"The volcano's due to go off again in fifteen minutes."

She smiled the smile at me, the one that could launch a thousand ships and burn the topless towers of Ilium. She walked slowly toward me.

"So are you," she said.

CHAPTER 19

The next morning Hawk joined us for breakfast.

"Where's Anthony?" Susan said.

"Never comes down till noon," Hawk said.

"He play till four fifteen this morning."

"Poor thing," Susan said.

"It's only seven-thirty. You must be exhausted."

"We don't get tired, Missy," Hawk said.

"Just sing some songs, and keep on picking cotton. Little guy in the hat getting kinda frazzled though."

Bob, the waiter, brought Susan one pancake with honey. Hawk and I had steak and eggs. I had some decaf.

"Why do they just keep watching him," Susan said.

"Why doesn't somebody act?"

"My guess is it's because he's winning," I said.

"If the little guy is watching him for Julius, or Gino, or Marty, or any combination thereof, they want their money back. Figure they'll wait until he wins as much as he can."

"And he'll start to lose eventually, won't he?" Susan said.

"Don't know his system, but Lennie Seltzer tells me he's a loser.

And everything I know about him supports it."

I was finished with my breakfast. Hawk was eating his last piece of toast. Susan poured another gram of honey onto her pancake and took a second bite.

"You got a view on losers?" Hawk said to Susan.

"You mean once you've eliminated stupidity and bad luck?"

"Which is eliminating big," Hawk said.

He sipped some of his coffee. It reeked of caffeine.

"With many people for whom gambling is an obsession, there's a lot of guilt," Susan said.

"They know it's obsessive, and destructive. They see it as a vice. And they are angry with themselves for doing it."

"Like alcoholics," Hawk said.

Susan nodded.

"Yes, and as is sometimes the case with alcoholics, the vice becomes its own punishment."

"So they gamble 'cause they have to, and lose to punish themselves," Hawk said.

"Something like that," Susan said.

"Sometimes."

"If you right, and Lennie Seltzer right, and we right, Anthony bound to lose and when he start to lose they may just whack him."

"Who?" I said.

"Find out when he starts to lose," Hawk said.

"I was hoping for prior to," I said.

"You seen any sign of the woman he's registered with?"

"Nope. Stays in the room as far as I can tell. Eats off the room service menu. She goes out she does it when I'm watching Anthony."

"Seems kind of odd," I said.

"It do," Hawk said.

"No trips to the blackjack tables to cheer on her man? No expeditions to the Fashion Mall?"

"Unthinkable," Susan said. She had already finished half her pancake.

"I guess she didn't want to be seen," I said.

"By whom?" Hawk said.

"We the only ones watching, until Panama Hattie showed up."

"Maybe after we go to the airport I'll take a look into that a little."

"Toward that eventuality," Hawk said, lengthening the initial e, "ah has acquired us a key."

He handed it to me and I put it in my shirt pocket.

Bob appeared with the check.

"You want to chahge it to your room?" he said.

"Or put it on a credit cahd."

All three of us looked at him simultaneously. A song of home.

"You from Boston?" I said.

"Yeah, Dawchestah. How'd you know?"

"A wild guess," I said.

When I signed the check, I overtipped Bob because he talked right.

Hawk and I drank the rest of our coffee, caffeinated and decaffeinated. Susan finished all but two bites of her pancake, and it was time for the airport.

Lester was waiting out front. Susan was wearing her jonquil jacket, and carrying her makeup bag as we got into the Lincoln.

The little guy with the Panama hat was nowhere in sight. No Buick Regals followed us to the airport.

"What happened to all the luggage you brought out?" I said.

"Plus the stuff you bought?"

"The hotel is shipping it for me," Susan said. The hint of a triumphant smirk played at the corners of her mouth.

"Boy," I said, "now if they could just do that with sexual gratification."

"Yes," Susan said.

On the backseat of the Lincoln was a newsprint magazine titled Boobs-Are-Us. I picked it up. The cover featured a woman with a chest appropriate to the title. She had blonde hair and a lot of dark eye makeup and she had her tongue sort of half stuck out. Two pink telephones concealed her nipples.

"Tasteful," Susan said.

There was a phone number to call and a picture of a Visa card and a MasterCard, presumably so you could call the blonde right up on the phone and charge it. I looked through the magazine. It consisted of a series of pictures of seminude women, many with the perennially popular little hearts pasted in crucial spots. Each picture had a brief sales pitch, like "shy but sweet" or "nude and naughty." With each there was a telephone number.

"I like the ad for hot sexy feet," I said.

"I figured you for that," Lester said.

"All these years," Susan said, "I've been wasting time on nudity."

"What happens if you call these folks," I said to Lester.

"Besides the chilling effect on our relationship," Susan said.

"Prostitution is legal in Nevada," Lester said.

"But it's on a county by county basis. It's not legal in Clark County, where Vegas is, so you pay a hundred bucks for a girl to come to your room, get naked, and give you a massage. You want more you make a private deal with the girl. If she wants to. Or I can take you about an hour down the road, next county, and you get it legal in a whorehouse.

That's why I have the magazines. People ask about the girls and I can steer them to the brothels."

"Maybe later," I said.

Susan made a sound that in someone less elegant would have been a grunt.

"Well, keep it in mind," Lester said.

"I get a nice commission on that."

He pulled the car up in front of the airport.

"I'll be here," he said.

I walked with Susan through the brief wedge of dry heat into the air-conditioned terminal. We went along the concourse past the people on their way home desperately trying to recoup with one last dollar in one last slot until we got to the security gate.

"Did anyone follow us out here?" she said.

"No. Once they located Anthony they jilted me," I said.

"That would suggest that it was Anthony they were looking for."

"Yes."

"Do you think he's in danger?"

"Hawk's with him," I said.

"I wish you knew if there were danger, where the danger was coming from," Susan said.

"Where's the fun in that?" I said.

We stood silently for a moment. Then Susan put her arms around me.

"I love you," she said.

"There's a certainty," I said.

"Maybe the only one."

"Maybe the only one necessary," I said.

She nodded as if I'd said a smart thing and smiled up at me.