could find Dwayne Miller. I buzzed Cynthia, asked her to get me Detective Bloom at the Public Safety Building, and then slipped the signed Bannister notes into a manila envelope, marked it Bannister-Ungerman Notes, and tossed it into the basket with the rest of the material awaiting filing. Cynthia got back to me almost at once.

�Detective Bloom on four,� she said.

I picked up the receiver.

�Hello,� I said, �how are you?�

�Hungry,� he said.

�Hungry?�

�I went to see my doctor last Saturday, the yearly checkup, you know? He told me I�m fifteen pounds overweight, my blood pressure is one-twenty over ninety-four, and my cholesterol level is three-seventeen. All right, anything over two-eighty for the cholesterol is supposed to be bad, and anything over one-twenty over ninety for the blood pressure bothers him. So he�s got me on a fat-free, salt-free diet, and I�m starving to death. You know what I had for lunch? Fruit salad, cottage cheese, and a slice of protein bread without butter. I�m six feet three inches tall, and I weigh two hundred and twenty. Does that sound fat to you?�

�Well, I really don�t...�

�My doctor says I�m overweight. He says at my age all of this can be a problem � the extra pounds, the high blood pressure, the cholesterol. I�m forty-six, does that sound ancient to you?�

�Well, no, it doesn�t.�

�He said I can either start dieting or else stop buying long-play records. That was supposed to be a joke, he�s a very comical man, my doctor. So I�m eating fruit and cottage cheese for lunch, like some blue-haired old lady in Garden City. What can I do for you, Matthew?�

�Couple of things you should know,� I said, and I filled him in on what both Anthony Konig and Melanie Simms had told me after Vicky�s funeral yesterday.

�We got suspects coming out of the woodwork, huh?� Bloom said.

�It would appear that way.�

�So the old man is rich, huh?�

�Orange groves, motels, securities, and cash. Yes, I would say he�s moderately wealthy.�

�What�s an orange grove in Manakawa County worth?�

�I have a client with a hundred and four acres there, and he�s priced them at a little under a million.�

�And Miller�s got himself four hundred acres, huh?�

�That�s right.�

�So why was his daughter living in a crumby little development house out there on Citrus Lane?�

�Good question.�

�Looks to me like he disinherited her while she was still alive. What about this Jim Sherman? He seemed gay to me. Is he gay?�

�That�s the rumor.�

�Doesn�t matter to me either way,� Bloom said, �except as it might apply to the case. Said she was going to be dead, huh?�

�That�s what Melanie told me.�

�Could�ve meant he was going to fire her if she didn�t pull the crowds in.�

�Maybe.�

�I�ll talk to him, thanks. Few things you might like to know. Are you interested in any of this shit?�

�Yes, I am.�

�I thought you might be. First, I called this guy who used to be lead guitarist with the group, the one up in El Dorado. He was playing a wedding job Sunday night, give me the couple�s name, couldn�t possibly have been down here putting the blocks to Vicky, so that lets him out. Next I called this guy on the Cape, the one who used to play bass with the group. A kid answered the phone, cutest little thing, must�ve been seven or eight years old, told me her Mommy was out shopping and her Daddy was out tuning. I gave her my name and number, but that was a lost cause, she kept calling me Mr. Boom. How do you like that? Mr. Boom. I�ll try him again in a little while, on the off chance he was down here in Calusa Sunday night beating Vicky Miller to death.�

�Did the airlines...�

�Nothing for a George Krantz. Not from Boston, where he would�ve most likely caught a flight, nor from anywhere else near the Cape either. But who knows, he might�ve driven down. I can�t get a line on this Sadowsky character, the drummer, who was living in New York the last time Marshall heard from him. Checked all the directories, got a call in to the N.Y.P.D. right now, maybe they�ll give it the old college try for a former Nassau County cop. I�ve been calling every hotel and motel in town, trying to locate Marshall, see if he can give me a little more information on the guy, what he looks like and so on, but he�s nowhere in sight. I figure he must�ve headed back for Georgia already. He said he worked as a disc jockey up there someplace, didn�t he?�

�Yes, he did.�

�Right. He also said he borrowed that boat he was on from somebody named Jerry Cooper in Islamorada. That�s a man, I asked him if it was a man, do you remember?�

�I remember.�

�Well, there�s no Jerry Cooper listed in Islamorada. That may not mean anything, lots of people have unlisted phones. But his alibi�s still wide open, far as I�m concerned, so I�m eager to talk to him on several counts. What I did, I located an outfit in Skokie, Illinois, that puts out a publication called Spot Radio Rates and Data, it�s mostly for people in the advertising business, tells them how much a commercial costs on any radio station in the country. Lists all the stations in all the states. I just got off the phone with them, they�ll be Xeroxing the listings for Georgia and sending them to me by Express Mail. I hope there aren�t too many damn stations there, because I plan to have my people calling each and every one of them. Provided the feds don�t object, those bastards. Where�s Skokie anyway? Are you familiar with Illinois?�

�I�m originally from Chicago.�

�So where�s Skokie?�

�Just outside of Chicago, actually. Very close to Evanston, where I went to law school.�

�Well, I hope I get that stuff by tomorrow. I�d like to talk to Marshall again if I can locate him, ask him about this Sadowsky guy, and find out about that boat. You think Konig might know what station he works at up there?�

�Maybe. He wants me to go see Vicky�s father, by the way. Would you have any...�

�What for?�

�He wants to know if Vicky left a will, figures Miller might know.�

�Oh? Why does he want to know about a will?�

�He�s dying to know if he�s been named guardian of Allison�s property.�

�Tell him he has.�

�I�m sorry, what did you... ?�

�Tell him he�s been named guardian of her property.�

�How do you know?�

�I�ve got the will right here,� Bloom said. �We found it in a shoebox on the top shelf of her bedroom closet.�

The will was one of those stationery-store things that could be bought over the counter for fifteen cents plus tax. It was folded in three, the way most legal documents are; all it lacked was a blue binder. On the front, printed in Old English script lettering, was the word and beneath that �of� and then a printed line above which Vicky had hand-lettered her name, �At the bottom of the page the same Old English script announced three blank spaces headed but none of those spaces were filled in. I unfolded the document.

The will itself was a combination of the printed form and the handwritten words Victoria had filled in:

That was the end of what Vicky had handwritten on the page. The rest, again, was a combination of the form�s printed type and the words Vicky had filled in. A name leaped out of the page at me:

I turned the page over.

The document was dated the fourth day of January, signed by Vicky, and witnessed by people I guessed were the babysitter�s mother and father, an Albert Whitlaw and a Dorothy Whitlaw, who gave their addresses as 1122 Citrus Lane.

I sat alone in Bloom�s office, and read the will a second time. Vicky had written it, or at least dated it, on the fourth of January, which was a week before she�d opened at the Greenery. She had written her letter to Konig on the seventh, advising him that he should contact Matthew Hope in the event of her death, a not unreasonable suggestion since she had already named me as executor of her will. It was entirely possible that Konig had possessed no prior knowledge of the will, or of the fact that Vicky had left to him a quarter of the accumulated income and principal of a trust in which, presumably, she was named beneficiary. On the other hand, it was also possible that Konig had known about the will all along, had perhaps even discussed it with Vicky after he�d received her letter and before her death. This would have accounted for his eagerness to have me locate the will now. I had no idea how much money was in that trust, but people have been known to commit murder for pennies.

The door to the outer office opened, and Bloom�s cholesterolladen bulk filled the doorframe. Beyond the door, two federal agents in identical blue suits were sitting at the same desk, talking on separate telephones. Bloom closed the door behind him, shutting them from view.

�Tweedledum and Tweedledee,� he said, pulling a face. �They�re running this place like a bookie�s wire room, on the phone day and night. Wait�ll the city gets the bill for all those long distance calls. Think it�ll stand up?� he asked, nodding toward the will.

�Well...� maybe not all of it. She must�ve had some kind of advice before she wrote it, or else she looked at someone else�s will as a model, had it properly witnessed, all that. But I wouldn�t go spending my share of that trust money if I were Konig.�

�Why not?�

�I�m assuming the trust hasn�t kicked out yet. If it had...�

�Kicked out?�

�Terminated. If it had, if Vicky was already in possession of the accumulated income and principal, she wouldn�t have made reference to the trust at all. Her bequest would have been covered by the �real and personal property� in the first clause.�

�She wasn�t a lawyer, you know.�

�Granted. But I think I�m fairly safe in assuming the termination date would have been sometime after she wrote this will. And that�s where the problem may arise. For both Konig and his daughter.�

�How so?�

�I don�t know the terms of the trust agreement. I do know that unless the grantor...�

�Miller.�

�According to this, yes. �A trust created by my father Dwayne Robert Miller in the year 1965.��

�Think it actually exists?�

�I would guess so. But unless it makes specific provision for Vicky to appoint alternate beneficiaries in the event of her death...� well, I just don�t know. I�d have to see the instrument. It�s safe to say that the grantor or settlor of a trust � the man creating it � is the only one who can decide when and how the income and principal are to be distributed. Unless the power of appointment is there.�

�We�re talking about millions here, you know.�

�How do you figure that?�

�The orange groves alone, from what you told me, could be worth at least four million.�

�That�s right, but...�

�So even forgetting the motels and the rest of the shit, Konig�s share would come to a flat million. That�s a nice piece of change.�

�Provided all that property is part of the trust.�

�What do you mean?�

�We don�t know what Miller put into that trust. The principal could have been a worthless gold mine in the Yukon, and the income on it over the years could have amounted to zero.�

�I�m betting all the other stuff is in it.�

�Not according to Konig. He says Miller put all of Vicky�s earnings into his own bank account.�

�That�s Konig�s story, but what�s Miller�s? I sure would love to have a look at that trust instrument. Is there any way I can get my hands on it?�

�You can ask for a court order, can�t you?�

�On what grounds?�

�You�re investigating a homicide...�

�Sure, and a million bucks is motive enough for murder, isn�t it?�

�Exactly.�

�But will a judge see it that way?� Bloom shook his head. �I doubt it. He�ll want to know how I can assume motive if I don�t yet know what the trust says. I�ll explain that I won�t know what the trust says until I have access to the instrument itself. He�ll say, �You have no reasonable cause, petition denied,� and that�ll be that.�

�Want me to take a shot at it?�

�How would you do any better?�

�My client�s named in a will that refers back to a trust. It�s reasonable to assume his inheritance may depend upon the provisions of that trust.�

�Mm,� Bloom said.

�What�s Miller�s address?�

�He�s on Manakawa Farms Road. You take the first left after you pass the City Limits sign. That�s at the stop light on 41 � where you�d ordinarily take a right to go to the beach, okay? He�s, oh, five or six miles outside of town.�

�Left at the stop light,� I said. �Manakawa Farms Road.�

�Yeah, he�s got a mailbox painted guess what color?�

�Any name on it?�

�Just numbers. Three-twenty-four. Think you�ll learn anything?�

�It�s worth a try,� I said.

