“So, you’re a rat leaving a sinking ship. Is that it? Trying your luck on your own?”

“I’m not guilty of anything but looking the other way.”

“Yeah? Well, a girl died in that time you turned your head,” I said. “That makes the person looking away an accessory.”

“I wasn’t there,” he insisted.

“That’s your new story?”

“It isn’t a story. Listen to me,” he said. He looked over his shoulder, checking for cameras and microphones. No one had noticed us.

“I was not there with Bennett all night,” he said.

I stilled my temper and studied his face in the poor light. It had been a long time since I’d learned to spot a liar. I was very good at it. If Barbaro was trying to scam me, he was very talented.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“I went to Bennett’s house after the party, but I didn’t stay. I didn’t want any part of it.”

“Any part of what?” I asked, my mind running rampant with sordid and terrible possibilities.

He looked away. “I am not a Boy Scout. I’ve partied a lot. That’s not a secret.”

“Spit it out, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped. “I’m a big girl. And you, as you said, are no Boy Scout. Don’t waste my time pretending to be embarrassed or trying to break it to me gently. I was a cop for a long time. Nothing you have to say is going to shock me.”

“Irina… was high, she’d been drinking,” he began. “Everyone was on something or another. Irina told Jim Brody she wanted to give him a very special gift for his birthday.”

He was clearly uncomfortable with the memory. I waited.

“Irina was the only girl who came back to Bennett’s house that night,” he said.

I felt sick at the possibilities for the rest of the story. Irina, brash, high, full of herself, and half a dozen men with one thing on their minds.

“She wanted to-”

I held up a hand to forestall any details he might have been about to give me. The details of the debauchery didn’t matter. Only one thing did.

“Who killed her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I told you, I left. I walked back here for my car.”

“Did anyone see you leave the party?”

“They were otherwise occupied.”

“Did anyone see you walking?”

“No, but I saw Beth-Lisbeth-when I got to the parking lot.”

“Try again,” I said. “Lisbeth left the party at Players around one.”

Barbaro shrugged. “I thought it was her. It looked like her. I was sitting in my car. She walked past. She looked at me. I remember thinking, how strange to see her there. Then again, I had been drinking. I suppose I may have been mistaken.”

“I suppose you may have been.”

“You could ask her,” he suggested.

I made a noncommittal sound. I remembered Barbaro’s handsome face staring up at me from the cover of Sidelines magazine on the table in Lisbeth’s apartment. I remembered the snapshots of him and his buddies on the refrigerator in her kitchen.

He may have figured she would back him up because he was who he was or because she had a crush on him. Or he might have been counting on her silence because it had been assured the night before when someone whispered in her ear: “This is what happens to girls who talk too much.”

“No one else,” I said.

“I saw the Freak creeping around,” he said.

“How did you get your car keys?” I asked. “I know you use the valet. They were gone by then.”

“I give them only the valet key. I keep my keys.”

“And no one was here to see you,” I said.

“No.”

“You have no one to corroborate your story.”

“No,” he said, growing impatient with my line of questioning while he was trying to do the good and noble thing.

I didn’t care. Good and noble were two words with which none of his cadre had more than a passing acquaintance.

I shrugged. “I’m only asking you the same questions the detectives will.”

He still took offense. “I wish I had seen ten people, but I did not. I didn’t know I would need an alibi later.”

“And it wouldn’t have mattered if you had, would it?” I said. “All you had to do was pick up a phone, right?”

Barbaro said nothing. He had no defense for that, and he knew it.

“Who killed her?” I asked again.

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you think killed her?”

He rubbed his hands over his face and walked around in a little circle.

“I had a call from Bennett,” he said. “Just before dawn.”

“He needed an alibi?”

“Yes.”

I remembered that call myself. Not a phone call, a personal call. Twenty years ago. Four in the morning. I had been sound asleep.

Bennett had let himself into my condo. The sound of the shower in the guest bath woke me-and confused me. Why would he shower in the guest bath? When I went to ask him, the door was closed and locked.

Still feeling unsettled, I had gone back to bed. Some time later, he slipped under the covers next to me, warm and naked, and when I stirred, he told me he had been there for hours.

“No, you haven’t, ” I whispered, a strange apprehension stirring inside me.

“But you’ll say that for me, won’t you, baby? You’ll say that for me…

I felt sick at the memory.

“Later he told me Irina was dead,” Barbaro said. “That she was dead when he found her in his pool. He said she must have drowned.”

“And you believed him,” I said.

“I wanted to believe him. He’s my friend. I couldn’t imagine it hadn’t been an accident.”

“If it was an accident, why didn’t he call 911?”

“She was dead,” he rationalized. “He was afraid of the scandal, he’s a very visible, wealthy man, from an influential family. His wife is a fragile person-”

“I wonder if he ever thought of that while he was busy fucking twenty-year-old girls,” I said. “And so, because Irina was already dead, and out of his touching concern for his invalid wife, he- and you-thought it was a perfectly acceptable idea to dump her body in a canal so aquatic organisms could feed on her eyes and her lips, and an alligator could stick her corpse under a sunken log to rot until it was just right for dinner.”

Barbaro squeezed his eyes closed, as if that would stop him from seeing the image I had just painted for him. His voice trembled a little when he said, “I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know what he did with her until I heard on Monday.”

“And would it have made any difference to you if you had, Juan?” I asked. I shook my head and held my hands up to prevent an answer. “Don’t answer. Don’t bother.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Barbaro stared off in one direction, thinking I don’t know what. I stared off in another direction, thinking about the vibrant, promising young woman Irina might have been if not for a couple of twisted priorities and a half dozen men who believed the rules of decent society didn’t apply to them.

She had made a couple of stupid, careless choices. It was nothing short of tragic that she had paid for them with her life.

“Did Irina think Bennett would marry her?” I asked.

Barbaro looked at me, confused. “Why would she think that? She knew he’s married.”

“I think she might have been pregnant. She had set her sights on him… All things considered, I don’t think it would have occurred to her that his wife would be an obstacle.”

She was young, beautiful, vibrant, exciting, sexy. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize those are qualities a wealthy man looks for in a mistress, not a wife. And the two things she was lacking were the only things that counted to a man like Bennett Walker: money and connections.

“I never thought anything like this would happen,” Barbaro said softly.

“Yeah,” I answered in kind. “It’s all fun and games-until somebody loses their life.”

“What happens now?” he asked.

“You talk to Landry.”

I took my cell phone out of my bag but hesitated before hitting Landry’s number.

“You could have called him yourself,” I said. “Why did you want to talk to me first?”