Neither of us spoke. The coffeemaker muttered. Rikki continued to hug herself and stare at nothing. The coffeemaker subsided, and I got up and poured some.

"Milk?" I said.

"Sugar?"

"Milk," she said in a small voice.

"Two sugars."

I brought her coffee, placed it on the edge of my desk in front of her. I took mine and went around and sat down again. She picked up the coffee cup with both hands and sipped some coffee.

Her lipstick made a bright crescent on the edge of her cup.

"I don't know who else," she said.

"Un huh," I said.

"There's no one I can trust."

I nodded.

She sipped her coffee again and raised her eyes from the cup and looked straight at me for the first time since I'd arrived.

"Can I trust you?" she said.

"Yeah," I said.

"You can."

"My husband's gone."

"Gone?"

"They've taken him. I know he's dead."

She drank some more coffee, holding the mug with both hands carefully. The mail I had come to check was in a pile on the floor near the mail slot.

"Tell me about it," I said.

Rikki pressed the coffee mug against her cheek as if warming herself.

"My husband always stayed in his office at the restaurant until ten o'clock. Then he would have one scotch and soda at the bar, and come home. Two of the boys would drive him."

"Death Dragon boys?"

"Yes. Last night he did not come home at ten. I called his office. There was no answer. I called the restaurant. My husband had left early, alone. He told the boys to wait there for him, that he would be back. The boys were still there waiting. He did not come back."

"Why do you think he's dead?"

She shrugged.

"If he were not, he would have come home. They have killed him."

"Who?"

"They. The people my husband did business with."

"Do you know any names?" I said.

She shrugged again.

"I did not know about my husband's business. It was not my place to know. But it was a business where a person could be killed."

"Have you been to the police?" I said.

"No. I do not trust the police."

"Why not?"

Rikki shook her head.

"I do not trust them," she said.

"But you trust me," I said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I do not know," she said.

"But I do."

I was hoping for a bigger endorsement than that, but one takes what's there.

"How about the Dragons?"

"I don't trust them either."

I nodded.

"Would you like me to come up to Port City with you," I said, "and help you find your husband?"

"Yes."

I nodded. So much for checking the mail. Or looking for Jocelyn. Now I could look for Lonnie. I wondered if his disappearance had to do with Jocelyn's disappearance. Maybe they were sitting in a motel room together, pretending to be kidnapped. This wasn't working like it was supposed to. The more I investigated, the more I learned, the less I understood. I was having trouble even keeping track of who my client was. Was I working for Christopholous, or the Port City Theater Company, or Jocelyn Colby, or Rikki Wu?

Or Susan? Since no one was paying me it was kind of hard to be sure.

"Okay," I said.

"Let me make a call."

I pulled the telephone over and called Hawk.

"Who we been looking for?" I said.

"Jocelyn?"

"Yeah."

"And there someone there so you being cagey."

"Yeah. I think things are not as they appear to be. I think the person is in a motel in the area. Voluntarily."

"She faked it?"

"Yeah."

"So she be in a motel under her own name," Hawk said. "

"Less she got lot of cash."

"Un huh. You and Vinnie see you can find her," I said.

"She could be with somebody else," Hawk said.

"If she is, find them too," I said.

"Don't do anything. Just locate her and let me know."

"Sure. You going to the movies?"

"Lonnie Wu is missing," I said.

"His wife is here in the office.

I'm going to help her find him."

Hawk was silent for a long moment on the phone.

"Maybe Lonnie with Jocelyn," he said after a while.

"Maybe so," I said.

Hawk was quiet again.

Then he said, "This the silliest thing you ever got me involved in."

"Without question," I said.

"Maybe the Death Dragons won't bother you," Hawk said.

"You with Mrs. Wu."

"I'm not worried about the Death Dragons," I said.

"At least I know where I stand with them."

"No small thing," Hawk said, "in Port City."

CHAPTER 47

It was the gang kids that found Lonnie Wu. In the bird-watching pavilion out across the causeway on Brant Island Road, where I had stood in the darkness watching the ghostly Asians immigrating.

When Rikki and I got there, only two of them were around, leaning against a black Firebird with chrome pipes and silver wings painted on the hood. Neither one looked old enough to drive.

They spoke to Rikki in Chinese and nodded toward the pavilion.

She took my arm as we walked toward it.

Lonnie was there. Crumpled in the corner, his back propped against the low railing, his feet stuck straight out in front of him, his argyle socks looking forlorn. You don't have to have seen many corpses to know one when you see one. I heard Rikki's breath go in sharply and felt her hand tighten on my arm.

"No need to look," I said.

She didn't answer, but we kept going until we were standing right above him, looking down. He was facing west, his back to the ocean, and the early afternoon sun hit him full in the face. Before Lonnie died, someone had beaten hell out of him. His nose was broken, one eye was closed. His lip was so swollen it had turned inside out, and several of his teeth were missing. There was dark blood soaked into the front of his shirt. Rikki stared down at him for a moment, then turned away and pressed her face against my chest. I put my arm around her. Several herring gulls swept in on the wind and settled on the pilings of the causeway, reorganizing their feathers as they landed. Road kill was road kill to them. They didn't make fine distinctions.

"Do you have a friend that you could stay with?" I said to Rikki Wu.

With her face still pressed against my chest, she shook her head no.

"Family?"

"My brother will come."

"Okay," I said.

"I'll ask you to sit in the car for a minute or two and then we'll go back together."

She made no reply, but she didn't resist when I turned her and walked back to the Mustang. The two kids looked at me blankly.

They made no finer distinctions than the gulls.

"Either one of you speak English?" I said.

The smaller of the two wore an oversized Chicago Bulls jacket.

He smiled widely. The other one, taller but just as frail, with his long hair blown forward by the wind, showed no expression at all.

"Dandy," I said and went back up the causeway. I heard the doors open and close on the Firebird and then it started up and roared away. Who could blame them. No reason to hang around.

They didn't work for Lonnie Wu anymore.