If you follow Route 41 south out of Calusa, you should arrive in Manakawa a half-hour later. Manakawa is only seventeen miles away, but during the season it might just as well be seventeen hundred; it took me the better part of an hour to get to the outskirts of town, and then another twenty minutes to locate Miller�s orange groves out on Manakawa Farms Road, near the construction in progress for the proposed Interstate. I might have missed the mailbox painted in bright orange with the numerals 324 on it in black, and the narrow dirt access road leading into the property, had I not been alerted by miles and miles of orange trees planted in neatly spaced rows. The temperature the night before had risen to a comparatively sweltering thirty-four degrees (a little over one degree Celsius, which damn system we will never get used to here in America), but the smudge pots were still standing under the trees, ready to be ignited in the event of another sudden freeze.

A half-dozen cement-block buildings painted white formed a sprawling architectural complex at the farthest end of the access road. I parked the Ghia alongside a pickup truck painted orange and lettered in black with the words MILLER GROVES. Three long low steps led to a screened-in porch attached to the largest building. I opened the screen door and crossed the porch to a wooden door that opened into the building proper. A young girl in her twenties was sitting behind a desk, typing and chewing gum. She looked up as I came into the room.

�Hi,� she said.

�I�m Matthew Hope,� I said, �I�m looking for Mr. Miller.�

�Out in the groves just now,� she said. �Want to have a seat?�

�How long will he be, do you know?�

�Checking to see was there any damage last night,� she said. �Shouldn�t be too much longer, he�s been out there quite a while now.�

�I guess I�ll wait outside,� I said. �Get a little sun.�

�You�ll get the sun and the cold both,� she said.

�Little warmer than yesterday, though.�

�Not much. Supposed to get only to the high fifties. That ain�t so warm at all.�

�Well,� I said, �think how bad it is anyplace else.�

�That�s for sure,� she said.

I nodded pleasantly and then went outside again, wondering as I crossed the screened-in porch just how long it had been since I�d gone native. Think how bad it is anyplace else. Jesus! In the distance another orange-colored pickup truck was coming up a dirt road that ran between the trees, raising a great cloud of dust behind it. I leaned on the fender of the Ghia and waited.

Dwayne Miller was wearing a ten-gallon straw hat, a blue denim jacket, blue jeans, and brown cowboy boots with white leather insets. He seemed taller than I remembered him, but perhaps that was an illusion caused by the high crown of the hat. He saw me from the cab of the truck, but made no sign of acknowledgment as he cut the engine, opened the door, and climbed down. He was looking at the ground as he came toward the porch.

�Mr. Miller?� I said, and he glanced up. �Matthew Hope, I was at the funeral yesterday.�

He studied my face. His eyes were as intensely dark as his daughter�s had been, a brown almost the color of coal. His brows were as black as the sideburns showing beneath the brim of the hat. His nose qualified him at once for a member of the pig family, bulbous and somewhat tip-tilted, with overlarge nostrils.

�I don�t remember you,� he said.

�I was with Detective Bloom.�

He kept studying me. �What is it you want?� he asked.

�I was a friend of Vicky�s.�

�So?�

�I�m an attorney,� I said.

�Her attorney?�

�No, but...�

�Then what do you want here? Mr. Hope, is it? What do you want here, Mr. Hope? This is a place of business. We grow oranges and we sell �em by the bushel. Did y�wish to buy some oranges, Mr. Hope?�

His tone was broadly sarcastic, his eyes burning with what seemed unwarranted animosity. I did not know the man, this was our first meeting; I could not imagine why he was being so rude.

�Tony phoned a little while ago,� he said, �told me you might be stopping by.�

�Ah.�

�Told him there wasn�t no damn will I knew of, said his lawyer would be stopping by to ask me about it, anyway. I�m telling you the same thing, Mr. Hope. There wasn�t no will.�

�How do you know?�

�Vicky would�ve told me. I saw her Thursday night, she�da mentioned it then.�

�Why then, Mr. Miller?�

��Cause it was plain to see she was worried to death about something. Knew what was coming, you ask me. Could see it plain as day on her face. Fear. Like when she was a little girl and it thundered and lightened. D�run under the bed, lay there facedown with her eyes shut, her hands clasped behind her head, sobbing and trembling. Same thing last Thursday night. Not crying or shaking, not anything like that, no, but this fear on her face when we were talking about the opening. I warned her against it, warned her myself, but she wouldn�t listen.�

�What�d you say to her, Mr. Miller?�

�Told her she was makin a mistake, openin at that little dive out there on Stone Crab. She was a star! A star don�t go singin in a goddamn bar�s part of a restaurant! I warned her. Told her I�d disown her if she went ahead with it. Wouldn�t listen. Stubborn damn little bitch, same as when she was little. Coulda killed her sometimes. Just like her mother. Stubborn as a mule.�

�What�d you have in mind, Mr. Miller?�

�I don�t follow you,� he said.

�When you told her you�d disown her?�

�I don�t see as that�s any of your business, is it?�

�Were you thinking of the trust?�

His eyes opened wide. He stared at me speechlessly for several moments, trying to decide whether I was bluffing. He must have figured at last that I did in fact know about the trust and there�d be no point denying its existence.

�Couldn�t have had it changed, anyway,� he said, �it�s an irrevocable trust. But she didn�t know that. I was jess tryin to scare her is all, put a little pressure on her. How�d you know about it?�

�Her will,� I said. �It refers back to the trust.�

�Thought you didn�t know if there was a will or not.�

�I didn�t say that, Mr. Miller.�

�Tony damn well said it.�

�Was Vicky in fact the beneficiary of that trust?�

�The trust is none of your business,� Miller said, and took off his hat, and wiped the sweatband with his handkerchief. His hair, I noticed, was going gray on top. He looked suddenly much older. He put the hat on his head again, returned the handkerchief to the back pocket of his jeans, looked me dead in the eye, and said, �Let me make something clear, Mr. Hope. I don�t own nothin in my own name �cept my house. Everything else � the groves, the motels I got on the Trail, the securities � all of it�s owned by the trust. Vicky was only nineteen when she got started in the music business, hit it big when she had no more sense about money than a toad. Just like her mother. I set up that trust to protect her, make sure she wouldn�t end up like some of them other rock stars, you know the ones I mean, poppin pills and killin themselves or else enterin their middle years without a pot to piss in. Your average life of a rock star is maybe four or five years, Mr. Hope, six or seven if they�re lucky. I didn�t want my little girl endin up in the shithouse when she got to be in her thirties. Now that�s all you need to know.�

�Mr. Miller,� I said, �Vicky�s will leaves the trust principal and income three-quarters to Allison and one-quarter to Vicky�s former husband, Anthony...�

�Don�t make me laugh,� Miller said.

�I didn�t write the will, she did.�

�How can she give away what�s in a trust she didn�t make? You�re a lawyer, ain�t you? You know damn well the man creating the trust is the only one can decide how and when the income and principal�s to be distributed.�

�She was beneficiary of the trust, wasn�t she?�

�Of course she was. But...�

�Well, if the trust had already terminated, the principal would be hers to do with as she...�

�It hasn�t terminated.�

�When does it terminate?�

�That�s none of your business.�

�If it terminated before her death, it�s very much my business. Your daughter has settled a quarter of the principal on Anthony Konig. That means if the money was already hers, a quarter of it...�

�Are you trying to steal all this for your client?� Miller asked, opening his arms wide to encompass the acres and acres of orange trees. �What I worked my life buildin for the time Vicky got old enough to manage it herself?� He shook his head. �Ain�t no way you�re goin to do that, mister.�

�I�m not claiming Mr. Konig has the right to anything just yet...�

�Oh, just yet, huh? When do you plan to make such a claim, Mr. Hope?�

�After I see that trust instrument. And then only if...�

�Be a cold day in hell when you do that, mister.�

�If the trust was in fact terminated before your daughter wrote her will...�

�It wasn�t, I told you.�

�Or if provision was made in the trust for her to designate alternate beneficiaries...�

�There�s no such provision.�

�How can I know that for sure unless I see the instrument itself?�

�You take my word for it.�

�Where a quarter of the principal and income is concerned? There�s no way I could do that and still remain faithful to my client�s interests.�

�Then you can go straight to hell, Mr. Hope, because that trust is none of your damn business, and you ain�t going to see it, period.�

�A judge may disagree with you.�

�What?�

�My client is named in a will that refers back to that trust. I can file suit to recover...�

�There�s no court in the world would listen to...�

�Yes, there is, Mr. Miller. It�s called the Calusa County Circuit Court, and that�s where I�d go to ask for a declaratory judgment determining my client�s rights in connection with that trust. At the same time, I�d serve you with a request for production, demanding inspection and copying of the trust instrument.�

�No court would grant you that.�

�I don�t need a court to grant it. Upon commencement of my action, I can make my request without leave of the court.�

�Then you just go do that, Mr. Hope.�

�Your attorney may not want me to go to all that trouble, Mr. Miller. Are you sure you don�t want to talk to him first?�

�You go talk to him yourself, you feel like making a long-distance call. Man who drew the trust papers was David Haythorn, in N�Orleans, where we were livin at the time. You want his phone number, too?�

�I can find it, thanks. Good day, Mr. Miller.�

He did not answer. He went up onto the porch instead, and slammed the screen door behind him.

Before leaving the office, I�d asked Cynthia to call the Herald-Tribune for a copy of last Saturday�s paper, the one carrying Jean Riverton�s review on Vicky�s opening the night before. It was waiting on my desk when I got back, together with a list of people who�d called while I was out. I glanced briefly at the list, and then scanned the index on the front page of the paper. The review was on page twelve of Section E. It read:

My music was swing.

I grew up in the era of the Big Bands. My feet tapped to the rhythms of Benny Goodman and Charlie Barnet. My soul responded to the sweet harmonies of Glenn Miller and Claude Thornhill. My heart soared with Harry James�s trumpet or Artie Shaw�s clarinet. I can still hum note for note the theme songs of Charlie Spivak, Glen Gray, Vaughn Monroe, Duke Ellington � even Alvino Rey, who played electric guitar long before the Beatles learned to plug a �chord� into an outlet. The female vocalists I idolized were Helen O�Connell and Kitty Kallen, Martha Tilton and Connie Haines, Betty Hutton and her sister Marion, the Andrews Sisters, the King Sisters, Doris Day when she was still with the Les Brown band. I loved swing. I still love swing.

Victoria Miller became a recording star in 1965, when swing was dead and the Big Band Era buried. She made her reputation with what has been called in retrospect �hard rock� as opposed to �soft rock� or �acid rock� or �bubble gum rock� or, most recently, �punk rock.� She recorded three albums and a handful of 45 rpm�s during her brief career. The albums were million-copy sellers, the best known of which was the first � �Frenzy.� She was backed by a group called Wheat, and the style that brought them all to fame and fortune can best be described as driving, tempestuous, raging � indeed �frenzied.� Last night, in her opening at the beautiful Tropicana Lounge of the Greenery Restaurant, Victoria Miller decided to sing many of the songs popularized in the Big Band Era. The results were disastrous.

