I told him about Mitch showing up at the coroner’s office.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “Mitch thinks he has special privileges. I guess he does.”

“Your cousin was the one who did the actual talking, I think.”

“My cousin? Eric or Ian?”

“Ian-at least, Lefebvre said it was Ian.”

“Silver streak in his hair?”

“Yes.”

He made a face and gave an exaggerated shudder.

“That bad?”

“Ian and Eric are evil.”

I laughed.

“I’m not joking,” he said.

I was startled by his tone, his seriousness.

The awkwardness that produced was relieved a moment later, when the waiter came back and asked if we wanted dessert or coffee. We both declined, and soon he was back again, presenting the checks, taking our credit cards with thanks and an appearance of sincerity in his pleasure in serving us.

I could see Max fretting as the waiter walked off. “Don’t worry,” I said, “my card won’t be declined.”

He smiled. “I hope someday I’ll be able to make this up to you. You know, that we’ll be able to do something together and it won’t be work for you.” He turned red after he said it.

“Do you have a girlfriend at Dartmouth?” I asked.

“No. Not many girls go to Dartmouth-they just started admitting women six years ago. So there weren’t many in my graduating class. Not many at all in computer science.”

“Oh.”

I was scared to death that he was going to say, “Why do you ask?” But he asked a worse question.

“Did you have a boyfriend in Bakersfield?”

“No,” I said, breaking eye contact. “No…just friends. That’s all.”

“I must have missed that news story,” he said.

I looked back at him. “What?”

“The one about all the guys in Bakersfield suffering from blindness.”

“It’s my charm that allowed them to resist, I’m afraid.”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t go to Bakersfield in what you’d call a receptive mood,” I said.

“Somehow, I sense there’s more to this.”

“There is, but I need to get back to the paper.”

He laughed. “You didn’t come back to Las Piernas in a receptive mood, either, I see. Okay, I won’t pressure you to talk about it.”

The restaurant had become more crowded by the time we left, and the parking lot was full when we stepped outside. Most of the cars were Jags, Mercedes, or BMWs. There was a gaggle of black BMWs parked near the place where we had left Max’s. “Are you going to be able to figure out which one is yours?”

“I’ll have to look at the plates,” he admitted. “Mine will be the one without any yet. But before we do that, let’s go over to the fence-have you ever seen the view from this parking lot? It’s one of the best in Las Piernas.”

He was right. The fence was about waist-high. We could see Catalina Island in the distance, and nearer, sailboats passing the oil islands-man-made islands with oil well drilling rigs on them, the rigs covered and disguised as condos. And beyond, dappled with bright sunlight, a vast expanse of blue-gray sea. The wind brought sea spray and the scent of the ocean up the cliff, and below us breakers roared and hissed.

Max moved a little closer to me, not quite touching me. That inch or so of distance might as well have been the edge of the cliff-tempting and dizzying, but a wise woman would watch her step. I was trying to decide if I would be wise when a deep voice behind us said, “Who have we here?”

He startled the hell out of both of us, and we turned to see a big man who looked enough like the man I had seen at the coroner’s office to allow me to guess who he was. Eric Yeager had no white streak in his hair, and wider shoulders than his younger brother.

“Kyle-no, Max,” he said, stepping closer to Max, even as I stepped away from both of them. “Oh no, wait-we can’t call you that, because Max Ducane is dead.” He grabbed Max’s shirtfront and said, “I know, I’ll just call you cocksucker, since that’s what you are.” He leaned forward, so that Max was bent backward over the rail. I saw Max’s feet leave the ground.

“Let go of me, Eric.”

“ ‘Let go of me, Eric,’” he mimicked. “If I do that, cocksucker, you’ll fall and die. Not a bad idea.”

“That would be a stupid fucking thing to do in front of a newspaper reporter,” I said.

He turned to look at me and narrowed his brows, as if he had just noticed that I was there.

“You’ve got a filthy mouth, bitch,” he said.

“Like you’re Emily Post come to teach me manners.”

“Irene-” Max said. “Don’t.”

Eric continued to stare at me. Almost absently, he pulled Max back onto his feet. He let go of him and took a step toward me. “Maybe I will teach you some manners.”

I took a step back without thinking, then stood my ground. I let the shoulder bag slip off, but kept hold of the straps in my hand. I moved it a little, trying to get a feel for the best use of its weight.

He saw the step back and laughed. “Talk big, but you’re scared, aren’t you?”

“Of your breath,” I said. “You have a different kind of filthy mouth.”

He lunged. I swung the bag up toward his balls as hard as I could.

The bag hit Eric full in the face instead of his family jewels, making a satisfying cracking sound on his nose. I didn’t miss the more vulnerable target because I had aimed badly, but because Eric had already been on his way down to the asphalt. He hit it much harder than I had hit him.

I never saw exactly what it was Max had done to him, but he had moved like lightning.

Eric, in contrast, didn’t move at all.

“I’m almost sorry we aren’t on a date,” I said shakily. “Dragon slayers are so damned rare these days.”

“Come on,” Max said, putting an arm around my shoulders and hurrying me away. “We’d better get out of here.”

“Where did you learn to do that karate or whatever it was?”

“Military boarding schools, remember?”

I glanced back at Eric and saw that he was getting to his feet. I started running toward the car. Max ran, too.

We backed out just as Eric came at us from between parked cars. His face was bleeding down the front of his shirt. For a moment, I thought he was going to step in front of the Beemer, but Max hit the accelerator and Eric had at least enough sense left in him to stay back. We burned rubber out of the parking lot and drove lickety-split down a series of side streets, squealing around turns, braking hard, and narrowly missing objects mobile and immobile.

I don’t know if seconds or minutes passed that way. I do remember thinking that my father might outlive me after all, and worrying about who would take care of him. The things you think of when you are full of adrenaline.

Almost as suddenly as our wild ride began, it ended. Max pulled over to the curb of a suburban street and parked in the shade of a big oak tree. We sat there, listening to the little clicks and small noises of a cooling engine. He rolled the windows down. Birds chirped up in the tree, a soft breeze blew, and I could hear the stutter of a pulsating lawn sprinkler two houses away.

We were both shaking.

“I’ve probably made you late to work,” he said, “so I’ll take the book back to the library for you.”

Don’t ask me why, but this struck me as one of the funniest things anyone had said in the twentieth century. I started laughing, and so did he.

When we paused for breath, he added, “You’ll have to tell me how to get out of here. I’m lost.”

That set off another round of laughter.

I looked at him, and what I wanted to do, in all honesty, was kiss the hell out of him. I would swear that he was looking at me in exactly the same way. But neither of us leaned closer, and the moment passed, and we both looked out the front windshield as if the scenery before us would change somehow, must have changed with whatever else had just changed.

“If you go straight ahead to that intersection,” I said, “I can read the street sign and probably guide us from there.”