Chinaman’s Chance

Chapter 28

A very wet, very unseasonable low-pressure system that had been lurking out in the Pacific for nearly a week finally decided to make its breakthrough late that Saturday night. By four o’clock the next morning, just as Quincy Durant’s uneasy doze was turning into fitful sleep, a hard rain began falling over much of Southern California. It was a Sunday, the nineteenth of June.

By the time Aggie Wu arose that morning in her house on Ninth Street in Santa Monica, the hard rain had turned into fine mist and fog. Aggie Wu immediately decided that it was a perfect day for a picnic at the beach.

It took a while to convince her husband of the suitability of her notion, which he described as goddamned weird, but by ten he had made the call to Durant and got the Wu clan invited to the beach. By eleven the huge picnic hamper was packed, and by noon Artie Wu was parking his Chrysler station wagon at the far end of the Paradise Cove parking lot, which, because of the weather, was virtually deserted.

Durant watched from the deck as the Wu family proceeded across the parking lot to the driveway and up to the deck — Wu in the lead, of course, his big stomach relaxed and poking proudly at his tent of a white sailcloth shirt, his face beaming; very much the family man; very much, indeed, the Patriarch.

Behind him came the two sets of twins, first the boys, then the girls, barely two, barely able to toddle. And last came Aggie Wu, tall and almost radiant in the Scotland-like weather, carrying the big picnic hamper. Since Artie Wu had created the delicacies that filled it, he had automatically assumed that his wife would do the carrying.

Durant greeted the twins by name, although it was sometimes hard for him to tell Angus and Arthur apart. The girls were easier. One was pretty; the other one, prettier.

“They’ve got a poem for you, Quincy,” Aggie Wu said as she placed the hamper on the redwood table.

“Hell of a poem,” Artie Wu said. “They picked it up from one of the neighbor kids.” He nodded encouragingly at his two sons.

It was all the encouragement they needed. In unison they chanted in voices tinged with an odd Spanish-Scottish-American accent:

“Like it?” Aggie Wu said.

“The rhyme’s a little off, but the meter’s pretty good,” Durant said. “And they’ve learned some new Spanish,” Aggie Wu said. “Say your new Spanish for Quincy, Angus.”

Angus Wu, the elder son, the one who, if things turned out just right, might someday be both Emperor of China and King of Scotland, smiled sweetly at Durant and said, “Chinga tu madre, loco cabrón.”

“And the same to you, pal,” Durant said.

“Come on, kids,” Aggie Wu said. “Let’s go take a walk along the beach so we can be cold and wet and chilled like God intended people to be.”

Wu and Durant watched the mother and her bundled-up children head down toward the beach. Wu then picked up the hamper and followed Durant inside. Wu put the hamper down and poured two mugs of coffee from the big gallon pot and handed Durant one.

“You look like you could use a little something in yours,” he said, studying Durant.

“That bad, huh?”

“It shows. Hard night?”

Durant nodded.

“I’ve got big ears.”

“I don’t know,” Durant said. “It’s sort of kiss-and-tell stuff.”

“What’d you do,” Wu said as he moved into the living room, “pick up some broad?”

“Not exactly.”

“One picked you up?” Wu said, sitting down on the couch. “Something like that.”

Artie Wu shook his head in a gesture of kindly commiseration. “And it turned out as usual.”

“As usual.”

“Bad?”

“Yeah. Bad.”

“Who was she?”

Durant debated whether to tell Wu. It might help a little to talk about it. Sometimes it did, and of course, he knew it would go no further. It wasn’t something that he wanted to go any further.

“Lace Armitage,” he said.

Artie Wu lifted his face heavenward and flung his arms out beseechingly. “Oh, Lordy, let it happen to me!”

Durant told Wu what had happened, adding nothing, editing much. “And then came her big moment—”

“And you sitting there not even able to get your tongue hard.”

“Yeah. Well, who should walk in on us but the husband.”

“Piers?”

“That’s the only one she’s got.”

“Christ. What happened?”

“Nothing. He seemed used to it — or as used to that kind of thing as you can ever get, I suppose. He seemed more sorry for her than anything else.”

Artie Wu produced a cigar and lit it with his usual ceremony. “I guess for a woman like that you could put up with just one hell of a lot.”

“I guess.”

Wu examined Durant several moments. “You still want to go through with it?”

Durant nodded.

“We can cut and run.”

“No.”

“You’re still counting on what that doctor told you in London?”

“He was a pretty expensive doctor. Thirty-five guineas an hour.”

“The retribution theory.”

“Yeah,” Durant said. “Retribution, not revenge. There’s a difference.”

“She’s dead, Quincy,” Wu said, his voice gently reasonable.

“I know. I’ve finally got around to accepting that. But I should’ve done something about it. According to our Harley Street friend, it really wouldn’t have mattered much what I did as long as it was something. But I didn’t do anything. So it all started festering inside some place, the feelings that I wouldn’t let myself have, the guilt I wouldn’t admit; then the conflict and the payoff in the form of a permanently limp dick, which for us grown-ups isn’t much fun.”

“It’s some theory,” Wu said.

“You don’t buy it?”

“I don’t know. Retribution.” Wu shook his head. “If you fix Simms, who was responsible for Christine’s dying, then you fix up the family jewels. It’s a little pat.”

“The shrink’s theory was that it doesn’t matter what I do to Simms. I can slap him on the wrist or drop him off a cliff. What he meant — and this part I do buy — is that it doesn’t matter a damn what I do now as long as I believe that it’s what I should have done then. You follow that — or is it too murky?”

“Yeah, I follow it.”

“It’s all a matter of confidence.”

“Impotency?”

Durant nodded.

“Well, shit,” Wu said, “we can’t have you going around like this for the rest of your life.”

“No, that’s a bit long.”

“So let’s get on with it, then.” Wu looked past Durant to the ocean, still gray from the overcast, although the horizon, for some reason, was clearly defined — so clearly, in fact, that Catalina was plainly visible, which it seldom was, even on clear days. “I’ve had a couple of ideas,” Wu continued, “which, when you hear them, might help you to understand why they used to call us Oriental folks wily.”

“Shifty, too.”

“Well, this is one of the shiftiest ideas I’ve ever had, but it might make us a little money.”

“How much is a little?”

Wu blew one of his smoke rings. Durant watched it rise toward the ceiling and said, “That much, huh?”

“How can you tell?”

“Whenever you come up with something really rotten, you blow a smoke ring first. It’s sort of like italics.”

Wu blew another smoke ring and said, “A half a million. Each. Cash.”

Durant leaned back in the suede chair and looked at the ceiling. “Well, now. A slight risk involved, of course.”

“We might wind up in jail. Or dead.”

“As I said, a slight risk.”

Wu blew his third smoke ring. “Your ears always get pointy.”

Durant touched his right ear. “When?”

“Whenever I mention a bit of money, they start growing points.” He sighed. “Greed, I suppose.”

“I didn’t think it showed. Tell me about how we’re going to get rich, Artie.”

Wu looked at his watch. “Let’s call Otherguy first and get him and McBride out here for a small conference.” Wu rose and went over to the telephone. He reached Overby on the third ring. Overby said that they could make it by two that afternoon. Wu hung up the phone and went back to the couch, sat down, and blew a final smoke ring.

Then he looked at Durant and smiled. “Let’s go after the two million.”

“Eddie McBride’s two million?”

Wu nodded.

“That means we’ll have to go after Simms.”

Again Wu nodded.

“I like it already,” Durant said. “But half of two million is a million each. You said half a million.”

“We might have to divvy it up with a couple of people.”

“Well, fair’s fair. Let’s hear your rotten plan.”

Wu grinned. “It’s really rotten.”

“Good,” Durant said, and lit a Pall Mall, his second for the morning. “Let’s hear it.”

It took Artie Wu nearly an hour and forty-five minutes to outline his ideas. It took that long because Durant immediately began poking some father large holes in them, which together they plugged up. Then Aggie Wu and the children came back and they decided to have the picnic early out on the deck. After the picnic, the children were put to bed for a nap on the twin beds in the spare bedroom, Aggie Wu decided to take a nap in Durant’s room.

When the children and their mother were finally asleep, Durant and Wu went over the scheme again, probing for weak spots, for holes, and for gaping inconsistencies. They found quite a few and patched them over mostly with improvisation.

Finally, Durant locked his hands behind his neck and gazed up at the ceiling again. “By God, it’s rotten, isn’t it?”

Wu smiled. “I thought you’d like it.”

“You know what the odds against it are?”

Wu shrugged. “We’ve got a Chinaman’s chance.”

“That bad, huh?”

Wu stuck a fresh cigar into his mouth and around it grinned a big, wide, white, merry grin. “Nah,” he said. “That good.”

Chapter 29

Otherguy Overby fell in love with Durant’s house. In fact, nothing could begin until Overby was given a tour of the place. Aggie Wu had taken the children for a last, damp walk along the beach, this time toward Santa Monica, and Overby went through the house like a prospective buyer, opening closets, flushing the toilet, and making sure that the garbage-disposal unit in the kitchen worked properly.

After that, Overby stood in the middle of the living room, looking around with a proprietary air. “How much you paying, Quincy, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Six-fifty.”

Overby stuck his lower lip out a little, turned the corners of his mouth down, and nodded his approval. “Not bad, not half bad. Your furniture?”

“Yes.”

“What about the utilities?”

“Another fifty or so.”

“Not bad at all. And you got the ocean.”

“Plus the beach.”

“Who cares about the beach?” Overby said. “All a beach is good for is tracking sand in all over the place.” Overby nodded to himself, still looking around, and said in a voice that was clearly a self-addressed promise, “One Of these days.”

“One of these days what?” Artie Wu said.

“One of these days I’m gonna make a bundle and buy me a place like this and then tell the world to go fuck itself.”

“You want a beer in the meantime?” Durant said.

“Yeah, I would, thanks.”

“What about you, Eddie?”

“Sure,” McBride said.

After each had a beer, he selected a place to sit in the living room, Overby claiming a spot on the couch so that he could keep an eye on the ocean. McBride sat in the leather Eames chair which he had bled on a little a few nights before. Durant chose the suede chair, and Wu sat on the couch with Overby.

“All right,” Durant said, “let’s see what we’ve got scheduled.” He looked at Overby. “You’ve got an appointment with Simms tomorrow at nine, right?”

“Right.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?”

“An hour probably. Maybe a little more.”

“And you’ve got the reporter — what’s his name?”

“Conroy,” Overby said. “Herb Conroy.”

“Yeah, Conroy. You’ve got him set for the lunch tomorrow.”

“I’m going to pick him up at twelve, maybe a little before.”

“He still thinks it’s about a job?” Wu said.

“Sure.”

“I think,” Durant said slowly, “that we’d better get a rundown from you, Otherguy, on your meeting with Simms before we get into the lunch.”

“Where’re you gonna be about ten or ten-thirty?”

“Anywhere you say,” Wu said.

“My place?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Wu said.

Overby nodded. “If I’m not there, the kid here’ll let you in or I’ll leave word for somebody to.”

“What about Eddie’s ID?” Wu said. “Any problem there?”

Overby shook his head. “We picked it up this morning. It’s a nice job.”

“How much?” Durant said.

“One thousand even.”

“Jesus,” Artie Wu said. “I can remember when you could get a whole set for three hundred.”

“Not with credit cards and a Washington Post press card,” Overby said.

“What’s that name you’re going to use, Eddie?” Durant said.

“Max,” McBride said. “Anthony C. Max, and maybe, in a couple of hours or even maybe a couple of days, you guys are gonna get around to telling me what the fuck this is all about.”

“Five minutes, Eddie,” Durant said. “That’s all you’ve got to wait.”

“Show him your stuff, kid,” Overby said.

McBride took a wallet out of the breast pocket of his jacket. From the wallet he extracted a folding, accordionlike plastic case and holding it up, let it unfold itself as the nine or ten connected compartments tumbled down toward the floor.

Overby rose, took the case, and showed it almost proudly to Durant and Wu. “Maryland driver’s license, Social Security card, American Express, Carte Blanche, Gulf Oil, DC. public library card — I thought that up — and the press card.”

Wu examined the press card carefully. “Is this really the way it looks?”

“Who the hell knows?” Overby said. “What this guy did was go down and buy a copy of the Post somewhere and then take its name, the way it is in Old English type here, and shoot it and then ink it in good and reduce it. He had a press card that he’d got somehow from the Sacramento Bee and he used that as a kind of model and then got a color Polaroid shot of the kid here and put that in and then laminated the whole thing with plastic. I think it looks damn good.”

Wu looked at Durant, who nodded. Wu handed the folding case back to McBride and then looked at Overby. “One more thing, Otherguy.”

“What?”

“We need a couple of pieces.”

Overby’s face went very still. Only his eyes moved as they flicked from Wu to Durant and then back to Wu. “Well, now,” he said. “If you two guys need pieces, how about me and the kid here?”

“You’ve already got one, Otherguy,” Durant said. “It’s a belly gun, a thirty-eight, and when you carry it, you carry it cute — around in the small of your back.”

Overby’s hand went around to the small of his back and touched something through his jacket. “You remember,” he said.

“Yeah, we remember.”

“What’ve you got in mind?” Overby said.

“Pistols,” Durant said. “Revolvers. No smaller than a thirty-two, no larger than a thirty-eight.”

“There’s a guy over in Hollywood that—”

“Otherguy,” Wu interrupted.

“What?”

“We don’t want to know.”

Overby nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Okay. But I’m running a little short.”

Wu sighed. “How much?”

“Five hundred.”

Wu sighed again, took out his roll with the oversized silver paper clip, peeled off ten fifties, and handed them to Overby. “Make sure they’ve got firing pins in them and everything.”

“Firing pins,” Overby said as if making a note, and stuck the money into his pocket.

“Just make sure they shoot. And get some bullets for them, too.”

“How many rounds you want?”

“Just enough to load them,” Wu said. “We’re not starting any war.”

“What the hell are we starting?” McBride said. “You guys all need pieces, but I don’t. I’m going to be the boy reporter, which I know fuck all about being. I think your five minutes are up, and if I don’t hear something that makes sense in one minute flat, I walk.”

“Okay, Eddie,” Durant said. “We’re going to get to you right now.”

“You know, the kid’s got a point,” Overby said. “He and I’ve sort of been talking things over.”

“About what?” Durant said.

“Well, you know, you guys’ve got your deal going, and I mean, you don’t have to tell us every last detail, but we would kind of like to get a look inside.”

“How’d you like a peek at two million dollars?” Durant said.

Again, Overby’s face went still. “Cut how many ways?”

“Four,” Wu said. “Possibly five.”

“Even?”

Durant nodded. “Even.”

Overby looked at McBride. “What do you think, kid? With that kind of money we could maybe do what we were talking about.”

“What’s that?” Wu said.

“Well, I’m not getting any younger and I could probably use an associate — a partner, really — and the kid here has got all the right moves, so he and I were sort of thinking about going in together out there when this is all over.” Overby nodded toward the Pacific Ocean, again indicating that out there could be anything from Seattle to Singapore.

“Two million,” McBride said. “That’s a pretty familiar figure.”

“It’s the same one, Eddie,” Durant said.

“So what do I have to do?”

“You have to look for somebody.”

“Where?”

“We’ll know tomorrow morning, probably around nine,” Wu said. “It may be an address, it may be just a neighborhood.”

“And what do I do when I find whoever I’m looking for?”

“You call us,” Durant said.

McBride nodded thoughtfully. “And that’s all you’re going to tell me, isn’t it?”

“For now,” Wu said.

“Except who I’m going to be looking for. You’re going to tell me that.”

“Silk Armitage,” Durant said.

The name made McBride look down at the floor. For several long moments he seemed to be studying the intricate pattern in the Oriental rug. When he looked up his face was set, thoughtful. “If I’m looking for her,” he said, “that means she doesn’t want to be found.”

“That’s right, Eddie,” Wu said. “She doesn’t want to be found.”

Chapter 30

At 3.30 p.m. on that damp, cool Sunday afternoon, a failed pimp turned part-time car thief was killing an otherwise dull day by bar hopping down the Pacific Coast Highway. The car thief’s name was Joe Crites, and he had already been in three bars by the time he hit the Sneaky Pete in Venice and ordered a Virgin Mary.

There wasn’t much of a crowd in the place, and Crites had grown bored and was almost ready to leave when Gobie Salimei, one of the Sneaky Pete’s three owners, came down to Crites’s end of the bar, leaned on it, and offered his opinion of the weather.

“You’d think, Joey, on a day like this people’d be flocking in here, wouldn’t you?”

Crites looked around and shrugged. “You got a crummy joint here, Gobie. They ain’t gonna flock in here rain or shine.”

“Maybe I oughta get a string of ladies and let ’em work outa here.”

“It’s an idea, except the oney kind you’re gonna get are gonna be dogs and they’d drive more bidness away than they’d bring in.”

“You think so, huh?”

“I know so.”

Gobie Salimei nodded gloomily. Then he thought of something that might elevate him a little in the bankrupt pimp’s estimation. It was information, inside stuff, and you never could tell. Crites knew a lot of people.

