“Miss Finley teaching?” I asked sharply.

Alicia looked guilty but defiant. “Yes. Two-thirty class. Look. The critical thing is to get those diskettes back. I called Tom, explained it to him. Told him I’d try to help him raise the money but that we couldn’t let the Chinese have those things. He agreed, so he’s bringing them out here.”

The room rocked slightly around me. “No. I know you don’t have much of a sense of humor, but this is a joke, isn’t it?”

She didn’t understand. Wouldn’t understand that if the Chinese had already left the country, Tom no longer had the material. That if Tom was coming here, she was the scapegoat. At last, despairing, I said, “Where is he meeting you? Here?”

“I told him I’d be at the pool.”

“Will you do one thing my way? Will you go to Miss Finley’s class and conjugate verbs for forty-five minutes and let me meet him at the pool? Please?”

At last, her jaw set stubbornly, she agreed. She still wouldn’t let me call the bureau, though. “Not until I’ve talked to Tom myself. It may all be a mistake, you know.”

We both knew it wasn’t, but I saw her into the Latin class without making the phone call I knew it was my duty to make and returned to the pool. Driving out the two students still splashing around in the water, I put signs on the locker room doors saying the water was contaminated and there would be no swimming until further notice.

I turned out the lights and settled in a corner of the room remote from the outside windows to wait. And go over and over the story in my mind. I believed it. Was I fooling myself? Was that why she wouldn’t call the Feds?

At last Tom came in through the boys’ locker room entrance. “Allie? Allie?” His voice bounced off the high rafters and echoed around me. I was well back in the shadows, my Smith & Wesson in hand; he didn’t see me.

After half a minute or so another man joined him. I didn’t recognize the stranger, but his baggy clothes marked him as part of Smollensk’s group, not the bureau. He talked softly to Tom for a minute. Then they went into the girls’ locker room together.

Whey they returned, I had moved part way up the side of the pool, ready to follow them if they went back into the main part of the high school looking for Alicia.

“Tom!” I called. “It’s V. I. Warshawski. I know the whole story. Give me the diskettes.”

“Warshawski!” he yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I sensed rather than saw the movement his friend made. I shot at him and dived into the water. His bullet zipped as it hit the tiles where I’d been standing. My wet clothes and my sore shoulder made it hard to move. Another bullet hit the water by my head, and I went under again, fumbling with my heavy jacket, getting it free, surfacing, hearing Alicia’s sharp, “Tom, why are you shooting at Vic? Stop it now. Stop it and give me back the diskettes.”

Another flurry of shots, this time away from me, giving me a chance to get to the side of the pool, to climb out. Alicia lay on the floor near the door to the girls’ locker room. Tom stood silently by. The gunman was jamming more bullets into his gun.

As fast as I could in my sodden clothes I lumbered to the hit man, grabbing his arm, squeezing, feeling blood start to seep from my shoulder, stepping on his instep, putting all the force of my body into my leg. Tom, though, Tom was taking the gun from him. Tom was going to shoot me.

“Drop that gun, Tom Dauphine.” It was Miss Finley. Years of teaching in a tough school gave creditable authority to her; Tom dropped the gun.

VI

Alicia lived long enough to tell the truth to the FBI. It was small comfort to me. Small consolation to see Tom’s statement. He hoped he could get Smollensk to kill his sister before she said anything. If that happened, he had a good gamble on her dying a traitor in everyone’s eyes-after all, her designs were gone, and her name was in Smollensk’s files. Maybe the truth never would have come out. Worth a gamble to a betting man.

The Feds arrived about five minutes after the shooting stopped. They’d been watching Tom, just not closely enough. They were sore that they’d let Alicia get shot. So they dumped some charges on me-obstructing federal authorities, not telling them where Alicia was, not calling as soon as I had the truth from her, God knows what else. I spent several days in jail. It seemed like a suitable penance, just not enough of one.

THE MALTESE CAT

I

HER VOICE ON the phone had been soft and husky, with just a whiff of the South laid across it like a rare perfume. “I’d rather come to your office; I don’t want people in mine to know I’ve hired a detective.”

I’d offered to see her at her home in the evening-my Spartan office doesn’t invite client confidences. But she didn’t want to wait until tonight, she wanted to come today, almost at once, and no, she wouldn’t meet me in a restaurant. Far too hard to talk, and this was extremely personal.

“You know my specialty is financial crime, don’t you?” I asked sharply.

“Yes, that’s how I got your name. One o’clock, fourth floor of the Pulteney, right?” And she’d hung up without telling me who she was.

An errand at the County building took me longer than I’d expected; it was close to one-thirty by the time I got back to the Pulteney. My caller’s problem apparently was urgent: she was waiting outside my office door, tapping one high heel impatiently on the floor as I trudged down the hall in my running shoes.

“Ms. Warshawski! I thought you were standing me up.”

“No such luck,” I grunted, opening my office door for her.

In the dimly lit hall she’d just been a slender silhouette. Under the office lights the set of the shoulders and signature buttons told me her suit had come from the hands of someone at Chanel. Its blue enhanced the cobalt of her eyes. Soft makeup hid her natural skin tones-I couldn’t tell if that dark red hair was natural, or merely expertly painted.

She scanned the spare furnishings and picked the cleaner of my two visitor chairs. “My time is valuable, Ms. Warshawski. If I’d known you were going to keep me waiting without a place to sit I would have finished some phone calls before walking over here.”

I’d dressed in jeans and a work shirt for a day at the Recorder of Deeds office. Feeling dirty and outclassed made me grumpy. “You hung up without giving me your name or number, so there wasn’t much I could do to let you know you’d have to stand around in your pointy little shoes. My time’s valuable, too. Why don’t you tell me where the fire is so I can start putting it out.”

She flushed. When I turn red I look blotchy, but in her it only enhanced her makeup. “It’s my sister.” The whiff of Southern increased. “Corinne. She’s run off to Ja-my ex-husband, and I need someone to tell her to come back.”

I made a disgusted face. “I can’t believe I raced back from the County building to listen to this. It’s not 1890, you know. She may be making a mistake but presumably she can sort it out for herself.”

Her flush darkened. “I’m not being very clear. I’m sorry. I’m not used to having to ask for things. My sister-Corinne-she’s only fourteen. She’s my ward. I’m sixteen years older than she is. Our parents died three years ago and she’s been living with me since then. It’s not easy, not easy for either of us. Moving from Mobile to here was just the beginning. When she got here she wanted to run around, do all the things you can’t do in Mobile.”

She waved a hand to indicate what kinds of things those might be. “She thinks I’m a tough bitch and that I was too hard on my ex-husband. She’s known him since she was three and he was a big hero. She couldn’t see he’d changed. Or not changed, just not had the chance to be heroic anymore in public. So when she took off two days ago I assumed she went there. He’s not answering his phone or the doorbell. I don’t know if they’ve left town or he’s just playing possum or what. I need someone who knows how to get people to open their doors and knows how to talk to people. At least if I could see Corinne I might-I don’t know.”