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  Bryan turned, moved toward his desk. "I've got to write a letter."

  "That's cool," Ayres said. "Keep your mind occupied."

  Walter parked his sister's Monte Carlo next to a bulldozer that stood in the drive of an abandoned gas station. Every parking place up Jacob and around on Campau was taken. Like somebody was having a party. There were three girls in front of Lili's, standing in the dark smoking, passing around a cigarette. He could smell it now; he was still a cop he could bust them. The hell with them.

  He had slept about two hours and was still whacked out, half in the bag. The girls moved away, one of them looking at him as he approached the bar, the girl saying, "The Babies bring out the weirdos every time."

  What? He put his hand on the door and felt a vibration. The same girl was saying, "Down here, dad."

  The fuck was going on?

  They went through a board gate and along a pas-sage with walls that squeezed in close, Walter following sounds in darkness, a girl's laughter, smelling the grass, seeing the glow as the girls took last tokes and went in past a sign that said Pagan Babies. Pagan what? Art was looking at him through a window in a red door. Art said, "Three bucks."

  Walter said, "Wait a minute. I got turned around or something."

  Art said, "Three bucks, for the band."

  Walter dug in his pocket. He said, "For the band?

  That's the band? I thought it must be the fucking wreckers tearing down a building, Art. Hey, Art?"

  But they were moving him into the wall-to-wall racket of rock sound filling the bar, people behind him now crowding him into people standing inside, the people moving but moving in place, moving up and down, skinny people with painted hair, pink hair, Kraut hair, moving like puppets attached to the beat, skinny girls wired to it together, thighs shining, sliding together with sex on their faces, mouths moving, speaking, but no sound coming out of them, no room for voice sounds in a room filled with electronic sound. Five guys up there by the front with tight suits on and no shirts--no, four guys and a girl playing with them as alike as the guys were alike, moving alike, mechanically, one eating the microphone, saying something about thepope. The pope? "The Turk did it during her afternoon soap--" It sounded like the guy singing was saying the girl was pissed off, she missed all her children, yeah, "She missed 'All My Children'--" And people around him as he tried to get through them, as he used his shoulders to ram his way, were repeating it, their mouths saying, "She missed 'All My Children'--" But the girl was gonna go straight to hell because she was pissed and the guy up there in the suit and no shirt was saying, "Don't forget your Sea and Ski--" And now everybody was mouthing, saying, "Don't forget your Sea and Ski--" Walter raised his face to breathe. He saw Lili, a striped tiger drinking a white drink. He saw a pair of barmaids in shirts that glowed pure white and saw the labels of the fruit-flavored brandy glowing white, girls at the bar moving with their eyes closed and a girl licking the sticky inside of her glass, getting it all, girls squirming in pain to the guys in the suits and no shirts who looked diseased. The sound stopped. It was in the room filling the room and then gone like a plug had been pulled, leaving screams that were moans in comparison. A voice close to him said, "Oh, man, who's got some blow?" Another voice said, "You're busting caps now, man. What do you need with blow?"

  Lili's voice said, "Walter? Come on--is that Walter Kouza?"

  He stared at her, at her tiger dress. Lili's voice said, "Walter, you sick? Please don't throw up on my customers, Walter. Go outside."

  Art's voice said, "He doesn't know where he is."

  Another voice said, "I'll take care of him."

  Walter turned to the voice.

  To Robbie Daniels smiling at him. "Come on, Walter, let's go outside."

  Walter heard his own voice say, "I'm messing up . . ."

  Bryan wrote in longhand on a legal pad. He wrote lines and scratched out words and tried other words, trying to explain in the letter why he was writing it. He started again and stopped, picked up the phone and dialed a number. He listened to it ring. He hung up and dialed an out-of-state number.

  "Irene? . . . Bryan Hurd. I'm sorry to bother you again. Are you sure Walter's at his sister's? I called a few times, there was no answer . . . Yeah. No, I did see him this afternoon . . . He's fine. Sort of unwinding. Give me the number again, make sure I have it right." He wrote numbers on the yellow pad. "And the address? . . ."

