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"Did it have a stamp on it?"

Berger thought, closed his eyes, frowning. Then he shrugged.

"She was a very observant woman," Chee said. "I wonder if either one of you happened to see a Navajo girl show up at Gorman's apartment yesterday. Little. Skinny teenager, wearing a navy pea coat. You see her?"

Berger hadn't. He looked after the woman, wheeling furiously across the grass with the red-faced man hurrying after her. "Smart," he said. "Sometimes."

"I had an aunt like that," Chee said. "Actually my mother's aunt. When she could remember she was very, very smart. Yesterday our friend couldn't remember anything."

"Excited," Berger said. He tried to explain. Failed. Stopped. Stared down at his feet. When he looked up again, he was excited. And he had a plan.

"War," he said. He held up two fingers.

Chee thought about that. "World War Two," he guessed.

"Son," Berger said. He tried to go on and failed.

"In the war," Chee said.

Berger nodded. "Navy."

"He was killed," Chee guessed.

Berger shook that off. "Big shot," he said. "Rich." That exhausted Berger's supply of words. His mouth twisted. His face turned pink. He pounded at the walker.

The red-faced young man had caught the woman's wheelchair and was pushing her toward the porch. She sat, eyes closed, face blank. So her son was rich and important, Chee thought. What was Berger trying to tell him with that. Her son had been in the navy forty years ago, now he was rich and important, and that was related to something causing her to be excited yesterday.

"Hey!" Chee shouted, suddenly understanding. "Yesterday. Yesterday morning she saw a sailor, is that it?"

Berger nodded, delighted at the breakthrough.

"Maybe she saw a sailor," Chee told Berger. "Maybe she saw Margaret Sosi in her pea jacket. What's that woman's name?"

Berger got it out the first try. "Ellis."

"Mrs. Ellis," Chee shouted. "Did you see a sailor yesterday? At the apartments?"

"I saw him," Mrs. Ellis said.

"He looked like your son. In a blue pea coat?"

"I don't have a son," Mrs. Ellis said.

Chapter 15

The man mcnair called henry brought Vaggan his water in a crystal glass. Vaggan had said, "No ice, please," but the man named Henry hadn't listened, or hadn't cared. Henry's expression had suggested that he found bringing Vaggan a glass of water distasteful. He was a plump, soft man, with a soft voice and shrewd eyes that he allowed to give him an expression of haughty contempt. Vaggan placed the glass on the coffee table, aware of the two ice cubes floating in it but not looking at it.

"You're a day late," McNair said. "I called you yesterday morning, and I said there was a hurry for this." McNair opened a black onyx box on his desk, extracted a cigaret, and tapped it against his thumbnail. "I don't like people who work for me to be late."

Vaggan was feeling fine. He'd gotten home from the Leonard business before dawn, showered, done his relaxing exercises, and slept for six hours. Then he'd exercised again, weighed, and had a breakfast of wheat germ, alfalfa sprouts, and cheese while he watched the noon TV news. The NBC channel had led with Leonard being rushed through the emergency room doors and propelled away with one bloody ear visible. He switched quickly to ABC-TV and caught the tag end of his own voice, recorded from his final telephone call, explaining about the welshed debt. The Man could hardly ask more. Perfect. He'd switched off the set then and called the McNair number. He'd told the man who answered—probably Henry—to tell McNair he'd be there at 2 p.m.

It was an easy hour's drive. He killed the remaining time reading through his new copies of Survival and Soldier of Fortune. He clipped out an article on common medicinal herbs of the Pacific Coast and circled an advertisement of Freedom Arsenal offering an FN-LAR assault rifle for $1,795. He'd looked at an FN in a Pasadena sporting goods store—the same model built by Fabrique National in Belgium for NATO paratroops. He'd been impressed, but the price there had been $2,300, plus California sales tax. With the Leonard money, he could afford either price, but most of that money would have to go to the contractor to finish the concrete work on his storage bunker, and he also wanted to install a solar generator and add to his stock of ammunition. However, there'd be more money coming in from McNair. Vaggan felt fine.

He left at 1 p.m., giving himself a bit more time than he needed to drive into the Flinthills district, where the McNair family had bought itself a hill and built itself an estate and raised its offspring. And now he sat in the McNair office, or study, or library, or whatever such rooms were called in such houses, and here across the desk was McNair himself. McNair interested him. Very few men did.

"I am never late," Vaggan said. "Maybe Henry didn't tell you." He glanced over his shoulder at Henry, who was standing stiffly beside the doorway. "Henry," he said. "Come here."

Henry hesitated, looking past Vaggan at McNair. But he came.

"Here," Vaggan said. He extracted the two ice cubes from the glass and held them out to Henry. "You can have these," he said. "I said no ice."

Henry's face flushed. He took the cubes and stalked out of the room.

Vaggan took out his handkerchief and dried his fingers.

"Hard to get reliable help," he said to McNair.

McNair had understood the subtlety of the point Vaggan was making, appreciating how the threat had been made without ever being spoken. He made a wry face and nodded.

"Henry," he called.

Henry reappeared at the door.

"Bring Mr. Vaggan a glass of water, please."

"Yes, sir," Henry said.

"So what needs doing?" Vaggan said.

"More Navajo business," McNair said. He had a heavy, rawboned face, pale and marked with the liver marks common with lightly pigmented people when they age. His eyes were an odd color, something near green, sunken under heavy, bristling gray brows. His expression was sour. "More trouble from the Gorman screw-up," he added. "A young woman named"—McNair looked down at a note pad on his desk—"named Margaret Sosi came to Los Angeles from Shiprock. She had a photograph of Leroy Gorman, and she came to Albert's place in West Hollywood looking for him. I want you to find her."

"Just find her," Vaggan said.

McNair grinned, more or less, showing white, even teeth. Henry had not had even teeth. It seemed to Vaggan that it was one of the few remaining signs left in America of social position versus family poverty. Rich people could afford orthodontists.

"I don't get involved with what happens after you find her. Just make sure she doesn't make any trouble." He lit the cigaret with a silver lighter extracted from the end of the onyx box. "Absolutely sure. I do not want her talking to anybody."

He exhaled a cloud of smoke.

"And I want that picture. I want it brought to me, personally. I want an end to it."

Vaggan said nothing. A map of Scotland printed on something that looked like parchment dominated the wall behind McNair. Its borders were decorated by patches of plaid which Vaggan presumed were the tartans of the Scottish clans. A bagpipe and a heavy belt holding a scabbarded sword hung beside it. A claymore, Vaggan thought. Wasn't that the Scottish name for it? Down the wall were photographs. People in kilts. People in fox-hunting coats. A photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, an autograph scrawled across the bottom.

"Here's her description," McNair said. He held out a sheet of typing paper.

"I hope you have a little more than that," Vaggan said. "If you want her found this year."

"I have an address."

"Addresses help," Vaggan said.

"If she's still there," McNair said. "It was yesterday morning when I called you."

"Maybe we'll be lucky," Vaggan said. "Anyway, it's a place to pick up the trail."

McNair was holding the typing paper, folded, between his fingers, tapping the edge of the fold against the desk, looking at Vaggan.

"How'll you do it?"