Meanie shook his head. “No. But Larker had a girl. Real pretty black girl. She dressed fine and filled out those clothes like nobody’s business. Kirk used to say that she was his golden ticket. Said she could get him through any door.”

“You remember her name?”

“Yeah. It was an odd one. Mona Strael. I remember because I asked where the name Strael came from and she said, ‘Outta thin air.’ ”

30

30

I sat around Little Anzio until closing time, which was 2:00 a.m. I was hoping for Kirkland Larker to show but he never did. Still, I sipped schnapps slowly and talked to anyone who drifted my way. Because I was buying the drinks most everyone took up temporary residence on a stool next to mine. In that way I learned a little bit.

A guy named Mike told me that Larker offered to help get him a job somewhere.

“You remember where?” I asked.

“Not really. It sounded kinda chinky. You know I used to scuba dive near Seoul. But one day I was down there and I saw about ten thousand shrimp swarming a corpse. They’d been at that guy for so long that he was no more than a raggedy skeleton . . .”

A man calling himself Captain Fell told me, “Kilian and Larker are malingerers,” and that he expected both men to end up in front of a firing squad.

I didn’t enlighten him as to Craig’s end. I guess I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

It was almost 3:00 in the morning when I pulled up to the Dragon’s Eye. Through the alley on the right side of the establishment was the parking lot. I really had no plan in mind. Feather was at Jackson Blue’s and the two bars were the only places I knew that my quarries might have been.

There were about half a dozen cars spaced out around the lot. Sounds of something akin to love came from a couple of them. I walked the perimeter, stopped in a dark corner to brood for a quarter hour or so, then headed back for my car. I was just about to put the key in the ignition when I saw Montana coming from around the side of the building followed by a blowsy businessman. She was pulling him by one finger as he staggered behind.

“Montana,” I called.

“Oh. Hi, baby.”

“Who the fuck are you?” the businessman demanded. He wore a blue suit that sizzled in the electric light. He was burnished tan and carried about thirty-five pounds more than a doctor would advise. Maybe at his office that extra weight was seen as strength. But in a back alley it didn’t mean a damn thing.

Before I could answer the question Montana put her lips to the john’s ear and whispered something.

“Wha’?” he said. “I didn’t know that. How you expect me to know that?”