I haven't seen him before.

Well Jesus Christ this is the face of the guy in the photograph!

You'd better take care, Nicko, she said. Don't kill too many.

Her face hidden by the glare of the flashlight, but I'd caught the scent of patchouli.

'So why did you get in the car?' She was watching my face, too, in the windscreen.

'Which car?'

'This one.'

'I didn't have time,' I said, 'to find a taxi.'

'With Mr Proctor right up your ass!'

'That's right.'

'So what's a Britisher doing over here in God's country, muscling in on the game?'

'It's like calling you an Americaner, which sounds awful, don't you think? A British subject is actually a Briton.'

'You real cool cat,' tossing her head back, laughing, the big gold earrings flashing as they swung. 'So what's a Briton doing over here messing around on our home ground?'

She swung the wheel and gunned up through the intersection with an expertise that I found sexy. 'I work for the Foreign Office in London,' I said, 'and the reason why Nicko intended to kill me was because Proctor had asked your friend Toufexis to put out a contract on me, as you know.'

'Maybe I do, maybe I don't.' Not smiling now.

We were going very carefully, she and I. As far as I knew she worked for Toufexis and looked capable enough of making a hit if I said something wrong, despite her alleged aversion to making judgements. As far as she knew I was opposed to Proctor and Toufexis to the point where they'd put a price on my head.

'Foreign Office,' she said. 'What's that?'

'State Department.'

'See your ID?'

And the tone was unmistakable. I gave her my card.

'Looks authentic,' she said. 'Could even be.'

I took it back. 'You can flash your badge,' I said. 'I won't tell Toufexis.'

'What badge?'

Said it too fast.

Watching me in the windscreen, 'You know what I find so interesting about you? First time I see you, it's in George Proctor's place, visiting. Next thing, he vanishes like a bunny with a bee in his ass. Then you're down there on Quay 19 and Nicko's going to cream you, execution style, which is the only way he knows. Next thing, I see you tonight in that place talking with the highest-paid anchorwoman in the US of A like you knew each other all your lives, when you shoulda been out there in the ocean feeding the sharks. I don't get time to catch my breath before La Cambridge is lying dead on the ground just a hundred feet from where you're standing, just like you were the spotter for those guys, ain't actually saying anything. Then before I can blink you're tooling through the town in a limo with Proctor drilling holes in the bodywork, busy as a riveter. So I find you a very interesting man.'

She used the gear shift, the heavy gold bracelet shimmering in the glow from the facia panel, and we turned again, eastward towards the Bay.

I didn't say anything. I'd had to roll twice on the sidewalk back there and the stitches must have pulled because my shirt was sticking to the wound and the right shoulder was bruised because it had taken the impact but the worst of the shock was over by now and I was beginning to feel the heady lightness that suffuses the organism when it comes to know that life is sweet and that it has not been taken away.

Proctor had come very close to doing that, and it was nice to be driving through the late night streets of this fair city with a pretty little undercover agent of the Miami Police Department.

She was still watching me, and I suppose it would have been rude not to answer.

'One has to keep busy,' I said.

'It's this Foreign Bureau thing I don't get. It doesn't gel with all that.'

'Office.'

'Huh?'

'Foreign Office.'

'Oh, sure, yeah. Maybe intelligence?'

'I was afraid you'd never catch on.'

Proctor knew; Toufexis and the mob knew; it was practically in the papers.

'Okay,' she said in a minute, 'that makes sense.' She turned her head to study me. 'Yeah, you got the look. Mean, hard as a nail, sell your own mother and not for much.' She slipped a slim dark hand into the gold bag on the seat. 'You mean this one?'

'Yes.' A lieutenant, yet.

'Just a bit of gold tin, but I like the life.'

'It suits you. Does he deal? Proctor?'

'No. He smokes crack, that's all. But he's in with Toufexis like you said. We go to your place or mine?'

'Yours.'

'Okay. Fix you some protein. You gotta be feeling hungry after a ride like that. I been there.' I suppose she meant the Corvette thing.

'I can imagine,' I said.

'See, I moved in on Proctor to find out what he was doing. I knew he was in with Toufexis.'

'And Toufexis is your assignment.'

'Absolutely. Pull him in, I pull in the most powerful branch of the mob in Florida, that don't get me captain, nothing can. Proctor, he doesn't deal, no, but tell you this, he's into something bigger than that. Political. And very sophisticated. Like when I move in on him I have to move La Cambridge out, and she's – she was really quite attractive. So what happened, you going to tell me Nicko got a sign from heaven to spare you out there in that boat, or what?'

She'd done a lot of interrogation in her time, been taught how to drop a subject for a while and then snap back to it, catch you by surprise.

'They weren't professionals,' I said.

'You bet your sweet ass they were professionals, man. They -'

'I mean they weren't trained in close combat.'

'Oh, come on. You mean you had a teeny weeny XM-177 assault rifle tucked in your sock and they never frisked you.'

'I never carry a gun.'

She stopped at the lights, hand on the gear shift, her head turned to look at me. 'You never carry a gun. But there were four of those guys out there with -'

'Look,' I said, 'this is very embarrassing. I had some luck, and that's it.'

Watching me, a shimmer of dark eyes between smoky lashes. 'You're really annoyed aren't you?'

'Yes.'

A soft explosion of laughter as the lights changed and she hit the gear shift and took the Mazda away. 'You real, real cool cat!'

Very annoyed cool cat. 'So why didn't you just flash your badge and call the police and get me put into protective custody?'

'Huh? Well see, it's this way. I thought you were a rival dealer horning in on his operation, or maybe you'd stashed away a little bit of Toufexis's merchandise when someone wasn't looking, and normally I don't give a shit if one of those mothers gets in the way of a spray gun, it lightens the load for us and it saves all that bullshit in the courts when we work our ass off for months on end and bring a bunch of those suckers into the court and see some bleeding-heart jury give them an acquittal on all counts and send them whistling on their way, happens all the time. But like I say, the execution thing gets under my skin a little, I mean I like to sleep nights, so I put in my bit for you and tried to cool Nicko off, but that was all I could do because you know what? I flash my badge and he'd have shipped me out there with you on that boat, you better believe me, and if he hadn't done that I'd have blown my cover, and I've been working more than six months getting closer and closer to Toufexis and I would've thrown the whole thing out the window for the sake of one little waterfront dealer, which like I say is what I thought you were, didn't know you were a real live dude in the British Foreign Bureau – sure, Office, right. But then, gee, big deal, you didn't need my help anyway.'

'All the same,' I said, 'it was civil of you.'

'Hey, any time.' White flash of her smile in the windscreen.

She turned again and headed south and started slowing along a street full of waterfront apartment houses.

'That was a Mafia hit?' she asked me. 'Cambridge?'