It was, I must admit, difficult to resist comparing Miss Miller�s rendition of �You Belong to Me� with Jo Stafford�s, her version of �Why Don�t You Do Right?� with Peggy Lee�s, her interpretation of �He�s My Guy� with Helen Forrest�s. But if comparisons are odious, then they should have been avoided at all costs; a repertoire should not have been built upon songs well known in their original versions, and remembered only too dearly by many of Calusa�s residents. Miss Miller�s choice of material, rather than creating a mood of familiar relaxation in the company of old friends, reeked instead of condescension. Moreover, her voice � well-suited perhaps to the blaring amplification of the rock style she exploited back in the sixties � seemed tiny and tinny as she struggled with such forties favorites as �I�ll Get By,� �Sentimental Journey,� and �Serenade in Blue.� She was somewhat, but only somewhat, more believable when singing �Thanks for the Boogie Ride� (But who can forget Anita O�Day backed by the Gene Krupa orchestra?) or �Tampico� (Again, is there anyone who would not have preferred the June Christy/Stan Kenton version?), but for the most part her performance lacked the presence, the vibrance, the sheer magic those singing stars of the forties brought to each and every one of their personal appearances. John Ruggiero accompanied her admirably and bravely on piano. I suspect he may have wished he were back on the stage of the Helen Gottlieb.

I closed the newspaper.

I had never read a more devastating review from Jean Riverton � or, come to think of it, anyone � in my entire life. I could understand why she might have felt Vicky shouldn�t have invaded turf sacred to many of Calusa�s pentagenarians, but Jesus, did she have to rip her to shreds besides? I remembered the conversation Melanie Simms had overheard, and I wondered now if the token insertion of a few rock-and-roll numbers might have satisfied Jean�s raging indignation. I doubted it. One thing was certain: Jim Sherman had been right on target when he�d objected to Vicky�s choice of material, and I suspected he would not have waited very long before telling her she was through at the Greenery. Was that actually what he�d meant when he�d said, �Lady, you are dead�? I could not imagine him engaged in the sort of brute violence that had killed her. But on the other hand, a negative Jean Riverton review had been known to close the bravest of endeavors. I remembered the handful of people in the lounge on the night I�d been there. A great big bundle of money was invested in the Greenery, and if all of it went down the drain because Vicky�s appearance there had given the place a bad name�

I didn�t want to think about it; that was Bloom�s job.

I picked up the phone and began doing my job.

Directory Assistance for New Orleans gave me a listing for a David Haythorn at One Shell Square. It was close to five o�clock when I dialed his number. I told the woman who answered the phone that I was calling long distance, and she put me right through.

�Mr. Haythorn,� I said, �this is Matthew Hope, I�m an attorney here in Calusa, I wonder if I may prevail upon your time for a few minutes.�

�Yes?� he said, cautiously.

�I�m representing a man named Anthony Konig...�

�Oh, yes,� he said.

�Sir?�

�I didn�t place your name for a moment. Dwayne Miller said I might be expecting a call from you.�

�Yes, sir, I saw him just a little while ago.�

�So he told me.�

�Then you know what this is about.�

�More or less.�

�And I needn�t bother filling you in.�

�It�s about the trust, as I understand.�

�Yes, sir.�

�As it might concern your client.�

�Yes, that�s right.�

�I told Mr. Miller we had nothing to hide here, and that I�d have no objection to discussing the provisions of the trust with you. That seemed to me the only way of satisfying you that your client would have no claim to the principal or accumulated income now that Miss Miller is dead.�

�I�m making no such claim yet, sir.�

�Well, from what I understand, you were waving lawsuits in my client�s face, and threatening to...�

�Only if I couldn�t gain access to the trust instrument in any other way.�

�You can have access anytime you like. We have nothing to hide here.�

�Mr. Miller told me that his daughter was beneficiary of the trust...�

�Well, I don�t wish to discuss that on the phone, Mr. Hope.�

�He�s already told me this, it isn�t something I�m trying to...�

�I still would rather not discuss it.�

�Assuming she was beneficiary...�

�Mr. Hope, really, this isn�t something easily discussed on the telephone.�

�Why not?�

�A trust is a complicated thing, as I�m sure you�re aware...�

�Yes, Mr. Haythorn, I�m familiar with trusts.�

�I wouldn�t want any misunderstandings concerning this particular trust. There�s been a murder committed, there�s been a kidnapping, I wouldn�t want the trust misinterpreted as a possible�� He cut himself short.

�A possible what?� I said.

�I would prefer not discussing this on the phone.�

�I wish you could see your way clear to do that, sir.�

�No, I don�t believe that would be in the best interests of my client.�

�It would save me a trip to New Orleans.�

�I�m sure there are flights from Calusa.�

�I�m not sure they�re all that frequent.�

�I have no other suggestion to make.�

�Other than my coming to New Orleans, is that it?�

�That�s it, Mr. Hope.�

�You�re making this difficult for me, Mr. Haythorn, and I�m wondering why.�

�As I told you earlier, we have nothing to hide here. But if you want to see the trust instrument, it�ll have to be here in my office.�

�I�ll be there tomorrow,� I said. �Let me call you back as soon as I�ve checked the flight schedules.�

�Fine, I�ll expect your call,� he said. �I�ll be here another hour or so.�

The moment I hung up, I remembered that I had to pick up Joanna after school tomorrow. I wondered how she might react to a trip to New Orleans for the weekend. Knowing my daughter, I guessed she would be ecstatic about the idea. I checked my calendar. I had a closing at ten tomorrow, and a lunch date at noon. Joanna did not get out of school until three-fifteen, provided she didn�t have Choir or Soccer or something. I buzzed Cynthia and asked her to check the airline schedules to New Orleans, reminding her of my various commitments, and she got back ten minutes later to report that my best bet would be National�s 127 out of Calusa at 3:10 P.M., connecting with National�s 25 out of Miami, arriving in New Orleans at 6:08. I told her to book two coach seats, and then I called St. Mark�s and asked to talk to Joanna�s adviser there. The woman�s name was Isabel Reed. She sounded harried and a trifle annoyed that I was detaining her from an imminent departure for a gallery opening. I explained that I would be taking my daughter to New Orleans with me over the weekend, but that it would entail catching a three-ten flight, which meant I would have to take her out of school at least an hour before then so that we could�

�Why don�t you take a later flight?� Miss Reed asked.

�Because I have an appointment in New Orleans,� I said. I did not yet have an appointment with David Haythorn, and I wasn�t yet sure he�d be willing to see me after such a late arrival, but first things first.

�Why don�t you take a later flight,� Miss Reed said, �and make your appointment for the following day?�

�Because it�s a business appointment, and the following day is Saturday,� I said.

�Oh,� she said.

�I�d like to pick her up at two o�clock,� I said, �perhaps even a little before then, if possible.�

�She has English at two o�clock,� Miss Reed said.

�I�m sure she can make up the class,� I said.

�English is her weakest subject,� Miss Reed said.

�I�m sorry,� I said, �but this is urgent.�

�Well,� she said.

�Thank you,� I said.

I next called Haythorn again to tell him I�d be arriving in New Orleans at a little past six tomorrow night, and would appreciate it if he could see me shortly after that. He was, much to my surprise, entirely amenable to meeting with me so late in the day. He said he was staying in town for a dinner engagement, anyway, and would be happy to have me come to his office as soon as I could get there from the airport. I told him I�d be staying at the Saint Louis � which reservation I hadn�t yet made � and that he could reach me there if there was any problem. He anticipated no problems.

Susan seemed to be her usual bitchy self when I called. She told me she was busy packing for her big weekend with Georgie Poole in the Bahamas, and Joanna wasn�t home from school yet because she had Movie Club, and would I please make this brief. I told her I�d be taking Joanna to New Orleans with me tomorrow, and would she mind asking her to pack a bag for the weekend and to take it to school with her in the morning because we�d be going directly from St. Mark�s to the airport.

�Yes, fine,� Susan said, �is that it?�

�Please ask her to pack a dress because we�ll be eating out, and I�d like her to...�

�I�ll ask her to pack a dress.�

�And a raincoat. New Orleans can...�

�A raincoat, yes. Matthew, if you don�t mind, I am trying to...�

�And tell her I�ll pick her up at two o�clock, I have Miss Reed�s permission for her to cut English.�

�English is her weakest subject,� Susan said.

�So I�ve heard. Two o�clock, okay?�

�You�re so fucking irresponsible,� Susan said, and hung up.

Cynthia buzzed me almost the instant I put the phone back on the receiver. �It�s Attorney O�Brien,� she said, �on three.�

I immediately pushed the lighted button in the base of the phone.

�Hello, Dale,� I said.

�Hi,� she said. �I want to take you to dinner tomorrow night. Are you free?�

I am, at the age of thirty-seven, too old not to be startled by today�s liberated women. I had never been invited out to dinner by a female person before. I had been invited in to dinner, where I was served beef Bourguignon and red wine in a candlelit nook off an artsy-craftsy kitchen, but never had I been invited out. Never.

�Matthew?� she said. �Are you there?�

�Yes, I�m...� here. Right here,� I said.

�Well, just say yes or no.�

�I�m going to New Orleans tomorrow,� I said.

�Oh, what fun!� she said. �Why don�t I come with you?�

My silence now was almost palpable.

�Matthew?� she said.

�Yes, I�m still here.�

�Would that be all right?�

�Well...� my daughter�ll be coming with me,� I said.

�Would she mind?�

�No. I don�t think so, but...�

�Where are you staying?�

�The Saint Louis.�

�Good, I�ll book a room. What flight are we on?�

�Are you serious?�

�Of course, I�m serious. In fact, I�ve been looking for an excuse to get out of this town for a while. What flight are we on?�

�I�ll have my secretary book it for you. And the room, too, if you�re really...�

�I am really,� she said.

�Well, good. Hey, good,� I said, smiling.

�Yeah, good,� Dale said.

It was normally a twenty-minute ride from the New Orleans International Airport to the French Quarter, but the traffic on 61 was heavy, and our driver had to stop first at the Saint Louis Hotel on Bienville to drop off Joanna, Dale, and the luggage. The law offices of Foelger, Haythorn, Pelessier and Cortin were only half a dozen blocks away, but one-way streets in and out of the Quarter can pose problems of their own, and I did not get to Number One Shell Square until almost seven o�clock on Friday night.

The building was a monolithic monstrosity that occupied a full city block from Carondelet to St. Charles and Perdido to Poydras. Its entrance doors were on Carondelet, where the taxi dropped me, and access to them was gained first by climbing a short flight of steps to a landing some thirty feet across, at the outer edge of which was a standing, bronze-framed, ONE SHELL SQUARE marker, and then climbing another ten steps or so to a second landing, and yet another ten steps to a third landing across which were the spaced doorways with their brown antiglare glass. I felt rather as if I were climbing pyramids along the Nile. In the lobby a Burns Security guard sat inside a waist-high, oval counter fashioned of the same stone as the building itself, something that looked like a cross between marble and granite. He asked me if I was a Shell employee, and when I told him I wasn�t, he pulled back the ledger he had been in the process of offering, and asked me to sign my name in a second book instead. He told me to make sure I signed out when I left, and then gratuitously pointed out the location of the elevator bank. I stopped at the wall directory first, found a room number for Foelger, Haythorn, Pelessier and Cortin, and then took the elevator up to the seventh floor.

