This part of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue was called Old Town, as if the Old West had been lined with curio stores and pawnshops with steel shutters. At night the street was deserted and black, except for the tents of light around streetlamps.

As Anna got into the jeep she touched her hair. “My new pin. I left it on the table.”

Joe returned for the pin, and as he came out of the club again he took a shortcut through the kitchen and out the back. There were fewer cars there, the jalopies of waiters and kitchen help. Among them, he heard voices and a laugh, and then something hitting the ground.

Between a pair of Fords a tiny beam of light played from a horizontal face to a shirt, to a double-breasted jacket, to a hand in the jacket pocket. As Joe approached the beam slid up to the face, which was round as a plate, subcutaneous blue on the upper lip and chin, eyes closed and mouth slack. Spread on the man’s chest were license, business cards, postcards, money. Kneeling over him was Captain Augustino, still in civvies.

“Harry Gold.” Augustino read the cards under the light. “Harry Gold of the Philadelphia Sugar Company. Harry Gold, licensed driver of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Street map of Santa Fe. One thousand two hundred and fifty dollars in cash. Harry Gold on vacation.”

An empty champagne bottle rolled away from the captain’s knee and came to rest against a tire. Joe assumed Augustino had used the bottle on the back of Gold’s head.

“You know about him,” Joe said.

“Heinrich Golodnitsky, to be exact, Sergeant.” Augustino flicked the light back to the plump face and crumpled hat. “Heinrich Golodnitsky, of Russian-Jewish lineage. Golodnitsky, who came at the age of three to an America of sugar-sweet opportunity, not only to find gold on the streets but to be Gold. Golodnitsky, Gold. Heinrich, Harry.” As he pointed the beam at Joe, some of the light escaped to touch his own lean, passionate face. “See, you always thought I was crazy, Sergeant. Yet here he is. It’s like catching a real devil. A small devil, but a devil all the same. We were at the bar. You played well. Dr. Weiss looked lovely.”

“I thought you were at Trinity, sir.”

Augustino opened the back door of the nearer Ford. “I thought you were on the Hill. Help me get him into the car.”

The band could be heard faintly in the lot. Joe could make out the beat, but not the tune; 2–4 time, a whisper of horns.

He gathered Harry Gold in his arms and laid him on the backseat of the car. “What are you going to tell Gold when he wakes up?”

“The concussion will eliminate any short-term memory. I’ll tell him he got drunk, fell down and hit his head. He was drunk.”