Salimei leaned across the bar and lowered his voice. “The word’s out on a guy.”

Crites nodded and made his tanned, thirty-three-year-old face look interested.

“A guy name of McBride. Eddie McBride. Ever hear of him?”

Crites shook his head. “How much?”

Salimei looked around and made his voice grow even more conspiratorial. “A grand. Just for his address.”

“Who’s putting it up?”

“Solly Gesini. You know Solly?”

Crites nodded. “I know who he is. What’d you say this guy’s name is?”

“McBride,” Salimei said. “Eddie McBride.”

Five bars, two ginger ales, and three draft beers later, Joe Crites found himself on the outskirts of Pelican Bay. Because he had grown bored with bars, Crites decided to go calling on a former business associate. He decided that he would drop in on Brenda Birdsong, whose pimp he had once been back in the old days in North Hollywood. The old days to Crites were eighteen months ago. Brenda was one of the reasons that Crites had failed as a pimp. She was pretty enough, but she was lazy and had a smart mouth and didn’t like to take baths. Dirty ankles, he remembered. Brenda always went around barefoot and had dirty ankles, and that sort of turned guys off unless they were some kind of freaks.

Crites had no trouble getting past the old man with the white ponytail who held down the reception desk at the Catalina Towers. A few minutes later he was knocking on the door of 521, which was just across the hall from 522, where, until recently, Otherguy Overby had lived.

“Who is it?” Brenda asked through the door,

“Joey.”

“Joey who?”

“Come on, Brenda.”

She opened the door, and Crites saw that she hadn’t changed any since the old days. She had on an unbuttoned man’s white shirt and blue nylon panties and that was all, except for too much mascara around her wise-ass eyes and a pretty good coat of grime around her ankles.

Inside the apartment, Brenda turned to Crites and said, “No freebies, Joey.”

“Aw, hell, Brenda. I just dropped by for a drink and a few laughs.”

“What’ve we got to laugh about?”

“We’ll think of something. Here.” He took a pint of White Horse Scotch out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. “Make us a drink.”

Brenda shrugged, took the bottle, and went into the kitchen. She came out a minute or two later with two glasses. “No soda,” she said. “So I used water.”

Crites accepted his glass. “Water’s okay.” He took a taste of his drink and looked around the shabby apartment. “So how’s hustling?”

“How’s car stealing?”

He shrugged. “I get by.” Crites sat down in an upholstered chair and poked at a cigarette burn in the fabric of its left arm. “I was just talking to a guy over in Venice.”

“Don’t poke at it,” Brenda said. “It’ll just make it worse.”

Crites stopped poking at the burn. “This guy over in Venice I was just talking to is thinking of letting a few ladies hustle out of his bar.”

Brenda made a face. “In Venice?”

“What’s wrong with Venice?”

“Fifteen- and sixteen-year-old dopers, that’s what’s wrong with Venice. They give it away over there for the price of a joint. You talk about turning a trick in Venice for fifty bucks and you get laughed out of town. You wanta know what Venice is? It’s the pits.”

“Well, maybe you’re right,” Crites said, “except I think probably you oughta move back to Hollywood.”

“I’m doing all right here.”

“Yeah, I can see,” Crites said, looking around the room.

“I got some regulars,” Brenda said. “I turn five or six, maybe seven tricks a week and I can get by. The cops don’t bother me, not in this town, and I don’t have to keep some fucking pimp in nine-hundred-dollar suits.”

Crites made a small deprecatory gesture with his drink. “Hell, it was just an idea. I mean, about Venice. I was over there and this guy happened to mention it so right away I thought about you. He also told me something else kinda interesting.”

“What?”

“The word’s out on some guy.”

“Anybody we know?”

“I never heard of him. Some nobody called Eddie McBride.”

Brenda’s face changed. Her eyes lost their wise-ass look and turned cunning instead. A small, tight smile appeared on her face. “Who’s Eddie McBride?” she said.

“I don’t know. Some guy that Solly Gesini’s looking for.”

“Is that the Gesini who runs the muscle factory over on Lincoln Boulevard?”

“You know him?”

“I just heard of him.”

“Well, Solly’ll pay a little money to find out where this here Eddie McBride is keeping himself.”

“What’s he offering?”

Crites looked at her carefully. “You sure you don’t know him?”

“Who?”

“McBride.”

“Nah, I don’t know him. How should I know him?”

“Well, I just thought in case you did we might split the two hundred bucks that Gesini’s offering — just for his address.”

“Well, if I hear anything, I’ll let you know. I could sure as shit use the money.” She finished her drink, put it down, then turned to Crites. “You wanta ball — just for old times’ sake?”

“I don’t mind,” Crites said.

After Crites had gone it took a while for Brenda to get someone to give her Solly Gesini’s unlisted home phone number. But finally she got it from Gobie Salimei at the Sneaky Pete. Gesini answered his phone with a hello on the third ring.

“Mr. Gesini?” Brenda said.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know me, but I hear you’re looking for a certain party whose last name begins with an M.”

“Yeah, I might be looking for somebody like that.”

“How much is it worth to you?”

“You got the address, it’s worth one grand.”

“A thousand?”

“That’s what I said.”

“How do I know I’m gonna get the thousand if you get the address?”

“You got a name?”

“Brenda.”

“Well, let me tell you something, Brenda. I’m a businessman and I got a reputation to keep up. I say I’ll do something, I’ll do it. You can ask anybody.”

“How soon can I get it — the money, I mean?”

“You give me the address, you can get it tonight. You know a place called the Sneaky Pete in Venice?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you give me the address and then give me an hour to do a little checking, and if everything works out, then there’ll be an envelope for you at the Sneaky Pete. An hour from now.”

“Well, he’s living in another guy’s apartment.”

“Where?”

“In Pelican Bay.”

“What’s the name of the apartment?”

“The Sandpiper Apartments. It’s on Third and Seashore Drive.”

“Yeah, I know where it is. What’s the name of the party he’s living with?”

“Overby. Maurice Overby — although nearly everybody calls him Otherguy.”

“Otherguy?”

“That’s what they call him.”

“Okay, Brenda, if this checks out, you just made yourself a thousand bucks.”

“And I can pick it up in an hour?”

“That’s right. In an hour at the Sneaky Pete.”

After she hung up the phone, the excitement of what she had just done hit her. She looked around the apartment trying to think how she might kill half an hour before she started for the bar in Venice. She didn’t want another drink — not just then. But she wanted to do something, though, something that would help keep the excitement and anticipation under control, but still not spoil it. So Brenda Birdsong decided to do something that she hadn’t done in quite some time. She decided to take a bath.

Chapter 31

On that following morning, the first day of summer, a Monday, Randall Piers was at his desk at seven o’clock after having walked and run the six greyhounds for their usual mile along the beach.

Piers tried the large cup of coffee that Whitlock, the butler, had left for him on the desk. It was good — very good, in fact — but still not quite as good as the coffee made by the tall, lean man with the scars. Thinking of Durant, Piers remembered how the day before, Sunday, Lace Armitage had described Durant’s impotency. She had made it a sad, even poignant story, and her obvious compassion and sympathy had irritated Piers a little, and still did, although he was careful not to let it show.

When Piers had married Lace he had known what he was getting into, because she had told him very carefully and with much graphic detail, explaining that she wanted him to know exactly what to expect.

“I just can’t seem to help it,” she had said. “I try, but somehow it happens anyway.”

“But you want to do something about it?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then we’ll work on it,” he had said.

And they had, and things had seemed to be getting better until this business with Silk started. After Silk disappeared, things had gone to hell again. Randall Piers very much wanted to find his sister-in-law because he had decided that it just might somehow save his marriage, and he was very much in love with his wife.

After another sip of coffee, Piers rang for his executive assistant. Hart Ebsworth came in a moment later and took his usual seat.

“Well?” Piers said.

“It cost.”

“How much?”

“The Senator said to tell you that as far as he’s concerned he doesn’t owe you a thing now.”

“He thinks it’s worth that much, huh?”

“That much.”

“So what did he come up with?”

“Just the bare bones,” Ebsworth said. “But it cost him plenty, or so he said. But you know how he lies.”

Piers nodded.

“Durant and Wu had a contract to furnish supplies to a hush-hush hit-and-run outfit in Cambodia. There was a girl involved, Durant’s girl. She was a reporter, French. She got killed along with some CBS guy, and Durant got captured. That’s how he got the scars. Wu went in and got him out. Then they went to Scotland. And that’s it, except for one thing.”

“What?”

“The hit-and-run outfit. It was a bunch of CIA-paid mercenaries, illegal as hell. The guy who ran it was one Luke Childester. The Dirty Duke, they called him. Well, when the war ended, Childester went sour, turned renegade or something, and now he’s running things for Imperlino in Pelican Bay using his real name, which is Reginald Simms. It seems Imperlino and Simms went to school together. Bowdoin.”

Piers turned his swivel chair slightly and stared out at the ocean, which had gone pewter gray under the overcast. “And suddenly Wu and Durant just happen to turn up in Malibu and we just happen to meet on the beach, Wu and I.”

“They worked it pretty slick, didn’t they?”

“Yes, very slick. Are they connected with the CIA now — or anybody else?”

“The Senator says they’re not. Swears they’re not, in fact.”

“Well.”

“What’re you going to do?”

Still staring at the ocean, Piers said, “Do? I’m going to let them find Silk, that’s what I’m going to do.”

At seven-thirty that morning Solly Gesini arrived at the asphalt-covered parking lot across the street from the Sandpiper Apartments and bought four spaces for his Oldsmobile 98 from the surly attendant, parking it himself. The spaces that he bought gave him a clear view of the apartment building’s entrance and almost instant access to the lot’s exit.

Next to him on the Oldsmobile’s front seat was a stack of country-Western tapes. He chose one and shoved it into the tape deck. Gesini liked country-Western music, mostly because he could understand the words, which usually told a story, and that too he liked.

Next to the tapes on the seat was an almost frozen six-pack of Tab. The Tab was for his weight, and the five packets of M & M chocolates next to the Tab were for his hunger. Gesini felt that they sort of balanced things out. He popped open a can of Tab and held it between his knees while he tore open one of the M & M packets and tossed a handful into his mouth, letting them melt a bit before he washed them down with a swallow of the cola.

Gesini then settled back in the seat, his eyes fixed on the apartment entrance, his soul soothed by the country-Western music, his inner needs satisfied by the diet cola drink and the candy-coated chocolates, and his mind pleasantly engaged by the interesting task that lay ahead, which was the murder of Eddie McBride.

Across the street and up on the twelfth floor in apartment 1229, Eddie McBride was sprawled half dressed in an easy chair in the living room. He had a cup of instant coffee in one hand and a Camel in the other as he listened with no little interest to Otherguy Overby’s lecture on the proper dress, appearance, and grooming of the successful mountebank.

Overby stood in the center of the living room dressed in shorts, shoes, a white shirt, dark tie, and no pants. He held a suit up by a hanger, as though offering it for McBride’s inspection and possible purchase.

“Now, look what I got on, kid. A white shirt, custom made, with no breast pocket and never, never any fucking initials where the pocket’s supposed to be. You wear initials, it means you’re not sure who you are and that you gotta have something to remind you — and probably everybody else. Now the tie. Whaddya think about the tie?”

McBride shrugged. “It’s dark, not much color.”

Overby shook his head. “It’s ugly. That’s the important thing. Ugly, but expensive. What you gotta do is find the ugliest, most expensive tie you can, like this one, which cost me sixty-five bucks. But somebody else sees me wearing it and they think, ‘Hey, there goes a guy who can afford expensive bad taste.’ Not flash, kid, but expensive, conservative bad taste. There’s a hell of a difference.”

“Yeah, I think I know what you’re saying,” McBride said, and sipped his coffee, not taking his eyes off Overby.

“Now the shoes and socks — what about them?”

McBride shrugged again. “Black shoes, black socks, the high ones that come up almost to your knees.”

“Okay, first the socks. You sit down and cross your knees and you’re wearing short socks and you show a little patch of white, hairy leg and lemme tell you something, there’s nothing nastier looking. I mean nasty. The way it affects some people it’d be better if you took your cock out and waved it around. I don’t know why, but that little white, pasty patch of hairy leg — unless you got just one hell of a tan — looks diseased to most people. So whatever you’re talking about, they’re not gonna be listening. Instead, they’re gonna be thinking about that horrible disease on your leg. Okay?”

“Sure,” McBride said. “Okay.”

“All right, now the shoes. Guess how much they cost?”

McBride looked at them. They were ordinary-looking black low-cut shoes with capped toes — the kind once referred to as Oxfords. McBride decided to go high on his estimate. “Eighty-five bucks,” he said.

Overby shook his head, pleased by his pupil’s low guess. “Two hundred and forty-eight dollars,” Overby said.

“For them?” McBride didn’t believe it.

“Handmade by a little old English guy in Hong Kong. He must be close to a hundred now and he makes ’em just like they did thirty, forty, even fifty years ago. Now what else about ’em, except that they’re kinda ugly?”

“They don’t shine much.”

“They’re not supposed to. They sort of glow, but they don’t shine. The only place shoes are supposed to shine, kid, is in the Marine Corps, although sometimes I like a good spit shine on my loafers. And that’s the other thing — these aren’t loafers. They lace up. Loafers, and boots that zip up, and shoes that buckle, and pimp flash shoes with five-inch heels — well, they indicate a weak moral fiber.”

“A what?”

“A weak moral fiber,” Overby said very seriously. “I mean, if you’re too lazy to lace up your shoes, there’s gotta be something wrong with you.”

“Jesus, Otherguy, I feel I oughta be writing all of this down.”

If it was sarcasm, Overby chose to ignore it. Instead, he put on the dark blue suit that he had held up throughout his lecture. The suit had some very faint gray stripes, and when Overby had it on and its vest buttoned — except for the final button, of course — he looked very much like a smart, hard, tough, prosperous banker from a medium-sized city — which was exactly what he wanted to look like.

“Well, whaddya think, kid?” he said.

McBride examined him carefully. “The suit,” he said finally. “It don’t fit.”

“One size too large,” Overby said. “Like maybe I had the guts and determination to take a little weight off and keep it off, right?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“So what does that tell you about me?”

McBride nodded slowly. “Yeah, I see, like maybe you’re the kind of guy who does what he sets out to do.”

“Exactly. One size too large. Remember that.”

“What about out there?” McBride said, unconsciously imitating Overby’s westward nod that embraced the entire Pacific. “Is this the way you do it out there too?”

“Not exactly, kid. I’ll have to show you when we get there. But out there,” he said, his voice almost dreamy, “well, out there it’s kind of different.”

As Artie Wu was getting dressed that morning in his bedroom in the house on Ninth Street in Santa Monica, his wife had summoned his children to observe and learn.

“Watch Daddy, darlin’s. He’s puttin’ on his gittin’-outa-here-and-gittin’-us-some-money suit.” Agnes Wu had expertly copied both the voice and the admonition from the wife of an Anadarko, Oklahoma, tool pusher whom she had known in Aberdeen.

It was a resplendent outfit that was intended to be noticed, and Solly Gesini noticed it immediately and the man it clothed as soon as Artie Wu climbed out of Durant’s Mercedes coupe.

Jesus, Gesini thought, it’s gotta he the Chinaman. And the other guy, the skinny one, must be Durant.

The cream-colored raw-silk suit and its double-breasted vest with black silk piping fitted Wu to perfection. Stretched across the enormous mound of stomach, made even more pronounced by the vest, was a heavy gold watch chain. Wu’s glistening white shirt had been hand tailored in Singapore out of handkerchief linen with a high, rounded, almost Hoover-like collar. His tie was severely narrow and no-nonsense black. Dash, if that, indeed, were needed, was supplied by the black-banded Panama hat with the enormous brim turned down all the way around.

“Hell, Artie,” Durant had said when he picked Wu up that morning, “you forgot your ivory-handled fly whisk.”

It was a little after nine when Wu and Durant got out of the Mercedes, which they had parked in a two-hour meter zone on Seashore Drive across from the Sandpiper Apartments.

As they jaywalked across the street, Wu glanced at the fat gold watch that he kept tucked away in a vest pocket. “We’re going to miss Otherguy,” he said.

“He doesn’t need any last-minute advice.”

“No,” Wu agreed. “Not him.”

“But McBride?”

Wu shrugged. “We’ll see.”

McBride, after his early-morning lecture by Overby, was visibly impressed by Wu’s attire when he let the two men into apartment 1229. He studied it all for several moments, trying to decide who Wu was supposed to be. He had no trouble with Durant in his conservative lightweight glen plaid with the blue shirt and black knit tie. Durant was exactly what he seemed to be: smart, competent, and a little hard. Even, perhaps, a trifle ruthless. But Wu... well, Wu, McBride decided, was something else. So he gave up and asked.

“What the fuck are you supposed to be, Artie?”

Wu smiled and made his eyes become two curved sparkling slits. “Mysterious, knowledgeable, highly intelligent, and a bit eccentric. Mild eccentricity, by the way, inspires confidence.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” He turned to Durant. “You want to call him?”