There was no one sitting behind the desk in the ultra-modern reception area with its white Formica desk and its dark blue carpet, its Mondrian print on the wall opposite the entrance doors, its modular sofas and easy chairs. But I heard a typewriter going someplace down the hall, and I found a harried secretary who seemed relieved I was offering her a brief respite from the tyranny of her machine and all those legal-sized pages scattered on her desk. She personally escorted me to a closed walnut door at the end of the hall, and then asked if I would like a cup of coffee. I told her I would not. I knocked on the door and a voice within said, �Yes, come in, please.�

David Haythorn was perhaps seventy years old, a frail-looking man with surprisingly jet-black hair and stern brown eyes set in a face that resembled browned and weathered parchment. His office, like the reception area and the other offices I�d peeked into along the hall, was decorated in a severe contemporary style that made him seem like a lost soul transported from Great Expectations into Star Wars. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and he offered me a seat beside his desk.

�So,� he said, �you�re here to see the trust instrument.�

�Yes, sir, I am.�

�Would you like some coffee?�

�No, sir, thank you.�

�You�re wondering why I insisted you come here to see it.�

�Considering I could have served Mr. Miller with a request for production...�

�Yes, if you�d brought suit. But you weren�t ready to do that, Mr. Hope, were you? Not really, were you? You may have scared Dwayne, but we�re both attorneys, so you can be honest with me. We have nothing to hide here.�

Whenever anyone says that to me � and David Haythorn had said it three times on the telephone, and a fourth time just now � the thing I run to hide is the silverware. I smiled at him. He smiled back.

�Do you know the one about the ship that sinks in the middle of the Pacific?� he asked.

�No, sir, I don�t believe so.�

�Well, a doctor, a minister, and a lawyer are floating around out there in shark-infested waters, and the sharks promptly eat the doctor and the minister, but they leave the lawyer alone. Do you know why?�

�Why?�

�Professional courtesy,� Haythorn said, and burst out laughing. His laugh, for such a frail-looking man, was surprisingly robust, as though somehow echoing his youthful head of hair. When at last he sobered, he said, �The reason I wanted you to look over the trust here in my office...�

�Yes, sir?�

�Was that I didn�t want it misinterpreted. I thought we could discuss it quietly and calmly here, and in that way you wouldn�t come to the conclusion I�m almost certain will at first occur to you.�

�And what conclusion is that, sir?�

�Why, the conclusion that Dwayne Miller killed his own daughter.�

I looked at him.

�Yes,� he said.

�I see.�

�Which, of course, is nonsense. And yet, the trust instrument might support such a supposition. Especially in view of the fact that no one has yet heard from the little girl�s kidnapper.�

�Which means what to you, Mr. Haythorn?�

�Which means that she, too, may be dead by now.�

�I hope that isn�t the case.�

�Well, naturally, naturally, but the possibility nonetheless exists. And if the primary beneficiary of the trust is dead � as of course Miss Miller is � and if the alternate beneficiary were to die before the trust terminates, why, then I think you can see why a supposition of foul play just might pop into someone�s head.�

�Why is that, Mr. Haythorn?�

�Because in such an eventuality the accumulated income and principal would revert to the grantor. And the grantor, as you know, is Dwayne Miller.�

�I see.�

�Yes.�

�Well.�

�Yes.�

�May I have a look at the instrument now?�

�Certainly. I simply wanted to forewarn you against any hasty judgment.�

The trust instrument ran to twenty-eight pages, and it took me close to an hour to read through them carefully, making notes as I went along. Haythorn never so much as glanced at his watch during all that time, even though he�d told me on the phone that he had a dinner engagement here in town. When I turned the last page, he looked across the desk at me and said, �Well? What do you make of it?�

�It seems simple enough,� I said.

�Oh, yes, for certain, a model agreement if I must say so myself. Except for the reinvested income, of course, but that was Dwayne�s idea. I told him at the time that there�d be tax disadvantages, but he said he wanted the income to accumulate rather than have it distributed at regular intervals. He always thought of his daughter as something of a financial incompetent, insisted not a penny go to her till she reached the age of thirty-five, when presumably she�d have been wise enough to take care of it.�

�When would that have been, Mr. Haythorn?�

�Well, that�s another thing that could easily lead to a false conclusion.�

�Why?�

�Because Victoria Miller would have been thirty-five years old on the twenty-second of January � that�s next Tuesday, Mr. Hope.�

�Are you telling me the trust would have terminated only nine days after she was murdered?�

�Yes, sir, but please don�t jump to the obvious conclusion.�

�Who�s the trustee, Mr. Haythorn?�

�Cajun National.�

�Here in New Orleans?�

�Yes, sir.�

�Would they know the current value of the trust?�

�I�m sure they would, but I have the most recent statements, and I can tell you it�s currently worth close to twelve million dollars.�

�Twelve...�

�Yes, sir.�

�Which Victoria Miller would have received on her thirty-fifth birthday next week.�

�Precisely. And which, under the provisions of the agreement, her daughter � as alternate beneficiary � will still receive next week.�

�Unless, as you suggested...�

�Yes, unless she�s dead by then.�

�In which case all of it reverts to Dwayne Miller.�

�I�m afraid so.�

He looked at my face.

�Ah,� he said, �I knew exactly what you�d think.�

�Mr. Haythorn,� I said, �I don�t want to keep you any longer, I know you have a dinner date. Thank you for your time.� I hesitated. �Could you possibly have the instrument copied and sent to me? Or would that be too difficult?�

�Now that we�ve talked, I�d have no objection,� he said. He grinned and added, �Anyway, if I didn�t comply, you might serve me with a request for production.�

�Thank you,� I said.

We shook hands. I walked up the long corridor with its doors opening onto ultra-modern offices, and past the room where the secretary was still struggling with reams of legal-sized paper, her typewriter sounding like a tap dancer on Bourbon Street, and I thought about a trust created back in 1965 and a will drawn only two weeks ago, and I thought about little Allison Konig out there someplace, and wondered if she knew that twelve million dollars was riding on her life.

Even God rested on Sunday.

Besides, my daughter wanted to know whether we were going to blow today the way we�d blown yesterday, what with traveling from New Orleans and then Tampa and then me rushing off to take care of business while she sat watching television all alone. My daughter has a way of directly demanding attention. She was great at this even when Susan and I were still married, but she has become expert at it since the divorce, working on the principle that parents who have split up are uncommonly receptive to their offsprings� slightest whims. She really doesn�t have to try quite so hard; I would leap into a pit of molten lava for her.

What I did instead was scan the Herald-Tribune�s Sunday Section for a suitable amusement, proposing and having dismissed in turn: 1) the Annual Bayview Avenue Arts and Crafts Street Exhibit 2) a sculpture opening at the Wexler Gallery on Main Street 3) the annual sale of duplicate plants and orchid auction at the Agnes Lorrimer Memorial Gardens 4) the Calusa County Fair (which Joanna told me she�d outgrown, thanks) and 5) an exhibit of gem stones and Indian jewelry at Pierpont Hall. It was not until I stumbled upon the advertisement for the All-Florida Championship Rodeo in Ananburg that I captured Joanna�s interest. She asked at once if we could call Dale to ask if she�d like to come with us. I dialed her home on Whisper Key and was somewhat relieved when the phone rang and rang without an answer; I really wanted to spend some time alone with my daughter. It was not my fault, as it turned out, that some of that time would be occupied by business � even in Ananburg, a good forty miles from the scene of the multiple murders.

To get to Ananburg, which is in adjoining De Soto County, you drive due south on 41, and then make a left turn eastward on Timucuan Point Road, driving past the Sawgrass River Bird Sanctuary and into acres and acres of cow country. In late April and early May the air out here is alive with love bugs mating in flight and smashing in conjugal bliss into your windshield. The ensuing romantic mess is bloody and gluey, and you�ve got to stop every three miles or so to wipe off the windshield or else drive the rest of the way on instruments. But this was January, and there were no love bugs doing their incessant thing, and the cold front seemed to have drifted mercifully out to sea, leaving behind it a day that was beautiful and bright, with a high temperature of seventy-three degrees promised by all the forecasters.

You did not have to drive very far out of Calusa to realize that the State of Florida was really an integral part of the Deep South. The regional dialects in the place I�ve called home for the past four years were largely midwestern, with here and there a hard smattering of northeastern edge, and � even scarcer � a dollop of Canadian English. But if you stopped for gas out here in the boonies, as we did some sixteen miles from the city limits, the Southern accent was so thick you needed a machete to slice it. The men wore bib overalls here, and boots, and straw hats, and they chewed tobacco and spit it with unerring accuracy; the women wore those patterned cotton things my mother used to call house dresses; the restaurants in the infrequent little towns along the way featured �home cooking,� which invariably meant country ham and black-eyed peas, green beans and fatback, hominy, collard greens, corn bread and � particularly in this part of the country � fried catfish. As we made the drive on an arrow-straight road flanked by grazing land, I could not help but wonder how my partner Frank might have reacted to this landscape and the people who inhabited it.

My daughter had something on her mind.

I can always tell when she�s about to reveal anything of monumental importance because she will sit silently for half an hour or so, nibbling at her lower lip, and fretting the problem until it finally surfaces. It pays to be patient at such times. I�ve discovered after thirteen years of fatherhood that probing does little to unseal Joanna�s lips; she�ll tell me when she�s good and ready, and only then. And usually the revelation will come completely out of the blue, as it did that Sunday on the drive to Ananburg. I�d been rattling on about the rodeo we were about to see and about rodeos in general, and I made what I thought to be a clever remark to the effect that seeing a rodeo once every twenty-seven years was essential to my life plan, not thinking I had to explain to my daughter that since I was now thirty-seven, the last one I�d seen had been when I was ten, when without warning, she said, �What should you do if a boy wants to feel you up?�

I pondered this for a moment, and then answered in a manner that would have guaranteed an immediate objection from an opposing attorney. �Who�s the boy?� I said.

�Well...� any boy.�

�You don�t have a specific boy in mind?�

�Yes, I do have a specific boy in mind.�

�Do I know him?�

�You know him, and you don�t like him,� Joanna said.

�Andrew the Cruel,� I said.

Andrew the Cruel was a fifteen-year-old boy whose name actually was Andrew Crowell, but whom I had rebaptized when he was still fourteen and had promised my then twelve-year-old daughter that he would take her to something called the Spring Frolic at Bedloe, only to call at the last moment to advise her that he had an errand to run for his father and would have to skip the dance after all. Joanna was spending that particular weekend with me, and the way she spent it was in her room weeping from Friday afternoon at five o�clock, when the little son of a bitch called � two and a half hours before he was supposed to pick her up � till Sunday at six, when I finally coaxed her to come out and have some dinner before I took her back to her mother�s. I do not easily forgive little bastards who are mean to my daughter. Joanna, on the other hand, forgave him almost at once. Two weeks later, when she was visiting me again, she spent nearly as much time on the phone with him as she had weeping in her room on the weekend of the dance. Now she wanted to know what she should do if and when, if not already, Andrew the Cruel felt her up.

