The scarred thug left the corner for a while, but was replaced by one of his mates. A real Frankenstein’s monster, this one—cinderblock head and gorilla arms and all. Harper sensed there were still others, standing by, out of sight. She was going to need reinforcements.

She phoned Bernard—twice—from the pay phone at the far end of the bar. He wasn’t in, of course. She could hardly have expected him. He lived above the office, in her house right across the street, but he seldom returned there before dawn. His nights, she understood, were spent in the sort of prowling debaucheries she only wished were beyond her wildest imagination. Just in case he should call in, as he sometimes did, she tried to leave a message on his private machine. It being a machine, however, and she being herself, she wasn’t quite sure she had succeeded.

So she retired to the fireplace. Sat at a table. Nursed a warm pint of Guinness. Fitfully smoked her pipe, relit it nervously, lay it steaming on the tabletop beside her Borsalino. And prayed that help would somehow arrive.

Shortly before eleven, the two old gentlemen at the bar packed it in and headed for home. Harper was left alone with the barkeep. Robert. A likely lad, sinewy in his paisley shirt, with stand-up hair the color of wheat and a pendulous jade earring in one lobe. But she could no more put him at risk than she could Storm. She was out of options. She finally accepted the fact that she had to call the police.

“Phone’s out,” Robert told her. She had already picked it up, had already tasted the acid gout of fear at the sound of silence down the line. “Went down about twenty minutes ago.”

“You have a house phone,” she said.

“That one’s out too. Bizarre, isn’t it?” He shrugged one shoulder, flipped through the pages of a magazine. “There’s another pay phone down on the next corner, you could try that.”

“No,” said Harper. “That’s all right.”

“Last call, by the way,” said Robert. “We close in ten minutes.”

“I’ll just finish my pint,” she said.

She waddled back to the window. Glanced out. The scarred man had taken up his post again. Was raising his overturned hand to his lips, drawing smoke from the hidden cigarette. He’d grown bold now. He was staring directly at her. His sneer widened when he saw her there.

She showed him her back and hobbled once more to her place by the fire.

The last minutes before closing ticked away. She sat over her stout and brooded. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let Storm leave her here. He would have gladly stayed if she had asked him. He would have wanted to. And he had the courage for it, she had seen that.