“Where?”

“I don’t know. Oh, God.”

“It’s okay, Danny.” I grabbed his hand, squeezed.

“You’ve got to get her back, Charlie.”

“I will.”

Tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. “Please. You’ve got to find her, get her back for me. I’m begging you.”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll find her. I’ll fix everything.”

Outside the hospital room, I found a water fountain. My hands shook, breathing turned heavy. Danny. My brother. Almost dead.

I took a pill, found the elevator, went down.

In the parking lot, Agent Dunn stood next to my Buick waiting for me. I stopped in front of him, and we looked at each other for a second. He lit a cigarette, puffed.

“I’m getting pretty damn tired of never knowing what the hell’s going on,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“I told you to get out of town.”

“I’ve been trying.”

“Maybe I should take you downtown, question you there.”

“I don’t have time for that,” I said. “How about I make you an offer?”

He gave me a curious look. “Like what?”

“Like maybe I help you solve some of your problems.”

“Really? This is just absolutely fucking fascinating. And what are my problems per se?”

“You’ve got three rogue agents for one thing,” I said.

“It’s only one now. We found two of them shot, but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

I shrugged. “I know I can get Beggar Johnson’s accounting ledgers for you.”

That made him stop puffing his cigarette.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“That’s not how it works. You’ve got to get out of my way and let me do what I need to do. I’ll send you the books. Beggar’s no friend of mine. Put him in jail, or don’t. It’s all the same to me. But I don’t have time to mess with you right now.”

He considered, then stepped aside. “Sure. Why not?”

I got in my Buick, but he grabbed the door before I could close it. “I’m not going along with this because I trust you. I don’t. I’m going along with this because this case is already so fucked up, I don’t see how it could hurt.” He handed me a business card. “But if you’re on the level, I can be reached at this number.”

I took it, and he stepped back. I closed the door and drove away.

I went back to Amber’s apartment complex, parked the Buick, and grabbed my tote bag. I’d made sure to park as far away from Amber’s apartment as possible. I was a little tired of people following me, and I wanted to finish my business without any of Beggar’s men or the Feds on my tail.

I zigzagged my way through the buildings and found Danny’s Impala. I threw my luggage in the backseat and found the keys under the floor mat.

I’d been holding the steering wheel too tight from stress, and it made my hand hurt. I wanted another pill bad. I resisted and drove.

I knocked on Jeffers’s door, but he didn’t answer. His Lexus was in the driveway, so I tried again. Tired of waiting. I tried the knob. It turned, and I pushed my way in. Nobody in this town locked up anymore.

In the hall, I passed a bathroom. A radio sat on the back of the toilet, country music, turned up loud. I kept walking.

Into the kitchen. A little TV on the counter blared I Love Lucy at me. Whaaaaaa, Ricky!

I remembered where his office was. Jeffers wasn’t in it, but his stereo was up almost all the way. Steve Miller Band blaring “Jungle Love.”

The living room, another TV. This time MSNBC’s constant flow of misery. The Middle East blah blah blah. Washington blah blah blah. The economy blah blah blah.

I felt another giggle stirring in my gut, looking to rear its ugly head. I pushed it down. Not now. Find Jeffers.

In the corner of my eye, I caught a little flash of movement through the French doors leading out back. My hand drifted into the pocket of the pea coat, closed around the butt of my Minelli cannon. I ducked behind a curtain, looked through the French doors to the backyard. Jeffers had a pool, and I wondered if I was walking in on the Sunset Boulevard scene with Jeffers facedown in the pool like William Holden.

Jeffers stood stripped to the waist. He was sagging and pale, a few tennis muscles covered by a layer of prosperity. His back was to me. He danced a silly, drunken middle-aged dance. A little portable radio sat next to an empty gin bottle. Jeffers was having a little party for himself. The radio and gin bottle perched on a glass table with a mirror and a mound of white powder.

Jeffers was barefoot, and his slacks were soaked to the knees, where he’d evidently braved the first step or two into the swimming pool. I turned down the TV, so I could hear what he was dancing to. Some oldies bubble-gum pop.

I opened the French doors and stepped outside. I kept my fist around the Minelli cannon but didn’t haul it out.

Jeffers heard somebody behind him and spun quickly.

“Tina?”

“Nope.”

He looked terrible, dark heavy bags under the eyes, skin sallow and clammy. His hair was a matted, greasy mess. I didn’t believe he’d bathed recently or gotten much sleep. I assumed the tumbler of clear liquid in his fist was gin.

His glassy, bloodshot eyes focused on me with effort. “It’s you.”

“It’s me.”

“Where’ve you been, for Christ’s sake?”

The song on the radio segued into “Sugar Shack.”

I decided Jeffers wouldn’t appreciate all of the real and gritty drama in its entirety, so I boiled it down for him.

“I’m looking for Tina.”

“She was looking for you too,” said Jeffers. He was looking dead at me but not focusing too well. “She got tired of waiting and left.”

“To go where?”

“Oh, my God. Oh, oh, oooooh.” He trailed off into a sad, throaty moan and slumped into the lawn chair next to the table.

“Jeffers.”

“I’ve messed it all up,” he said. “Oh, God why can’t I die? Look at me. How come I don’t die?” He started crying, a long, high-pitched feeble blubbering.

“Knock it off,” I said. “Answer my question.”

He kept on crying and groped for the mirror with the cocaine. He curled his arm around it lovingly, drew it to him, pushed his face down into the powder.

“Stop that.”

He sniffed, tears dropping from his face at the same time, clumping in the white powder. He pressed his whole face into it, snorting and crying and writhing, coughing out sobs and sniffing in the powder when he could take a breath.

“Stop that. You look like a retard. Stop it.”

“I need it.” Sniff.

“You don’t need it. This isn’t helping.”

“I need it, need need need it. Oooooh, please oh please.” His face was still down on the table. He scooped the powder onto him with both hands, into his eyes, mouth, on his cheeks like he was trying to burrow into it, hide like an ostrich.

I grabbed him under the arms, pulled him out of the chair.

He went limp, dead weight, cried at full volume like an infant. His skin was slippery. I pulled him to the edge of the pool, dropped him. Moans.

“Sorry about this,” I said.

I dunked him into the cold water. In and out, in and out. I kept that up for a while until he shouted at me between dunks.

“Okay, okay. Stop.”

I pulled him away from the pool, let him lie on the grass. He was still crying, just a little, but it wasn’t the out-of-control tantrum like before. He was spent now, defeated, but I could talk to him.

“Oh, Tina. I wish Tina were here.”

“Me too,” I said. “She could make us some coffee.”

“She was so much more than a coffee maker.”

Whatever.

“Oh, God, where is everybody?”

“I don’t know.” I turned one of the pool chairs around, sat looking down at him lying sprawled on the grass, eyes crunched up, lips pulled back in a feral grimace. “Tina’s undercover FBI, you know.”

Jeffers picked his head up, looked at me like I was Sherlock Holmes or a Martian or God. “How did you know about that?”