“I need to talk to some people. You think you can find out who owns that warehouse in Williamsburg?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard. The Nine-Six is probably on top of it already, but I’ll see what I can get from the city assessor’s office.”

“The cops at the Nine-Six have a name on the man I killed. I don’t imagine they’re going to share much information with me, so keep your ear to the ground, see what filters through.”

“No problem. You planning on staying at the Meridien for another night?”

I thought of Rachel.

“Maybe one more. After that, I need to go home.”

“You talk to her?”

“This morning.”

“Did you tell her what happened?”

“Most of it.”

“That sound you hear in the back of your mind? That’s thin ice cracking. You need to be with her now. Hormones, everything gets screwed up. You know that. Even little things can seem like the end of the world, and big things, well, they just really might be the end.”

I shook his hand.

“Thanks.”

“For the advice?”

“No, the advice sucked. ‘Thanks’ is for stepping up to the plate on this one.”

“Hey, once a cop,” he said. “I miss it sometimes, but this helps. It reminds me of why I’m better off out of it.”

My next call was to Louis. I met him at a coffee shop on Broadway, up in the Gay Nineties. He didn’t look like he’d slept much, and although he was clean-shaven, and his shirt was neatly pressed, he appeared uncomfortable in his clothes.

“Martha’s cousin is flying up today,” he said. “She’s bringing dental records, medical stuff, anything she can find. Martha was staying in some shit hole in Harlem. I made her move, so they’re both booked into the Pierre now.”

“How is she?”

“She hasn’t given up hope. Says it may not be Alice. The locket doesn’t mean nothing, except that the guy took it from her.”

“And you? What do you think?”

“It’s her. Like you, I just knew. I felt it as soon as I saw the locket.”

“The cops should have a positive ID by tomorrow, then. They’ll probably release her in a day or two, once the ME has made his report. Will you go back with the remains?”

Louis shook his head.

“I don’t think so. I won’t be welcome. Anyway, there’s history down there. Better to let it rest. I got other things to be doing.”

“Like?”

“Like finding the ones who killed her.”

I sipped my coffee. It was already going cold. I raised the cup to the waitress, then watched quietly as she warmed it up.

“You should have told me what you did to G-Mack,” I said, as soon as she was out of earshot.

“I had other things on my mind.”

“Well, in future, if we’re going to do this, you’ll have to share your thoughts some. Two detectives down over in the Nine-Six liked me for the shooting. The fact that I’d left another man dead on their patch didn’t help my case.”

“They say how that pimp asshole is doing?”

“He was still woozy when I was at the Nine-Six, but since then he’s come around. He told the cops that he didn’t see a thing.”

“He won’t talk. He knows better than to say anything.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Look,” said Louis. “I ain’t asking you to get involved in this. I didn’t ask you to begin with.”

I waited for him to say something more. He didn’t.

“You finished?” I said.

“Yeah, I’m done.” He raised his right hand in apology. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. If you shoot someone, just let me know, that’s all. I want to be sure I can say I was somewhere else. Especially if, for once, I was somewhere else.”

“The men who killed Alice are gonna find out that the pimp talked,” said Louis. “The man’s dead.”

“Well, when they come he won’t be able to run away, that’s for sure.”

“So what now?”

I told him about the death of Alice’s friend Sereta near Yuma, and the body found in the car with her.

“He wasn’t shot in the car,” I said. “Mackey told me that the cops followed a blood trail from outside the room to the door of the Buick. This guy walked to the car, then he sat in the driver’s seat with the door wide-open while he burned alive.”

“Could be someone was holding a gun on him.”

“It would have to be a pretty big gun. Even then, getting shot would be a whole lot more attractive than burning. Plus he wasn’t one of the guests registered. They’re all accounted for.”

“One of Sereta’s johns?”

“If he was, he left no trace in her room. Even if that were true, what was he doing outside the Mexican’s hotel room getting shot through the door?”

“So he was one of the killers?”

“It looks that way. He screws up, gets shot, then instead of taking him with them, his buddies leave him in the car and set him on fire.”

“And he doesn’t object.”

“He doesn’t even get up from his seat.”

“So someone found out where Sereta was and came looking for her.”

“And killed her when she was found.”

He made the connections, just as I had earlier. “Alice told them.”

“Maybe. If she did, they forced it from her.”

He thought about it some more. “It’s hard for me to say this, but if I was Sereta, I wouldn’t have told Alice more than she needed to know. Maybe general things, a safe number to contact her at, but no more. That way, if they came for Alice, there wouldn’t be too much she could give away.”

“So somebody down there ratted her out, probably based on whatever Alice’s killers got out of her.”

“Which means somebody down there knows somebody up here.”

“Garcia might have been the contact. Given how close the Spyhole was to the border, the Mexican connection would make sense. It could be worth finding out some more.”

“This wouldn’t just be a way of getting me out of the city so you can pursue a, uh, more diplomatic line of inquiry?”

“That would assume that I’m cleverer than I am.”

“Not cleverer, just slicker.”

“Like I said, someone down there may have information that could help us. Whoever it is, he or she is unlikely to give it up easily. If I were you, I’d be looking to strike out at someone right about now. I’m just giving you a focus for your anger.”

Louis raised his spoon and pointed it at me. He managed to rustle up what might almost have been a smile.

“You been spending too long sleeping with psychologists.”

“Not lately, but thanks for the thought.”

Louis was right, though: I wanted him gone for a couple of days. It would save me having to keep my movements from him. I was afraid that if I gave him too much information, he would take it upon himself to try to force answers from the people involved. I wanted the first shot at the bail bondsman. I wanted to speak to whoever had rented the warehouse space to Garcia. And I wanted to track down the FBI agent, Bosworth. After all, I thought, I could always set Louis on them later.

I went back to my hotel, but with one extra item in my trunk. I had entrusted the bone sculpture to Angel before he left the warehouse, and now Louis had returned it to me. If the cops found out that I had withheld it, I would be in serious trouble, but the sight of it had allowed me to gain access to Neddo, and I had a feeling that it would open other doors if necessary. Waving a photograph or a Crayola drawing wouldn’t have quite the same impact.

Angel and Louis were due to fly down to Tucson that evening, via Houston. In the meantime, Walter got back to me with a name: the warehouse was part of an estate that had become tied up in some endless legal squabble, and the only contact the cops could find was a lawyer named David Sekula with an office on Riverside Drive. The telephone number on the banner at the warehouse went straight to an automatic answering service for a leasing company called Ambassade Realty, except Ambassade Realty appeared to be a dead end. Its CEO was deceased, and all callers were directed to contact the lawyer’s office. I took down Sekula’s address and telephone number. I would call him in the morning, when I was fresh and alert.