Durant glanced at his watch. “Okay.” He went over to the phone, dialed I number, and asked for Chief Oscar Ploughman.

Lt. Marion Lake of Homicide watched as Ploughman let his private outside line ring twice. Then the police chief said, “This has gotta be them,” picked up the phone at the end of the third ring, and said hello. When Durant asked for Chief Ploughman, the chief said, “You’ve got him.”

“This is Durant. You said for us to call.”

“I’m going to give you all I can,” Ploughman said.

“All right.”

“Breadstone Avenue. Somewhere in between the 2100 and 2300 blocks.”

“That’s all?” Durant said.

“That’s all,” Ploughman said, and hung up. Then he smiled a large, yellow smile and turned to Lt. Lake. “Let’s give ’em until three o’clock.”

“Then?”

“Then you get over there and find out for sure.”

Lt. Lake nodded. “Who do you think I oughta be this time?”

Ploughman thought about it as he studied Lake for several moments. “A reporter,” he said finally. “You do that pretty good.”

When Durant hung up the phone he turned to Eddie McBride. “Okay, here’s what we’ve got. She’s somewhere in the 2100 to 2300 blocks on Breadstone Avenue. And that’s all we’ve got. You know what to do?”

McBride nodded slowly. “I’ve been talking to Otherguy about it. He gave me a lot of ideas. I’ll hit the bars and the stores and dry-cleaning shops and things like that and ask questions.”

“And if you find her?” Wu said.

“I call you guys.”

“Right. Now, we’re going to be at a meeting between one and two-thirty probably. But we’ll be back here after that.”

McBride cleared his throat a little nervously. “How do I look?” he asked, his voice full of self-consciousness.

The two men inspected the well-cut jacket, the dark slacks, the tasseled loafers, and the gray oxford-cloth shirt with the slightly loosened foulard tie. Durant thought McBride looked about as believable as Steve McQueen would look playing a reporter, but he didn’t say what he thought. Instead, he said what Eddie McBride wanted to hear: “You look like a reporter, Eddie. A smart one.”

McBride looked at Wu for further confirmation. Wu nodded slowly, even judiciously. “Get me rewrite, sweetheart,” Wu said.

“What the fuck’s he talking about?” McBride asked Durant.

Durant smiled. “A very old play.”

“You look great, Eddie,” Wu said. “Just right.”

As if in need of additional evidence, McBride opened the door of the living-room closet and examined himself in its full-length mirror, pulling the loosened tie down another careful half inch.

While McBride was inspecting himself in the mirror, Durant said, “When you and Simms — or Childester — were lifting the money in Saigon, did you help him make the actual switch?”

McBride shook his head, still examining himself in the mirror. “Nah, he had that part all done. What he needed me for was to take down the screens over the air-conditioning ducts. We had exactly two minutes the way he had it figured.”

“But he had the money all switched and ready, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I was just curious how you worked it,” Durant said.

McBride turned and looked at Durant for a moment, the younger man’s skepticism obvious. But then a thought struck McBride. “Jesus,” he said, “I almost forgot.”

He turned and went into the kitchen. When he came back he was carrying two packages of frozen vegetables. He handed Wu a package of Green Giant frozen peas, and Durant got the same brand of frozen broccoli.

“What’s this?” Wu said.

McBride grinned. “Overby said you might have to warm ’em up a little — you know, like in a pan.”

Wu ripped open the box of peas and took out a short-barreled .38 Colt revolver. Durant’s box of broccoli contained the same thing.

“That’s where the guy kept ’em,” McBride said. “He had this little store over in North Hollywood and he kept them in the back in a refrigerator. He—”

“Eddie,” Wu said.

“Yeah?”

“You’d better get going.”

“Yeah, okay.”

McBride examined himself for the last time in the full-length mirror and then went to the door, where he paused and looked back at Wu and Durant. “What do I do if I don’t find her?”

“You’ll find her,” Durant said.

“Yeah,” McBride said. “Sure.” And left.

When the door closed, Durant looked at Wu. “What do you think?”

“About the purloined two million?”

Durant nodded.

“I think,” Wu said slowly, “that it’s all beginning to make just a little more sense.”

“Just a little,” Durant said.

When McBride came out of the Sandpiper Apartments that morning at 9:32, Solly Gesini was on his second can of Tab, having already polished off most of the M & Ms. When he saw McBride he turned down the country-Western music, as though the absence of sound would help him see better.

Gesini watched as McBride crossed the street and took an overparking ticket from under the windshield wiper of his 1965 Mustang convertible, the someday-soon classic that he had rescued from its abandonment in Venice. As he watched McBride stuff the ticket away in a pocket, Gesini started the engine of his Oldsmobile.

McBride got into his car, started it, and pulled away from the curb. Gesini waited until another car came by and then shot the Oldsmobile out of the lot after the car of the man he was going to kill, with any luck at all, that very morning.

Chapter 32

Otherguy Overby sat patiently in the chrome-and-leather chair and watched the man who looked like a male model count the ten thousand dollars. Every time his count reached another thousand, Chuck West would look up at Overby and smile a little helplessly, as though to say that while he knew it was all there, he still had to make sure, and he was confident that Overby would understand and bear with him.

West was counting the money on to the top of his grimly contemporary desk in the sizable office that he held down for Reginald Simms, Inc., Consultants, on the fifteenth floor of the Ransom Tower. Overby thought that West was as grimly contemporary as his office, and he had already dismissed both as being second-rate Sunset Boulevard.

When he finished counting, West looked up at Overby and gave him his beautiful-person smile. “Right on the nose, Maurice.”

“Maurice?” Overby said with a puzzled smile, “Did you call me Maurice? Not many people call me Maurice anymore.”

“What do they call you, Maury?”

“They call me Mr. Overby,” he said in a flat tone. “Sometimes for years.”

Chuck West stared at Overby for a moment, and behind the beautiful hair and the beautiful tan and the beautiful teeth Overby caught a glimpse of something else that was not so beautiful, but instead quite ugly and just a little sinister.

“I’ll call you anything you like, mister,” West said. He picked up his phone and dialed two numbers. When the phone was answered he said, “Mr. Overby is here and we’ve just finalized his consultation fee.” There was a pause and then West, “No... cash.” After another pause, West said, “Yes, how very true.”

After he hung up the phone, West didn’t tell Overby what was very true. Instead, he rose and said, “I’ll take you in to Mr. Simms now.”

Overby liked the view that Reginald Simms had of the ocean, but that was about all he liked. He immediately marked Simms down as a smooth, smart bad-hat, which didn’t bother him at all because Overby found smooth, smart bad-hats an interesting challenge. But anyone who would have a fire in his office in June must have a few soft spots that Overby decided might well be worth probing. Overby thought the fire a silly affectation.

After Chuck West made the introductions and left, Simms gestured Overby toward one of the high-backed leather chairs that flanked the fireplace.

“Do you like a fire even in June, Mr. Overby?” Simms said after waiting for Overby to sit down.

“They’re comforting anytime,” Overby lied, choosing his words carefully.

“You approached us first — let’s see, when was it — two months ago?” Simms said, pouring coffee into two bone-china cups from a silver pot that rested on a table near his chair.

“About then,” Overby said, accepting a cup.

“And you represent a small syndicate of investors?”

“It’s not so small.”

“I mean the number of investors, of course, not the amount of their proposed investment. A million dollars is still a very respectable sum.”

“You’re not exactly dragging your investors in off the street by the arm,” Overby said. “Not if you charge ten thousand dollars just to talk.”

“Try to think of it as earnest money,” Simms said. “It separates the idly curious from the totally serious. You are totally serious, aren’t you, Mr. Overby?”

“I’ll let the ten thousand dollars speak for itself. I didn’t drop by just for the small talk.”

Simms drank some of his coffee, produced his cigarette case, offered Overby one, and when Overby accepted it, lit it for him. After he had lit his own, Simms blew the smoke out, fanned it away before the air conditioning had a chance to get at it, and said, “You’ve been looking around our little town these last two months, I understand.”

“That’s right.”

“And what have you discovered that’s interesting?”

Overby decided to see how Simms would handle a hard, fast one, low and inside. “What I’ve discovered that’s kind of interesting is that Vince Imperlino has a lock on this town and you’ve got the key to the lock.”

Simms put his oval cigarette out carefully after having smoked no more than a quarter of an inch of it. He leaned back in his chair and made a steeple of his fingers and gazed thoughtfully over them at Overby. A small, nearly whimsical smile came and went from his almost chiseled lips.

“Otherguy Overby,” Simms said, and shook his head in a small gesture of appreciation that was almost mocking, but not quite. “To use a phrase that I intensely dislike, almost a legend in your own time — at least” — and Simms gave his head a small nod toward the window — “ ‘out there.’ ” From the tone, Overby realized that Simms was quoting him, even mocking him a little now. Overby smiled, but said nothing. It was getting interesting.

“We did some checking on you, of course,” Simms said, examining the steeple that his fingers still formed.

Overby produced another small smile, but again said nothing. He too had long ago learned the many uses of silence.

“And your syndicate of ‘investors,’ ” Simms went on with another small shake of the head. “Run Run Keng, Jane Arden, Pancho Clarke, Gyp Lucas, et al.” Simms sighed happily. “As merry a band of freebooters as one could hope to find anywhere.” He paused and smiled again. “And, I should add, our kind of people.”

“Yours and Imperlino’s,” Overby said.

“That’s right. Mine and Mr. Imperlino’s.”

“So what’re you and Imperlino selling that up until now has cost me ten thousand dollars for nothing more than a cup of coffee and a seat by the fire?”

Simms seemed to consider Overby’s question quite seriously for several moments. “I suppose,” he said thoughtfully, “what we’re really offering is licenses to steal. Interested?”

“Very.”

“What about hotels, Mr. Overby? Are you also interested in them?”

“I’ve lived in a lot of them.”

“We’re going to build in this town on ten acres of the finest beach property left in the world what may very well be the world’s largest hotel. We’re not quite sure about that because there may be one in Moscow that has a few more rooms. Do you know the Bayside Amusement Park?”

Overby nodded.

“That will be the site. We already have clearance from the Coastal Commission, we have the necessary environmental-impact studies completed and approved, and we, of course, have the necessary financing.”

“So what’s left, the hatcheck stand?” Overby said. “There’s no money in that anymore. The linen service? The ladies? The booze?”

“All very small change, Mr. Overby. Very small indeed. Of course, you haven’t quite thought it through. When one builds a hotel of five thousand rooms, one has to fill it with paying guests. So what do we have to offer? An excellent hotel with a fine beach, immaculate service, wonderful food, and Disneyland not much more than an hour away. But one can get all that in Miami Beach or a number of other places. No, what fills a hotel is conventions, Mr. Overby, people getting together once a year or so to trade information, elect new officers, find new jobs, get away from their wives or husbands, and also, perhaps most important of all, have a little excitement. And that, Mr. Overby, is what we intend to provide: excitement.”

“What kind?”

Simms rose. “Let’s go over to my desk and I’ll show you something.”

When they reached his spindly-legged desk, Simms opened a large leatherbound folder — about the size of those that commercial artists keep their samples in. The first page was a detailed map of the downtown section of Pelican Bay.

“Here we have the amusement park where the hotel will go up,” Simms said, using his finger as a pointer. “And here, just across the street from it, we have this four-block area that’s now largely made up of second-rate apartments, small, marginal businesses, and one-family homes, most of them deteriorating. With the city’s official blessing and the enthusiastic backing of the local newspaper and the various civic groups, including the labor unions, we’re going to raze that entire four-block area.”

“And put up what?”

“Whatever people dream about in their wildest fantasies.”

“You mean a whorehouse that’s four blocks square?”

“Not all fantasies are sexual, Mr. Overby, although we will, of course provide sex in all of its many delightful forms. But what we’re really going to provide is sin without sorrow and thrills without danger. Good, wholesome licentiousness, one might say, with no regrets.”

Overby thought about it for a moment. Finally he said, “Either you are or you aren’t. You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s going to be real or it’s going to be a gyp.”

“A good point. An excellent point, in fact. But take a look, Mr. Overby, and then decide.”

Simms turned another page in the folder. It was a street scene done in skillful watercolors, and Overby somehow knew that if he went down that street with its small sidewalk cafés, its intriguing-looking doorways, its cobbled pavements, he would find all sorts of stimulating, possibly erotic things to do and see. He lifted his eyes from the rendering and stared at Simms for a moment, thinking, The fucker’s not all flash after all.

Simms turned another page. This time the scene was again vaguely European, but more tawdry, more decadent. “Berlin in the ’30s,” Simms said. “The first one was Paris in the ’20s, the Pigalle section — idealized, of course. You can go from Paris to Berlin” — Simms started turning more pages — “to Singapore to Hong Kong to Marseille to London’s Limehouse to San Francisco to New Orleans to New York to wherever you have ever dreamed of going. It will all be within this four-block-square area, and whatever you have dreamed of finding in those places you will find here — carefully sterilized for safe consumption.”

“Gambling?” Overby said.

“Our one problem. Gambling is against state law except for draw poker, which California, with its usual omniscience, has recognized as a game of skill, not chance. But real gambling will come to California, sooner probably than any of us think. The voters will decide that they’d rather have legalized gambling than confiscatory property taxes. It’s wonderful, don’t you think, how flexible one’s lifelong convictions usually are?”

“Sure,” Overby said. “Wonderful. But what’s still bothering me, is there going to be any action or not?”

“Action?” Simms said, as if he liked both the sound and the taste of the word. “You will see things that you have only heard whispered rumors of before — not you, of course, Mr. Overby, but the average person. Let your imagination run rampant; it will all be there.”

Overby bored in again. “Can I get laid, for example?”

“Laid? Laid. If during your wanderings down these delightful streets you spy a young woman who strikes your fancy, you need only whisper to her the number of your hotel room. And she will whisper back the time. And then, at that exact time, she will appear as if by magic in the comfortable surroundings of your room — perhaps accompanied by a friend, if you should so desire. Yes, Mr. Overby, you can indeed get laid.”

“What about the law?”

“The law, Mr. Overby, will be present to protect the customer. Nobody will get rolled, nobody will get mugged, nobody will have his pockets picked or his body harmed — except, of course, through his own self-indulgence. The policemen on duty will, in fact, cheerfully steer the adventurous into even more intriguing pursuits.”

“Dope?”

“Perhaps an opium den or two — the height of wickedness, don’t you think?”

“Real opium?”

“Who’s to say — as long as the beautiful young Chinese girls prepare the pipes?”

“Has it got a name?”

“A working one, because not all of us are delighted with it. We’re tentatively calling it The Barbary Coast.”

“Okay, you’re offering four square blocks of broads, booze, gambling — sort of, anyway — food, a little action probably, maybe a three-way exhibition with a donkey or something like that; but it still doesn’t sound much better to me than Havana in the ’40s and ’50s. In fact, it sounds like a shuck.”

“It is a shuck, Mr. Overby. A safe, antiseptic, quite expensive, carefully immoral shuck that the average person will remember for the rest of his days because he will have convinced himself that he alone of all his fellow conventioneers actually experienced the real thing. The Japanese will go absolutely crackers over it.”

Overby nodded thoughtfully. “What it really is is sort of a dirty Disneyland, right?”

“Excellent, Mr. Overby, excellent. A dirty Disneyland for people with normally dirty, normally twisted minds. You see, in many cities they have set aside certain sections for legalized vice. Amsterdam comes to mind. The Reeperbahn in Hamburg. The Combat Zone in Boston, which was a recent, rather unsuccessful experiment that made the mistake of trying to offer the real thing. People don’t want the real thing, Mr. Overby, because the real thing has bad breath, and smelly armpits, and sometimes steals your wallet and makes you hurt when you pee. What people want is vice and sin that look the way that they look in the movies — and that’s exactly what we intend to give them. I would not be at all surprised if many a budding movie star will receive his or her first big break at The Barbary Coast.”

“How many people?”

“On the payroll?”

Overby nodded.

“Approximately five thousand, we believe, including the hotel staff, all organized by the same union whose pension fund, incidentally, is providing much of the capital.”

“The Teamsters?”

Simms only smiled.

“What will my million dollars buy me?”

“In.”

“How far in?”

“A cabaret perhaps. Half of a poker parlor even.”

“What would the return be?”

“Fifteen percent the first year. Between nineteen and twenty-one after that.”

“Guaranteed?”

“Not quite.”

“But you’ve worked these figures out pretty carefully?”

Simms made a gesture that indicated that they should resume their chairs before the fire. As they sat down, Simms said, “This is not someone’s sudden bright idea. It’s been on the boards for almost ten years. Teams of psychologists, cost accountants, designers — some of them from Disneyland, by the way — gaming experts, crowd-flow specialists, and even one rather well-known writer with a particularly salacious imagination have all been working on it for nearly a decade. We had to find the right town in just exactly the right stage of development — or perhaps I should say decline. Pelican Bay is ideal.”

“What about the Feds?”

“What about them?”

“Aren’t they interested?”

“No reason why they should be as long as the proper taxes are paid. We are not involved in interstate commerce; our business will cross no state lines.”

