"Paola? Is she his daughter?"

"Yeah. You know her?"

"We've met. How do you happen to know her?"

"I met her at a party in the barrio. She told me her mother was part Spanish and part Indian. Paola's a beautiful woman, don't you think? I love those Spanish types."

She hunched her shoulders and rubbed her palms together as if she were warming herself at Paola's heat.

I drove back to Santa Teresa and paid a visit to the morgue in the basement of the hospital. A young deputy coroner named Henry Purvis, whom I knew, told me that Jacob Whitmore had drowned while swimming. He pulled out a drawer and showed me the blue body with its massive hairy head and shrunken sex. I walked out of the cold room shivering.

XI

As if he were feeling lonely, the deputy coroner, Purvis, followed me into the anteroom, letting the heavy metal door swing shut behind him. He was almost as hairy as the dead man, and almost young enough to be his son.

I said, "Is there any official doubt that Whitmore died by accident?"

"I don't think so. He was getting too old for the kind of surf they have at Sycamore Point. The coroner put it down as an accident. He hasn't even ordered an autopsy."

"I think he should, Henry."

"Do you have a reason?"

"Whitmore and Grimes had a business connection. It's probably not a coincidence that they're in here together. Of course there'll be an autopsy on Grimes, won't there?"

Purvis nodded. "It's set for first thing in the morning. But I did a preliminary examination, and I can tell them what the probable results will be. He was beaten to death with a heavy weapon, probably a tire iron."

"The weapon hasn't been found?"

"Not that I know of. You should ask the police. The weapon is their department." He looked me over carefully. "Did you know Grimes?"

"Not really. I knew he was an art dealer in town."

"Was he an addict at one time?" Purvis said.

"I didn't know him that well. What kind of addiction do you have in mind?"

"Heroin, probably. He's got old needle marks on his arms and thighs. I asked the woman about them, but she wouldn't talk. The way she blew her top, she may be an addict herself. There's a lot of it around, even right in the hospital here."

"What woman are we talking about?"

"Dark woman-Spanish type. When I showed her the body, she did everything but climb the wall. I put her in the chapel and tried to call a priest for her but I couldn't raise one, not at this time of night. I called the police, and they want to talk to her."

I asked him where the chapel was. It was a narrow little room on the first floor, with a single small stained-glass window denoting its function. It was furnished with a lectern and eight or ten padded chairs. Paola was sitting on the floor head down, hugging her knees, her black hair almost covering her face. She was hiccuping. When I approached her, she raised a bent arm over her head as if I might be planning to murder her.

"Get away from me."

"I won't hurt you, Paola."

She tossed back her mane of hair and stared at me narrow-eyed, without recognition. She had an aura of fierce forlorn sexuality. "You're no priest."

"You can say that again."

I sat near her on the carpeted floor, which repeated the design of the stained-glass window. There were times when I almost wished I was a priest. I was growing weary of other people's pain and wondered if a black suit and a white collar might serve as armor against it. I'd never know. My grandmother in Contra Costa County had marked me for the priesthood, but I had slipped away under the fence.

Looking into Paola's opaque black eyes, I thought that the grief you shared with women was most always partly desire. At least sometimes you could take them to bed, I thought, and exchange a temporary kindness, which priests were denied. But not Paola. Both she and the woman at Sycamore Point belonged to dead men tonight. Chapel thoughts.

"What happened to Paul?" I asked her.

She looked at me with her chin on her shoulder, her lower lip protruding, her eyes defensive. "You haven't told me who you are. Are you a policeman?"

"No. I run a small business." I winced at the half-lie; the chapel was getting to me. "I heard that Paul was in the market for pictures."

"Not any more. He's dead."

"Aren't you going to carry on the business?"

She raised her shoulders and shook her head fiercely, as if she were being violently threatened. "Not me. You think I want to be killed like my father was?"

"Was Paul really your father?"

"Yes, he was."

"Who killed him?"

"I'm not saying. You're not saying much, either." She leaned toward me. "Didn't you come into the shop today?"

"Yes."

"It was something about the Biemeyers' picture, wasn't it? What kind of business are you in? Are you a dealer?"

"I'm interested in pictures."

"I can see that. But whose side are you on?"

"The good guys."

"There are no good guys. If you don't know that, you're no use to me." She rose on her knees and swept her arm between us in a gesture of angry dismissal. "So why don't you get lost?"

"I want to help you." It wasn't entirely a lie.

"Sure you do. You want to help me. Then you want me to help you. Then you want to take the profits and run. That's the story, isn't it?"

"What profits? All you've got is a double handful of grief."

She was silent for a while. Her eyes stayed on my face. Through them I could sense the movements of her mind almost as tangibly as if she were playing chess or checkers on a board, asking herself what she had to lose to me in order to take a greater amount away.

"I admit I'm in trouble." She turned her hands palms upward on her knees, as if to offer me a share of her grief. "Only I think you're worse trouble. Who are you, anyway?"

I told her my name and what I did for a living. Her eyes changed but she didn't speak. I told her that the Biemeyers had hired me to find their stolen painting.

"I don't know anything about it. I told you that this afternoon at the shop."

"I believe you," I said with a mental reservation. "The point is that the theft of the painting and the killing of your father may be connected."

"How do you know that?"

"I don't know it, but it seems likely. Where did that painting come from, Miss Grimes?"

She winced. "Just call me Paola. I never use my father's name. And I can't tell you where he got the picture. He just used me for front; he never told me his business."

"You can't tell me, or you won't?"

"Both."

"Was the picture genuine?"

"I don't know." She was silent for an interval, during which she hardly seemed to breathe. "You say you want to help me, but all you do is ask questions. I'm supposed to supply the answers. How does it help me if I talk myself into jail?"

"Your father might have been better off in jail."

"Maybe you're right. But I don't want to end up there. Or in a hole in the ground, either." Her gaze was restless and inward, lost in the convolutions of her mind. "You think whoever painted that picture killed my father, too."

"That may be true. I have a feeling it is."

She said in a thin voice, "Is Richard Chantry still alive?"

"He may be. What makes you think he is?"

"That picture. I'm no expert like my father was, but it looked like a Chantry to me, the real McCoy."

"What did your father say about it?"

"I'm not telling you. And I don't want to talk about that picture any more. You're still asking all the questions, and I'm doing all the answering, and I'm tired. I want to go home."

"Let me take you."

"No. You don't know where I live, and I'm not telling you, either. That's my secret."

She got up from her knees, staggering a little. I supported her with my arm. Her breast touched my side. She leaned on me, breathing deeply for a moment, then pulled away. Some of her heat migrated through my body to my groin. I felt less tired than I had.