They drove the twelve-block length of Main Street, crossed the broad but shallow river, turned around before the road ran into the hills south into Pennsylvania, and drove back up the length of town again, making two detours to explore the side streets where Highway 305 ran into Highway 16 near the downtown. When he reached the north edge of town again, Kurtz made a U-turn through a gas station and said, "Notice anything?"

"Yeah," said Rigby, still watching Kurtz carefully as if he might get violent at any moment. "There was a Lexus and a Mercedes dealership along the main drag. Not bad for a town of… what did the sign say?"

"Twenty-one thousand four hundred and twelve," said Kurtz.

"Yeah. And there's something else about the old downtown…" She paused.

"No empty stores," said Kurtz. "No boarded-up buildings. No 'for lease' signs. No state employment and unemployment offices in empty buildings." The economy in Buffalo and around Western New York had been hurting long before the recent recession, and residents just got used to defunct businesses, empty buildings, and the omnipresent state unemployment outlets. Downtown Neola had looked prosperous and scrubbed.

"What the hell is the economy here?" said Rigby.

"As far as I know, the Major's South-East Asia Trading Company is the biggest employer with about two thousand people working for them," said Kurtz. "But not only the old Victorian homes off Main here were all spruced up and painted, fresh trim colors, but that trailer park down by the river had new F-150 pickups and Silverados parked by the mobile homes. Even the poor people in Neola seem to be doing all right."

"You don't miss much," said Rigby.

He glanced at her. "You don't either. Did you notice a place we could grab an early lunch or late breakfast?"

"There was that fancy Victorian house called The Library on the hill before the river," said Rigby. "Families in church clothes and ladies in hats going in."

"I was thinking a greasy spoon where people might talk to us," said Kurtz. "Or a bar."

Rigby sighed. "It's Sunday, so the bars are closed. But there was a diner next to the train tracks back there."

The locals didn't rush over to talk to them, or even seem to take notice of them, during their late-breakfast, early-lunch diner meal—except for some kids in a nearby booth who kept staring at Kurtz's bruised eyes and bandaged head and giggling—but the coffee and food helped his headache and Rigby quit looking at him as if worried he was about to strangle her.

"Why did you really want to come to Neola?" the detective said at last. She was eating lunch; Kurtz was eating a big breakfast. "Are you planning to visit Major O'Toole at his home here? You want me along to make sure it doesn't get out of control? He used to be Special Forces in Vietnam, you know. He may be almost seventy and in a wheelchair, but he probably could still kick your ass."

"I don't even know where he lives," said Kurtz. It was true. He hadn't taken time to look it up.

"I do," said Rigby. "But I'm not going to tell you, and I doubt if any of these good people would either." She nodded toward the people eating in the loud diner and others hurrying by outside. The wind was blowing light rain. "Most of them probably get their paychecks from the Major's and Colonel's SEATCO in one way or the other."

Kurtz shrugged. "The Major isn't why I'm here. At least not directly." He told her about Peg O'Toole's question about amusement parks, described the photographs of the abandoned park on a hilltop, and shared Arlene's information about Cloud Nine, and about the Major's kid shooting up the local high school thirty years earlier.

"Yeah, when I learned about the kid dying in the Rochester asylum fire, I had some people look into it," said Rigby. "I thought that might be why you're down here. Do you seriously think the Major might have had someone shoot his own niece?" Kurtz shrugged again.

"What would the motive be?" asked Rigby. Her brown eyes held a steady gaze on him over her coffee cup. "Drugs? Heroin?"

Kurtz worked hard not to react, even by so much as a blink. "Why do you say that? What do drugs have to do with anything here?"

It was Rigby King's turn to shrug. "Parole Officer O'Toole's old man, the cop, was killed in a drug bust a few years ago, you know."

"Yeah. So?"

"And Major O'Toole's company, SEATCO, has been under suspicion from the Feds for several years as being a Southern New York, western Pennsylvania heroin supplier. The DEA and FBI think that he and his old Vietnamese buddies have been shipping more than Buddha statues and objects of art from Vietnam and Thailand and Cambodia the last twenty-five years or so."

Bingo, thought Kurtz. He couldn't believe he'd found the connection this easily. And he couldn't believe that Gonzaga and Farino Ferrara didn't know about this. He squinted at Rigby. "Why are you telling me this?"

She smiled her Cathy Rigby smile at him. "It's classified information, Joe. Only a handful of us at the department knows anything about it. Kemper and I were briefed by the Feds only last week, because of the O'Toole shooting."

"All the more reason to ask you why you're telling me this," said Kurtz. "You suddenly on my side here, Rigby?"

"Fuck your side," she said and set down the coffee cup. "I'm a cop, remember? Believe it or not, I want to solve Peg O'Toole's shooting as much as you do. Especially if it ties in with rumors we're hearing of junkies and heroin users disappearing in Lackawanna and elsewhere."

Again, Kurtz didn't blink or allow a facial muscle to twitch. He said, "Well, for now, I just want to find whether this Cloud Nine is real or not. Any suggestions?"

"We could drive through the hills around town," said Rigby. "Look for roller coasters or Ferris wheels or something sticking up above the bare trees."

"I have to be back in Buffalo tonight," said Kurtz. To meet a woman coming across the Canadian border and ask her why her fiancé shot me. "Have any smarter suggestions?"

"We could go to the library," said Rigby. "Small town librarians know everything."

"It's Sunday," said Kurtz. "Library's closed."

"Well, I could wander into the Neola police department or sheriff's office, flash my badge, and say I was following up on a tip and ask them about Cloud Nine," said Rigby.

Kurtz was getting more and more suspicious about all this helpful assistance. He said, "Who will I be? Your partner?"

"You'll be absent," said Rigby. She dug out money for the check. "You go into the local sheriff's office with those raccoon eyes or wearing those sunglasses, with your scalp all carved up like that, they'll throw us both in jail on general principles."

"All right. Shall I meet you back at the car in an hour?"

"Give me ninety minutes," said Rigby. "I have to go find a doughnut place open. You don't go ask local cops for help, even on directions, without bearing gifts."

They'd noticed the green signs for the police station, only a block east of Main, and Rigby decided to walk. She said that she didn't want to lose all credibility by having someone see her being dropped off in that rusted piece of Ford crap Kurtz was driving. Kurtz watched her disappear around the corner, her short hair still being stirred by the strong wind from the west and her corduroy jacket blowing, and then he opened the Pinto's trunk. The.38 was there, hidden under the spare tire, but that wasn't what he wanted. He pulled the still-sealed pint of Jack Daniel's out of its hiding place and slipped it in the pocket of his leather jacket. Then, pulling his collar up against the gusting wind, he headed off down Main Street in search of a park.

Even in an absurdly prosperous town like Neola, there had to be a place where the winos hung out, and Kurtz found it after about fifteen minutes of walking. The two old men and the stoned boy with long, greasy hair were sitting down by the river on a stretch of dirt and grass out of sight of the park's jogging path. The men were working on a bottle of Thunderbird and they squinted suspiciously as Kurtz settled himself on a nearby stump. Their eyes grew a film of greediness over the suspicion when he took out the sealed pint. Only the greediness disappeared when Kurtz said that he wanted to talk and.passed the pint over.