  The quiet was good, the sensation of gliding in silence, protected, staring at the gleam of the hood as they passed beneath street lights."Is this Belmont?"

  "Next one. Hang a left. Go down the second block."

  "How do you feel?"

  "Shitty. I don't know what happened to me. It was like--you really want to know what it was like? It was like dying and going to hell."

  "That's interesting," Robbie said.

  They went in the front door. Walter switched on a lamp, walked through to the kitchen and turned the water on to let it run and get cold. A phone rang.

  "That's Irene," Walter said. "She thinks I'm gonna answer it she's crazy." Still, he walked back out to the living room to watch it ring.

  Robbie, wearing a bulky knit sweater that hung to his hips in soft folds, leaning in the kitchen doorway, straightened. His hands went behind him, beneath the sweater, as his eyes moved over the kitchen. He'd better do it now. Not wait. Bringing out the Colt Python he stepped to the refrigerator, laid the gun on top and stepped back again as the ringing stopped and Walter returned from his vigil.

  Robbie said, "You know things don't always go as planned."

  "The first thing I'm gonna do," Walter said, "is quit drinking. The second thing--I don't know, I'm fucking beat. But I was gonna call you."

  "To offer me a deal?"Walter took time to drink a glass of water. He refilled the glass and sat down at the kitchen table.

  He said, "Okay. Two hundred and fifty thousand for the tape I got."

  "You mean tapes," Robbie said. "Two of them."

  "I got one, that's all. I threw the other one away."

  "You sure?"

  "I'm telling you I did."

  "Which one do you have?"

  "The one you're doing Chichi."

  "Why do you think it's worth a quarter of a million?"

  "You're in it too. The headband--fucking Cochise."

  Robbie pulled out the other kitchen chair and sat down. "I had to pick up after you, Walter. You leave me in a spot and now you're blackmailing me."

  "Bet your ass I am."

  "If in fact you do have the tape."

  "Take my word."

  "Forget it," Robbie said. He rose, pulled his sweater down and started out through the hall to the living room.

  Walter said, "Hey, you think I'm kidding?"

  Robbie stopped and came half around. "About what?"

  "Pay or I mail it to the cops. How's that grab you?"Robbie came back to the kitchen doorway, hands on his hips, slim, hair mussed. Walter thought of a cheerleader, the first time in what seemed like years.

  Robbie said, "Walter, you send it in, I get picked up. What's the first question they ask me?"

  "Why you shot him."

  "No--who shot the film? I'll give you a hundred grand, flat deal. But only if you prove to me you've got the tape. I mean right now. Otherwise, fuck off."

  "I'm sober," Walter said, "you think you can pull anything."

  "Come on, Walter, Jesus Christ, I want to go home and go to bed."

  Walter got up from the table. He approached Robbie carefully and felt the bulk of the sweater around the middle. "You stay right here, you don't move. Right?"

  He went out through the kitchen door, down the steps and across the yard to where his sister had set up her shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a fourfoot plaster statue on a pedestal: Mary standing on top of the world, a snake held firmly beneath her foot. Walter looked back at the light showing in the kitchen door before he carefully tilted the statue, bringing it toward him to let his shoulder support the
weight, reached into the hollow base and drew out his Browning nine-millimeter that he would throw away right after this deal was completed. Hestuck the automatic into his belt, reached under again and drew out the cassette, done up in Saran Wrap.

  Robbie had moved a little. Enough to see Walter coming up the back porch steps with a gun in one hand and something wrapped in the other. Enough to place himself next to the refrigerator with his hand resting on top.

  Walter stuck the Browning into his belt again so he could unwrap the cassette.

  Robbie's hand came off the refrigerator with the Python. He shot Walter squarely in the chest, three times, giving him one more than he had given the Haitian, and watched Walter stumble around rearranging the table and chairs before he hit the linoleum floor. He felt for a pulse in Walter's throat, something he had not done with the Haitian. It was how you learned.

  Twenty-one seventy-two Belmont.

