"We would also like to know from you… this man who was murdered at the airfield-what is his connection with these criminals in St. Louis? He is a Mafia?"

"He has connections with St. Louis organized crime," Mallard said.

"You think some Italians from St. Louis came to Cancъn and shot my boy," Mejia said. "By mistake."

"Not so many Italians anymore, but that's basically what we think, yes," Mallard agreed.

"You will tell us their names?"

Now Mallard showed a little nervousness. "We can't do that. But as the investigation progresses, I'm sure you will… learn a few of them. We wouldn't want you to take, ummm, any active role in the, ummm, investigation."

"But, perhaps, through my family commercial connections-I have connections with hotels, motels, friends in the States… perhaps I could find information for you. If I had the names."

"We really can't bring in civilians."

"He's afraid you would send gunmen to St. Louis to kill the names," Lucas said to Mejia. "He might not mind if they did that, if it would help catch Rinker. But he couldn't tell you the names, because that might turn out to be technically criminal and he would be purged."

"That's not exactly accurate," Mallard said irritably.

"Besides, you don't need him to tell you," Lucas said, still talking to Mejia. "Watch your computer. The FBI leaks like crazy and the names will appear. If Rinker starts shooting, there will be lists in the newspapers. In your search engine, put in 'organized crime,' 'St. Louis,' and the word 'shot.' "

"Goddamnit, Lucas," Mallard said.

Mejia looked at Lucas for a long five seconds, then turned to Mallard. "So, then, from me, you need clues to Clara Rinker."

Mallard nodded. "Yes."

Mejia nodded back. "We will look. If you will give us a telephone number, we will call when we find anything."

Mallard took a card from his pocket, scribbled a number on it, and handed it over. Mejia glanced at it and held it out to Anthony, who, like his brother, was leaning against the library table. "That's my secure cell phone," Mallard said. "I sleep with it. You can call me twenty-four hours a day."

"You're not married," Mejia said.

"Not anymore," Mallard said. "The job was more interesting."

THEY TALKED FOR another ten minutes, but not much came of it. Mejia and his sons gave them impressions of Rinker. She was a happy woman, they said, and had made Paulo happy. Although she said she was younger than Paulo, they thought she might have been a couple of years older. Would they have married? Perhaps.

Mejia seemed to lack any real information about the crime, which wasn't surprising, since the FBI and the Mexican National Police had the same problem. As they left, Lucas and Mejia talked a few minutes about library shelves, and how to prevent unsightly sagging, and the arrangement of books, which the old man called an enjoyable but impossible task. On the way out of Mйrida, Malone said, "Nice old man. For a ganglord."

Martin's eyes flashed up to the rearview mirror to catch hers, and he said, "Maybe not so much ganglord talk outside the car. And I do not think many people would agree that he is a nice old man."

"Do you think he'll help us trail Rinker?" Mallard asked.

"If he sees some benefit in it," Martin said. "Benefit for him. He will analyze, analyze, analyze, and if finally he is sure of the benefit, he will help. Realpolitik."

Lucas smiled at the word. "You speak really good English, you know?"

WITH MARTIN AS a guide, they returned to Cancъn and toured the restaurant where Paulo Mejia and Rinker had been shot, interviewed the restaurant owner, and climbed into the loft of the church to see the shooting position taken by the assassin.

"Had to have local help to find this," Lucas said, as Martin explained how the shooter had probably fired once, then retreated down the stairs and out the back door to a waiting car.

"There would have to be a driver," Martin said. "You couldn't park a car back there-it would block the entire street and bring attention."

"You know the driver?" Mallard asked.

"We are looking for a man… He is unaccountably absent. Normally, he would go to relatives to be hidden, but they do not know where he is. They knew where he was three days ago, but then he went away."

"Running," Malone suggested. "Maybe he felt you coming."

"He went to a business meeting, his mother says. He didn't come back."

"Mmm."

The loft was hot as a kiln, and smelled like hay, like a midwestern barn loft in summer. A wasp the size of Lucas's little finger bumped along the seam of the ceiling and wall. They looked out on the hot street for another minute, then trooped back to the restaurant for a light lunch. The service was wonderful, which Martin seemed to take for granted. Lucas again noticed the body language between Mallard and Malone, an offering from Mallard, equivocation from Malone. He smiled to himself and went back to the pasta salad.

From the restaurant, they went to the hotel where Rinker had worked as a bookkeeper. She'd worked off the books, illegally, but nobody was being coy about it. With both the Mejia family and the national cops involved, the hotel manager simply opened up and told everybody everything: He'd hired her because she had the bookkeeping skills-she knew Excel backward and forward-and was willing to work whenever she was needed, for as long or as little as she was needed, and there were no benefits or taxes to pay.

"She said she just needed an extra squirt of money to supplement her disability pension," the manager told them. "She was very good. The arrangement was convenient for everybody."

"Is there any possibility that she took the job because she knew she would meet Paulo Mejia?" Lucas asked.

The manager shook his head. "Mr. Mejia never came here-only the once, to look at the parking for an appraisal he was doing. I introduced them when he needed some numbers."

"Purely by chance."

He nodded. "By chance." He explained that he didn't know Mejia was coming that day, and that she'd come in at the last minute to deal with a money problem involving a group of Americans who had asked to extend their vacation stay. "She could not have planned it."

He also characterized her as cheerful and hardworking, and said that her hours were increasing each month. "I would have liked to employ her full-time, if she had not been a foreigner," he said. "She worked very well."

Mallard asked about pictures, and the manager shrugged. "How often do you take pictures of people in your office? We're not tourists-we work here."

ON THE WAY back to the hotel, all four of them were quiet, thinking their own thoughts, until Lucas asked Martin, "Why is it that everybody speaks English? Everybody we've seen…"

Martin sighed. "Gringo imperialism. Cancъn business is Americans and Canadians. And English people, and now some Germans. Always Israelis. There's a story-not a story, you would call it a line- about Cancъn," Martin said. "It's that Cancъn is just like Miami-except in Miami, they speak Spanish."

AT THE HOTEL, Martin got out of the truck, shook hands with the three Americans, and asked Lucas to get the name of the San Francisco store where he'd bought the jacket. Lucas said he would find it and call back.

"Not much here," Lucas said, as he watched Martin drive away. Then he, Mallard, and Malone crossed into the cool of the hotel.

"But we got a deal with old man Mejia, which is the main thing," Mallard said. "If he decides to put a price on her head, Rinker's gonna have a hard time getting any help from the underground. Word'll get around."

"You have more faith than I do," Lucas said. "Most of the fuckin' underground can't read a TV Guide."

"I'm not talking about the assholes on the corner," Mallard said. "I'm talking about the gun dealers and the moneymen and the document people. They'll hear. She'll have trouble moving."