He wanted to give me a bonus. I told him it wasn’t necessary, that I’d been adequately paid for my time, but he insisted, and when people insist on giving me money I don’t generally argue. I told him I’d taken the ivory bracelet from Kim’s apartment. He laughed and said he’d forgotten all about it, that I was welcome to it and he hoped my lady would like it. It would be part of my bonus, he said, along with the cash and two pounds of his specially blended coffee.

“And if you like the coffee,” he said, “I can tell you where to get more of it.”

He drove me back into the city. I’d have taken the subway but he insisted he had to go to Manhattan anyway to talk to Mary Lou and Donna and Fran and get things smoothed out. “Might as well enjoy the Seville while I can,” he said. “Might wind up selling it to raise cash for operating expenses. Might sell the house, too.” He shook his head. “I swear it suits me, though. Living here.”

“Get the business started with a government loan.”

“You jiving?”

“You’re a minority group member. There’s agencies just waiting to lend you money.”

“What a notion,” he said.

In front of my hotel he said, “That Colombian asshole, I still can’t remember his name.”

“Pedro Marquez.”

“That’s him. When he registered at your hotel, is that the name he used?”

“No, it was on his ID.”

“That’s what I thought. Like he was C. O. Jones and M. A. Ricone, and I wondered what dirty word he used for you.”

“He was Mr. Starudo,” I said. “Thomas Edward Starudo.”

“T. E. Starudo? Testarudo? That a curse in Spanish?”

“Not a curse. But it’s a word.”

“What’s it mean?”

“Stubborn,” I said. “Stubborn or pig-headed.”

“Well,” he said, laughing. “Well, hell, you can’t blame him for that one, can you?”

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

In my room I put the two pounds of coffee on the dresser, then went and made sure nobody was in the bathroom. I felt silly, like an old maid looking under the bed, but I figured it would be a while before I got over it. And I wasn’t carrying a gun anymore. The .32 had been impounded, of course, and the official story was that Durkin had issued it to me for my protection. He hadn’t even asked how I’d really come by it. I don’t suppose he cared.

I sat in my chair and looked at the place on the floor where Marquez had fallen. Some of his bloodstains remained in the rug, along with traces of the chalk marks they place around dead bodies.