"You want to wait here?"

"I think maybe I'd better."

"We keep a pot of coffee going," Sergeant Kenny said.

Matt's cellular buzzed fifteen minutes later.

"I have just spoken with Mrs. Solomon," Washington said. "Placing what I truly hope is justified confidence in your analysis of the situation, she is dispatching an assistant district attorney-probably, if she decides Peter Wohl will just have to do without his services for a day or two, Steven Cohen, Esq. As we speak, a teletype message is being prepared asking the Daphne authorities to hold Mr. Daniels. Travel arrangements similarly are under way. You will be advised of the details."

"Yes, sir," Matt said.

"I devoutly hope this is not premature: Good job, Matt!"

"Thank you, sir."

"Please share that with Detective Lassiter."

"Yes, sir."

[ONE] We're going to have to check out of the hotel," Olivia said, almost as soon as they got into the Mustang. "We never should have gone in there in the first place."

"The alternative would seem to be sleeping on the beach," Matt said.

"The alternative was any of the motels we saw when we turned off the interstate into Daphne."

"Every time I stay in a motel off an interstate, I am invariably denied sleep by the sounds of unbridled passion, a crying baby, or a barking dog-often all of the above-coming from the next cubicle. What's wrong with where we are?"

"An assistant D.A. is coming tomorrow," she said. "I don't want him going back to Philadelphia and saying, 'When I got down there, Payne has got his squeeze in a plush hotel.' "

"I hadn't thought about that," Matt confessed. "And the cold fact seems to be that I do seem to have my squeeze in a plush hotel. You're right, we better get out of there before our shameful secret becomes public knowledge. But in the morning. Not tonight."

Matt looked at Olivia, expecting a smile. She was not smiling.

"Is that how you think of me, as your squeeze?"

"That was your term, Mother, not mine."

Neither said anything else for the next ten minutes, until they were off four-lane U.S. 98 and driving through Fairhope.

"Hey, look at that!" Matt said, cheerfully, pointing. "Trattoria."

"What?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that was an Italian restaurant, " he said. "It doesn't sound Polish. How about it, squeeze? A little linguini, a nice bottle of red, maybe even candles romantically flickering in a bottle covered with dripping wax?"

"Don't ever call me that again," she said, coldly.

"Sorry," Matt said. "I was about to add, 'Then we can go to the hotel and fool around.' Does that interest you at all, Detective Lassiter?"

"Just go to the hotel, please."

"You want to tell me what I've done wrong?"

"From your perspective, probably nothing."

"And from yours?"

"I've been thinking."

"About what?"

"Us."

"What about 'us'? This afternoon-Christ, from the time I first laid eyes on you-I thought 'us' was nice and dared to think the feeling was reciprocal."

"It's happening too fast," she said. "And you're dangerous."

"How the hell am I dangerous?"

"You don't think, that's your problem," she said.

"Give me a for example, Mother."

"You never should have talked to the doer without permission. "

"Were you there when I said, 'I can't talk to you without your lawyer being present' or words to that effect?"

When she didn't reply, he asked,

"Anything else I've done dangerously?"

"When you chased the guy in Philadelphia, you were drunk."

"I wasn't drunk. And you will recall I caught him."

"After you fell down twice."

"I fell over a goddamn wire."

She snorted.

"And the Highway sergeant gave you mints. He saw you were drunk."

"Isn't that what they call the pot calling the kettle black?"

"At least I admit it."

"Okay. I admit it. I was drunk. Happy?"

"And we never should have gone to the hotel in the first place. You should have thought what it would mean to me if it ever got out."

"I wasn't aware that our going to a hotel-in which, by the way, we have separate rooms-was going to see you branded forever with a scarlet A on your forehead."

"It would damned sure keep me from staying in Homicide, " Olivia said.

"Look, you better be prepared, Olivia-Christ, you're naive-for all sorts of clever remarks from the guys in Homicide about our 'vacation' in Alabama. Whether we move into some dump of a motel or not, there are going to be suggestions that we fooled around."

"What they're going to think, is (a) I walked into Homicide, and (b) took one look at the hotshot sergeant, who calls the first deputy commissioner 'Uncle Denny,' and (c) jumped into his bed. And you know it, and you know that'll keep me from staying in Homicide. And you don't care."

"As much as I would like it to be otherwise, I think you have absolutely no chance of staying in Homicide."

"Is that so?"

"That's so. The only reason I'm in Homicide is because Mariani had that brainstorm about giving the top-five guys on the sergeant's exam their choice of assignment."

"It had nothing to do, right, with your 'Uncle Denny' Coughlin?"

"No, goddamn it, it didn't. He tried to talk me out of it, as a matter of fact."

She snorted again.

"And he was probably right. There is no one more aware of my limitations as a Homicide investigator than I am."

"Amazing! That's the first modest thing I've ever heard you say."

"Oh, screw you!"

"Fat chance!"

The doorman of the Grand Hotel opened the door for Olivia.

"Olivia, would you like to have dinner with me?"

"I think I'll have a sandwich in my room. But thank you just the same."

She smiled at the doorman and walked into the hotel.

[TWO] Matt drove back into Fairhope and had linguini with Italian sausage and a bottle of Merlot-all of a bottle of Merlot-in La Trattoria, while considering the differences of the mental processes of the opposite sexes.

And then he drove very carefully back to the Grand Hotel, asked for any messages-there were none-and then went into the hotel's Bird Cage Lounge, where he sat all by himself in an upholstered chair at a table and had the first of five drinks of Famous Grouse on the rocks. The prospect of a scotch-or even an Irish-martini did not have much appeal.

Between drinks three and four, he used the house phone on the bar to call Miss Olivia Lassiter. The hotel operator said she was sorry, but Miss Lassiter had left word that she didn't wish to take any more calls tonight.

Between drinks four and five, his cellular buzzed.

It was Detective Joe D'Amata.

"The Black Buddha said to call, Matt. Meet Delta 311 at the Mobile airport-"

"Mobile?"

"That's what he said. Mobile. Arriving at twelve-thirty-five. "

"They pronounced that 'Mow-beel,' not 'Mow- bile,' by the way."

"No shit?"

"Tell him I'll be at the 'Mow-Beel' airport. Who's Mrs. Solomon sending down? Did she make up her mind?"

"I dunno," Joe said. "This is the doer, huh?"

"It sure looks like it, Joe."

"Good for you, Matt. Having a good time?"

"Absolutely, Joe."

"Yeah, I bet you are," D'Amata said, chuckled, and hung up.

After drink five, Matt signaled for the waitress and signed the bill.

"I've had all the fun I can stand for one night," he said to her.

He left a call for half past seven and went to bed.

He woke with a hangover and a clammy undershirt.

He wondered about that and sniffed, and when he first encountered a really foul odor, remembered he had had a nightmare.

I always smell like death warmed over when I have one. And this was one of the better ones: