Thalia then turned her back with a resolute determination that Zoe had come to recognize as inarguable finality. Then: “Okay.” She paused. “So you have these loony tunes in your head and the world’s best memories of exposed fakes. That’s what makes you the champion fakebuster?”

Zoe marveled at the older woman’s resilience for a moment and then replied. “Well, that’s not entirely it. One of the best ways to polish off your fakebusting education is to know a forger, have him teach you his secrets,” Zoe said. “You really get to know what to look for when you can watch one create a fake masterpiece.”

“Pretty hard to do, I imagine.”

“Pretty hard,” Zoe agreed, “but not impossible.”

Thalia’s eyebrows arched. “So you got to know a forger?”

“Uh-huh.” Zoe nodded. “Biblically.”

“Oooh, girlfriend,” Thalia’s face brightened. “Let’s take a break. I’ve got to hear all about this.”

NINE

The single-story motel squeezed itself onto a narrow slab of earth between the patched asphalt of the Pacific Coast Highway and a gullied embankment that sloped steeply down to a fringe of beach. A VACANCY sign burned vaguely into the deepening evening, appealing in vain to customers who had mostly taken their travel to Interstate 5, some six miles inland, and their business to the newer chain motels that hugged the interchanges.

The bored desk clerk who had checked in Ridgeway, Stratton, and the rest of the party an hour before sat impassively; watching through bulletproof glass as cars straggled past, their headlights burning small temporary holes in the fabric of darkness. If this night’s business was typical, he’d check in a lost traveler who took the wrong exit off I-5 and followed the road too far west, and maybe a Marine from nearby Camp Pendleton with his girlfriend or somebody’s wife. Which was all fine with him. After all, he had only four rooms to rent out

The motel looked like the sort of place local people expected to close or fall into the ocean any day. It seemed to have a steady parade of owners and desk clerks, none of whom ever stayed long enough to get to know anyone locally on a personal level. None of them realized it had had only one owner since the U.S. National Security Agency had bought it in 1963.

The clerk had given Stratton the key to a suite of rooms in the back of the motel facing the ocean. On a calm summer day, the rooms out back had a view of the Pacific from San Onofre to Oceanside, its waves dotted with surfers, fishermen, and sailboats. But tonight, the remnants of the storm tore at the motel, forcing little sighs and whistles under the door and through cracks around the windows. The curtains Stratton had drawn to keep out the wind swayed gently with each gust.

“Damn it,” Ridgeway barked at Stratton, “you had no right. No right at all.”

It had been hours of madness. Over and over the scene played itself just behind Ridgeway’s eyes: the inside of the limousine, Rebecca Weinstock’s bodyguard moaning in pain on the front seat, the killer’s head being jerked backward, the muscles of his face going slack, and then the image of the blood being wiped from the glistening woodsman’s knife.