“Well, thanks.” I gently shake his hand.

“Thank you, my dear.” Wheaton moves from the door so that John and Lenz can get into the hall. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

Dr. Lenz tries to shake the artist’s hand, but Wheaton takes a step backward and gives him a tight smile. Then the three of us are outside again, walking toward the FBI sedan parked on the street.

“He just told us to go to hell,” says John.

“Very smoothly,” Lenz agrees. “But he certainly pointed his finger at Gaines.”

“After saying nothing yesterday. I wonder why.”

“He told you why,” I say irritably. “He doesn’t like talking about anybody’s personal business. Even an asshole like Gaines. He knows the FBI will turn Gaines’s life into a living hell because of what he just told you.”

“Yes,” Lenz says thoughtfully. “He does.”

“What did you think about his answers about his mother?” asks John.

Lenz adopts his professorial tone. “He doesn’t know why she left, but he can’t let it be because she loved a paramour more than her children. As for childhood abuse… I don’t know. Denial is classic adaptive behavior. Without more time with him… I’ll have to think about that one.”

John opens the front door of the car, holds it for me, and looks into my eyes. “I hope you have better luck with Frank Smith.”

“I make my own luck.”

He smiles. “I believe you. They faulted Smith’s phones, both home and cell. No warning from Wheaton this time. You still want to go in alone?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s get to the Quarter, then.”

The medical tape holding the T-4 transmitter at the small of my back chafes as I climb the steps of the Creole cottage on Esplanade and knock at Frank Smith’s door. From the transmitter, a thin wire runs around my ribs and up to a microphone clipped to the V of my bra. This time the door isn’t answered by Juan but by the owner himself. Frank Smith smiles broadly, revealing the gleaming white teeth of an affluent childhood, and leans against the doorjamb with languid grace.

“Is this visit social? Or government business?”

“I wish I could say the former, but it’s not.”

Smith arches his perfectly plucked eyebrows. “Well, then. I don’t think I’m at home.”

His movie-star handsomeness is starting to irritate me. “Have you watched any TV this morning?”

“No.”

“Read the Times-Picayune?”

“I took a long bath and had coffee in the garden. That’s the sum of my morning. Why?”

“May I come in?”

His sea-green eyes narrow. “Don’t tell me he’s taken another one.”

“Thalia Laveau.”

Smith looks confused. “What about Thalia?”

“He took Thalia. Last night.”

This is the first time I’ve seen Frank Smith lose his perfect control.

“May I please come in?”

He steps out of my way, and I walk inside. Instead of waiting for him to lead me to the salon, I walk through the house and make my way to the garden. The fountain that filled the courtyard with sound yesterday is switched off now, and a blackbird perches on the highest tier. There’s a small wrought-iron table under the gnarled wisteria, and I take a seat there. Smith sits across the table from me. In his fine trousers and royal blue polo shirt, he looks less like an artist than a model, but there’s no denying the quick intelligence in his eyes.

“How could Thalia be kidnapped when she was under surveillance?” he asks.

“Why do you think she was under surveillance?”

“Well, I am. Where are your FBI friends today?”

“Working.”

“But they sent you here. To ask me something. Because I responded to you yesterday.”

“I asked to come alone.”

He mulls my answer. “So, I’m still a suspect. What is it you want to know?”

I quickly explain that the Bureau knows Roger Wheaton spent several evenings at this house, and also that he and Smith argued on some or all of those occasions.

“I wondered why Juan didn’t show up this morning,” Smith says. “I suppose they threatened to deport him?”

“I don’t know what they did, Frank. I’m sorry. And I don’t like butting into your personal business. But this is life or death. Thalia could still be alive, and we have to try to help her.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“That she could still be alive? Yes.”

“I’m glad. But what you’re asking has nothing to do with this case.”

“That’s what Wheaton said.”

Smith turns up his palms as if to say, Next subject.

“Look, it seems to me there could only be a couple of innocent reasons for holding out. One, Wheaton is gay, and you guys have a relationship.”

“And two?”

“I can’t think of a second. Drugs, maybe. I think the first reason is it.”

Smith is wearing a smug smile.

“And if it is, admitting it is the quickest way to get the FBI out of your life. They honestly don’t care what you or Wheaton do for sex. What worries them is other possibilities.”

“Like?”

“Like you being involved in a conspiracy to produce the Sleeping Women.”

“Ridiculous.”

“I think so too. But I don’t run the FBI. Come on, Frank. What’s the deal? Is Roger Wheaton gay?”

“Have you asked him?”

“He evaded the question.”

“Well he would, wouldn’t he?”

“Why would he?”

“Roger grew up in rural Vermont. He’s fifty-eight years old, for God’s sake. He’s another generation altogether.”

“You’re saying he’s gay?”

“Of course he is.”

Of course he is…

Smith runs a manicured fingernail along the wrought-iron scrollwork in the tabletop. “He’s simply not comfortable with the kind of attention that comes with being gay and famous.”

“Are you and he lovers?”

Smith shakes his head with what looks like regret. “No.”

“Then how do you know he’s gay? He told you?”

“Roger ran away to New York when he was seventeen or eighteen. How do you think he lived? Certainly not by selling his paintings.”

“Are you saying he sold himself?”

“We all sell ourselves, in one way or another. Here was this talented, handsome kid schlepping his derivative paintings around to all the galleries. He got noticed, but not for the paintings. Before long, the old queens were fighting to give him a place to live and work. They took care of him until he joined the marines.”

“You seem to know more about him than anyone else.”

“Roger confided these things because he knew I would understand. And I’m telling you so that you’ll do all you can to get the FBI off his back. His life is hard enough without that.”

“I agree. And I will. But I’m not completely clear here. If the visits were about friendship, what were the arguments about? The yelling?”

Smith shakes his head again. “I can’t answer that. The FBI can’t know about that.”

“Jesus, Frank. I won’t give them details. I’ll just tell them I’m satisfied that the arguments and visits mean nothing.”

“I can’t do it.”

Filled with frustration, but also understanding Smith’s reluctance to violate Wheaton’s privacy, I lean forward, pull the tail of my blouse out of my jeans, and rip the medical tape from the skin of my back. As the transmitter falls against the iron seat of my chair, I picture Daniel Baxter panicking in the surveillance van outside. I hope he has the sense not to come charging in with his gun drawn.

“I’m switching off,” I say loudly. “Don’t come in.”

Smith gapes as I reach into my blouse and pull the tiny mike from my bra, unthread the wire, then drop the transmitter on the table between us and switch it off.

“We’re no longer live, Frank. It’s you and me.”

He looks ready to throw me out of his house.

“Listen to me,” I say with the conviction of my own pain. “My sister has two small children that she loves more than her life. She was yanked off the street by some predator, and she’s probably rotting in the swamp somewhere right now. There are eleven other women just like her, one of them a friend you say you cared for and admired. The clock is ticking down on Thalia’s life. Is it an invasion of privacy for the FBI to learn Roger Wheaton is gay? Yes. Is it a tragedy? No. If your arguments with Wheaton have nothing to do with this case, all the effort the FBI puts into investigating them is wasted. Do you want that wasted effort to cost Thalia her life?”