�Andrew Crowell, Dad,� she said, correcting me. She could call him Andrew Crowell from now to doomsday; to me he would always and ever be Andrew the Cruel, the little prick. It did not help improve my opinion of him to have learned inadvertently from one of Joanna�s girl friends who�d been sleeping over for a weekend several months ago that Andrew was most likely pushing dope and that the �errand� he�d had to run that night of the dance undoubtedly involved picking up grass on a deserted beach someplace. My daughter vehemently denied this allegation. She did not, however, deny that Andrew the Cruel kept snakes. He once offered to bring to my house a pet boa constrictor. I told him that Freud might have had a lot to say about his hobby. He asked me who Freud was. This was my daughter�s inamorato: a pusher, a zoo keeper, and a fucking ignoramus.

�When did this happen?� I asked.

�When did what happen?�

�What you said happened?�

�I didn�t say it happened.�

�Well, when do you expect it to happen?� I said.

�It�s sort of come up.�

�You mean he�s warned you to expect it?�

�Not exactly.�

�Then what, exactly?�

�Not exactly a warning, I mean. More like a promise is what it was.�

�Oh, I see.�

�Dad, don�t get uptight, okay? I just want to know what I should do is all. In the eventuality. If what I think is going to happen happens is all.�

�He�s already promised you it�ll happen, is that it?�

�Yes. Well, more or less.�

�How do you mean, more or less?�

�Well, he�s indicated that he finds...� you know...� that all of a sudden he�s, you know, sort of attracted to, you know, what there wasn�t anything there to be attracted to a little while ago. And now there is. So he�s sort of said he might not be able to...� well...� what he said was �resist the temptation.� That�s what he said.�

�He wants to taste of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, is that it?�

�What?� Joanna said.

�Little Biblical zoo keeper that he is.�

�Dad, if you�ve got a thing about snakes, that�s your problem, not Andrew�s.�

�I definitely have a thing about snakes, yes. I also have a thing about Andrew.�

�That I know.�

�So why are you asking me what you should do?�

�Because I asked Mom, and she wanted to know if I�d like to go see Dr. Beyer to get a prescription for the pill.�

�The pill!�

�Yeah.�

�Jesus Christ!�

�Yeah.�

�Has your mother lost her mind? You�re only thirteen years old!�

�I�ll be fourteen in September.�

�September�s almost a year away!�

�She�s thinking ahead, I guess.�

�She�s thinking too far ahead, you ask...� I hope you told her no.�

�I told her I�d think about it. Meanwhile, what should I do about Andrew?�

�What do other girls your age do about Andrew?�

�Well, the only other girl who�s ever gone steady with Andrew...�

�Oh, are you going steady with him?�

�Well, yeah, sort of.�

�What does �sort of� mean?�

�We�re seeing each other. And nobody else.�

�Joanna, you�re too young to...�

�Come on, Dad...�

�... be tying yourself exclusively to one boy.�

�Almost all the girls at St. Mark�s have steadies.�

�Does Roxanne have a steady?�

Roxanne was the girl who�d told me one afternoon � while I was squirting Charco-Lite onto the backyard briquettes in preparation for a gala hamburger and hot-dog feast � that Andrew Crowell was probably pushing dope. Joanna, at the time, was swimming in the pool, underwater like a shark. I graciously did not mention Roxanne�s comment until after her father had picked her up that Sunday afternoon. Alone again with my daughter, I confronted her with the bizarre notion that Andrew might be involved in narcotics, and she told me flat-out that Roxanne was full of it. Roxanne had turned fourteen just before Christmas, which made her nine months older than Joanna. She was short and somewhat pudgy, with frizzy black hair and intelligent brown eyes. Her mother was a graduate of Vassar, and Roxanne herself planned to go there one day, as she incessantly informed anyone who would listen. In preparation, she was practicing a scholarly look by wearing black-rimmed eyeglasses. She had told me about the dope matter-of-factly, the way all the kids in Calusa � and maybe everywhere in America � talked about dope.

�Roxanne�s the one who used to go steady with him,� Joanna said.

�Roxanne?�

�Yeah.�

�With Andrew?�

�Yeah.�

This fresh knowledge seemed to lend at least some support to Roxanne�s dope-pushing allegation. I wondered briefly just how �full of it� she actually was, and promised myself I�d get back to this entire subject of narcotics as soon as the more important matter of my daughter�s virgin breasts had been dealt with.

�Well, when she was going steady with him,� I asked, �did she allow him to... ?�

�All the way, Dad,� Joanna said.

�What?�

�All the way.�

�Are you saying... ?�

�Yep.�

�That little Roxanne... ?�

�Yep.�

I shook my head.

�Don�t be so shocked,� Joanna said.

�Shocked? I�m appalled! She�s only fourteen!�

�Everybody does it,� Joanna said.

�Ev��

�Well, almost everybody. At St. Mark�s, I mean.�

�If that�s the case, you must be considered retarded.�

�Actually, I am. Considered, I mean. In fact, when I asked Roxanne whether I should, you know, let Andrew, you know, do what he said he was thinking of doing, she just burst out laughing.�

�Thought it was funny, huh?�

�Yeah.�

�Hilarious.�

�Yeah. So should I? Let him, I mean?�

�No.�

�No?�

�Not Andrew.�

�Why not Andrew?�

�You�d be cheapening yourself,� I said.

I could not think of any other way of putting it. I knew I was being miserably inadequate, I knew that I should have come up with some earth-shattering advice to help my daughter find the proper path to womanhood, prepare her somehow for that first tentative touch and glorious response, and all I could say was that with someone like Andrew she�d be cheapening herself, she�d be allowing a person inferior to her to...� to soil her somehow.

She was silent for what seemed like a long time. Outside the open windows of the Ghia, the monotonous countryside flashed by. We were still a good twenty minutes from Ananburg, and it was close to one-thirty, and the Grand Entry was scheduled to begin at two sharp. I knew I�d said the wrong thing, and my only consolation was that Susan had given her advice even more stupid. Offering to put her on the pill, Jesus!

�Actually...� Joanna said.

I held my breath.

�I�m not even sure I want him to. I mean...� I think you may be right about him, Dad. I�m not sure, but I think maybe you are. And I think if I let him do what he wants, then I�d be letting him take something very personal from me, something I�m not sure I want him to have. Yeah, it�d be cheap,� she said, and nodded.

I said nothing. I kept my eyes on the road ahead.

�Thanks, Dad,� she said, and hugged herself.

In a little while she began humming an Elton John tune even I knew.

�It�s Aftra,� Bloom said on the telephone.

It was a little after nine o�clock and I was running late. I had just got out of the shower, in fact, and was standing with a towel wrapped around my waist, dripping water all over the white bedroom broadloom that must have cost the owner of the house I was renting at least twenty dollars a square yard.

�I guess maybe it�s capitalized,� Bloom said. �Capital A, capital F, capital T...�

�What is it?� I asked. �A country in Africa?�

�AFTRA? No, it�s a union. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The union Eddie Marshall belongs to. Or � as they have him listed in their files � Edward Richard Marshall. I called the Atlanta local not five minutes ago. They checked their Rolodex and came up with a current address for him in a town called Valdosta, population around thirty-five thousand, county seat of Lowndes County, not too far from the Florida border. We�ve been ringing there, but no answer. Kenyon just finished going through the stuff that nice lady in Skokie sent us, came up with three FM and four AM stations for Valdosta. We�re calling all of them now, trying to reach him.�

�Good,� I said.

�I tried you at the office first,� he said. �You weren�t there yet.�

It sounded like a reprimand. I said nothing. I had left Dale�s house at two in the morning, and I had slept � on and off � for less than six hours; I felt hardly less than refreshed, even after my shower.

�We finally reached Miller. He�ll be coming in here at eleven, right after the little girl�s funeral. What time is it now, anyway?�

�I haven�t got my watch on,� I said.

�Ten after nine,� he said, answering himself. �I�d like you to hear what he has to say, but if you were present he�d probably scream we were violating his rights. Maybe I can convince him to let us tape the interview. You think he�d let us tape it?�

�Why don�t you ask him?�

�I will. I�ll use the old �If You Have Nothing to Hide� routine. Where�ll you be around eleven, eleven-thirty?�

�At the office. I hope.�

�I�ll call you there. You�re not going to the funeral, huh?�

�No, I can�t.�

�Well, okay, I�ll talk to you later.�

�I ran into Jim Sherman yesterday,� I said.

�Oh? Where?�

�The rodeo. Out in Ananburg. He was miffed that I�d gone to the police.�

�Tell him to relax, we�ve got bigger fish to fry.�

�That�s what I told him. Who�s the bigger fish?�

�Whoever killed Vicky and her little girl. I�m pretty sure it wasn�t him. I�ll talk to you later.�

�Right,� I said, and hung up and went back into the bathroom to shave. My face was full of lather when the telephone rang again. It was Arthur Kincaid, the man who�d called the night before to ask me about the coal-mine tax shelter.

�Don�t you ever return your calls?� he asked.

�I got in late last night, Artie, I�m sorry.�

�I just called you at the office,� he said. �Do you know what time it is?�

�It�s nine-twenty,� I said, looking at the bedside clock.

�That�s right. What time do you go to work?�

�Artie,� I said, �I�m running late this morning. Send me the offering brochure, I�ll look it over and get back to you.�

�When?�

�When I�ve formed an opinion.�

�When will that be?�

�I�ll get to you by the end of the week,� I said.

�I�ll send it over by messenger.�

�Fine.�

�Can you get to it this afternoon?�

�I don�t think so.�

�Then when?�

�Artie...�

�All right, all right,� he said. �As soon as you can, all right?�

�Yes,� I said.

�Thank you, Matthew,� he said, and hung up.

I had finished shaving and had rinsed my face and flossed my teeth and combed my hair when the telephone rang again. I stomped out naked into the bedroom and snatched the receiver from the cradle.

�Hello!� I said.

�Wow,� Dale said.

�Oh, hi,� I said. �I�m sorry, this phone�s been going like sixty.�

�I know, I�ve been trying you for the past ten minutes.�

�Where are you?�

�Home,� she said. �In bed.�

�I just got up myself a little while ago.�

�I�m exhausted,� she said.

�So am I.�

�I have a client coming to the office at ten-thirty, what time is it now?�

�Nine-thirty,� I said.

�Guess I�d better get up then, huh?�

�I think so.�

�I wish you were here with me,� she whispered.

�Mm, me too.�

�When am I going to see you again?�

�How about tonight?�

�What time?�

�I don�t know what�s waiting for me at the office, I�ll have to call you later.�

�Okay, I won�t make any other plans.� She hesitated. �Matthew?� she said.

�Yes?�

�No, never mind. I�ll talk to you later.�

�What were you about to say?�

�No, nothing.�

�All right then.�

We said our good-byes, and I began dressing. I was in my undershorts when the next call came. I looked at the phone incredulously. I let it ring. I kept looking at it. Finally I picked it up. �Hello?� I said wearily.