“When do you start operations?”

“The groundbreaking on the hotel will begin in approximately six months. Construction of The Barbary Coast — do you like the name?”

“Not much.”

“Well, it will begin at about the same time.”

“When would I have to say yes or no?”

“I’ll give you some figures to look over — some projections. Then you will have one month.”

“That’s not much time.”

Simms rose, signaling an end to the interview. “No, it isn’t. But there are many applicants who want to get in on what will be a very profitable ground floor. We have to decide which ones to select.”

Overby was also up now and noticed that he was being very politely steered toward the door. “I should add, I suppose, Mr. Overby, that this is only a pilot project. A billion-dollar pilot project.”

“You mean there’re going to be more of them?”

Simms smiled agreeably. “All over,” he said. “All over these United States — wherever we can find a suitable city. And I must say, there are additional candidates every day.”

“But you’re starting here?”

“In Southern California, you mean?”

Overby nodded.

“Doesn’t everything start here?” Simms said.

Chapter 33

Otherguy Overby had drawn a rough map of Pelican Bay’s downtown section, which he had used to show Wu and Durant where the enormous hotel and what he called “the dirty Disneyland” would be erected.

“And all this goes, too,” Overby said, indicating another large chunk of Pelican Bay’s blighted commercial district. “They’re gonna turn practically the whole fucking downtown into one big parking lot. But that’s not all.”

“What else?” Durant said.

“Jobs. How many working stiffs would you say there are in Pelican Bay?”

Wu thought about it. “Maybe fifty or sixty thousand.”

“And suppose you created maybe five thousand new jobs with the absolute power to hire and fire. Translate them into votes and political clout and it means somebody’s gonna have Pelican Bay in their hip pocket.”

“The Ploughman Machine,” Durant said softly, and smiled to himself.

“The what?”

“Just somebody’s dream,” Durant said.

Overby tossed aside the pencil he had been using as a pointer for the rough map he had drawn and leaned back on the couch. Since his return to his apartment it had taken nearly an hour for him to describe the meeting with Simms. It had taken that long because he had left nothing out and he had quoted Simms verbatim most of the time, even down to Simms’s shrugs and steepled fingers and half-whimsical smiles.

“So,” Durant said, still looking at the map on the coffee table, “what it adds up to is a billion-dollar pilot project for sanitized licentiousness.” He looked at Wu and frowned slightly. “What the hell’s wrong with that?”

“Not enough,” Artie Wu said.

Durant nodded slowly. “Not nearly enough.”

While Otherguy Overby was describing the curious fate that awaited Pelican Bay, fifty-one-year-old Herb Conroy, the reporter who would be lunching at the Woodbury Club that afternoon, was throwing up his breakfast into the kitchen sink under the watchful, sympathetic gaze of his sixty-three-year-old mother-in-law, Netta Gambling, who over the years had by default become Conroy’s favorite drinking buddy.

Conroy’s breakfast that morning had consisted of a large, warm glass of Manischewitz Concord-grape wine, which was about the only thing that would stay down long enough to soothe the uncontrollable shakes that Conroy woke up to nearly every morning.

“You don’t look so good, Herb,” Netta Gambling said, and took another swallow of her breakfast beer, her second can of the morning.

Conroy turned from the sink. Tears caused by the vomiting streamed down his puffy cheeks. He wiped them away with a hand that shook. “How bad?”

Netta studied him judiciously. “Well, not as bad as last Saturday. Last Saturday was kinda bad, if you remember.”

Conroy took a deep breath. He was a thin man, medium tall, who would have been wiry except that he long ago had lost all muscle tone. His face was pasty and splotched with gray, except for the tip of his nose and two round spots high up on his cheekbones where years before the capillaries had burst into rosy bloom. The shape of his nose was ordinary, and his mouth was gray and almost thin, and his chin was virtually without character of any kind.

“Well,” Netta said, “this is gonna be your big day, huh? You took the day off from work and everything.”

“Yeah. You know who Randall Piers is?”

“You told me last night. Maybe fifty-eleven times.”

“Well, this is the one, the real fat chance, Netta. It’s almost as good as that time I could’ve gone with the Daily News in Chicago, except you wouldn’t leave this horseshit town.”

“You could’ve gone without me; I didn’t hold you back.”

“Yeah, but Doris wouldn’t go without you.”

“You should’ve left her. Of course, I don’t know what you’d’ve left her for, because after that lunch you had with that guy from Chicago suddenly there wasn’t no job offer anymore. You got pissed. You’re not gonna do that this time, are you?”

Conroy took a swallow of his first vodka of the day. “Not this time. No way. This time I’m just going to coast. You know, just enough to keep the edge off.”

“Yeah, sure,” Netta said. “What’re you gonna wear?”

“My blue suit?”

Netta nodded. “Yeah, you always look nice in that.”

Eddie McBride started his search for Silk Armitage on the wrong end of the three blocks on Breadstone Avenue. If he had started at the other end, near the Tex-Mex Bar & Grill, things might have turned out differently. But perhaps not, because Eddie McBride never did have much luck.

Once he established his pattern of operation, McBride soon learned to his surprise that people were more than willing to talk to him about almost everything, but particularly about themselves. Even though he told them that he was from The Washington Post and looking only for Silk Armitage, nobody had seemed much interested in that, and none had seen her around anyway. What they really wanted to talk about, however, was the world they lived in, a world that, McBride soon found, was made up largely of sickness, divorce, apprehension, unpaid bills, shattered ambition, suspicion, resentment, quite a lot of hate, and not much hope.

So far that morning McBride had been in nine bars, two liquor stores, four gas stations, a Seven-Eleven, three beauty parlors, two dry cleaners, a laundromat, three cafés, a pet shop, a five-and-dime, and two drugstores, and he was about to enter a small Italian bakery called Angeletti’s.

From his car, parked about one hundred feet up the block and across the street, Solly Gesini watched McBride enter the bakery. Gesini had quickly figured out that McBride was looking for something or somebody, but he hadn’t been able to fathom what or whom.

Gesini noted the Italian name of the bakery, and it decided his course of action. After McBride left, he would go in and try to find out what the hell McBride was up to. If he couldn’t, well, he could use some cookies, maybe some of those kind with the walnuts and the chocolate frosting. The M & Ms were long gone, and Gesini was hungry again as well as curious.

Angeletti himself was behind the counter in the bakery when McBride entered. The proprietor was a short, tubby man with sad eyes who looked as if his feet might hurt and as if he might be fond of opera. He had one playing not too softly in the background: Verdi’s Rigoletto, the first act.

Angeletti was waiting on a customer, so McBride inspected the glass cases of pastry and bread, which didn’t interest him much because he wasn’t fond of sweets. Angeletti went to the cash register to make change, but paused and cocked an ear as the tenor tried for a high one. When he made it, as he always did, Angeletti nevertheless smiled with relief and punched the cash-register key.

When the customer had gone, McBride moved over to the cash register.

“You like opera?” Angeletti said.

“I don’t know. I never listened much.”

“Listen to that.”

The tenor was at it again, reaching for yet another high one, and when he caught it neatly, Angeletti smiled and said, “Something, isn’t it?”

“It’s pretty,” McBride said.

“So what can I sell you nice?”

“Actually, I’m not buying, I’m looking for somebody.”

“Oh? You a cop?”

“No, my name’s Tony Max and I’m a reporter with The Washington Post.” McBride brought out his fake press card and showed it to Angeletti, who glanced at it and handed it back.

“No kidding — Washington, huh? Who the hell you looking for in this crummy neighborhood?”

“Silk Armitage.”

“The singer?”

“The singer. Have you seen her around here?”

“You mean the singer who made all those records with her sisters, what was their names — Ivory and Lace? Yeah, Ivory and Lace. And she’s living around here? Huh.”

“We got a tip that she might be.”

“What’d she be living around here for?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out.”

“With her money, she can live some place nice. Beverly Hills. She in trouble?”

“I don’t know, but she’s dropped out of sight. We’d like to find out why.”

Angeletti settled himself down on the counter on his elbows. He again cocked his head as if listening to the recorded opera. “You know something, I remember the first time I heard them sing, those girls. It was back in what, the early ’60s? Yeah, about then. On the Sullivan show, Sunday night. I turned to my wife and said, ‘That little one’ — Silk was the little one, you know — well, I said, ‘that little one can sing.’ And by that, I meant she could sing this.” He straightened up and jerked his thumb at the speaker. “Of course, she would’ve had to’ve had a whole lotta training, you understand. I mean, you don’t start singing opera without a whole lotta training. But she had the — the quality, you understand?”

“But you haven’t seen her?” McBride said.

“No, but you wanta know something? My wife died of cancer six months to the day after we heard her sing. I started to get married again about four years ago, but then I thought, ‘What the hell you wanta go and get married for? At your age, who needs it?’ I’m sixty-four.”

“You don’t look it.”

“Well, I feel it. Standing up all the time is what gets you. I been standing up since I was fourteen years old. I tried to get my two kids interested in coming in with me, but hell, you think they wanta work? One of ’em turned out to be a drummer. What kind of musician is that, now, I ask you? A drummer.” Angeletti shook his head in sorrow for the lost son.

“Well, thanks for your help anyway,” McBride said.

“Sure,” the baker said.

Less than two minutes after McBride left, Gesini entered the store and bought a dozen cookies, the kind with the chocolate icing and walnuts. As he paid for his purchase he said, “You know, that young guy that was just in here, he looks familiar.”

“You from Washington?” Angeletti said.

“Nah, I’m from around here.”

“Well, he’s from Washington. He’s a reporter for The Washington Post and he’s looking for somebody.”

“Who?”

“Silk Armitage. You know who she is, don’t you?”

“Sure, the singer.”

“Yeah, well, he says she’s supposed to be living around here some place.”

“Around here?”

“That’s what I said. You know, you don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

“What do you mean, I don’t sound like I am?” Gesini said.

“You know, you sound like the way I do, like you’re from New York. You from New York — I mean, originally?”

“Yeah, New York, originally.”

“Me too, originally,” Angeletti said. Then a thought struck him. “I wonder if they got many Italians in Washington?”

Solly Gesini said that he didn’t know.

Chapter 34

The Woodbury Club was just off Camden Drive on Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills, and it looked like a bank, which was exactly what it once had been. When Franklin D. Roosevelt declared the bank holiday in 1933, the Liberty Bank and Trust Company had been one of those that never reopened, the victim of some poor loans it had made on a lot of land that nobody then wanted out in a place called Westwood.

The bank building had been bought cheaply by a group of wealthy men who founded the club because they wanted somewhere convenient and pleasant to go where they wouldn’t be bothered by picture people, which could be decoded into Jews. So the Woodbury Club became an Aryan haven and didn’t admit its first Jew until 1951. It still had no picture people as members, because it was felt that some standards simply had to be maintained. No one was now quite sure how the club had got its name, but most were content with the story that the founding members couldn’t agree on a name until one crusty old party went to the bathroom, washed his hands with a cake of Woodbury soap, came back to the meeting, and rammed the name through.

Durant and Wu arrived at the club at a little before one o’clock. There was no sign on the two-story granite building, only the street number and a small plaque that read PRIVATE. But if you looked very closely, you could still just barely make out the faint LIBERTY BANK & TRUST CO. above the entrance although it had been sandblasted away in 1933.

Inside the club there were a lot of old walnut paneling, thick carpet, leather furniture, and the hushed atmosphere of wise investments soundly made. Randall Piers, wearing a neat gray suit and tie, met Wu and Durant in the reception area, where they signed the guest book.

Artie Wu then asked for directions to the men’s room, partly because he had to go and partly because he wanted to see what it looked like, since Aggie Wu always demanded all the details whenever he went some place interesting.

Piers drew Durant to one side, out of earshot of an old gentleman who kept glancing at his watch impatiently and then ducking his head back into a copy of The Wall Street Journal.

“I’ve got a question,” Piers said.

“About the other night?”

Piers shook his head. “That’s past and forgotten — all right?”

“Fine. What’s your question?”

“Who are you, Durant, you and Wu?”

Durant took a moment before answering. “We’re pretty much what you see.”

“The pretty much is what bothers me.”

“Let me put it this way,” Durant said. “We’re going to get your sister-in-law back and then get whoever’s on her neck off of it. Permanently. She won’t have to hide anymore.”

“Silk was the key all along, wasn’t she?”

Durant nodded.

“Imperlino’s also involved somehow, right?”

“Up to his neck.”

“And this guy Simms — the one they used to call the Dirty Duke?” Durant smiled a little. “You’ve been busy.”

“When you get roped as slickly as I got roped, you like to know who did it and why.”

Durant nodded in mild approval. “Artie said you’d make us in five days. I said four. It’s four and a half, so we were both right.”

“How big is it?”

“We’re not quite sure, because some of it doesn’t make any sense yet. But it could be pretty big.”

“You mean a national mess?”

“Maybe.” Durant took out a Pall Mall and lit it. “Your sister-in-law probably has a big piece of it. This reporter who’s coming to lunch may have another, smaller piece, and Artie and I, we may have the key piece. If you’re still willing to play along, then when you get your sister-in-law back she can tell you all about it. If she wants to.”

Because he had a brilliant mind and liked to use it, it took less than a second for Randall Piers to make it up. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll play.”

“Good.”

“This reporter — you want me to dazzle him, right?”

“Right,” Durant said. “Would you like me to hum a few bars?”

Piers smiled for the first time. “No,” he said, “I think I’ve played it before.”

Shortly after Wu returned from the men’s room, Otherguy Overby arrived with the guest of honor, Herb Conroy, who was wearing his good blue suit and a mild vodka glow.

Piers bored in on Overby. “Maurice,” he said warmly to the man whom he’d never seen before in his life. Otherguy Overby was up for it.

“Randy, it’s good to see you.”

They shook hands the way men do who genuinely like each other but who meet all too infrequently. Piers swung around to Conroy. “And this must be Mr. Conroy, whom you’ve been telling me about.” Piers gripped Conroy’s hand and studied him for a moment. “I’ve been hearing a lot ol excellent things about you, Mr. Conroy. Really remarkable things.”

“Well, thank you,” Conroy said, and allowed himself to be turned by Piers toward Wu and Durant.

“These are two of my closest advisers, Dr. Wu and Mr. Durant. Gentlemen, Mr. Conroy — do you mind if I call you Herb?”

“Not at all.”

“And I’m Randy, of course,” Piers said as Conroy shook hands with Wu and Durant.

After the introductions were completed they filed into a small private dining room that Piers had engaged for the occasion, along with a small bar and a carefully instructed bartender. Still playing the expansive host, Piers suggested double vodka martinis all around. When those were drunk to the accompaniment of some highly flattering small talk aimed dead on at Herb Conroy, Piers insisted on another round of doubles, and by the time Conroy sat down at the table for lunch he was quite pleasantly in the bag, which was exactly where Wu and Durant wanted him.

When Conroy ordered a shrimp cocktail, a filet steak with Bearnaise sauce, a baked potato, and a salad for lunch, everybody flattered him further by ordering the same thing. Durant, however, said he would like some wine with the meal and ordered that and also another martini, but this time a single. Herb Conroy, his voice beginning to slur just a little, said he thought another single might be just the ticket.

“You know my magazine, The Pacific, don’t you, Herb?” Piers said.

“Yeah, I’ve read it.”

“What do you think of it? Be honest, now.”

“I think it’s pretty fucking dull,” Conroy said, and polished off the last of his second double martini.

“We’re thinking of making some changes, some rather drastic ones. We want to turn it into a hard-hitting, no-holds-barred kind of thing. Would you be interested in taking charge?”

“I could do a job on it,” Conroy said. “A real job. The only thing you’ve got in it now is who’s ruining the redwoods and where to eat and who’s screwing who in Hollywood.”

“You’d need a pretty big story for the first new issue,” Overby said.

“There’re plenty of big stories lying around that nobody’s got guts enough to print,” Conroy said. “Plenty of them.”

“Pelican Bay, for example?” Durant said.

“Yeah, for example.”

“We understand that there’re going to be certain, interesting changes made down there — economic changes,” Dr. Wu said in a rather academic tone.

“You don’t understand half of it, Professor. Not half.”

“Why haven’t some other newspapers or magazines sent in some reporters yet?” Durant said. “The L.A. Times, for example.”

“Why? You wanta know why?”

“Yes. Why.”

“Because they don’t know how far back it goes.”

“And how far back does it go?” Wu said.

“Back to ’53, that’s how far back. They haven’t connected now with back then, the way I have.” Conroy tried some of his fresh martini, the single. Then he tapped a forefinger significantly against his temple. “I’ve got it all up here — names, dates, the lot. And I’ve got files, too — confidential files that could blow it all out of the water.”

“I’ve been thinking in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars a year for the new managing editor,” Piers said. “Does that seem adequate to you, Herb? — with an expense account, of course, and a few other perks. It’s not a firm offer yet, of course, but I’d like to know if that’s in your ball park.”

Conroy thought about it. Finally, he nodded judiciously. “Yeah, fifty’d be about right.” He was making $16,345 that year.

“Suppose for the first issue you were going to do a story on, say, Pelican Bay,” Durant said. “Where would you start?”