  Bryan had to go up the walk almost to the house to read the number next to the aluminum storm door. He rang the bell and waited. The house was dark; the entire street seemed dark, no one up watching late movies. He went around back, along the narrow walk separating Walter's sister's house from the one next door. It was a clear night. He could see a statue standing in the backyard, a robedfigure with hands extended: come to me. The back of the house seemed darker than the front.

  When the knob turned in his hand he realized the door wasn't shut tight. He pushed gently. The door swung in and stopped, obstructed; but the opening was wide enough for Bryan to slip through, to step inside and feel the bulk of Walter's body against his foot. He turned the kitchen light on.

  A Browning automatic and a glass of water were on the table. Walter lay face down, blood on the back of his poplin jacket. Bryan knelt down, tired.

  He said, "Walter, you dumb shit," raised the jacket and shirt, pulling them up enough to see a ragged tear in pale flesh, blood oozing. He pulled the jacket down, rolled Walter over and opened his shirt. Three entrance wounds, one through and through. Two bullets were still inside Walter. Bryan stood up. He opened the cabinet door with the gouge in it, sifted through broken china to find the third slug and studied it in the palm of his hand. A chunk of misshapen lead. From something bigger than a twenty-two. Bryan turned the light off and sat down at the kitchen table. If police evidence technicians had been watching him up to now they'd have him thrown off the force. And if the Hamtramck Police knew what he was going to do next they might scream or they might thank him, it was a toss-up. But either way, this one was his. He'd find a shower curtain in the bathroom. Or a blanket.

  He'd bring his car around to the alley.

  He'd place a call as soon as possible to West Palm and get Gary Hammond out of bed. In fact, before he left the house.

  He needed just a little luck. Or kneel by that little statue for a minute. It wouldn't hurt.

  ROBBIE COULDN'T BELIEVE how beautifully the videotape came out. The assassination of Chichi Fuentes. Like he'd directed and choreographed it.

  The bottles on the bar and the door panes shattering, Chichi staggering out in his golden robe turning red and then, aggggggggh, falling into the swimming pool. Chichi was a good dier. He even liked--liked?--he loved the unplanned flashes of himself, the bandana and the sunglasses, firing the grease gun, holding it low and letting it rip with that great gutty sound, muted but very heavy. The whole scene was heavy. Inspirational. It reaffirmed his convictions, made him dead certain he wanted to go on to more significant projects, bag some really bad ones. Maybe not Carlos, but there were some giant assholes out there waiting.

  He was learning fast. He'd lucked out with Walter. Walter had been a mistake. Scratch Walter, a genuine pain in the ass. His body probably wouldn't even be discovered until the sister camehome from Florida; whenever. The type he needed was not a cop but a seasoned mercenary, a former Green Beret or Recon Marine who'd been to Africa and back and knew the game. A heavyweight. He'd look in the classified section of Soldier of Fortune and get in touch with a pro looking for action.

  Some guy practicing his karate moves, opens the letter, the guy wouldn't believe it.

  God, it was fun.

  Write the real book about it someday.

  Robbie watched the tape three times that night after he got home, about ten times or more yesterday and a couple of times this morning. It kept getting better.

  Right now he had the footlocker open, going through a seasonal rite: taking out his handguns, oiling and wiping them clean before mounting them in the wall cabinet behind his desk. He liked to keep the handguns handy, show them off. The heavy stuff, the submachine guns, he kept in a halfton safe that was bolted to the cement floor of the utility room in the Palm Beach house.

  There were guns spread all over the desk when the maid knocked on the door, opened it a few inches and said, "Someone here to see you, Mr.

  Daniels."

  He had been half-expecting this so he was ready.

  The unannounced visitor who would try to catchhim off-guard. What surprised him was that Lieutenant Hurd was not alone.

  Annie Maguire came in first and Robbie widened his grin as he saw her glance up and around at the sneaky cameras. His hand found the switch under the front of his desk and he flicked it on to activate a record of this meeting, just in case.

  Robbie's expression changed, became somber. He said to Bryan, "Lieutenant, I can't tell you how sorry I am. If I'd known what Angie was getting into, believe me--"

  Bryan cut him off. "You better not say anything.