�Matthew, it�s me again,� Bloom said. �We located Marshall, or at least we found the station he�s working for, little AM station up there in Valdosta, plays mostly rock. I spoke to the station manager, a man named Ralph Slater, he told me Marshall left for a week�s vacation after his show last Friday, he�s got a morning show he does from nine to twelve, took off right after it, said he was going fishing on the Keys. But he�s not back yet.�

�Well, maybe...�

�He was due back this morning,� Bloom said. �So where the hell is he?�

I called Dale just before I left the house to tell her there was something else I had to do before I�d be through for the night.

�What time do you think that�ll be?�

�About ten, I�d guess. In fact, I�ll make sure it�s ten.�

�Where will you be?�

�At the Public Safety Building.�

�That�ll mean at least forty minutes to my house.�

�Will that be too late?�

�No. Come when you�re finished. Whenever you�re finished.�

�I�ll call you if there are any problems.�

�Please don�t let there be any problems,� she said.

Neil Sadowsky was a man in his mid-thirties, about five feet seven inches tall, weighing a good hundred and sixty pounds, I guessed, with blond hair and brown eyes. A full beard covered his chin and his jowls and blended into the mustache over his upper lip, all of it as blond as the hair on his head and lending to his face a look of Victorian aristocracy that was strengthened by his straight slender nose and the deepness of his eyes. He was wearing blue slacks and a paler blue Ultrasuede jacket, a navy blue T-shirt, and black patent leather Gucci loafers. We were sitting in the captain�s office; I was beginning to wonder if the captain ever came to work.

�So,� Bloom said, �it was nice of you to fly over, Mr. Sadowsky, I really appreciate it. We�ve had a hell of a time finding you.�

�Yeah, well, I�ve been in Miami since before Christmas,� Sadowsky said.

�That�s what your mother told the New York cops.�

�I wish you hadn�t bothered my mother.�

I�m sorry about that.� Bloom paused, and then said, �I guess you know Vicky Miller and her daughter were killed.�

�Yes.�

�When did you find out, Mr. Sadowsky?�

�About Vicky, last Monday. About the daughter...�

�Well, let�s talk about Vicky first. You found out about her Monday, huh? Day after the murder.�

�Yes.�

�Where were you the night she got killed? Were you working?�

�No, I�ve got Sunday off.�

�So where were you?�

�I don�t remember.�

�Well, Mr. Sadowsky, I wish you�d try to...�

�Listen, I came here because I thought I could be of some help to you. If I knew this was going to be a third degree...�

�This isn�t a third degree, Mr. Sadowsky.�

�No? Then what is it? If you think I killed Vicky and her kid, you�re out of your mind.�

�So where were you?�

�I told you, I don�t remember. When I get back to Miami, I�ll look at my calendar, I�ll tell you where I was. How the hell can you possibly believe I had anything to do with Vicky�s murder?�

�A nice Jewish kid like you, right?�

�What�s that supposed to mean?�

�Where were you on Sunday night, the thirteenth of January, Mr. Sadowsky?�

�I keep telling him I don�t remember,� Sadowsky said to me, �and he keeps asking me. Vicky and I were good friends, can you understand that?� he said, turning back to Bloom. �There was nothing romantic between us, like with her and Eddie, but we were friends, can you understand friends? Can you get friends through your thick head? So why would anybody kill his friend?�

�Gee, I don�t know,� Bloom said. �Why did Cain kill Abel?�

�Jesus,� Sadowsky said, and shook his head, and let out his breath, and then said, �I can�t believe this. For Christ�s sake, can�t you understand how close we all were? I mean, it happened to all of us together, like a dream, what was happening to us. I mean, what the hell were we? A bunch of kids rehearsing in garages until we became Wheat? Without Vicky...� well, without Eddie, I guess...� we�d still be playing toilets in every shitty alley in the South. Eddie�s a genius. Have you ever met a genius? There isn�t anything he doesn�t know about music. You should�ve heard us back then, when we were auditioning for Regal. You�d have thrown us out of that studio in a minute. Even Georgie, who was better than any of us, maybe improved five hundred percent once Eddie started working with us. Me, I was just a half-ass dope banging on pots and pans till Eddie came along. Taught me everything I know about drumming. Hell, taught me everything I know about music. Before I met him, I didn�t know a paradiddle from a pair of chopsticks. He was a giant in his profession, a giant. Had a temper could level you flat, used to explode at the slightest thing, but who says a genius has to have patience besides? I mean, he was the one responsible for Wheat. And for Vicky Miller, too.�

�How so?� Bloom asked.

�Well, you know, after our audition...� Sadowsky shook his head. �I mean, who would�ve thought there was anything there at all?�

The audition had been a total disaster.

Vicky�s voice may have served in the past to mollify the scant audiences of drunks to whom she�d played in the saloons of Arkansas, but this was the big-time world of record production, and � even amplified � she had a difficult time being heard over Hamilton�s driving lead guitar, the bass player�s sonorous chords, and Sadowsky�s own pounding. Happily for her, Regal�s producer wandered by just as Vicky and the still-unbaptized group were winding up the second cut. Standing in the control booth, he listened and watched. What he heard, by Sadowsky�s own admission now, was just awful � but what he saw was something else again. He saw what Konig had seen earlier: nineteen-year-old Victoria Miller, tall and leggy, with midnight-black hair and eyes the color of anthracite, backed now by three not unattractive young men who, as fate might have ordained, all happened to be shorter than she was and exceedingly blond besides.

In the record business, or so Sadowsky now explained to us, a �producer� is really a combination of an arranger, a conductor, and what would be called a director if cutting a record were in any way similar to making a movie or putting on a play. The producer working for Konig was the young Eddie Marshall � originally Marciano, or Mariani, or Mastroianni, or Marielli, Sadowsky simply couldn�t remember � who�d been born in Los Angeles of Italian descent, and who was working his way up in the music business doing work �far beneath his obvious talents,� his constant complaint to the group. He saw in Vicky and the three young men backing her the visual nucleus of another of those overnight sensations that could happen only in the rock music business � if only he could get a performance out of them. Krantz and Sadowsky were better musicians than the lead guitarist Vicky and her father had picked up in Nashville, nineteen years old and another of those sixties kids who�d learned three basic chords and who�d then gone out to buy umpteen thousand dollars� worth of amplifiers and speakers so he could rehearse a �group.� He was, however, not entirely hopeless. Blond and good-looking, with china blue eyes and an engaging smile, Geoff Hamilton would get by with a little help from his friends, and he�d fit in beautifully besides with the other two blonds Eddie planned to use as Vicky�s backup. In his mind, and solely based on the color of their hair, Eddie had already decided to name the nascent group �Wheat.�

The problem was Victoria Miller herself, and her pushy father. Dwayne Miller was something of a madman, a cross between a religious fanatic, a carny barker, a con man, and a shrewd entrepreneur who visualized himself as an impresario with but a single artiste in his stable: his daughter Victoria. He would settle for nothing but complete stardom for her, this despite her notable lack of a vocal instrument and an almost tone-deaf ear. But miracles had been known to happen, and Eddie Marshall was eager to try his hand at producing his first one�

�Even for Moses and Jesus,� Sadowsky said, �there had to be a first one.�

Eddie locked himself in with Vicky and the three musicians (whom he now officially baptized Wheat), and for three weeks they labored to produce the single that would later become part of the hit album. Eddie had written the tune himself and had titled it �Frenzy� for no other reason than that the word �frenzy� was repeated in it a total of twenty-six times, accompanied by a great many supportive lyrics like �I�m in a,� and �You�re in a,� and �We�re in a,� prophetic in that the moment the album was released, everyone was in a.

If it took three weeks to perfect the single from which the album would derive its title, it took an equal number of months to record the other nine songs on it. Electronic wizardry aside, Eddie worked in those next three months (�This was November and December of 1964, and January of 1965,� Sadowsky said) harder than he ever had in his life. His raw material consisted of a scarcely accomplished bass guitarist, a loud drummer, a lead guitarist whose repertoire had now expanded to eight chords, and a singer who � though extravagantly beautiful � could barely carry a tune. The miracle of his miracle was that he pulled it off. With more dazzling tricks and effects than anyone save Steinmetz, Edison, or Marconi had ever contrived, he produced an album that made �Victoria Miller and Wheat� � as they were billed in blood-red letters on the album sleeve � sound like the freshest thing on the rock scene since the Beatles had broken out of their Liverpool basement.

� �Frenzy� was released in April of �65, around Eastertime,� Sadowsky said, �when Eddie and Konig figured there�d be bunches of kids home from school on vacation and roaming the record shops in search of hot new talent. The album shot to the number-one spot on the charts within three weeks, and passed the million-copy gold-record mark at the beginning of June. By then we�d pulled the single from the album, and it was in the number-two spot on the singles charts. In the long run the single sold a little less than a million copies, robbing us of a gold record in that category, but we guessed that was because so many people already owned the album.�

Vicky had told me, on the night she was killed, that her producer hadn�t wanted her to perform live because he �said it was bad for the records, he wanted everybody to go out and buy the records, you see.� Given the paucity of her talent, virtually nonexistent without the help of studio gimmickry, Eddie�s decision had been a wise one. The next album, appropriately titled �More Frenzy,� was released in 1966 and copped another gold record. The third and last album was simply titled �Vicky.� By then it had become apparent that she alone was the star here; it was Victoria Miller who was directly responsible for all that bread Regal Records was making, and Wheat might just as well have been chaff.

Her refusal to perform in public, her refusal even to appear on any of the television talk shows, was attributed to an innate shyness that caused severe stagefright, an ailment � according to Sadowsky � suffered even by the likes of Carly Simon. Vicky�s millions of fans, the press releases explained, would have to be content with whatever glimpses of her personal life were revealed in the seemingly endless flow of newspaper and magazine interviews she granted, including a lengthy one in TV Guide, the voice of the medium on which she had never appeared. �Vicky� was released in 1967 and earned yet another gold record. It was her last album.

�How come?� Bloom asked.

�She got married,� Sadowsky said, and shrugged. �To Tony Konig, in March of �68. And she got pregnant almost the minute after. Miscarried while we were working on the fourth album, as a matter of fact. Something called �More Vicky� which was never released. She quit halfway through, when she lost the baby. She blamed the miscarriage on the long days and hard hours she�d been putting in. Told all the newspapers her personal life was more important than all the gold records in the world. Ended her career and also Wheat�s and Eddie Marshall�s. He started messing around with dope, ended up working as a disc jockey at some hick radio station in...�

�Mr. Hope,� Kenyon said, poking his head into the room. �Telephone call for you, you can take it out here if you like.�

�Thank you. Excuse me,� I said and pushed back my chair. I went out to the reception room and took the receiver Kenyon extended to me. �Hello?� I said.

�Guess who?� Dale said.