Conroy finished his martini first. Then he held up the glass and looked at Piers. “You think I might have another one of these, Randy?”

“Certainly,” Piers said, and signaled the bartender, who quickly brought a fresh drink over.

“So you wanta know where I’d start, huh?” Conroy said. “Well, I’ll tell you where I’d start. I’d start back at Bowdoin in ’53, that’s where, because that’s when a couple of roommates were voted ‘most brilliant’ and ‘most likely to succeed.’ And you wanta know who those two guys were?”

“Who?” said Durant to keep it going.

“Vince Imperlino and a guy called Reginald Simms, who you probably never heard of. But you know who Imperlino is, right? At least you oughta know,” he said to Piers.

“I know.”

“Well, they got out of college, right? And Imperlino goes into the family business, which I don’t have to spell out for you, and this guy Simms goes into the CIA. And by ’61 they’ve both gone up in the ranks. So some CIA biggie about that time gets the bright idea that maybe somebody oughta slip something into Castro’s toothpaste — curare, maybe — who the fuck knows? Well, it’s just one hell of an idea, but who’s gonna do it? So the really heavy thinkers at the CIA decide to turn it over to some people who lost a lot when Castro took over, and that’s the mob, naturally. Well, now, who in the CIA is buddy-buddy with somebody in the mob? Simms, of course. Hell, he roomed with one of them. So Simms is told to get in touch with his old roomie, and Imperlino gets in touch with two other, older guys, real mob heavies by the name of Sam Consentino and Johnny Francini — you heard of ’em?”

“They’re dead,” Durant said. “Both of them.”

“Yeah, that’s sort of interesting too,” Conroy said, “but I’ll get to that in a minute.”

Artie Wu wasn’t at all sure that Conroy was going to last that long. The reporter’s voice was thick now and his eyes were wearing a bright glaze. But still he went on talking. And drinking.

“Well, the word is that Consentino and Francini tried three or four times, maybe even more, to snuff out Fidel, except it didn’t work out. But the Feds were so grateful anyway that they let both of them off the hook on a couple of tax matters that could’ve put ’em away in Atlanta for ten, maybe even fifteen years.”

“Mr. Conroy?” Wu said.

“Yeah?”

“I think I read most of this in the National Enquirer last week. Or maybe last year.”

“What you’re saying is that it’s not anything new, is that right, Professor?”

“Close, Mr. Conroy. Very close.”

“Well, lemme try this one on you. What would you say if I were to tell you that I’ve got incontruov — incontriv — that I’ve got solid evidence that would place Consentino and Francini in Dallas the same week that Kennedy got killed? What would you say to that, Professor?”

“I would, I think, ask how you happened to come by it.”

Conroy nodded wisely and then leaned over and wiggled a finger under Wu’s nose. “I’ve got certain sources, Professor. But they gotta be protected. You always protect your sources.”

Otherguy Overby, who always liked to get to the heart of any matter, said, “Are you saying these two guys killed Kennedy?”

This time Conroy looked arch, then crafty. “I’m not saying anything. I haven’t heard any firm offers around here yet, so I’m not saying whether they did or not.”

It was time for Piers to go into his buck-and-wing again, and he came on smoothly. “You know, Herb, in a town this size the man who holds down the job we’ve been talking about would be spending a lot of time in his car. Unproductive time. I’ve been thinking that perhaps a limousine with a driver and a phone and tape recorder would be a wise investment — from an efficiency viewpoint, of course. Even perhaps a small bar so the poor guy could relax once in a while. What do you think?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

“But I’m interrupting you,” Piers said. “Why don’t you continue?”

“I’m gonna jump ahead a little bit,” Conroy said. “After Dallas, well, Consentino and Francini couldn’t do anything wrong — not as far as the Feds were concerned. Consentino operated out of Chicago and Francini out of Miami, and they got rich and they got older. In the meantime, Imperlino’s moving up out here on the Coast. Then Watergate happened and all bets were off.”

“What do you mean?” Durant said.

Before Conroy could answer, the waiter started serving the shrimp cocktails. Conroy stared fixedly at his, convinced that one of the shrimp was still alive and wiggling. He picked it up with his fingers and bit it in two. He thought he could still feel it wiggling in his mouth, so he chewed it up and swallowed it. Any appetite he might have had deserted him.

“What do you mean about Watergate?” Durant said.

“I mean that the kid gloves came off. That Consentino and Francini were suddenly the focal point of a whole lot of interesting speculation. You see, almost ten years had gone by since Dallas. The people they’d been tight with in government, well, those people, some of them anyway, had died. Or retired. Or got fired. Instead of being sacred cows, Consentino and Francini had become just so much raw meat. So there they were, almost sixty then and looking forward to retirement, and all of a sudden they’ve got new tax problems, bad ones, and a Senate committee is breathing down their necks. So they decided to take immunity and talk.”

“But they didn’t,” Wu said.

“No, Professor, they didn’t. Before they could, Consentino gets shot in his basement in Chicago and Francini winds up in a fifty-gallon oil drum off Miami Beach.”

“And Imperlino?” Durant said.

“Well, Imperlino was having his own internal problems out here. But after Consentino and Francini aren’t around anymore, Imperlino all of a sudden gets anything he wants — including Pelican Bay. They handed it to him on a platter.”

“Who?” Wu said.

Before Conroy could reply, the waiter took away the shrimp cocktails, which nobody had seemed to want except Otherguy Overby, and started serving the steaks and the rest of the meal. Conroy eyed his steak with near revulsion. Overby watched him carefully. Five minutes, Overby told himself. He’s gonna last about five minutes more. Conroy looked around and focused finally on Piers. “Hey, Randy, you think maybe I might have another small one?”

“Sure,” Piers said, and signaled for another martini, which was brought almost instantaneously.

“Who gave Imperlino Pelican Bay?” Durant said.

“On a silver platter,” Conroy said, and swallowed some of his drink. “That’s how they gave it to him.”

“Who?” Durant said again.

Conroy was having trouble staying upright. He weaved a little in his chair. He peered through his alcoholic fog at Durant. “So guess who he brought in to help him divvy up the pie in Pelican Bay? His old college roomie, that’s who, Reginald Simms, and nobody knows that except me and now maybe you guys.” He turned to Piers. “You ever think of getting a Lear-jet for your magazine? Might be a good idea.”

“Who gave him Pelican Bay?” Piers said.

“I’ll tell you who knew the answer to that and a lot of other questions. I’ll tell you who knew the whole fucking story, even more’n I do. Congressman Ranshaw, that’s who, but the fuckers killed him.” Conroy stared down at his steak and the glistening Bearnaise sauce. It looked warm and comfortable.

“Who gave Imperlino Pelican Bay, Herb?” Artie Wu said in a gentle, almost coaxing voice.

Conroy looked at Wu and smiled and then closed his eyes and lowered his head onto the steak and the warm Bearnaise sauce and went to sleep.

Piers looked at Wu and Durant. “Well?”

Durant shook his head thoughtfully. “I think he told us everything he knew.”

“Did he have the piece that you were looking for?”

“Dallas,” Durant said. “We didn’t know about Dallas.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Piers said.

“Maybe it will when we talk to your sister-in-law,” Artie Wu said.

The cab driver shook Herb Conroy awake.

Conroy sat up and looked around. He knew he was going to be sick. So did the cab driver. “Where am I?” Conroy said.

“This where you live, Jack?” the driver said.

Conroy looked. Yes, this was where he lived. He tried to remember what had happened, but then decided that he didn’t want to remember. Not just yet.

“How much do I owe you?” he asked the driver.

“It’s all paid for, fella; just get out of the cab before you barf all over it. Here.” He handed Conroy an envelope. “They said for me to give you this.”

Conroy took the envelope and got out of the cab. He started toward the front door, wondering if he would make it before he got sick all over everything. He tore open the envelope. In it were five one-hundred-dollar bills and a card that read, Too bad, but thanks anyway. Overby.

Chapter 35

It was two o’clock that Monday afternoon when Eddie McBride, his search for Silk Armitage so far a failure, realized that he was hungry. Because McBride cared little about where or what he ate, he saw no reason why the Honorable Thief Cocktail Lounge wouldn’t do just fine.

Nobody in the Honorable Thief had seen Silk Armitage around either, and so after a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and a glass of beer, McBride went outside and paused on the sidewalk, wishing that he had a toothpick and trying to figure out where he should go next. After a few moments of hesitancy, McBride decided that the place across the street, the Tex-Mex Bar & Grill, would probably do as well as any.

When the knock came at her back door, Silk Armitage thought about putting on her wig and the rest of her Madame Szabo disguise. But then she realized that that didn’t make any sense, not any longer, so she went to the door just as she was, dressed in the tailored jeans, the high, expensive boots, and the cream silk blouse that came from Paris. Silk Armitage was ready to travel.

Little Sandy Choi’s eyes went almost round when Silk opened the door.

“Hey, man, you’re not—”

“Hello, Sandy,” Silk said, using her Madame Szabo accent.

Sandy Choi, all of nine, ran his discovery through the abacus that was his mind, estimating its cash value. It might be worth four bits across the street at old Betty Mae Minklawn’s. Yeah, she’d pay four bits. At least that.

“What’ve you got, Sandy?” Silk said in her normal voice.

“A dollar,” Sandy said, holding out a sticky hand.

Silk took a dollar from a pocket of her jeans. “You go first,” she said. “Then we’ll see.”

“There’s a guy going in every place and asking everybody questions. He says he’s a reporter from the Washington something.”

“Post?” Silk said.

“Uh-huh, Post!”

“What kind of questions?”

“He wants to know if anybody’s seen Silk Armitage around.” Sandy Choi smiled winningly; said, “That’s you, ain’t it?”; snatched the dollar bill from Silk’s hand; and raced down the back-porch steps and into the alley.

After he ordered his draft beer, which he wasn’t going to drink, Eddie McBride decided to hit on the old blond broad who was talking to the female bartender. The old blond broad was Betty Mae Minklawn, who was in deep conversation with her friend and confidante Madge Perkinson.

McBride picked up his beer and moved down to the end of the bar, keeping a respectable two stools between him and Betty Mae. The two women looked at him, and McBride nodded and said, “Afternoon, ladies.”

Betty Mae liked good-looking young men, especially those who looked a bit the way Alan Ladd had looked back in the ’40s and ’50s, except that this one wasn’t quite that pretty and soft. So she said, “Afternoon” and touched a hand to her chrome yellow beehive hairdo, just to make sure it wasn’t messed up.

“My name’s Tony Max,” McBride said, “and I’m with The Washington Post.” He took out his identification with an easy, practiced movement and showed it to Betty Mae, who looked at it carefully, because it was kind of interesting, and passed it over to Madge.

When Madge handed the identification case back to McBride, Betty Mae said, “What in God’s name you doing way out here?”

“We’re looking for somebody.”

“You on a story?”

“That’s right.”

“Who you looking for?”

“We received a tip that Silk Armitage might be living around here some place. She’s dropped out of sight and we’d like to find out why.” Something happened to Betty Mae’s face, something that told McBride that he had scored. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth grew prim, almost disapproving. Cagey, McBride thought. She’s trying to look like she doesn’t know anything, but instead she looks just the opposite. Cagey.

“Silk Armitage, the singer?” Betty Mae said, trying to sound indifferent.

“That’s right.”

“What in the world would somebody like that be living around here for?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“She in trouble?”

“If she is, we’d like to help her.”

“You mean do a big story on her.”

“Yes, ma—” McBride had started to say “ma’am,” but he thought better of it. Instead, he gave her a smile, the one that he thought of as his whorehouse smile. Betty Mae seemed to like it.

“You think it’s a big enough story for them to make a picture out of it?”

“Well, you never can tell about that,” McBride said. “We’d have to find her first, of course. But if it turns out to be a big story, well, sure, they might make a picture out of it.”

“You know something?”

“What?”

“She could play herself, couldn’t she?” Betty Mae turned to Madge Perkinson. “What do you think?”

Madge did some judicious mental casting before committing herself. “Well, I guess she could do it, but you know who could really do it?”

“Who?”

“Lace Armitage. Her sister.”

“God, yes!” Betty Mae said. “And think of the publicity.” She turned back to McBride. “Who do you think might play you?”

“Well, I haven’t even thought about it,” McBride said.

“You know who could play him?” Betty Mae said to Madge.

“Who?”

“Steve McQueen.”

Madge shook her head. “McQueen’s too old.”

“Yeah, well, maybe.” Betty Mae again faced McBride. “But I suppose when they make it, they’d have to have somebody play the part of whoever it was who gave the reporter the big tip, right?”

“You mean who told him where Silk Armitage was?”

“Uh-huh,” Betty Mae said. “They’d have to have somebody pretty good play that part. I mean, it wouldn’t be a big role or anything, but it’d be a hell of a cameo part for somebody.” Betty Mae gave her beehive another unconscious feel.

“Yeah, they’d have to do that, all right,” McBride said, and watched as Betty Mae and Madge exchanged glances full of secrets and significance.

“Maybe Mary Tyler Moore even?” Betty Mae said.

“She’d be great,” McBride said, and took out a ball-point pen and a small notebook that he had purchased on the advice of Otherguy Overby. “Where’s Silk Armitage?” he said.

“We didn’t say we know,” Betty Mae replied, her voice now coy.

“You know,” McBride said, and smiled. “By the way, I’d like to get your names to use in the story. You’re — uh?”

“Betty Mae Minklawn, that’s spelled with a Y in Betty, an E in Mae, and M-I-N-K-L-A-W-N, and this is Madge Perkinson and Silk Armitage is living right across the street from me, just a block from here at 2221 Breadstone.”

McBride tried to keep it from showing, the elation that roared through him as he wrote it all down. He made himself ask the two women a few more questions, mostly about themselves, and they responded eagerly now, vying with each other to be the first with the most details. Finally, McBride thanked them both, slid off the bar stool, turned, and started for the door.

Just as he was going out of the Tex-Mex another man came in, a fairly big blond man, dressed in a bright plaid polyester jacket, dark slacks, and a blue shirt with a loosened tie. The big man and McBride eyed each other, and through experience and possibly instinct one word automatically popped into McBride’s mind. Cop.

As the big man’s eyes took in McBride and memorized him for future reference, a single word came quickly to his mind: Trouble, although he wasn’t quite sure what kind. The big man was Lt. Marion Lake of Homicide.

Lt. Lake sized up the bar and automatically designated Betty Mae and Madge as his two most likely prospects. He moved down to them, ordered a beer, and then in a conversational tone said, “My name’s Bill Warren and I’m with the L.A. Times.”

Betty Mae and Madge looked at each other and then held a hurried whispered conversation.

After the quick consultation, Betty Mae turned back to Lt. Lake and said, “We’re not talking to any more reporters until we see him first.”

“See who first?” Lt. Lake said.

“Our agent.”

This time Solly Gesini had to get out of his car to follow McBride. But before he did he unlocked the glove compartment; took out the .38 Smith & Wesson Centennial; inspected it quickly, although he had done so only an hour before; and dropped it into his coat pocket.

McBride walked up Breadstone Avenue toward 2221 until he found what he wanted, a drugstore. He went inside and used the pay phone to call Otherguy Overby’s number. He let it ring five times and was about to hang up when Overby answered the phone, sounding a little breathless.

“It’s me,” McBride said.

“It’s the kid,” Overby said to Durant and Wu, who had just followed him into his apartment. Durant took the phone.

“Durant, Eddie.”

“I think I’ve found her,” he said. “But I think a cop may be right behind me.”

“What’s the address?” Durant said.

McBride told him the address and said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Get inside and keep her there for ten minutes.”

“You’ll be there then?”

“We’ll be there,” Durant said.

“What’ll I tell her?”

“Tell her you like the way she sings,” Durant said, and hung up.

When McBride reached 2221 Breadstone Avenue, he puzzled for a moment over the sign that said READINGS. But then he shrugged and went up onto the porch and knocked at the door. Through the door came Silk Armitage’s voice. “Who is it?”

“Tony Max, Miss Armitage,” McBride said. “I’m with The Washington Post. I’d like to talk to you.”

Inside, behind the door, Silk Armitage stood with her head bowed. Maybe this would be the best way after all, she thought. Maybe I’ll just tell them and then let them track it all down — all those loose ends. She’d give them what she had and then let them do it. I’m tired, she thought. I’m just too damn tired. She leaned her forehead against the door.

“Have you got any identification?” she said.

“Sure,” McBride said.

“Put it through the mail slot.”

McBride did as he was told. After a moment, the door opened. She was prettier than McBride remembered her as being from the photographs he had seen. Prettier and older and tireder.

“Come on back in the kitchen,” Silk said. “I was making myself a sandwich.”

“Sure,” McBride said.

In the kitchen McBride watched as Silk used a sharp chef’s knife to slice a tomato. “So you’re from the Post, huh?” she said.

“That’s right.”

“You want a sandwich?”

“No, thanks.”

“What about some coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Instant?”

“Instant’s fine.”

Silk made McBride a cup of coffee and then went back to her sandwich. “Well,” she said, “what do you want to know? I haven’t got much time. Not here, anyhow. I’m just waiting for a letter.”

