Then there's Mr. and Mrs. Rovere. Paul and Patsy are in their late fifties, and the story they give out is that Paul took an early retirement from his job back in Kingston, New York. Dicey heart, a small pension, but they manage with it. Breakfast at The Clock, lunch at Denny's, the early-bird special at the Fisherman's Net, sit on the porch in the evenings and rock away the hours. It isn't a bad story, and they actually do come from Kingston, but their name wasn't Rovere then. It was something quite different back home where they were pillars of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Paul was the chairman of the building fund. Yeah, you got it. His retirement began the day he cleaned out the fund, and they headed south. He got away with something just short of 200K, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it isn't working out. They had just enough brains to steal the money, but not enough to know what to do with it. Instead of putting it to work, they've been nibbling away at it for the past four years, and it's almost gone. They don't sleep well. They lie in bed with the covers over their heads, wondering which will come first, the law, or the day when there won't be enough left for the early-bird special at the Fisherman's Net. They're pathetic people, but neither of them is Gemstone.

The last one I tapped was Bertha Costigan, and I peeled that woman's mind like an onion. On the surface I found a placid, kindly widow whose life revolved around her rooming house and the people who live there. On the next layer down I found that she's had a lifelong love affair with the state of Florida, not the drab place where she lives, but the fantasy Florida of the travel brochures and the television commercials, the white beaches and the emerald water, the orange groves and Disney World. Under that I found a deep pride in her former profession; years ago in Buffalo, New York, she was a well-respected nurse. Buffalo, that was the next layer down, and when I reached it, it almost froze me stiff. Buffalo, with its snow, and ice, and freezing winds; and on that level of Bertha's mind I found a reservoir of hate. She hates Buffalo, she hates the cold weather, and she hates the years that she spent there. That time includes the years of her marriage, and she hates her husband, too. Late husband. She hated him when he was still alive, and even though he's been dead for twenty years, she hates him still. In her mind he comes across as an inconsiderate, domineering son of a bitch, but for Bertha the worst of his sins is that he never moved her to Florida. Harry was an actuary with the Metropolitan Life, and when they first were married she told him how much she despised the cold, and sleet, and snow that battered Buffalo every winter. She begged him to get her out of there, and he promised that he would. He promised her the Florida of her dreams, and that was the part she could never forgive, for he never delivered. The years went by, and every year there was another reason why they couldn't move south. There was Harry's job, there was his ailing mother, there was the cost of moving. Each year he came up with something else-once he actually announced that he was allergic to oranges-and after a while it was clear to Bertha that Harry wasn't going anywhere. She knew now that he had never intended to fulfill her dream, and that for as long as he lived she would be stuck in Buffalo.

So she killed him, and moved south with the insurance money.

Sammy, I'm not kidding, she really did. She doesn't know that she did it, or rather, she knows, but she's buried it so deep that it's gone from her conscious mind. I swear, I had to go down eleven layers before I found it, but there it was, tinkling like a lonesome bell.

… Treviton every three hours… Treviton every three hours… Treviton every three hours…

Do you see it? Husband Harry has a massive heart attack, and once he's off the critical list they send him home from the hospital because, what the hell, his wife is a registered nurse, and she can take care of him. Bed rest, TLC, no excitement, and Treviton every three hours. She's administered Treviton to more cardiac patients than she can remember, there's nothing difficult about it for her, and for the first four days she keeps to the routine. Never occurs to her not to. But this is Buffalo in February, and on the fifth night the wind comes sweeping up the lake, and the Grey Goose Express unloads three feet of snow on the city. That does it. The next time that Harry is due for his dosage, she goes into his room and looks out the window. The streets are blanketed, the snow is coming down in curtains, and she can almost feel the freezing winds that are blowing outside. She looks down at the Treviton on the tray beside the bed, she looks down at Harry asleep there, she looks outside at the snow again, and without allowing herself to think about what she is doing she picks up the tray and walks out of the room without administering the medication. It's as simple as that. She sits up all night in the kitchen drinking coffee and listening to the whistle of the winds outside. The hours go by, three, and six, and nine, but she never leaves the kitchen. She never goes back to the bedroom. It's a long night, just long enough, and Harry checks out just before dawn.

That was twenty years ago, and, as I said, she doesn't remember it that way. Talk about suppression, she's got it buried so deep that it would take a shrink with a degree in civil engineering to blast it loose. When she thinks about it at all, she remembers that she nursed poor old Harry round the clock, never left his side, but his heart just gave out. Snap of the fingers, quick like that. She did her best, but it wasn't enough. It was God's will, and who could blame her if she chose to move away from the scene of such sorrow? That's the way she recalls it, and she really believes it.

Are you ready for the cream of the jest? Harry the actuary, Harry the Met Life guy, Harry the conservative one, had only about half the life insurance coverage that she thought he had. Through all the years of their marriage he had denied her the Florida of her dreams, and he did it again from the grave. There wasn't nearly enough for the white beaches and the emerald waters; there was hardly enough for the hard-scrabble sands of Glen Grove, and a rooming house to give her an income as she grew older. Isn't it enough to make you weep for the old gal? Yeah, me too. But whatever you think of Bertha Costigan, she isn't Gemstone.

That leaves Julio Ramirez, the only one I haven't met. From what I can gather, he's a slim, dark, well-mannered guy in his thirties who scrapes together a living as some sort of an entertainer in the Cuban community here. Of course, the barrio here isn't anywhere as big as what you find further south, but…

Snake stiffened, and braced herself to stop the rocking of the glider as a car turned the corner and came into the street. She got to her feet, and moved quickly out of the light and into the shadows at the end of the porch. The car slowed as it neared the house, and she tensed, ready to move again. It was a jump to the front door, and three quick steps to the alarm. The car turned into the parking area near the house. The headlights went out, the motor went off, and a door slammed. She heard footsteps on the gravel, on the stairs, and a man walked onto the porch. He was also in shadow. He stopped, looked around, and said cautiously, "Is there someone here?"

"I'm sorry," said Snake. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Where are you?"

"At the end of the porch." She stayed in the shadows.

"What are you doing here?"

"Who wants to know?"

The man laughed softly. "Take it easy, I didn't mean it that way."

"I'm new here. I moved in this morning."

"I see. I live here, too. I'm Julio Ramirez. And you?"