�Hi.�

�Do you know what time it is?�

�I know precisely what time it is.�

�Five minutes to ten.�

�So it is.�

�You said you�d be finished there at ten.�

�I will be finished here at ten.�

�Just checking,� she said. �Why don�t you leave right now?�

�I will.�

�Matthew, I...�

�Yes?�

�Nothing, just hurry,� she said.

There was a click on the line. I put the receiver back on the wall hook, thanked Kenyon, and went back in to the captain�s office.

�Everything all right?� Bloom asked.

�Yes, but I�ve got to leave,� I said. �I had a previous appointment, but when you called...�

�This may take a while here yet,� Bloom said. �Go on, if you got to.�

�He still thinks I�m involved in this fucking thing,� Sadowsky said to me.

�Convince me you�re not,� Bloom said.

Most people don�t realize that police work is a twenty-four-hour business, and that police stations take the abuse of round-the-clock habitation. It�s amazing that all police stations do not deteriorate down to the ground within three years after they�re built; even the relatively new Calusa facility was beginning to show the strains of wear and tear. As the hour hand of the wall clock visibly lurched onto the twelve, joining the minute hand so that both hands stood straight up for only an instant, midnight might just as well have been twelve noon here at the police station. A battery of detectives and uniformed cops were sitting at desks all around the room, making telephone calls; at one of the desks, a man hunted and pecked at the typewriter before him, studying the keyboard as though it were lettered in Sanskrit. At yet another desk, an exceedingly drunken man was being questioned by a detective with his sleeves rolled up and a .38-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. In one corner of the room a woman in a blood-smeared white blouse was talking to a uniformed cop. Sadowsky sat at one of the desks with Bloom; I had already repeated to Bloom my conversation with Marshall on the day of the funeral � and now he was getting down to work.

�Now I know it was a long time ago when you heard his name,� he said to Sadowsky, �but you told me a little while ago it was something like Marciano, or Mariani, or Mastroianni, or Marielli, something like that, you couldn�t remember.�

�I still can�t remember,� Sadowsky said.

�Right, so what I�m going to do, I�m going to try and prod your memory, okay?�

�Sure, whatever you say,� Sadowsky said, and sighed.

I suddenly realized what all those cops on the telephones were doing. They were calling every damn hotel and motel in the city of Calusa, and probably in the adjoining towns of Manakawa and Hesterville as well.

�Calusa Police,� one of the detectives said, �I wonder if you can tell me, ma�am, whether you�ve got a guest by the name of Edward Marshall registered there?�

�That�d be Marshall,� another detective said, �M-A-R-S-H-A-L�L, yes, sir.�

�Well, do you have an Eddie Marshall?�

�Or any kind of Marshall at all? Any guests with the first name Edward?�

�Yes, ma�am, I�ll wait.�

�This is a long shot, you understand,� Bloom said, �and I�m sorry to be putting you to this trouble, but the possibility exists he may have used a name he was familiar with, the name he was born with, in fact, instead of cooking up a phony one. Most people registering under an alias will anyway use their own initials for the phony name, I guess you know that. There�s nothing mysterious about it, it�s just that lots of men and women have monogrammed items like shirts or handkerchiefs or luggage, and it�d be very strange for a guy named Eddie Marshall with his initials on his shirt to register as John Smith, do you follow me?�

�Yes,� Sadowsky said, and sighed again.

�Good,� Bloom said, �very good,� and suddenly grinned. There was about him tonight an air of gaiety I had not previously detected, as if even the possibility of a good suspect had � in addition to energizing the entire staff � given Bloom a badly needed jolt.

�What I�d like to do,� he said, �if you don�t mind, Mr. Sadowsky, I�d like to go right down the Calusa telephone directory with you, all the M�s in the directory, one by one, not because Marshall lived here, which he didn�t, and even if he did it would be listed under his legal name and not a name he dropped however many years ago, when he was still living in California � Pete,� he called suddenly, �did you get through to the L.A.P.D.?�

�Yeah,� Kenyon said, �they�ll call us back in the morning, when the courts open.�

�How about Frisco and San Diego?�

�I�ve got Reynolds and Di Luca working on it.�

�Is he back from vacation?� I said.

�Is who back from vacation?� Bloom asked, turning to me.

�Di Luca.�

�I didn�t even know he was away,� Bloom said, and laughed.

�He�s back,� Kenyon said. �Got back yesterday. You know him?�

�Better try Sacramento, too,� Bloom said. �Get them working on it first thing in the morning. If a guy changes his name, there�s got to be a court record of it someplace.�

�Right,� Kenyon said, and went out of the room.

�So here�s the phone book,� Bloom said to Sadowsky, �and what I�m going to do, I�m going to skip over all the names that couldn�t possibly be Italian names, like Mason or Moore or Moriarty or like that. But when I come across anything with a lot of vowels in it � well, for example, here�s the first one I see, right here, Macalerro, does that sound like the name?�

�No. Well, I really don�t know.�

�Just think about it for a minute. Macalerro. Ring a bell?�

�No, not really.�

�How about this one right after it? Macarro.�

�No. It was longer than that.�

�Okay, let�s keep going right down the page. Macchia. That�s M-A-C�C-H-I-A. How do you pronounce that, Gregorio?� he said, turning to one of the detectives.

�Spell it again,� Gregorio said.

�M-A-C�C-H-I-A.�

�With a hard K,� Gregorio said. �Mah-kee-yah.�

�Okay, Mah-kee-yah, does that sound like it, Mr. Sadowsky?�

�No,� Sadowsky said.

�How about Machinista?�

�No.�

�Maegli?�

�No.�

�Maestro?�

�No.�

�Maffeto?�

�No.�

�Mafrisiano?�

�No.�

�Magaletto?�

�No.�

�If the guy changed his name,� Gregorio said, �he probably just translated it.�

�What do you mean?� Bloom asked.

�From the Italian. Friend of mine changed his name to Frank Lamb, you know what his name used to be in Italian?�

�What?�

�Francesco Agnello. That�s lamb in Italian, agnello.�

Bloom was looking at him. We were all looking at him.

�What�s Marshall in Italian?� Bloom asked.

�Who knows?� Gregorio said. �Get a dictionary.�

It took Bloom close to an hour and a half to get an Italian-English/English-Italian dictionary because all the book stores in town were closed, and none of the owners had their home phone numbers listed in the directory. He finally found someone in the building who was able to tell him the name of the man who was in charge of Calusa�s library system, and he located the name in the telephone directory and called the man at home at a quarter to one in the morning and asked him if he could get someone down to the Henley Library to open it for him because he needed an Italian dictionary right away. The man, whose name was Roger Mahler and whose job as an appointed official submitted him to all sorts of abuse, but none quite like this before, patiently asked Bloom if this couldn�t wait till morning. Bloom informed him that this was morning already, and it was also a double homicide he was investigating, and he would sincerely appreciate it if someone could get down there with a set of keys right away. It was Mahler himself who finally agreed to go down there, where he was met by Detective Kenyon, who came back to the office at a little before two a.m. and placed the dictionary on Bloom�s desk.

�I already peeked,� he said.

Bloom was leafing through the pages in the English-Italian section. �Margin,� he said aloud, �marigold, marine...� and then let his finger skip down the page and said aloud again, �Marriage, married, marrow...� and then zeroed in on �Marsh, marshmallow, marshal, here it is, marshal,� he said, and looked up at Sadowsky. �Maresciallo,� he said. �Is that the way you pronounce it, Gregorio?�

�Is it C-H-I?�

�No. C�I.�

�Then it�s a �sh� sound, like you said it.�

�Maresciallo,� Bloom said again. �Does that sound like the name, Mr. Sadowsky?�

�That sounds like the name,� Sadowsky said.

The jailer on the second floor of the building led the three of us to a steel door at the end of the corridor, lifted a ring of keys from his belt, and fitted a key that was color-coded red into the keyway. He twisted it and swung open the heavy door.

�This way, please,� Bloom said.

We walked parallel to a long row of iron bars, down a narrow corridor, made an abrupt right turn, and came into a cul-de-sac at the end of which was a pair of cells. Eddie Marshall was in the cell at the end of the hallway. The jailer used the same color-coded key to open the cell door. Mrs. Gibson hesitated.

�It�s all right,� I said, and the three of us entered the cell. The jailer locked the door behind us.

�Mr. Marshall,� Bloom said, �this is Mrs. Mary Gibson, she runs the Marjo Motel on the South Trail. I�d like you to...�

�What are you doing here?� Marshall asked me.

�He�s her attorney,� Bloom said. �I�d like you to hear what Mrs. Gibson has to say, but first I want to be sure you still understand what your rights are. Earlier today, before I talked to you, I told you that you had the right to remain silent, that you didn�t have to answer any questions, and that whatever you said could be used against you at a later time. Do you remember that?�

�I remember it,� Marshall said.

�Well, you�ve still got those same rights. Do you want an attorney now?�

�We�ve got one attorney too many right this minute,� Marshall said.

�Does that mean you don�t want an attorney?�

�If I can sign off whenever I want to, why would I need an attorney?�

�Yes or no, Mr. Marshall?�

�No.�

�Okay. I�m going to ask Mrs. Gibson some questions, and she�s going to give me some answers. I want you to listen carefully to what she says, because I�ll be asking you about it later on. Okay?�

�Sure,� Marshall said.

�Mrs. Gibson, do you recognize this man?�

�I do,� Mrs. Gibson said.

Her earlier qualms seemed to have vanished entirely. She stood directly in front of Marshall where he sat on the cell�s single, wall-fastened cot, looking him directly in the eye, as though challenging him to deny the truth of what she was saying.

�Is he someone who registered at the Marjo Motel?�

�He is.�

�Did he register under the name Edward Maresciallo?�

�That�s the name in my records.�

�And this is the man who registered under that name?�

�Yes, he�s the man.�

�Have you looked at your records recently, Mrs. Gibson?�

�I looked at them last night when you called me.�

�By me...�

�The police.�

�Can you tell me when Mr. Maresciallo... ?�

�Listen, that�s enough of this,� Marshall said.

�No one�s questioning you,� Bloom snapped. �You just sit tight and listen to this, okay?� He turned back to Mrs. Gibson. �Can you tell me when this man registered at your motel?�

�Yes, it was Friday night, January the eleventh.�

�Did he check in alone?�

�I don�t have to listen to...�

�Just keep your mouth shut, Marshall!� Bloom said. �No one�s violating your goddamn rights. Did he check in alone, Mrs. Gibson?�

�Yes, he did.�

�When did he check out?�

�Late last night.�

�What time would that have been?�

�Ten-thirty or thereabouts.�

�Now, Mrs. Gibson, during all that time Mr. Marshall was staying at your motel, did he remain alone?�

�I don�t want to hear any more of this,� Marshall said, and suddenly got to his feet.

�Sit down,� Bloom said.