  All right?"

  "Well, I want to express how I feel--"

  "No. Don't say anything."

  Robbie said, "You're not inferring, I hope, that anything I say might be used against me."

  "I'm not inferring anything," Bryan said. "Can we sit down?"

  "Please." Robbie gestured, watched them sink into the soft leather chairs across the desk from him. He remained standing, deciding to feel his way a little deeper into it. "I thought, since I introduced you to Fuentes--remember, at Seminole? . . .

  Well, I'm sure you've talked to the police in Florida . . ." He paused a moment, not sure what to say next. Hurd was staring at him. Not with an expression that described an emotion, but simplystaring. It gave Robbie a strange feeling, the thought that he might have overlooked something.

  But if it wasn't about Florida . . .

  "How're you doing with the Curtis Moore investigation?" Robbie's gaze moved to Annie Maguire.

  Much better, a definite sign of life in her eyes.

  "Well, since you asked," Annie said. "We know you were at the hotel. I mean at the time of the homicide."

  "I told him that." Robbie's eyes flicked at Bryan and returned. "I was at the Renaissance Center about ten o'clock. I picked up some Mexicans. I told him all about it and he checked it out."

  "You forgot to say you went down to the parking garage," Annie said.

  "Are you serious?"

  "We've got a witness."

  "Where, down in the garage?"

  "Right by the valet parking."

  "I might've stopped there. I was looking for the Mexicans. But if you're trying to tell me somebody saw me down in the garage, that's pure bullshit."

  "Where was the pistol, in your car?"

  "What pistol?"

  "The one you used on Curtis."

  "Jesus Christ--"

  "The same one you showed us in your office.

  The High Standard."Bryan watched him begin to smile, getting back on safe ground.

  Robbie said, "You ran a ballistics check on the shells you picked up, didn't you? Compared them to the ones you got out of Curtis Moore? Isn't that the way it's done?"

  Annie said, looking at the desk, "Do you have it here?"

  Now Robbie looked over his display of handguns. "I don't see it. Oh shit, that was the one I lost in Florida. I was out in a boat, shooting, and dropped it over the side . . . Gee, I'm sorry."

  Annie said, "What were you shooting, fish?"
>
  "Yeah, I like to shoot fish." He gave Annie his interested, serious look. "Is this the way you do it, honest to God?"

  Annie said, "Well, you asked about Curtis Moore."

  "And that's all you have?"

  Annie said, "No. As a matter of fact we have a warrant for your arrest . . ."

  "You're kidding." Beginning to smile.

  ". . . on a charge of first-degree murder."

  Robbie was smiling sincerely now. It was a con, he was positive. These rinky-dinks were giving him the grim-cop number, Hurd playing stone-face, and he was supposed to, what, break down? Confess?

  He couldn't believe it."You're not serious, are you?"

  Annie said, "You have a constitutional right to remain silent. You don't have to answer any questions . . ."

  "Wait a minute."

  ". . . or make any statements. If you do. . . ."

  "Wait a minute, goddamn it! Hold it!"

  There was a silence.

  "Now then," Robbie said. "You've got a witness who wasn't actually there. You don't have a murder weapon . . . How in the hell can you associate me, in any way, with Curtis Moore? It's impossible."

  Bryan said, "The warrant doesn't mention Curtis." He waited to make sure he had Robbie's full attention. "It's for doing Walter Kouza."

  Bryan waited some more. He liked this part. The chair was comfortable, soft but firm. It was Robbie's turn. He watched Robbie pull up the highbacked desk chair, giving himself a little time as he sat down on the edge and tried to look interested in an objective way, at ease, slouching over to rest his arms on the desk full of handguns.

  "Let me get this straight," Robbie said, giving himself more time, "Walter Kouza was murdered?"

  "The night before last," Bryan said. He had the hook in now.

  "Wait a second," Robbie said, but added nothing to it. Bryan said, "I understand you were with him at Lili's about eleven." Giving him a little more of the hook. In a moment now he'd watch Robbie jump.