"Maybe they should bring their brothers up from Mexico," Lucas said.

She shook her head. "Easy to say."

"I know," Lucas said. "All right. I'll go ask him my question, and then maybe later we'll figure out somethingto slow him down a little."

"The hotel won't fire him," she said. "He's very good at what he does."

"Which is?"

"He fixes things. He gets tickets for shows and basketball games. If somebody gets sick, he gets a doctor."

"Anybody could do that," Lucas said.

"I mean, if a rock star gets sick"

"Because he put something up his nose?"

"Or whatever. Or if there's a little lovers quarrel, and somebody gets beat up or cut up"

"Okay," Lucas said. "We could still have a talk with him about the maids."

Lucas waited until the receptionist was well back toward her desk before he quietly opened Deal's office door. The office was a collection of six shoulder-high fabric cubicles; the clacking sound of a computer keyboard came horn the far corner.

Deal was a balding man with a long nose and heavy, petulant lips that he thrust in and out as he peered at his computer screen. He was wearing a dark sport coat, and sprinkles of dandruff decorated the shoulders and lapels. He was intent. He never saw Lucas coming.

Lucas picked up a visitors chair from a neighboring cubicle and sat it in the aisle just outside Deal's. He sat down heavily, and now Deal, for the first time, realized he wasn't alone. He jerked around, pulled back, startled.

" 'Lo, Derrick," Lucas said, smiling. "Thought you were in California."

Deal pulled himself together. "Goddamnit, Davenport, you scared the shit outa me. What do you want?"

"You heard about the murder? Sandy Lansing?"

"Nothing to do with us," Deal muttered. He picked a piece of paper up from the desktop, squinted atit, and slipped it into a desk drawer, out of sight.

Lucas shrugged. "You know how it is, Derrick. We gotta nail everything down. And this Lansing chick, she sorta puzzles us. She's got no moneyshe's pulling down twenty-five from this place. But she's driving a Porsche, she's dressing outa those Edina boutiques"

"We give her five grand a year for clothes," Deal said.

"Party dresses?"

"No. Not party dresses," Deal said. He turned casually to his computer screen, which showed a spreadsheet, pushed a couple of keys, and the screen blanked out. "The kind of dresses you see on the other women here. Upper-middle-class conservative matron clothes."

"We thought maybe she was getting the extra money from taking the clothes off. You know, the matron dresses."

Deal shook his head. "No."

"Come on, man," Lucas said. He waved his hand, meaning, Look at this place. "You got all kinds of jocks and movie stars and singers and theater people and rich guys I mean, what does a fixer guy like you do when one of them wants a blow job?"

"I tell him to go blow himself," Deal said.

"Derrick"

Deal put up his hands. "Listen, man. She was not fucking anybody for money. Not here, anyway. I knew about the car, I even asked her about it. She said something like, 'I got my own money.' I figured it came from Daddy and she was working until she got married."

"She was not a rich kid," Lucas said.

Deal shook his head. "So maybe you should do some real investigation, so you can stop hassling innocent people."

"Derrick, goddamnit, I'm trying tolike you, but you make it so hard," Lucas said. He put his hands on the arms of the visitor's chair, ready to stand up. "We know she's getting some extra cash, and sex is the only thing we can think of. I'd hate to think that Brown's is some kind of high-class bordello, but we're gonna have to send some people around to look at the records. Can we use your name as a recommendation?"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Deal said. He picked up a telephone, punched in four numbers, listened to it ring once, then again, and then said, "Jean, could you come down here for a second?"

He hung up and said, "You oughta look into dope."

"Why?"

"Because half the time, when Sandy came in, which was usually late in the afternoon, she was hungover. From partying. She was a party girl, and she had a real bad coke habit."

"You think she was selling?" Lucas asked.

Deal opened his mouth, as if with a reflexive response, but his eyes flickered and he changed direction. "I don't know about selling. But she was using. And she wasn't getting any extra cash here, above the boardor below it."

He was lying about something, Lucas thought. He'd seen it in Deal's eyes, the momentary flicker. The office door opened, and they both turned toward it. A moment later, a young woman looked down the aisle to Deal's cubicle and saw Lucas. "Mr. Deal?"

Deal stood up and stepped past Lucas. "Yeah, Jean, down here."

The woman walked toward them, and Lucas suddenly realized that she was extraordinarily good-looking. She was a little heavy, round, and had soft brown hair spiked with blond strands, a lush face with placid, pale blue eyes, and a slightly rolled underlip. She wore just a dab of lipstick. Her business suit was as conservative as the receptionist's, but with a differencehers was cut deeply enough in front to show a soft slice of cleavage. She was, Lucas thought, maternal and sexy at the same time.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Would you take this pencil outto India at the front desk?" He handed her a yellow pencil.

Shewas puzzled, but compliant. "Yes, sir."

When she was gone, Deal sat down again and said, with just a touch of sarcasm, "That'swhy Sandy Lansing wasn't dating our customers."

Looking after the woman, Lucas thought about it for a moment and then nodded. "She wasn't enough."

"Not nearly enough, for this place," Deal said, comfortably. "And there are a couple more like Jean. Even better than Jean. Not that I'd know anything about private arrangements between staff members and our guests." He folded his hands across his stomach and leaned hack in his office chair. "Anything else, Officer Davenport?"

Lucas leaned into him, smiled, reached out, and tapped him on the kneecap. "Yeah. Lansing and drugs. Where was she getting them?"

"I don't know." He squealed it; he sounded like a startled pig. "I don't know anything about any drugs, I don't do drugs. You know that."

"Yeah, right." Deal was lying about something. "You do assessments."

"Well. I would be, if you hadn't fucked me," he said. "Now I do hotels."

"Like it better?"

"No," Deal said. "I don't. I used tobe somebody. Now" He looked up between the rows of cubicles. "I'm in a goddamn rat cage."

Not much more to do: There were cops out everywhere, working on everybody. Writing biographies on the party people; matching their stories, one against the next. Outside, TV trucks were beginning to pile up at the curb. He called Rose Marie, checked out, and went home.

Had a sandwich, got a beer out of the refrigeratorthe last one; he'd have to run down to the store. He clicked on the TV: The movie people were going crazy, as expected. The local TV news shows crushed sports and weather into a five-minute segment, everything else into two minutes, and spent the rest of the half hour on Alie'e. Then the networks jumped in, with their talking heads. They'd had all day to explore the topic of fashion and dope, and long lines of solemn middle-aged men deplored the relationship.

Fox and NBC had a stunning Amnon Plain photograph of Alie'e Maison in what looked like men's underwear. The photo was as sexual as could be broadcast on TV without a fuzzy spot over the good parts, Lucas thoughtand while Plain was credited as the photographer, all of the commentators gave credit toThe Star for the use of the photo.