�No, I don�t want to sit down! You�re a lawyer,� he said, turning to me, �tell him I want him to quit.�

�He�s not asking you for incriminating testimony,� I said. �He doesn�t have to...�

�No, then what the hell is it when he drags somebody in here and...�

�You�re not covered by law,� I said, �so forget it. If he wants to, he can ask you to submit to a blood or breathalyzer test, take your fingerprints or photograph you, put you in a lineup, ask you to put on a hat or a coat, put your finger to your nose, pick up coins, repeat in your own voice words he�s written on a piece of paper � and listen to what a witness has to say. The difference is between nontestimonial and testimonial responses. When he gets to you, you can refuse to answer any questions. But so far, he hasn�t gotten to you. I suggest you listen quietly, Mr. Marshall.�

He sat on the cot again, and in that instant I knew he was finished. There was something in his look of resignation, his entire body stance, that told me all the spirit had suddenly drained out of him, it was all over. He knew exactly what Mrs. Gibson was going to say next, knew that Bloom had him dead to rights, knew further that there was nothing more he could do about it, nothing more he could say in denial or rebuttal; this was the end of the long road that had begun in Valdosta, Georgia, eleven days ago � or perhaps even longer ago than that.

�Mrs. Gibson,� Bloom said, �did he remain alone all the time he was registered at the Marjo Motel?�

�No, he did not remain alone.�

�Can you... ?�

�All right,� Marshall said softly.

�Can you tell me who was there with him?�

�A little girl.�

�When did she join him, Mrs. Gibson?�

�On Sunday night, the thirteenth of January.�

�Can you describe... ?�

�All right,� he said again.

�Can you describe the girl to me?�

�She was about six or seven years old, with long black hair. She was wearing a granny nightgown, I saw him carrying her from the station wagon to the...�

�All right, goddamnit!� he shouted.

The cell went utterly still.

�Want to tell me about it?� Bloom asked.

�You know it all, the hell with it.�

�Tell me anyway,� he said, more gently this time.

�I killed them,� he said, and looked down at his hands. �I killed them both.�

�Let�s start from the beginning,� Bloom said.

The beginning had been a long time ago, back in New Orleans, when he�d taken the basic straw of Victoria Miller�s meager talent and turned it into the pure gold of three million-copy albums. In return she had graced him with her favors. As Victoria�s father had told me earlier, Eddie and she became lovers, a relationship that lasted until fame and the heady lure of Konig and his sophisticated friends convinced Vicky that he was the man she should marry. Marshall made love to her for what he thought would be the last time (and here Mrs. Gibson turned away from him and stared in embarrassment through the bars at the wall in the corridor outside) in a farewell assignation a month before her wedding to Konig. When she returned from her honeymoon, she called Marshall to say she was pregnant with his child.

�Your child?� Bloom said.

�Mine.�

�Mr. Marshall...�

�My baby. She was married to Tony, but this was a week after the wedding, the baby was mine � from the last time we�d been together. And she killed it. She pushed so hard on that album, the last album, knew she was pregnant but worked herself like a dog, anyway. That was what caused the miscarriage, her working so hard, driving everyone so hard. She killed my baby.�

He left New Orleans shortly after Vicky�s retirement and the dissolution of Wheat, taking a job with a small record company in Nashville (�I was an industry giant, working for a firm with a list of midgets�), and when the company collapsed finally managed to get himself a job as a disc jockey in Georgia. In 1973, five years after he�d last seen her, he went back to New Orleans for a visit. She was still married to Konig, but the marriage was in serious trouble and when she came to see Marshall at the Royal Sonesta, where he was staying, she told him she hadn�t had sex with her husband in months. Inevitably, she and Marshall made love again. And inevitably, or so it seemed to him now, she got pregnant again. Two months after they were together for the last time, she called to tell him the news and to announce that the child was without question his.

�She promised me she wouldn�t lose this one, she�d take good care of it forever and make sure nothing happened to it. I got a birth announcement when Allison was born. Allison Mercy Konig, the card read. Konig. My daughter � with Konig�s name.�

After that there was silence � except for the Christmas cards each and every year with the little handwritten notes telling Marshall how the daughter he�d never seen was coming along. And then, this past Christmas, a card with a note saying she was going back into the business again, and would be opening a singing engagement at the Greenery on the eleventh of January. He called her on New Year�s Eve. He was drunk. Little Allie answered the phone. There must have been a party going on, he could hear a lot of noise in the background, could hear his daughter yelling to her mother that there was a �Mr. Marshall� on the phone. Mr. Marshall. His daughter, and she was calling him Mr. Marshall. Vicky sounded drunk, too. He told her she�d promised him she�d take care of their little girl forever, make sure nothing ever happened to her the way it happened to the first one and she just laughed and said she�d have plenty of money soon, she�d be able to hire a dozen governesses to take care of Allie, he had nothing to worry about. He didn�t know what she meant. How did she plan on making any money singing in public when she had a voice like a flat tire? He told her she�d better not do it. He warned her. She told him to go to hell, and hung up. He was sitting in a chair near the dresser in the room he was renting. He yanked the phone out of the wall and threw it at the mirror over the dresser, smashing it.

On the eleventh of January, the day of Vicky�s opening, he drove down to Calusa from Valdosta, Georgia. He hadn�t planned to kill her. He planned only to talk to her, reason with her. When he got down here that Friday night, he went to see her. This was just before the opening, he begged her not to go through with it, begged her to take care of their baby the way she�d promised. She told him Allie wasn�t a baby anymore, Allie was already six years old, and besides she�d be coming into a lot of money very soon, and he didn�t need to worry. He asked her what money, and she said the trust. He didn�t know anything about a trust, he thought she was lying, thought she was still planning on making millions singing again, the way she had back in the sixties. He warned her again. He told her not to go ahead with it, or he�d come take the baby from her as sure as he was standing there. She said he�d better get out of the house before she called the police. He left without even seeing his own daughter. She was staying at a friend�s house that night, sleeping over, so Vicky could get ready for her goddamn opening!

�It was happening already,� Marshall said. �She was already neglecting Allie for her dumb career!� He shook his head, and suddenly he began weeping. Mrs. Gibson, startled by the sound, turned from the bars to look at him. An expression of pity crossed her face. She stood watching him as though wanting to take him in her arms and comfort him. Bloom waited. Marshall took a handkerchief from the back pocket of the dark blue prison trousers. He blew his nose. He dried his eyes. He sighed heavily, and blew his nose again, and then shook his head and said, �I...� I still...� still didn�t plan to kill her. All I wanted was my daughter. I only planned to take my daughter. That�s why I registered under my old name, I guess. Because I planned to take my daughter from her. And then only if I couldn�t talk her into giving up this...� this dumb move she�d made. I mean, she�d got that bad review in the paper on Saturday, she had to know it was a lost cause. On Sunday I...� I called her at about ten to eight, I figured she�d still be at the house, I�d catch her before she left for the lounge. But she�d already gone, I talked to a baby-sitter instead. It was beginning, you see, she was leaving my daughter with a sitter while...� while she...� He shook his head again. He had begun wringing his hands. Mrs. Gibson was watching him, unable to take her eyes from his face.

�I called again at about ten-thirty, figuring she�d come straight home after the show ended. It ended at ten, you know, I figured she�d go straight home to Allie, but no, the goddamn sitter again! And then I called at about a quarter past eleven it must�ve been, and this time I asked the sitter to tell Vicky I�d be stopping by to collect. I was parked up the street when she got home at about eleven-thirty, I guess it was. I watched her go inside the house, and then come out again to where Mr. Hope here was waiting in his car. I saw both of them go in the house together. I...� I waited till he was gone, he left about three-thirty in the morning. There was only one light on in the house, I guessed she�d fallen asleep with the bedroom light on. I found a sliding door unlocked at the back of the house, and I went in. She was naked in bed. A light was burning on the table alongside the bed. I woke her up and told her I was taking Allie home with me. She...� she went for the phone right away, and I shoved her away from it, and she...� she started screaming...� and...� and hitting at me with her fists and I...� I just...� just lost my temper, I guess. I started pushing back at her, just trying to keep her away from me, you know, and then...� punching her, I guess, and then I...� I don�t remember, I guess I...� I banged her head against the tile floor until she was...� I guessed she was...� dead.�

He looked down at his hands. A shiver shook his body. He kept looking at his hands. I was surprised to see tears running down Mrs. Gibson�s cheeks. Bloom waited for a moment, and then very gently said, �What about your daughter, Mr. Marshall?�

�God,� he said.

�Will you tell me about her now?�

�God,� he said, �God,� and began wringing his hands again, and then abruptly brought them to his face, and buried his face in them, and spoke through his hands, hiding his face, his voice muffled. �I took her to that motel, I knew they were looking for her, they thought I�d kidnapped her, my own daughter! I couldn�t move, I couldn�t chance having her seen, she was still wearing the nightgown she�d had on Sunday night, when I took her from the house, I didn�t know whether to go out and buy her some clothes, I didn�t know what to do. When I went to the funeral last Wednesday, I had to leave her tied up in the room, tied and gagged, my own daughter! I just didn�t know what to do.�

�Why�d you go to the funeral?� Bloom asked.

�I figured if I was there, I mean if I was there expressing my grief, then nobody�d know I did it, nobody�d suspect me, you know what I mean? And then, when I talked to Mr. Hope, I found out he knew about those phone calls I�d made, and if he knew, then the police had to know, too, am I right? So I had to get out of Calusa, I had to take Allie someplace far away from Calusa. But I didn�t know where. I couldn�t go back to Georgia with her, I just didn�t know. I mean, the job in Georgia is nothing, I wouldn�t have cared about leaving it, but I didn�t know where to go. I mean, how could I get a job anyplace, take my daughter anyplace when the whole damn world was looking for her?�

He kept his face buried in his hands. It was difficult hearing him. Bloom had moved closer to him. I was standing alongside Mrs. Gibson, who took a surprisingly delicate lace-edged handkerchief from her pocketbook, and dabbed at her eyes with it, and then put the handkerchief back in the bag, and closed the bag. The brittle snap of the catch sounded like a gunshot in the small cell.

�It was...� it was Fri...� it was Friday night when I decided I�d have to make a run for it. Go down to the Keys with her, rent a boat there, take her out on the water till I figured out my next move. I told her we were leaving. I�d brought some fruit back from the market, and some cheese, and a bottle of wine, and we were having supper in the room when I told her we�d be leaving in the morning. We�d be going out on a boat, I told her, did she like boats? She said she didn�t want to go out on a boat with me, she wanted to go home to her mother. I told her...� I said your mother is dead, darlin. And then, for the first time since I�d taken her from the house, I...� I told her who I was. I said, �I�m your daddy, I�ll take good care of you, don�t worry.� And she looked at me, I was peeling an orange, I had this knife I kept in the wagon for whenever I went fishing, I...� I was peeling an orange with it, for her, the orange was for her, and she looked at me and said, �You�re not my daddy, Tony Konig is my daddy,� and got up and ran for the door. I caught her before she could unlock the door, I yanked her back by her hair, and I...� she was struggling to get away, I had the knife in my hand, I...� I just...� I guess I...� lost my temper again, her saying Tony was her daddy, damnit, I was her daddy! So I...� I guess I...� I used the knife. I guess I...� slit her throat.�

�All right, Mr. Marshall,� Bloom said.

�I guess I killed her.�

�All right,� Bloom said.

�I�m sorry,� Marshall said.