McBride tried to think of what a reporter would say, but nothing came to mind, so he said, “Why don’t you just start at the beginning and tell it from there?”

Silk used the knife to cut her cheese-and-tomato sandwich diagonally. “All right,” she said after a moment, “that’s probably as good a place as any to start.”

Solly Gesini studied the house at 2221 Breadstone Avenue and had a difficult time believing his good fortune. They’ve both gotta be in there, he told himself. I can do ’em both and be outa here and down the alley and into my car in less’n five minutes. Gesini knew the alley was there because he had checked it earlier.

Getting into the house presented no problem. From where he stood he could see that it was just an ordinary lock on the door. The lock would be a snap unless she had a bolt on the other side. Well, he would just have to see.

Gesini looked around to determine whether anyone was watching, and when nobody was he moved quickly up the steps of the porch to the door. He listened for a moment, then took out a case of picks and easily snapped back the lock He took one more fast look around and then cautiously opened the door and slipped inside.

He heard the voices then. Or rather, the woman’s voice. It was coming from the rear of the house. Gesini went through a pair of half-open sliding doors and into what he thought was a funny-looking room. It was the room where Madame Szabo had given her infrequent readings.

Gesini took the pistol out of his pocket. The voices were coming from the room on the other side of a swinging door. Gesini knew from experience the advantage that surprise gave him in situations like this. They freeze first and can’t do anything. Not for a couple of seconds. And that’s plenty of time.

He went through the swinging door fast, banging it open, and shot Eddie McBride twice in the back.

McBride knew it was coming. He had been given just a split second of warning by the startled expression on Silk’s face. And just as the bullets struck he grasped the chef’s knife.

He turned somehow, despite the pain, and saw Gesini, and the rage hit him along with the third round that Gesini fired, this time into McBride’s left arm just beneath the shoulder. McBride made himself move. He staggered toward Gesini for three feet and then lunged the final foot. The fucker won’t go down, Gesini thought, backing away. I hit him three times good and he won’t go down.

At the end of his lunge, McBride drove the chef’s knife deep into Gesini’s stomach, and as he did he cried a wordless cry, the one that the Corps taught in bayonet practice, the one that was half screech, half scream, and when that was done, McBride ripped the knife up until it ran into bone. And then McBride, in a curiously conversational, almost solicitous tone said, “Tell me where it hurts, Solly.”

McBride staggered back then and sat down on the kitchen floor with a thump. Solly Gesini looked down at the knife that was protruding from just below his breastbone. He dropped the pistol and touched the knife handle gingerly. Oh Jesus, does it hurt! Oh, why does it have to hurt so much? After asking the silent question that nobody ever answered, Solly Gesini sank to his fat knees and then toppled over on to the floor and went into shock and bled to death.

McBride, sitting on the floor, watched Gesini die. He heard the girl say something, but he couldn’t quite make out what. Something about if I’m hurt. I wonder why she’s asking that? McBride thought, and then lay down on the kitchen linoleum because he was tired and he hurt. He wondered again why the girl kept asking if he was hurt and then Eddie McBride died, as he had lived, just a bit puzzled.

Silk Armitage stood with the cheese-and-tomato sandwich still in her hand. She put it down on the kitchen table and then sank slowly into a chair. She licked her lips nervously, folded her hands almost primly before her on the table, closed her eyes, and began to sing softly. She would sing until she decided what to do.

She was still singing when Durant, Wu, and Overby came into the kitchen. She opened her eyes and stopped singing and said, “Who are you?”

Artie Wu looked up from his study of Eddie McBride’s body. “We’re your friendly local samurai,” he said, and went back to his study of McBride. “But a bit late, as usual.”

Durant took his eyes away from McBride and said, “Your sister sent us, Miss Armitage.” Durant handed Silk the letter that Lace Armitage had written. Silk looked at the letter for a long moment before she tore it open and began reading.

While she was reading it, Otherguy Overby knelt down by the dead body of Eddie McBride. His hard face softened, and he looked up at Artie Wu and said, “The kid and me, we’d been talking about going in together, partners, sort of; you know, like you guys.”

Wu nodded. Overby, still kneeling, stared at McBride for a long time. Then the tenderness in his face went away and the hardness came back. He stood up.

“Well, hell,” Otherguy Overby said. “It was only talk.”

Silk Armitage finished reading the letter and looked up at Durant. She’s going to cry in a moment, Durant thought. She’s either going to cry or go mad.

“I can’t do any more,” Silk Armitage said in a too reasonable tone that to Durant seemed to lie just this side of madness.

“You’d better let us take over,” he said.

Silk Armitage looked around the kitchen. For a moment her eyes rested on the two dead men. Then she smiled and said, almost brightly, “Yes, I think I’ve done just about everything I can, don’t you?”

And after that, she began to cry.

Chapter 36

Chief Oscar Ploughman and Lt. Marion Lake beat the Los Angeles police to the house on Breadstone Avenue by nearly ten minutes, which was plenty of time for Ploughman to have a brief but extremely interesting and even profitable chat with Otherguy Overby.

Ploughman had been on his way to meet Lake when the shooting report came over the radio. When the two men entered the fortuneteller’s house, pistols drawn, they discovered Overby sitting calmly in the room where fortunes had been told, smoking a cigarette and drinking a can of beer that he had found in Silk Armitage’s refrigerator.

“Who’re you, fella?” Lt. Lake said.

“Overby,” he said, and jerked a thumb at the kitchen, which lay beyond the swinging door. “I’m with Durant and Wu, and there’re a couple of dead ones in there.”

Ploughman turned to Lt. Lake. “Take a look,” he said, “and take your time.” When Lake went through the swinging door, Ploughman turned on Overby. “And you, make it fast.”

“They’ve got the girl,” Overby said.

“She hurt?”

“No.”

“So?”

“They’re gonna move on Simms and Imperlino and they wanta know if you wanta be in or out. If in, then they told me to tell you that they might be able to make a little contribution to your political hope chest.”

Ploughman studied Overby for a while, perhaps ten seconds. “How little’s a little?”

“Not so little,” Overby said. “Half a million.”

“And where do you come in?”

“I run errands,” Overby said. “And stick with you — if you decide to sit in.”

“Cash contribution?”

“Is there any other kind?”

Ploughman nodded. “I’m in,” he said, and then went back to his study of Overby. After a moment he nodded and smiled his big, yellow smile as if pleased with himself. “San Francisco,” he said, “1965, the Intercontinental Assurances swindle. Maurice Overby. You were the bag man.”

Overby smiled. “They never proved it,” he said. “They never proved it because it was some other guy.”

Silk Armitage had finally stopped crying by the time they reached Durant’s yellow house on the beach. Inside, Silk looked around and said in a small, almost indistinct voice, “Why here? Why not over at Lace’s?”

“Because we’d like to talk to you first,” Durant said.

“Would you like something?” Wu said. “A drink — or maybe some coffee or tea?”

“Have you got anything to eat?” Silk said. “I know I shouldn’t be hungry now, but I just can’t help it.”

“What about a nice grilled cheese sandwich with maybe a few sliced stuffed olives sort of worked into the cheese?”

Silk smiled weakly at Wu. “Sounds good.”

“And tea?”

“Tea would be wonderful.”

Artie Wu went into the kitchen and Silk sat down on the couch. Durant chose the suede chair. Silk looked at Durant for a moment and then bit her lip, as if trying to decide how to phrase her question.

“I know who you are — I mean, from Lace’s letter. But I don’t understand what you want to do now.”

“We’d like to finish what Congressman Ranshaw started.”

“Did you know Floy — I mean, the Congressman?”

“No.”

“Are you with the government?”

“No.”

Silk shook her head, “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a rather personal matter for me,” Durant said. “As for Artie, he’s in it for—”

“Personal gain,” Wu called from the kitchen. “Don’t saddle me with anything more high-flown than that.”

“A grudge?” Silk asked.

“You can put it that way.”

“Against who?”

“Reginald Simms.”

When Silk continued to look puzzled, Durant told her as much as he thought she should know about his and Wu’s prior association with Simms. By the time he was finished, Wu came in from the kitchen with the sandwich and the cup of tea. Silk started to eat the sandwich with small, neat, hungry bites.

When she was finished she wiped her mouth delicately with the paper napkin and looked first at Wu and then at Durant. “And you want me to tell you what the Congressman knew?”

Durant nodded.

“You know about how far back Imperlino and Simms go?”

Again, Durant nodded.

“And about Castro and the attempts to poison him and all that?”

“Yes,” Durant said.

“And Dallas — do you know about Dallas?”

“We heard something about it,” Wu said.

“They were sent in, you know, by Simms, those two men.”

“Sam Consentino and Johnny Francini?” Durant said.

Silk nodded. “Simms got Imperlino to send them in.”

“But not to kill Kennedy?” Wu said.

Silk’s eyes went wide with surprise. “Oh, Lordy, no! Is that what you thought?”

“That’s what some people think,” Durant said. “At least, we think that’s what they think.”

She shook her head. “Consentino and Francini didn’t even get there until after Kennedy was dead.”

“Then why were they sent in?” Durant said.

“The Congressman said that nobody really understands how they work.”

“Who’s they?” Wu said.

Silk shrugged. “He just called it ‘them’ or ‘they’ — I reckon he always meant the people who really run things.”

“The CIA?” Wu said.

“They were just part of it. You see, right after Kennedy got shot, nobody really knew just what had happened. You remember all the confusion. But some of them thought they knew — so they acted. Or reacted. They got in touch with Simms and he got in touch with Imperlino. And Imperlino sent in Francini and Consentino because they’d known him in Havana back in ’58.”

“Known who?” Durant said.

“Why, Jack Ruby,” Silk said as though addressing some small and not very bright children.

“They needed a cleanup man,” Durant said in a soft, thoughtful voice, staring at Wu.

Artie Wu ran it through his mind. “Yeah, they would do it like that, wouldn’t they? That’s how they work. They operated from one assumption: that Kennedy was supposed to get shot. After that it was just routine. They had to keep Oswald from talking. You say Francini and Consentino knew Ruby in Havana?”

“In ’58,” Silk said. “He was in jail there for a while.”

“The perfect sap,” Durant said.

“So Imperlino sends in Francini and Consentino,” Wu said, “and they remember this dope they’d known back in Havana and they work him over good and get him all fired up and he takes Oswald out in a burst of glorious patriotism on live TV.”

“They paid him,” Silk said.

Wu looked at her. “Is that what the Congressman thought?”

She nodded. “They paid Jack Ruby fifty thousand dollars.”

“Could he prove it — the Congressman?”

Silk shook her head.

“How much could he prove?” Durant said.

“He could place Consentino and Francini in Dallas. That was all he could prove — about that, I mean. But then when they got old and were thinking about taking immunity and getting themselves off the hook, then the Congressman could almost prove that Imperlino went to Chicago and then to Miami and killed them both.”

“How could he almost prove it?”

“He knew that Imperlino sometimes used an alias. Always when he traveled. He used it that time when he went down to Miami after Ivory died. The alias was T. Northwood. Terence Northwood. The Congressman was checking the airline records when he got killed. Afterwards, that’s what I was doing. We almost had it. I mean, it was supposed to be in the mail this morning, but the mail never came, did it?”

“And the airline records would prove what?”

“That Imperlino was in Chicago and Miami right when Francini and Consentino got killed,” Silk said.

Wu shook his head. “That’s pretty sketchy.”

“He was a cop,” Silk said. “Or had been. You have to remember that. What he was really after was who gave Imperlino his town. Pelican Bay.”

“Did he ever find out?”

Silk shrugged. “It was just ‘they’ again. When Imperlino bought the newspaper in Pelican Bay, nobody objected. When he needed the environmental-impact approval for that hotel he’s going to build, it went through in record time. When he needed the Coastal Commission’s approval here in California, that sailed through. The fix was in. That’s what the Congressman always said. The fix was in.”

“So now only Imperlino knows the real story?” Wu said.

“Imperlino and Simms,” Silk said. “They were at college together — did you know that?”

“We knew,” Durant said.

“The Congressman was trying to find out about Simms when he got killed. Simms’d been with the CIA, you know, but he turned bad or something. It wasn’t quite clear. All the Congressman knew was that suddenly Simms showed up in Pelican Bay with a lot of money and went in with Imperlino. Simms ran things while Imperlino played hermit in that house of his in Bel Air.”

“Who killed the Congressman?” Wu said.

Silk looked at him. “His wife.”

“You don’t believe that,” Durant said.

“No, I don’t believe that. I was outside in the car. I heard the shots. Then I waited and a car drove off. I couldn’t see who was in it. Then I went in and there they were. Dead. He’d left his briefcase in the car — with all the stuff he had, his evidence. Most of it, anyway. So I panicked, I reckon. I thought they might have seen me. So then I tried to finish what he started. But I didn’t get very far. Can I call my sister now?”

“Not yet,” Durant said.

“How much longer?”

“A day,” Durant said. “Maybe two at the most.”

“Then it’ll be over?” she said.

Durant nodded. “Then it’ll be over.” He looked at Wu. “You’d better call our friend up in Santa Barbara. Tell him to get down here with his mop.”

“Who?” Silk said. “Am I supposed to know who?”

“A guy with three names,” Wu said. “Whittaker Lowell James.”

“What does he do?” she said.

“Well,” Durant said, “I suppose what he does best is to go around with his mop and tidy things up.”

At two o’clock the following morning, a Tuesday, the twenty-first of June, Durant lay in his bed, his hands behind his head, staring up into the dark and listening to the sobs that came from the spare bedroom. He had been listening to them now for almost an hour.

Finally, Durant got up and went down the short hall and into the bedroom, where he switched on a dim night-light. Silk Armitage was curled up in one of the twin beds crying into her pillow.

Durant stared at her for a moment and then went over to the bed and sat down on its edge. He put his hand out and tentatively, even hesitantly began to smooth the blond hair back from her eyes.

“I’m so... so damned scared,” she said.

“It’s almost over.”

“I... I don’t know how it feels anymore, not to be scared.”

“Just a little while more — two days at the most.”

As he continued to stroke her hair, the sobbing subsided. She twisted around in the bed, snuggling up close to him. And then came the feelings that Durant thought he had forgotten how to feel. It was desire — and something else. A feeling of protectiveness that was very close to pity. Too close, probably. Durant stopped analyzing and let it happen, if, in fact, it was going to happen. It came on stronger then, almost purely sexual now, moving down to his groin, where it took over completely.

Durant’s hand moved from Silk’s head down over her body. She was wearing one of his shirts, and his hand went under the shirt and moved over her breasts and then down between her thighs. She sighed and curled up closer around him. He sat there for a moment and then he bent over and kissed her, wondering if he had forgotten how to do it. But he hadn’t, and the kiss went on, open mouthed and pleasantly moist, and full of mutual sexual promise that had Durant wondering whether he could live up to what he was advertising.

When the kiss was over he picked her up.

“I think we’re going to need more room,” he said.

She nodded and smiled, but said nothing. He carried her down the short hall into his bedroom and gently put her down in the bed. He stood there for a moment, looking down at her. She smiled up at him.

“Did you change your mind?” she said.

“No,” he said. And then he got into the bed and they made love, and if it wasn’t perfect, it was still much better than Durant had expected.

When Durant awoke the next morning, Silk Armitage was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, her chin in her hands, studying him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Morning.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you a virgin? I mean, were you?”

Durant smiled. “Yeah, I suppose I was. In a way.”

“I’m not complaining,” she said, “but I think you could do with a little practice.”

“So do I.”

“Now?”

Durant smiled again. “Sure,” he said. “Now.”

Chapter 37

They brought in Otherguy Overby to baby-sit Silk Armitage, who was still in the shower when he arrived.

“Ploughman’s all set?” Durant said.

“Yeah, he’s set. You know, he’s a pretty interesting guy.”

Durant nodded. “I thought you two would get along.”

“What about the girl?”

“No phone calls in or out,” Durant said. “And nobody leaves and nobody comes in. Absolutely nobody except either Artie or me.”

“What am I supposed to do with her?”

“Tell her some stories,” Durant said.

“Does she know why I’m here?”

Durant nodded. “She knows. You just make sure she doesn’t change her mind.”

Durant picked up Wu shortly before noon at the house on Ninth Street in Santa Monica. Wu started to get into Durant’s Mercedes, but paused, bent down, and stared in at Durant, who was already behind the wheel.

“What happened to you?” Wu said.

“What do you mean?”

Wu examined him some more. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the chipper air, the confident smile, the flashing eyes. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you got laid.”

“Unngh,” Durant said.

“What does ‘unngh’ mean?”

“It means I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We’ll celebrate,” Wu said, settling his big body into the seat next to Durant. “I’ll buy us lunch at El Charro’s.”

“Jesus,” Durant said, “not again.”

“Sure,” Wu said. “Why not?”

“You know what you are, Artie?”

“What?”

“A closet Mexican.”

“Yeah,” Wu said, nodding comfortably at the suggestion. “I probably am.”

