"A Mr. Ventura called, please call him in his room."

Hawk smiled and shot me with his forefinger.

Julius had several rooms in another wing, without a view of the volcano. I wondered if he knew he was not A list. Hard to be sure.

There might be people closer to the volcano than I, who thought I wasn't A list. His suite was bigger than mine, though it was smaller than Delaware. A fat guy named Steve, whom I knew slightly, let us into the living room. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a Glock 9mm on his right hip. There were four other men in the living room, all in shirtsleeves, all with guns. One of them was Jackie, Shirley's driver. I nodded at him. He nodded back. A pump shotgun lay across a hassock near the couch. The remnants of lunch littered the coffee table and the bar top, and spilled off the rollaway room service table. A bottle of red wine stood on an end table.

"Julius was looking for us," I said.

Hawk stepped to the side of the doorway and leaned on the wall again. There was nothing specific about the way he leaned but somehow it projected menace.

"He's in with the missus," Steve said.

"She's pretty shook up about Shirley."

"Probably is," I said.

"Can you let him know we're here?"

Steve went into one of the bedrooms, and stayed a moment. The four men in the room looked at Hawk and at me. No one said anything. Steve came out of the bedroom.

"Julius says come in."

Hawk and I went past him into the room. There was an old woman dressed in black lying on the bed with her shoes on. The shoes were black. Julius sat on the bed beside her. There was a plastic ice bucket full of water on the bedside table. Julius wet a face cloth in the ice bucket and wrung it out and wiped his wife's face with it. Her face, even refreshed with the cold water, was pale, and her eyes were puffy. She had thick eyebrows and a thick prominent nose. Her hands rested on her stomach below her bosom and her thick fingers were moving rosary beads through them, though she gave no outward sign of prayer.

"She don't want me to leave her," Julius said.

"Here is fine," I said.

The woman opened her eyes and looked at Hawk and me, without much focus.

"I don't know you," she said.

Ventura said softly, "They work for me, Iris."

"The colored man, too?"

"Yes."

"Did you know Shirley?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"She's dead, you know."

"I know," I said.

"I'm sorry."

"Did you know her?" she said to Hawk.

"Yes, Ma'am," Hawk said.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Yes," she said.

"It is a loss."

We were quiet. The old woman closed her eyes again and in a moment tears began to seep from under the lids. Sitting beside her, Julius wiped her face again with the wet face cloth Then he put the cloth back into the ice water and picked up her hand and held it and patted it with his other hand.

"We come to bring her home," Julius said to me.

"You know who did it?"

His voice was a deep slow rumble, like a subway train passing far below the surface.

"No," I said.

"Hawk?"

"No," Hawk said.

"You know where Anthony Meeker is?"

"Yes," I said.

"Tell Stevie," Julius said.

"Then go home."

"Can we talk?" I said.

"Nothing to talk about," Julius said.

"Yeah, there is."

"No," Julius said.

"I don't know if it was him actually put his hands on her. But he ran off on her. She wouldn't have been out here, he hadn't run off on her. She wouldn't be gone."

He slowly patted his wife's hand as he spoke.

"Did you know he has some kind of game going with Marty Anaheim?"

"He did, he didn't, don't matter. That's business, this is blood.

You understand anything?"

"You don't know the game between him and Marty?" I said.

The old woman on the bed opened her eyes. Her voice scraped harshly out between her thin bluish lips.

"Don't talk business, my daughter's in the morgue."

"No, Iris," Julius said.

"No business."

"Only business is killing him," she said.

"Yes," Julius said, still holding her hand, still patting it.

I looked at Hawk. He shook his head. I nodded.

"We'll find him anyway," Julius said.

"Save us a little time, you tell Stevie."

"Sure," I said.

"I'll pay you through today," Julius said.

"Tell Stevie, he'll give you cash."

"Sure."

"No more business, Julius," Iris said.

"Kill him."

He reached across and closed her eyes gently with his fingertips.

"Try to sleep," he said.

Hawk and I left the room. In the living room I spoke to Steve.

He took $100 bills from a suitcase in the closet and gave some to me. I folded it once and put the money in my pants pocket without counting it, and we left.

CHAPTER 26

On the phone Susan's voice had the same quality of promise that it had in person.

"I talked to a policeman from Las Vegas on the phone. He wanted to know if you were with me the night before I left."

"Yeah. They found Shirley Ventura dead with one of my business cards near her."

"My God! I told them the truth on the assumption that had you wished otherwise, you'd have gotten to me first."

"Honesty is the best policy," I said.

"Usually," Susan said.

"When are you coming home?"

"Why is it," I said, "that the simplest question, about the most ordinary subject, when you ask it comes freighted with the hint of God knows what excitement?"

"Perhaps it has to do with the auditor, more than the utterer."

"Utterer?"

"I have a Ph.D.," Susan said.

"Of course you do," I said.

"You think I'm projecting?"

"Yes. All I said was, "When are you coming home?" "And the possibilities I hear implied are me not you."

"Certainly. When are you coming home?"

"Well, as of yesterday I'm on my own. Julius paid me off."

"So now you have no client."

"True."

"But…?"

"Well, Julius blames Anthony for Shirley's death and plans to kill him. And Marty Anaheim's in town, and may want to kill Anthony. Might want to kill Bibi too."

"Bibi?"

"Anaheim's wife; she's here with Anthony."

"Oh my."

"Yeah. And there's something else going on, in the background, that I don't quite get."

"Do you think Anthony killed his wife?"

"Killing was pretty brutal. Raped and strangled by hand, left naked with no ID in a vacant lot."

"And you don't think Anthony's capable of that?"

"Doesn't seem his style."

"Still it sounds like a crime of anger. Rape and manual strangulation."

"Or a crime made to look like that."

"By whom?"

"Anytime there's a brutal crime and Marty Anaheim is around, it's worth thinking he might have done it."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"But you don't want to come home not knowing?"

"No."