He crossed the street, his back to the club, and went into Vesuvio, the venerable Beat generation bar next door to an equally famous Beat landmark, City Lights Bookstore. Vesuvio was one of the bars Ben and his friends had occasionally managed to sneak into back in high school. He looked around and had the weird sense he had gone backward in time. The place hadn't changed at all-the long wooden bar and pleasantly cramped tables; subdued chandelier and sconce lighting that made you feel you were entering a secret cave; Beat memorabilia plastered on walls the color of tobacco smoke. The air smelled faintly of beer and coffee. It felt like twenty years ago, and for a moment the contrast with the present was almost paralyzing.

A grizzled old man in a gray tweed coat sat at one of the booths, nursing a beer and reading a newspaper and looking as permanent a fixture as the tiled floor and the accumulated bottles behind the bar. A jazz number was playing in the background, piano and sax mixing with the disparate chords of conversation from the people sitting at the bar and surrounding tables. Ben walked past them, then took the narrow staircase in back to the dimly lit second floor.

He was in luck. One of the window seats looking out over Kerouac Alley and Columbus was open. He sat down and had a perfect view of the double doors and red awning that marked the entrance to Pearl 's. He checked his watch. Seven o'clock. If something were going to happen, it would happen in the next hour, two at the most. A waitress came by and he ordered a coffee.

If the girl were tied into this, she would let someone know where Ben could be found. Unless Ben had killed all of them, which he doubted, he expected they still had local resources. If he was right, one or maybe two men were going to show up at Pearl 's. If it were two, one would wait outside to ensure the target could at best spot only one of them. If it were one, he would of course go in alone, and then emerge after confirming Ben wasn't inside. If they showed, Ben would move out and follow them, and improvise from there.

What he was looking for was something that would be hard to articulate, but-what was it that Supreme Court Justice had said about obscenity?-he would know it when he saw it. The men would be alert and aware of their environment. Their expressions would be deliberately casual, but their postures would be possessed of purpose. Their clothes would be dark, bland, and without any identifying logos. There would be a look in their eyes he would recognize even from across the street. It was the same look in his.

He sipped his coffee, watching car traffic flowing up and down Columbus, noting pedestrians. The sky went from indigo to black; the street, from daylight to neon. Around seven-thirty, Pearl 's started filling up, mostly with casually but well dressed couples who were of no interest to him. Eight o'clock came and went, but he didn't see what he was looking for. Well, he'd wait until the end of the show. If nothing happened, it wouldn't prove anything. The girl might still be involved; maybe her people just couldn't mobilize fast enough. After all, they'd lost two players that morning. It was possible they were having trouble putting together a full team now.

At a little before eight-thirty, he saw an attractive, dark-haired woman in a waist-length black leather jacket coming up Columbus. He looked closer. Son of a bitch, it was Sarah.

He watched her go into Pearl 's, not knowing what to make of it. It didn't make sense. He could imagine her being an insider on whatever kind of operation Alex had gotten himself into trouble with, but not being an active part of it. He looked up and down the street, but saw nothing out of place.

There wasn't much time to think. He would just have to make it up as he went along.

He took out his cell phone and called Alex. “Just checking in,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Nothing new. No breakthroughs. We just called it a night. Sarah went out to buy a change of clothes.”

She hadn't told Alex she was going to Pearl 's. He wasn't sure what that meant.

“I want you to do something,” Ben said, watching the double doors through the glass. “There's a room key under the bottom drawer in the bathroom. It's for an extra room I took-758, right across the hall. Use it. Don't stay where you are.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“No, everything's copacetic. I'm just being sensible, or you can call it paranoid if you want. I just don't want you to be where she knows you'll be until I'm back.”

“Ben, I work with her. I know her. She's not mixed up in this.”

“Yeah, everyone thinks they know everyone. But you know what, I flew halfway around the world to help you. Why don't you help me make it not a wasted trip, okay?”

There was a pause, and Ben could imagine Alex fuming. Yeah, well, tough shit if he didn't like hearing the truth.

“Yeah, okay,” Alex said.

“One more thing. Lock the connecting door and leave all the lights on. And leave the closet and bathroom doors open.”

“Anything else?” Alex said. Ben heard the sarcasm and tried not to let it irritate him. Was it really so hard to understand that Ben didn't want to come back to a room he couldn't easily clear?

“Why don't you just acknowledge that you'll do it,” he said.

“Yeah, I'll do it.”

“Good. I'll call when I'm back.” He clicked off and pocketed the phone.

A minute later, Sarah walked out of Pearl 's and starting heading southeast on Columbus, back the way she had come.

Ben opened one of the casement windows. “Sarah,” he called.

She stopped and looked around. A bus went by and for a moment she was gone in a roar of diesel.

“Sarah,” he called again. “Across the street. In the window.”

She looked up and saw him. She gave a small wave of acknowledgment.

He looked around again and detected no problems. What she was up to? Keep him at Pearl 's while someone else visited Alex? Could be that. Well, Alex was safe for the time being.

She couldn't be here to do him herself. No, it didn't figure. He could imagine her being an access agent, something like that, but not a trigger puller. He didn't read her that way.

Still, if he was wrong, the penalty for missing would be high.

“Come on over,” he said.

21 INSUBSTANTIAL

Alex had yawned three times in an hour, and the last two had been infectious. Sarah looked at him and said, “We ‘re going in circles. I say we call it a night.”

Alex fixed her with that unreadable gaze of his, then something in his face seemed to soften. “You're right,” he said. “We need to come at it from a different direction to see what we're missing, and that's not going to happen without a break. Are you hungry?”

She had thought he might ask, and was ready for the question. “No, I'm okay. I'm just going to go out and buy a change of clothes. I guess I'll see you in the morning?”

He nodded. “Seven o'clock too early?”

“No, it's good. I doubt I'm going to sleep well anyway. This is all too crazy.”

She went to her room through the common doorway, stripped off her clothes, and got in the shower. Something had been building up in her all day, and if she didn't deal with it, she thought she might explode.

The day had started out weird and then had become downright frightening. Her files missing. The strange call from Alex. Then this guy in his office who she could tell was dangerous in some way, who turned out to be Alex's brother. When they'd told her what had been happening, she was concerned, but not really frightened. Looking back, she realized her relative sangfroid was the result of a lack of understanding. She didn't really believe she was in danger. Yes, she understood the police probably couldn't help, but she had agreed to go with Alex and Ben and try to figure out what was so valuable or dangerous about Obsidian almost as a lark, a kind of adventure, a break in the routine. And then Ben had come back to the car outside the Four Seasons with blood on his face, and she'd seen the report on the news, and she realized that Alex's brother was someone who could kill two men-gangsters, it seemed-with about the same level of difficulty most people faced when pouring a cup of coffee. Could kill? He had killed them. There was no other explanation.