Durant, who had finished his guacamole salad, watched as Artie Wu polished off the last morsel of the enormous $4.25 platter of tamales, enchiladas, burritos, frijoles refritos, rice, and salad.

Wu leaned back with a sigh, patted his big belly, and said, “Jesus, that was good.”

Durant lit a cigarette. “She doesn’t know all of it,” he said, and dropped his match into the ashtray.

Wu nodded. “I wonder if the Congressman did?”

“I’m not all that sure that he did either. But what he did know might have made a hell of a tabloid headline.”

“You mean, CIA ORDERED MOB TO SNUFF OSWALD, something like that?”

“I’d read it,” Durant said.

“Yeah, so would I, but it would be just a one-day story unless you could prove who gave Simms his orders.”

“Everybody seems convinced that the Congressman knew that.”

“By everybody you mean Imperlino and Simms.”

Durant nodded. “And now they’re apparently convinced that she knew everything the Congressman did — and maybe even more.”

Wu smiled and stuck one of his long, slim cigars into his mouth. “Let’s not disillusion them.”

“No, let’s do something else,” Durant said, also smiling. “Let’s go be rotten to Reggie.”

Chuck West didn’t like the way they looked or the way they talked or the way they smiled.

Wu and Durant were standing in West’s office on the fifteenth floor of the Ransom Tower. West had invited them into his office, but he hadn’t asked them to sit down. Instead, he was explaining why it would be impossible for them to see Mr. Simms. Mr. Simms, it seemed, was tied up in conference.

Artie Wu puffed on his cigar. “Tied up in conference,” he said, savoring the phrase. “Well, we’re old friends so we’ll just wait.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” West said. “The conference could go on all afternoon.”

Durant smiled. “We’ll wait all afternoon.”

West dropped his polite pretense, which was seldom, if ever, very firmly in place. He pointed to the door. “Out,” he said. “Now.”

“Us?” Artie Wu said, apparently surprised, if not shocked.

“You.”

Wu smiled. “No.”

West nodded thoughtfully. “I think I’ll arrange for someone to show you to the elevator — or maybe down the stairs, just to see how high you bounce.”

West started toward his desk, but Wu stepped in front of him. They were both about the same height, but Durant gave Wu the advantage of at least thirty pounds. On the other hand, West was younger by at least seven or eight years. Durant watched carefully because it promised to be rather interesting.

Artie Wu put his cigar back into his face. Then he examined West carefully, admiring the beautiful hair and the tan and the marvelously cut suede jacket, the beige shirt and dark brown knit tie. Wu nodded, as if well satisfied with his inspection, and hit West very hard in the stomach. Twice.

The whoof came as West bent over and his hands went to his stomach. But his right hand started inside his jacket. Wu caught it, held it, reached inside the jacket with his other hand, and brought out a small automatic pistol.

He looked at it and turned to Durant. “Jesus,” he said, “a real Beretta.”

“Nice,” Durant said.

West straightened up, glaring at Wu.

“Now, then,” Wu said, waving the Beretta a little. “Let’s go surprise Reggie.”

West used the plastic card to open the steel sliding door into Simms’s office. With a nod of his head Wu indicated that West should go first. West went in, followed by Wu and then Durant.

Simms looked up from his spindly-legged desk. A smile, very warm and very white, appeared on his face. “Well, Artie,” he said. “And Quincy, too. What a pleasant surprise.”

“We didn’t want to disturb you when we heard you were busy, Reg,” Wu said, “but your Mr. West insisted.”

“I didn’t—”

Simms interrupted. “That’s all, Charles.”

“Are you sure, sir? I mean—”

“No. That’s all.”

“Here, kid,” Wu said, and handed him the Beretta. West glared again at Wu and left. Simms was up now, the white, almost shy smile still there. Durant studied him, trying to analyze how the older man made him feel. Durant discovered a mild, almost detached dislike, but no hatred, and that surprised him. He wasn’t at all sure whether it was a pleasant surprise or not.

“Well,” Simms said, “this calls for a bit of a celebration. Do sit down.” He indicated two chairs in front of his desk. As Wu and Durant sat down, Simms asked, “Now, what can I get you?”

“You still drinking Armagnac?” Durant said.

“Of course.”

“Then we’ll begin with some of that.”

Simms went to his bar and poured three glasses from what seemed to be a very old bottle. He brought the glasses back on a small silver tray and served Durant first, then Wu.

Simms lifted his own glass and said, “Well, to prosperity.”

He sipped his drink, watched as Durant and Wu tasted theirs, and then went back behind his desk and resumed his seat.

“I heard you were in town, of course.”

Durant smiled, but said nothing. Wu puffed on his cigar and tried some more of the Armagnac.

“Here on business — or just passing through?” Simms said.

Durant smiled again and said, “Two million dollars.”

Simms nodded, almost encouragingly. “An interesting sum.”

“We want it,” Durant said.

“Of course you do. And doubtless deserve it.”

Durant sipped his drink. “We’ve got the girl.”

“Well, now.”

“You can have her for two million.”

“Indeed.”

“She’s got some interesting information, Reg,” Wu said, “about you and Imperlino and Dallas and Jack Ruby and all that good shit. The Congressman seems to have been an awfully fine snoop. But then, he used to be a cop, didn’t he? And a pretty fair one, I hear.”

“Clever,” Simms said, nodding his appreciation. “Not only clever, but also cunning, and totally out of character.”

Durant nodded agreeably. “It does make us feel a little rotten, but we’ll probably get over it.”

“The money should help,” Wu said.

“Of course, I believe you have the girl.”

“Well, if you don’t,” Wu said, “we can always bring you an ear.”

“That’s not quite what I meant. You have the girl, of course, but what does she have that’s so dreadfully expensive?”

Durant finished his drink and put the glass on Simms’s desk. Simms picked it up and put it on the silver tray. Durant lit a cigarette and blew the smoke up in the air.

“Well, let’s see, what does she have?” Durant said. “She has some airline records concerning a couple of trips that a Mr. T. Northwood took to Miami and Chicago. The T is for Terence. Terence Northwood. To start with, she has that.”

“Well, now, that is interesting,” Simms said.

“We thought you’d think so,” Wu said. “By the way how is your old roomie?”

“How nice of you to ask, Artie,” Simms said. “He’s fine.”

“Good. You know, it might be nice if you brought him along tomorrow when we pick up the money.”

“Tomorrow?” Simms said, “That soon?”

Durant nodded. “That soon. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“You know something,” Simms said, “I’m beginning to believe you’re serious.”

“That’s very perceptive of you,” Durant said.

Simms examined Durant more closely. “You’ve changed, Quincy haven’t you? You’re more — well — determined, I suppose.”

“Very determined.”

“Interesting. Well, of course, I can’t make this decision myself.”

Wu rose, picked up Durant’s glass and his own, and moved over to the bar. “We’ll drink some more of your booze, Reg, while you go call good old Vince. You might tell him he has twenty minutes to make up his mind. It’s the usual setup. Nothing original. If we’re not heard from by then, the girl, files and all, go public. She should make quite a splash.”

Simms rose. “Yes, well, do enjoy your drinks and I’ll be back shortly.”

He was back in less than ten minutes. “Would you like to haggle a bit over the price?”

“No,” Durant said. “The price is firm.”

Simms sighed. “That’s what we were both afraid of. It’s something romantic to do with poor Eddie McBride and all that, I suppose.”

“You’re close,” Durant said.

“Well, we do insist on picking the place.”

“Okay,” Wu said.

“It’s a beach house here in Pelican Bay, quite remote. It was used as an office while all the houses on either side of it were being razed.”

“Whom does it belong to now?” Durant said.

“The city, but I have access. I’ve also drawn you a rather rough map.” He handed it to Durant, who looked at it, nodded, and put it away.

“Well, then,” Simms said. “Until ten o’clock tomorrow.”

“Will Imperlino be there?” Wu said.

“Indeed, yes.”

Wu rose, and so did Durant. “Just one more thing, Reg,” Durant said.

“What?”

“I bring the girl in and Artie waits outside. If anything tricky happens, Artie runs. But he’ll come after you — sometime. You know how Artie is. Mean. Think of it, waking up nights and realizing that somewhere out there the last of the Manchus is waiting.” Durant made himself shudder. “Jesus.”

Simms smiled. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Do that,” Durant said.

Chapter 38

At four minutes until ten the next morning, which was a Wednesday, the twenty-second of June, the big Chrysler station wagon, Artie Wu at the wheel, stopped along the deserted, closed road approximately fifty yards from the gray, two-story frame house that looked as if it properly belonged on Cape Cod rather than on a strip of Southern California beach.

Spaced at regular intervals on either side of the house were the remains of the foundations where other beach homes had once stood. Parked in the gray house’s driveway was a late-model Ford LTD sedan.

“It looks as though they’re already here,” Durant said, glancing carefully around. “How does it look to you?”

Artie Wu studied the house for a moment. “Like a setup,” he said, and then looked at his watch. “You ready?”

“What time is it?”

“You’ve got a minute or two.”

“Let’s be early,” Durant said.

Inside what had once been used as the living room of the gray house, Vincent Imperlino watched as Reginald Simms tied the strong, waxed black thread around the trigger guard of the .38 Colt automatic. He then took an ordinary thumbtack and used it to suspend the pistol in the well of the old battered desk that faced the door through which Durant would come.

“It’s one of those dirty little tricks that they taught us,” Simms said, now down behind and almost underneath the desk. He stuck the pin into the wood, wrapped the thread securely around it, and then let the pistol dangle. He rose, brushing his hands.

“It hangs upside down, of course, but still quite handy.”

“Do you think we’ll actually need it?” Imperlino said.

“One can take comfort in a hidden advantage whether one uses it or not.”

“Is that what they taught you too?”

“No,” Simms said. “I do think I just made that up.”

Artie Wu got out of the station wagon, opened the rear door, and stripped back the blanket. The rear seats had been lowered to form a deck space. Stretched out on the hard surface was Silk Armitage, her hands tied behind her back, her mouth taped, her eyes wide and very frightened.

Wu pulled her up into a sitting position and then lifted her out of the car and set her on her feet next to Durant, who glanced at her once and then looked around again.

“They sure as hell chose one deserted spot,” he said.

Wu, also looking around, nodded his agreement. “The next few minutes are going to be pretty interesting.”

“Uh-huh,” Durant said. He took Silk by the elbow. “All right,” he said, “let’s go.”

Wu watched as Durant walked Silk Armitage down the cracked cement of the abandoned road, up the driveway, and into the condemned house. When they were out of sight, Artie Wu lit a cigar.

Just before he went into the house, Durant took the .38 revolver out of his pocket. He held it in his right hand down by his side. His left hand was on Silk Armitage’s elbow.

The door to the house was already open, so Durant went in, Silk Armitage slightly in front of him. Reginald Simms came out of the living room and stood in the small reception hall. Like Durant, he casually held a pistol in his hand down by his side, an automatic, which to Durant looked like the Beretta that Chuck West had had the day before.

“Well, Quincy,” Simms said. “I see that neither of us trusts the other very much.”

“Hardly at all.”

“We’re in here,” Simms said, indicating the open door that led into the living room.

“You first,” Durant said.

Simms smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

Simms went into the room and Durant guided Silk in, following closely behind her. He glanced around the room quickly. The tall, not quite heavy man who sat in the straight wooden chair in the corner would be Imperlino. There were a couple of other chairs, cast-off wooden ones, but except for them, and the one behind the old, scarred desk, that was all the furniture the room contained, except for the two suitcases on the floor, apparently brand new and about the size of large overnight bags.

“Well, I think everyone knows who everyone else is,” Simms said. “So any introductions would probably be unnecessary as well as tactless.”

“Let her sit down,” Imperlino said.

Durant guided Silk to one of the wooden chairs. She sat down in it, her eyes even wider and more frightened than before. She looked at Imperlino and then at Simms and finally at Durant. She stared at him for a long time and then closed her eyes wearily and slumped back in the chair. After a moment she opened them and stared out the window at the ocean, which seemed crisply blue and sparkling under the warm June sun.

“Let’s get to the money,” Durant said.

“The two cases there,” Simms said.

Durant went over to the cases, knelt down, and opened one of them. He kept his pistol in his right hand. The case was filled with fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills, bound in neat bundles by heavy red rubber bands. Durant pawed through the stacks with his left hand, taking some of the packets out from the bottom and riffling through the bills.

“You are suspicious, Quincy,” Simms said.

“Very.”

Durant closed the case and then opened the other one and made the same kind of inspection. When satisfied, he closed the second case and rose.

“Well” he said, “I think that takes care of everything.”

“No,” Imperlino said, and stood up. He had a pistol out now, one that looked to Durant like a Luger. Durant didn’t examine it too carefully because it wasn’t aimed at him. It was aimed at Silk Armitage instead, but rather casually.

“What do you mean, no?” Durant said.

“For our own protection, Mr. Durant, you are going to have to be a party to the murder of the young lady,” Imperlino said in a quiet, reasonable tone.

“I’m not going to kill her,” Durant said.

“No, of course not,” Imperlino said. “I shall do that — with much regret, although such a comment from me at this time must seem rather tasteless. But since you’ve sold her to us — and will witness her death — then in the eyes of the law you will be held just as guilty of her death as either Reg or I.” Imperlino paused. “Morally, I should think, even more so.”

Durant nodded. “They told me you were smart.”

Imperlino ignored the remark. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Most brilliant, too, I understand,” Durant said. “At Bowdoin, I mean.”

“Do you have a point to make, Mr. Durant?”

“Well, if I’d been voted most brilliant at Bowdoin, I think I’d be smart enough to be a little suspicious when my old college roommate suddenly shows up on my doorstep with a hot two million dollars that he’s stolen from the Saigon embassy. Two million dollars that nobody was even looking for because it supposedly had been burned. And my old roomie, the eternal company man, has suddenly, unexpectedly turned apostate, even renegade. Now, that would have given me pause. Yes, sir, it would have.”

Imperlino stared at Durant. Finally, very carefully, he said, “Why?”

“You mean, why he suspicious? Well, let’s look at it this way. The war was ending in Vietnam just as you were making your first moves into Pelican Bay. We’ll call that a coincidence, but it’s the last one you’ll have to put up with. So your old roommate comes back to Saigon from the wars — embittered, cynical, maybe even burnt out. He sees the opportunity to steal two million dollars with virtually no chance of being discovered. Well, he stole it. Who wouldn’t? And to help him do it, he enlisted the help of somebody called Eddie McBride, not too bright, not too dumb. Just average.

“So after they’ve stolen the two million and hidden it away for future recovery — and here comes the part that really bothers me — well, Simms makes a date to meet McBride in, of all places, L. A. Or rather, Beverly Hills. But he never shows up, and poor Eddie wanders all over town trying to sell his map of where he thinks the two million still is to whoever’ll pay him a few thousand for it.

“So why did your old roommate do that, Imperlino? Why didn’t he just meet Eddie and buy him off with a sweet stall and a few thousand? It wouldn’t have taken more than that to make Eddie happy. But instead Eddie flits around L.A., a walking, talking advertisement to the fact that the money was indeed stolen.

“So whom was your old roommate trying to convince?” Durant shook his head sadly. “You, I’m afraid.”

“You’re saying that they didn’t steal it?” Imperlino said softly.

“What I’m saying is that somebody let them steal it.”

Imperlino looked at Simms. “Well?”

Simms shrugged easily. “He’s trying to talk himself out of a hole, Imp.”

Imperlino nodded and turned back to Durant. “Go on.”

“It’s obvious. The same somebody that let them steal the money decided to send Simms in after you. But they knew he’d have to get all the way inside. So they figured that he’d have to come to you with unclean hands. The dirty money out of Saigon would be perfect. Somebody back in Washington heard about the six million that had to be burned, so they set it up. It was perfect. Unaccountable bait money. And Eddie McBride wandering around as a living testimonial to the fact that, yes, it sure enough had been stolen. You bought it, of course, along with your new partner — although from now on, if I were you, I’d sort of watch my back.”

Imperlino smiled politely, as though thanking Durant for some useful but not terribly important information. Then, still smiling a bit politely, Imperlino turned quickly toward his old roommate and was raising his pistol when Simms shot him twice through the chest.

The polite smile went away and then came back and then went away again, this time forever, as Imperlino stumbled back, slid down the wall, and died sitting on the bare wooden floor, in the dust, staring at Simms and wearing a look of deep disappointment, one that not even death could quite erase.

“Okay, Reg,” Durant said, his pistol now aimed at Simms. “Nothing quick or cute. Just turn around and put it down on the desk. Take all the time you want.”

When Simms turned, Durant was surprised by the look of almost total grief that had distorted his face. Well, how are you supposed to look, Durant thought, when you kill your best friend? He has a right to it.

Simms did exactly as he was told. He put the Beretta down on the desk and slid it slowly toward Durant.

“Now sit down and put your hands on the desk,” Durant said, moving cautiously over to the Beretta. He picked it up and put it into his pocket.

“I was going to have to do it sooner or later, of course,” Simms said in a thoughtful, reasonable tone that bore no resemblance to the tortured lines that he still wore on his face.

