"Coward," Miller said, chuckling, and left it there. "I'll pick you up in the morning at half past seven," he said. "Be standing on the sidewalk shaved and sober and full of energy because you gave your pecker the night off."

Castillo gave him the finger and got out of the taxi.

His initial impression of the Warwick Hotel was that it was a nice one. Nice lobby, with a really impressive floral display-real flowers; as he walked by, he checked-on a beautiful table. To the right was the entrance to the restaurant-he could see enough of that to make the judgment it, too, looked first-rate-and a bar.

There was a young woman sitting alone at the bar. She didn't look like a hooker, but sometimes it was hard to tell. He decided to give the brunette and the hotel the benefit of the doubt. The Warwick didn't look like the kind of a place where ladies of the evening were either encouraged or permitted to practice their profession. And the brunette really didn't look like a hooker.

He was pleased, too, with the room. It was large, high-ceilinged, with a king-sized bed, and the bathroom shelf was loaded with small bottles of high-quality shampoo and mouthwash and crisp packages of expensive soap of the type he liked to put in his toilet kit at checkout time against the inevitability that the next hotel would not much care if their guests bathed or washed out their mouths.

Not that I need either a bath or a mouth rinse.

What I need is a drink, maybe two – no more than two – and then something to eat, and then some sleep. Dick said to be on the sidewalk outside at half past seven.

Jesus, the last time I went to bed was in Vienna. That – and Cobenzl and the Drei Hussaren and Pevsner and Inge – was last night?

One drink and then something to eat and then to bed.

But not in the restaurant. I don't want a full meal, and I hate to eat alone at a restaurant table.

Maybe I can get a sandwich at the bar.

That is based solely upon my desire to have something simple to eat, not on the brunette.

It really is, and, anyway, by the time I get back down there she'll more than likely be gone. Nice girls – and we have decided that's what she is – do not sit around hotels where young men with out-of-control gonads might think they're available.

Major Carlos G. Castillo had been in his room no more than ten minutes before he left it, got back on the elevator, and rode it down to the lobby.

The brunette was still sitting alone at the bar.

At that point, Major Castillo told himself, he would have headed right for the restaurant had he not also seen there were four men sitting at a table in the bar eating some kind of good-looking sandwiches on crusty bread.

He entered the bar, taking care not to look at the brunette but taking a stool separated from hers by only one stool.

His cellular went off as the bartender approached him.

"Is there a local beer on draft?" Castillo asked. The waiter gave him a name he'd never heard before.

"One of those, please," Castillo said. "And a menu."

As the phone rang a third time, he pushed its answer button. "Hello? "Yes, sir? "I just checked into a hotel, sir. The Warwick. I'm about to have dinner "Well, that was certainly nice of the: him, sir. And thank you for telling me. I'll past the word to Dick, sir "He's going to pick me up here at oh-seven-thirty, sir "Thank you again, sir. Good night, sir."

He put the cellular back in his pocket as the bartender approached with a glass of beer and a menu.

"What are those gentlemen eating?" Castillo asked, nodding his head slightly toward the four men sitting at the corner table.

"Two cheesesteaks, one meatball and one sausage-and-peppers," the bartender said.

"Italian sausage and peppers?" Castillo asked. The bartender nodded. "Get me one, will you please?"

"Are you some kind of a serviceman?" the brunette asked and moved to the stool next to him.

Wrong again, Charley, you master of analysis you.

"What gave you an idea like that?"

"Yes, sir: No, sir: Thank you, sir: Oh-seven-thirty, sir," the brunette said.

"I'm a Texan; we talk that way."

"You sounded as if whoever you were speaking to was a general or something."

"Actually, he's a member of the president's cabinet and he was calling to tell me the president just did something very nice for a friend of mine who was in a little trouble."

She chuckled, almost laughed.

Nice smile.

"What do you do, actually?"

I'll be damned. She really doesn't look like a hooker.

"Actually, I work for a company called Rig Service, Incorporated, of Corpus Christi, and what we do is service rigs."

"What's a 'rig'?"

"An enormous oil well drilling platform, sitting in the Gulf of Mexico."

"And how do you service them?"

"My end of it is the catering," Castillo said. "You know, the food. And also the laundry. 'Personal needs,' they call it."

"May I ask you something?"

Am I looking for a little action? Am I married? Am I a fag?

"Why not?"

"Could you keep talking to me for a little while?"

"Sure. I'd be happy to."

"I have a little problem," the brunette said.

My sainted, crippled mother desperately needs brain surgery. I don't have the money and I'm willing to do anything – anything – to come up with it.

"My boyfriend was supposed to meet me here a half hour, no, forty-five minutes ago," the brunette said.

"And he's stood you up, you think?"

"No," she said, firmly. "He'll be here. And I'm not trying to get you to buy me a drink or anything like that. But I've been sitting here alone and-you see those men at the table?"

Castillo nodded.

"They keep looking at me. Like I'm a: hooker."

"Well, you certainly don't look like a hooker to me."

"Thank you. Well, will you?"

"Will I what?"

"What Frankie does, all the time, is forget to charge his cell phone," the brunette said. "So the battery goes dead and he can't call me. He's somewhere on I-95 right now, I know-he's driving up from Washington, D.C., and it's hard to find a pay phone anywhere anymore, much less on the interstate:"

"I would be happy to talk with you until Frankie either gets his batteries charged or shows up, whichever comes first, and would be even happier if you would permit me to buy you a beverage of your choice."

"I couldn't let you do that," the brunette ordered. "But let me treat you!"

She waved at the bartender.

"Give this gentleman another beer," she said. "My treat."

"Sir?" the bartender said.

Jesus, he thinks she's a hooker, too.

Goddammit, I don't think she is.

"We'll have another round, but put it on my tab."

"No, I insist," the brunette said, firmly.

Charley looked at the bartender, who shrugged.

"Okay. Thank you."

Fifteen minutes later, as Castillo was finishing his Italian sausage-and-peppers sandwich, a large young man wearing a zippered jacket and a look of gross annoyance marched into the bar and up to them.

Once Betty explained to Frankie what had happened and how nice Mr. Castle here had been to her while she was waiting for him without a telephone call, much-but by no means all-of the look of annoyance left his face.

Betty and Frankie left. Betty said maybe they'd bump into each other sometime, which did not seem to please Frankie very much.

But when Charley asked for the bill, the barman said, "The broad's boyfriend took care of it."

Charley tipped the bartender anyway and went to his room, and, after leaving a call for quarter to seven, got in bed and went to sleep wondering what it would be like to really work in the catering end of Rig Service, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Castillo Petroleum, Inc., and maybe meet a nice girl-and Betty was a nice girl-by accident in a bar somewhere and seeing what would develop.