“You may suppose we do,” the waiter replied. “We have another customer who forced us to order it.”

“On the rocks, please.”

Dino ordered his Scotch.

The restaurant was filling up rapidly; even all the bar stools were taken. “Busy place,” Stone said.

“The food must be good,” Dino replied. “Hey, here’s Tommy!”

He stood up to greet their old acquaintance as he entered the restaurant, and so did Stone. Shortly, Tommy had a margarita before him.

“You’re drinking that tropical swill?” Dino asked.

“After a while down here, it gets to be unpatriotic if you don’t,”

Tommy replied.

“How’s retirement treating you, Tommy?” Stone asked.

“Who’s retired? A week after I hit town, I was a detective again.”

“Working homicide?”

“Are you kidding? You’re in Paradise; we get like one homicide a year, if we’re lucky, and it’s nearly always perfectly clear who the killer is. He’s usually standing there, holding a gun or a claw hammer in his hand, when we walk in. The only problem is getting him not to talk too fast while we’re taking his statement.”

“What keeps you busy, then?” Dino asked.

“Drug stuff, burglaries, mostly small-time. We get a lot of drifters down here, especially in the winter. They at least know they’re not going to freeze to death, and they can steal enough to eat. We get the usual domestic stuff, too, only more of it is gay than in New York.”

“What’s the job like?”

“Pretty interesting. The first thing I had to do was to train my partner, a kid named Daryl, whose acne had not yet cleared up. He was the chief’s nephew at the time.”

“Sounds like a drag.”

“No, he was quick to learn, and he’s turned into a pretty good detective. His uncle is gone now, and so is the guy who replaced him. Last week, the chief and two captains resigned over a scandal.”

“What kind of scandal?”

“Fixing parking tickets, harassing gay guys on bicycles, hiring girlfriends as secretaries and fucking them in the supply room, drinking on the job, you name it. Nothing big, just a lot of continuous horseshit. I’m currently acting chief of detectives—all six of them. They offered me the chief’s job, but I’m too old for the politics and the PR horseshit.”

“I don’t blame you,” Dino said. “I’m running the squad at the Nineteenth, and that’s almost more politics than I can stand.”

“What’s the most interesting case you’ve worked down here, Tommy?” Stone asked.

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Tommy laughed. “We had a big drugs, murder, sex thing right after I signed on that involved some prominent locals, among them the local tennis pro. You remember a player named Chuck Chandler?”

“The guy who choked in the Wimbledon final some years back?”