“Were you?” Durant said, and looked quickly at Silk Armitage, who was staring down at the dead Imperlino. She started shaking her head slowly and was still shaking it when Durant looked back at Simms.

“You don’t believe me?” Simms said.

“It doesn’t matter much what I believe.”

“You were right about poor Eddie McBride, of course. He was my bona fides, so to speak.”

“Who sent you in, Reg?”

Simms shrugged, some of the grief now gone from his face. In its place was a questioning look. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “What I’m intensely curious about right now is what you intend to do with me.”

Durant stared at Simms for several seconds and then said, “What I’m trying to decide is whether I should pull the trigger.”

“Should or can?” Simms said.

“The should’s the hard part,” Durant said. “Can presents no problem.”

Simms smiled, apparently quite cheerful now. “You’ll never do it, Quincy. Never.”

“I might enjoy it.”

“Nonsense. You’d never kill your own brother. Half brother actually, of course.”

The gun wavered in Durant’s hand as pure shock hit him like a cruel, totally unexpected blow. He automatically rejected the idea in self-defense, then accepted it, rejected it again, and then accepted it forever as a lifetime of speculation about his identity ended. And suddenly, Durant realized that he hadn’t wanted it to end. And he was thinking about this, puzzling about it, when Artie Wu walked quietly into the room.

“I was just telling Quincy, Artie,” Simms said, “about us being brothers. You do look shocked, Quincy. But think about it. Why do you think I nursemaided you all these years after you first popped up on our green sheet down in Mexico that time? I got you out of jail and then into the Peace Corps and later kept you in tow and mostly out of trouble. Mother made me promise, of course. Incidentally, her maiden name was Quincy. It was one of those dreadful deathbed scenes — you know what I mean.”

As if to make his point, Simms’s right hand performed a graceful flourish, an actor’s practiced gesture actually, which ended with the hand resting casually on his right knee, almost beneath the desk. Simms moved the hand cautiously until he had it wrapped around the butt of the automatic that was suspended out of sight beneath the desk top.

Simms tightened his finger and began, “You see, Quincy,” in a conversational tone that ended when Artie Wu took his gun out of his pocket and shot Reginald Simms at close range once in the throat and twice in the chest, just about where the heart is. The bullets slammed Simms back in his chair, but then he slumped forward on to the desk and after a moment slipped awkwardly to the floor.

Wu moved over to the desk, reached under it, jerked the hidden automatic free, and slid it across the desk toward Durant, who still stood in the center of the room, silent and stunned.

“You don’t need a brother,” Artie Wu said. “You got me.”

Chapter 39

Finally, Durant moved. He walked around the desk and stared down at the body of Reginald Simms. Well, brother, he thought, and wondered why he kept staring down at him.

Artie Wu had put his revolver back into a pocket of his resplendent silk suit. From its hip pocket he now brought out a small silver flask. He uncapped it and handed it to Durant.

Still staring down at Simms, Durant swallowed some of the brandy. He then moved over to Silk Armitage, put the flask down, carefully removed the tape that covered her mouth, and untied her hands. After that he silently handed her the flask. She took a small swallow.

“Oh, my God, I was scared!” she said. “Were you?”

Durant nodded. “You okay now?”

“I think so.” She looked quickly at Simms and then even more quickly looked away. “He really your brother?”

Durant shrugged.

Silk put out her hand as though to comfort him with a touch. But she stopped and instead said, “I’m sorry, I really can’t help it, but I’m just obliged to go to the bathroom.”

“Try down the hall,” Artie Wu said.

After she had gone, Durant continued to sip at the brandy while he stared down at Simms. But finally he turned to Wu and said, “You knew, didn’t you, Artie?”

Wu nodded.

“How long?”

“About eight years. It was when we were in Bangkok that first time. Reg came through on some fruitcake mission. If anything happened to him, I was to tell you. Well, nothing happened.”

“Who was he?”

“Who?”

“Daddy,” Durant said, grating up the word.

“What do you care?” Artie Wu said. “Make him up. Pick anybody you like. Somebody swell, the way I did.”

“Who was he, Artie?”

Wu sighed. “He doesn’t know.”

“You mean about me?”

Wu nodded. “She was a widow — your mother, Simms’s. She got involved with a married man. When she found she was pregnant she went to San Francisco. Simms told me that she had you and a breakdown at about the same time, so you got left on the doorstep with the tag around your neck.”

“So who was he?”

Wu sighed again. “James.”

“Whittaker Lowell?”

“Whittaker Lowell.”

“Well, now.”

“Well, now, what?” Wu said.

“Well, now, isn’t that too fucking bad,” Durant said.

When Silk Armitage came back she hesitated at the entrance of the living room. “Do we have to wait in here?” she said.

“Yes,” Durant said.

She came in slowly, not looking at the two bodies. She went up to Durant and said, “Look, I’m sorry about your brother, but I’m not sure if there’s anything I can say.”

“No,” Durant said. “There’s really nothing to say.”

Silk went over to the window and stared out at the ocean. “How much longer?” she said.

Wu glanced at his watch. “Not much now.”

It wasn’t much longer, no more than a quarter of an hour, before they arrived right on time, the three of them. Oscar Ploughman came in first, followed by Otherguy Overby. Last in was Whittaker Lowell James, sprucely dressed, almost dapper, wearing his usual brusque, no-nonsense air.

Ploughman took it in quickly. He glanced first at Wu and Durant and Silk Armitage and then went over to the bodies. He gave Simms only a cursory look, but when he reached Imperlino he smiled happily with his big yellow teeth. “Well, Vince,” he said. “Hello, Vince.” Then he turned to Wu and Durant. “Who got him?”

“Simms,” Durant said.

Ploughman nodded. “Why?”

“Because Simms had been sent in to take him out.”

“No shit?” Ploughman said. “Who sent him?”

“Ask him,” Wu said, nodding at Whittaker Lowell James.

“What about it, Pop?” Ploughman said.

The man with three names ignored the Pop. Instead, he said, “As far as I know, Simms was acting on his own.”

“Who shot Simms, then?” Ploughman said.

“Let’s talk about money first,” Artie Wu said. “Then we can talk about who shot Simms.”

Ploughman nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that makes sense. There is some money to talk about, huh? I mean, you guys weren’t just selling snowflakes?”

Durant nodded toward the two suitcases. “It’s in there.”

“Mind if I take a look?” Ploughman said.

“Why not?”

“Give me a hand, Otherguy,” Ploughman said. The two men knelt down by the suitcases and opened them. As Durant had done, they took some of the packets from the bottom and riffled through them.

While Ploughman and Overby inspected the cash, Durant inspected the man who was his father. Artie is right, Durant finally decided, children should be allowed to pick their own parents.

Ploughman looked up from the money at Durant, his big yellow smile gleaming. “Two million?”

Still staring at James, Durant nodded. “Two million,” he said.

“Four-way split?”

“Four-way split.”

As Ploughman and Overby closed up the suitcases, James said, “It was a very clever scheme, Quincy. Ingenious.”

“It was Artie’s idea.”

James nodded approvingly. “All very neatly done — and rather profitable, too, I should say.”

“Of course, it still leaves Silk around,” Durant said.

James smiled politely and bowed slightly to Silk. “I don’t think anyone bothered to introduce us, Miss Armitage. I’m Whittaker James.”

“The man with the mop,” Silk said.

“Yes,” James said with a small chuckle. “I suppose you might say that. And I’m sure that you and I can reach some mutually satisfactory accommodation.”

Ploughman, back up on his feet, frowned. “What the fuck’s he talking about — pardon me, lady?”

“He’s trying to put the lid on,” Artie Wu said.

Ploughman frowned some more and shook his head slowly, looking around the room. “We’re gonna have to give ’em somebody,” he said.

“The law, you mean?” James said.

“The law? No, I’m not talking about the law, Pop. I’m the law. Me. I’m talking about people who don’t pay much attention to the law. I’m talking about Vince Imperlino’s buddies, pals, friends, and associates. Them. You don’t kill somebody like Imperlino in my town without hanging it on somebody. And it can’t just be somebody you found down in the alley with a bottle of muscadoodle in his pocket. To make Imperlino’s crowd happy, you gotta come up with somebody they’ll buy. If you don’t, then you’re in bad, bad trouble with them, and that kind of trouble I don’t need.”

There was a lengthy silence, which lasted long enough for Artie Wu to light a fresh cigar with his usual ceremony.

He blew one of his fat smoke rings toward the ceiling and said, “Let’s give them Otherguy.”

“No fucking way, Artie,” Overby said, and his right hand darted around toward the small of his back where he kept his snub-nosed revolver. But then his hand stopped. No, that wasn’t the play, Overby realized. That was just the check before the raise, the bump. They’re gonna sandbag somebody, Overby told himself with pleasure. So he smiled slightly; said, “No fucking way” again, but without much vehemence; folded his arms; and leaned against the wall, watchful and very much interested.

Ploughman frowned again, although this time it was more of a scowl than a frown. “Well, I’d sort of hate to lose Brother Overby here, on account of him and me’ve been talking about maybe going in together on a couple of small items after we get this mess here squared away. Which sort of reminds me, Durant. You know how to set up a Swiss bank account?”

“Sure,” Durant said. “You want us to set one up for you?”

“Would that mean you’d have to take my cut?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to open an account without any money.”

Ploughman rubbed his big chin. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Lemme think about it. Right now we’ve gotta figure out who we’re gonna give ’em.”

There was another lengthy silence that lasted almost thirty seconds until it was finally broken by Durant.

“Let’s give them Whittaker Lowell James,” he said, a small crooked smile on his face, his eyes fixed steadily on the older man.

Artie Wu stared at Durant. Then he smiled a big, broad, happy smile. “By God, I like it. I do.”

Ploughman chuckled. “These two guys are pretty funny, right, Pop?”

“Yes,” James said. “Very amusing.”

“He’s perfect, Chief,” Durant went on. “Think of the headlines, EX-DIPLOMAT SLAYS CIA TURNCOAT, MOB CHIEF. What do you think he’d get — a year, eighteen months?”

Ploughman again rubbed his big chin, staring at James. “If that,” he said. There was a pause and then he said, “You know what, Pop, I think they’re serious. I mean, they really want to set you up.”

“Yes,” James said, his voice calm, his gaze level. “So it would seem.”

“The best thing about it,” Durant said, “is that he can’t talk. If he denies it, then he has to explain, and if he explains, then he has to explain everything, and he can’t afford to do that, right, Whit?”

“There are reasons for not talking, which, I think, Quincy, you’d have a most difficult time understanding.”

“You know,” Ploughman said, “the more I think about this, the better I like it. Hell, Pop here comes off sort of a half-ass hero, I get the credit for making the collar, and Imperlino’s buddies have all that honor shit of theirs taken care of.” He turned to Overby. “What do you think, Otherguy?”

Overby smiled — a small, careful, crafty smile — as he stared at Whittaker Lowell James. “I say give ’em the old man.”

Ploughman looked at Artie Wu. “Well?”

Artie Wu blew another fat smoke ring up at the ceiling. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s give them Whit.”

“Well, I know how you feel, Durant,” Ploughman said. “But what about the little lady here?”

“It’s up to her,” Durant said. “The whole thing.”

Ploughman frowned again. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said,” Durant replied. “She has the yes or no vote. Whittaker Lowell James is probably as much responsible for the death of Congressman Ranshaw as anyone alive. You could probably never prove it, Chief, but it’s almost a cinch bet that he and some of his R Street cronies sent Simms into Pelican Bay to silence the Congressman and then, at the right time, take out Imperlino. But I think Simms’s loyalties got a little mixed up there toward the end. And when he showed signs of waffling, Artie and I were brought in — to find Silk and somehow stop Simms. If we found Silk, then Whittaker knew he could put a clamp on her one way or another. So you see, to him the whole thing was just one more rather big job for his mop.”

“Why?” Ploughman said. “He’s not with the government anymore.”

Durant smiled. “He’ll always be with the government,” he said, staring at James. “The real government, right, Whit?”

“Are you almost through, Quincy?” James said in a bored voice.

“Almost,” Durant said, and turned to Silk. “You can either let him loose and then try to get your story told, or you can put him away and then keep silent. You can’t have it both ways. Because if you decide to put him away, then you become part of it — this conspiracy. But if you let him go free and then try to get your story told, he’ll shut you up — and don’t ever, ever kid yourself that he can’t.”

“You’re babbling now, Quincy,” James said.

“Probably,” Durant said. “But there he is, lady, the Them and the They that the Congressman was always telling you about. You call it.”

Silk Armitage, the product of the Black Mountain Folk School in the Arkansas Ozarks and millionaire socialist singer of songs, stared for a long time at Whittaker Lowell James, the product of St. Paul’s, Yale, and years of quietly accumulated power. James returned her stare, on his lips a small, amused, almost aloof smile, the kind that a man wears when he has total confidence in himself and a kindly fate.

The long silence lengthened as Silk Armitage bit her lower lip and stared at Whittaker Lowell James. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, but firm.

“Give them the old man,” she said.

Chapter 40

Chief Oscar Ploughman whistled and hummed “Harbor Lights” as he drove his black unmarked Plymouth sedan down Seashore Drive on his way to Police Headquarters with his distinguished-looking, gray-haired prisoner safely handcuffed in the seat beside him. When Ploughman reached the small circle that boasted the twenty-one-foot-high statue that was the last pelican in Pelican Bay, he gave it a small salute and said, “How the hell are ya, Freddie?”

Whittaker Lowell James stared straight ahead and didn’t bother to ask who Freddie was.

Chapter 41

The evening of that same Wednesday, late, when the sun was going down, Quincy Durant and Silk Armitage walked barefoot in the sand along the beach at Paradise Cove. They had walked from Durant’s house up to Little Point Dume and now they were walking back. Silk wore white shorts and a soft blue sweater. Durant had on his sawed-off jeans and the faded sweat shirt that read DENVER ATHLETIC CLUB.

They had been walking in silence for nearly five minutes when Silk said, “That old man.”

“What about him?”

“Was he evil?”

“Evil. That’s not a word I use very much.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t suppose he was evil. Or is.”

“What he did, he did because he thought he was right.”

Durant shook his head. “He didn’t just think it; he knew it.”

“But he wasn’t, was he?”

“Well, he’s in jail,” Durant said.

“But that doesn’t mean we were right.”

“No,” Durant said, “it means that we got away with it.”

“And that’s what counts.”

“Usually.”

“You know something?” she said.

“What?”

“I should feel awful, but I don’t.”

“You just won one.”

“Did I?”

“You’d better think of it that way.”

They walked on in silence until they passed the pier and were approaching Durant’s house. She wondered if he would ask her in again. They had spent most of the afternoon and early evening there in bed. Then she knew that he wouldn’t. She wasn’t quite sure how she knew.

“What happens now?” she said.

“I’m not sure.”

“Will you go to Switzerland?”

“For a few days anyway.”

“And then?”

“That’s what I’m not sure about.”

“Well, you have that number I gave you.”

“Yes.”

“Call it sometime.”

“All right.”

She looked up at him. “But you won’t, will you?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

They walked on until they reached the marble steps that went up to Randall Piers’s house. He kissed her then and held her quite close for a long time. Then she moved back and smiled up at him. “Good-bye, Quincy.”

“Good-bye,” he said, and turned and started walking along the beach back toward the yellow house.

She went up the steps and then paused and waited for him to turn and perhaps wave. But when he didn’t, she went on up the remaining 175 steps made out of Carrara marble that led to the house of the man with six greyhounds.

The next morning, which was a Thursday, the twenty-third of June, Randall Piers and his six greyhounds came down the marble steps just after dawn.

They headed along the beach toward the Paradise Cove pier, the greyhounds clustered at his heels, watching for the signal, and when he gave it, the hard, almost chopping gesture, they grinned and raced one another to the pier, their ears hard back and joy in their eyes.

By the time the dogs had trotted back, Piers was abreast of the small yellow house with the green composition roof. He skirted by the dead pelican, which had lain on the beach for exactly one week and which nobody had bothered to get rid of yet, and climbed up the four-foot slope of sand, the greyhounds now bunched at his heels again.

When he reached the steps that went up to the deck, he hesitated, and then started up, the dogs just behind him. He moved around to the door that led into the kitchen and peered through its glass. The house was empty. Everything was gone, including the wall of books and the Oriental rug. Not even the usual trash and junk had been left behind.

Piers tried the door. It was unlocked, so he went in. He looked around the kitchen and noticed that something after all had been left behind. On the stove was the big gallon coffeepot. He thought he could smell coffee, so he went over and touched the pot. It was very warm, almost hot. Next to it on the tile sink were several unused Styrofoam cups.

Piers poured himself a cup of coffee and tasted it. It was as good as ever. He wandered into the empty living room and looked around, wondering where they had gone, the lean man with the scars on his back and the other one, the fat pretender to the Emperor’s throne. Piers almost wished that he had known them better, because they were rather interesting men — certainly different, if not wholly admirable. But then, who the hell was?

Randall Piers discovered that he was very curious about what they would do next. As he stood there in the empty house, sipping the coffee, he decided to find out. But for many reasons, he never did.