In the foyer with him was a big man with thick hands.

"Mr. Hoyle?"

"That's me," Macklin said.

"Sorry, sir, but I'll have to pat you down. Just routine."

A short plump man in a white silk shirt was standing behind the big man. He had thin black hair plastered against his balding skull.

"Sergeant Voss is an off-duty police officer," the plump man said.

"Just to make sure everything's on the up and up."

"Excellent," Macklin said.

"Makes me feel safe."

He spread his arms and stood straight while Sergeant Voss ran his hands under each arm, down each side, around Macklin's belt line, and down each leg. Sergeant Voss was assiduous, as Macklin knew he would be, in avoiding Macklin's crotch. When he was through, Sergeant Voss stepped back and nodded at the plump man.

"I'm Tommy King," the plump man said.

"Come on in."

The game was in the living room. Five men at a round table, with a sixth chair waiting for Macklin at the sixth spot. A blond woman with prominent breasts and a short black dress was overseeing the buffet and bar that was set up at the far end of the living room.

"Drink?" King said.

"I'll just take a beer," Macklin said.

"Maybe a shrimp cocktail."

"Fine. Tiffany will get it for you."

Macklin sat down. He took the thousand out of his pants pocket and put it on the table beside him without making much attempt to smooth them out.

"The gentleman with the five-o'clock shadow is Tony, my dealer."

Macklin nodded at him.

"The rest will introduce themselves," King said.

"Bill," the first player said, and they went around the table.

"Chuck."

"Mel."

"John."

"Sully."

Macklin smiled and nodded. Tiffany brought him beer and shrimp cocktail and managed to rub one of her breasts against him as she did so.

"Five-card draw," Tony said.

"Jacks or better. Hundred-dollar minimum."

Macklin nodded and put his hundred in the pot. Tony began to deal. He was thin with dense black hair that waved straight back.

The cards seemed to move about in his thin hands as if they were alive. Macklin got a pair of threes. Chuck opened. Macklin drew three cards. It didn't improve his threes. He dropped out. Chuck won with three queens. Tiffany made sure everyone had what they needed in food and drink. And she made sure that she rubbed her chest against all the players but Tony. Tony neither ate nor drank.

Sergeant Voss leaned on the wall in the foyer. Occasionally Tommy King sat in for Tony. Macklin was a competent card player, but it didn't interest him. Gambling was for losers. There were better ways to get money. And there were better ways to lose it... like women. Macklin played hard enough to make it seem he was trying and kept close track of the amount of money that was moving Iv across the table.

After an hour and a half, Macklin was down $200.

i "Excuse me a minute," he said.

"Damn beer, you don't drink it, : you just rent it."

He stood and walked through a bedroom into the bath and \ closed the door and locked it. Then he unbuttoned his pants, pulled the tape off the gun butt and took the pistol out of his protector. He put the pistol down on the top of the toilet tank and took the occasion to urinate. Make it authentic. Then he zipped up.

Washed his hands, dried them on a towel, picked up the pistol, cocked it, and went back through the bedroom. He took a pillow |s off the bed and shook the pillowcase loose. Carrying it in his left hand, with the 9-mm in his right, he went into the poker room. The first thing he did as he stepped through the bedroom door was to shoot Sergeant Voss in the middle of the chest. Voss grunted and fell on his left side and twitched a couple of times and was still. It took the starch out of everyone else in the room. Macklin waved the gun gently toward the poker players. Tiffany began to cry softly.

Macklin ignored her.

"Any one of you can be next," Macklin said.

"Unless I get all the money."

Nobody spoke.

"Everybody clasp their hands behind their head."

They did as they were told.

"No problem," Tommy King said.

"You'll get your money."

"This is true," Macklin said.

"Now, one by one, starting with you, Tommy, get up, empty your pockets into the pillowcase. And then lie facedown on the floor," he gestured with the gun barrel, "right there."

They did as they were told. After all the men had done as they were told, Macklin picked up the money on the table and handed it to Tiffany.

"Hold that," he said.

Then he surveyed the room.

"In a minute I'm going to search you, one at a time. If I find you held out on me, I'm going to shoot you in the back of the head."

He paused a moment.

"Anybody got anything to declare?"

Nobody moved. Macklin grinned.

"Okay, I believe you. Come on, Tiffany."

He took hold of her wrist and led her past the dead man in the foyer and out the front door. Turn left. Two doors down. Into the emergency stairwell. Tiffany was still crying. He let go of her.

"I left you behind, they'd have taken the money away from you," he said.

"Now you're on your own."

And he left her clutching the table stakes and sniveling, and he ran down the four flights. At the bottom he took the gun off cock, dropped it in the pillowcase, and went out the emergency door onto the street.

NINE.

"So now you're a weather weenie," Jesse said.

He sat at the counter in Jenn's kitchen in a newly remodeled third-floor condominium on Beacon Street. Jenn had shown him around. From her bedroom window, you could see the Charles River. He had felt uneasy in her bedroom, but he was more comfortable now, sipping a scotch and soda, while Jenn transferred supper from the take-out boxes to the plates.

"Only the guys have to be weenies," Jenn said.

"The weather girls have to look," she stuck out her chest and wiggled her hips, "goooood."

Jesse smiled.

"What about 'having a film career'?"

Jenn shook her head.

"Have to ball too many toads," she said.

"Like Elliot?" Jesse said.

"Yeah, and the worst part is after you ball them, they're still toads."

She had bought chicken salad at the take-out, and cold sesame noodles, and a loaf of sourdough bread. She went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay and handed it to Jesse.

"Opener's right there beside the wine bucket," she said.

Jesse finished his scotch, opened the wine, and poured two glasses. He handed one to Jenn as she came around the counter to sit beside him. She touched his glass with hers.

"I don't know what to drink to," Jesse said.

"We could drink to each other."

"Okay," Jesse said. They drank.

"So," Jesse said.

"Here we are."

"Yes."

"But I don't quite know where here is."

"Other than three thousand miles from Los Angeles?" She served a spoonful of chicken salad onto his plate.

"It's got grapes in it," Jesse said.

"That makes it chicken salad Veronique."

Jenn served him some sesame noodles and took some for herself. She liked to eat, and she was careful about what she ate. But she put together some very odd combinations, Jesse thought.

Sesame noodles and chicken salad? Veronique? She was sitting beside him eating neatly. She seemed calm. He could smell her perfume, and he could brush her arm if he leaned slightly left. He remembered exactly what she looked like with her clothes off.