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“He didn’t wear hats,” said Zetta, then frowned. “Oh. That was a joke, right?”

“Investigative humor. It kills at conventions.”

“I’ll bet. A lot of that stuff I already brought with me”—she patted her tote—“but call by the house whenever suits. We can even go there now if you like.”

She had a gleam in her eye. It signaled that if I were to make a move on her, she wouldn’t object. Zetta might have been worried about her boyfriend, but notthatworried, even if I was old enough to be her father. She was one of those artistic free spirits. Trouble, in other words.

“Tomorrow morning will be fine,” I said. “How about after ten? I’m not an early riser.”

That sounded like an unfortunate double entendre under the circumstances, but Zetta managed to hide any disappointment she felt and no tears of regret stained the bar as she wrote down her address for me.

“After ten it is,” she said. “If I’m working, I may not hear the bell, so call my phone. I’ll see it light up.”

She ordered another gin and tonic. I left her to it. Outside, the evening wind was baring its teeth enough to nip but not bite. Across the street, an intoxicated man argued loudly with a marginally less inebriated woman, who walked away from him with her head high. Having no one else to argue with in her absence, he continued arguing with himself before heading after her. I shadowed him from the other side as he caught up, but he displayed no signs of violence toward her, nor she to him. I saw only some conciliatory gesture from the former and what might have been grudging acceptance from the latter. They walked on, together but apart, which was about as well as it could have ended.

I thought about calling Macy to see if she wanted to meet, but if I did, the evening would drift—not unpleasantly, it should be said—andperhaps the night as well, and I had things to do. I speculated on what it might say about me that I should opt for paperwork over the company of a woman who cared. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

I heard footsteps behind me, and Gibson Ouelette appeared. He hadn’t spent long in Howie’s. Gibson didn’t spend long anywhere except prison cells. I’d always gotten along okay with Gibson. He wasn’t a bad guy, just an unlucky one, and many worse men had never spent even an hour behind bars.

“How you doing, Gibson?”

“You know, getting by.”

He stared at the sky, which was cloudless and filled with stars.

“Beautiful night,” I said.

“Someone once told me all those stars were dead,” said Gibson, “but he was an asshole. It’s just old light, from thousands and thousands of years ago, that’s only reaching us now. We’re looking back in time, staring at fragments of the past scattered above our heads.”

Gibson was like that, a philosopher trapped in the body of a petty criminal. He could conduct a searching moral inventory while emptying a cash register. As I watched, he made a shape with his hands, creating a narrow rectangle.

“That was as much as I could see of it through the window of my last cell,” he told me. “Just that. But it was enough. All this”—he gestured at sky, land, river—“is too much.”

Gibson wished me good night and walked on. I guessed he’d be back in jail before the year was out—not because he wanted to be, but because after years spent in a room eight feet by six, the outside world was often too big, and the past too close. Departed, but still haunting the living.

CHAPTERXIV

Roland Bilas had never seen the interior of an interview room at LAX before and had hoped to without being able to say he’d had the pleasure. The room smelled of sweat and old coffee but was otherwise clean and tidy, even if the decor extended no further than various official notices in English and Spanish that told him little he didn’t already know.

Bilas didn’t panic. He was too experienced for that and had blustered, threatened, and lied his way out of tougher situations, some involving men who carried machetes as a matter of course and not because they were passionate about agriculture. When the customs officials ordered Bilas to go along with them, he hadn’t made any more fuss than might have been expected from an innocent man who believed an unfortunate error had been made, to be cleared up as soon as someone took the time to listen to what he had to say.

Bilas elected not to mention the Moche ceramics before determining the lay of the land. If they were the reason for the search, he would protest that he had the requisite invoices, and the paperwork was, so far as he was aware, completely legitimate. For the present, he made sure that when he spoke, he gave away nothing that might incriminate himself. He could have—perhaps even should have—immediatelyrequested access to a lawyer, but again, he preferred to see what might unfold before committing. More to the point, he was aware that he wasn’t legally entitled to representation during primary or secondary inspection by Customs and Border Protection, so if he kicked up, they could tell him to go fuck himself. If they found something and elected to charge him,thenthey’d have to let him call a lawyer, and the contest would begin in earnest. So Bilas asked only for a glass of water, which was provided, and for the novel he was reading to be returned to him, which it was not. After that, he was left alone with his thoughts.

The room didn’t have a clock, but Bilas still had his watch. An hour went by before two female CBP officers entered the room, accompanied by a young guy in shirtsleeves who was prematurely balding and appeared too somber for his years, as though playing at being a grown-up. One of the officers placed Bilas’s laptop and both of his cell phones, an iPhone and a red Nokia 2660 flip, on the table between them.

“What were you doing in Mexico, Mr. Bilas?” asked the younger of the two CBP officers. Her name tag identified her as Flores. The older one, who looked like she chewed barbed wire for fun and profit, was tagged as Schroeder. Mr. Somber wore no badge at all. He was also sweating through his green shirt, indicating a recent, even hurried, arrival. Bilas instantly had him pegged for non-CBP, a specialist of some kind. Bilas’s worry meter crept up a notch.

“I had a consultation about dental work,” he replied. “I’m considering getting implants and don’t want to have to refinance my mortgage to pay for them on this side of the border. I have the appointment letter in my bag, along with the estimate for the procedure.”

“What about the contents of your baggage?”

Bilas decided to play a card, see what unfolded.

“You mean the pottery? What about it? They make those things by the thousands to sell to tourists. I mean, okay, mine might be a littlerisqué, but I’m a single man living alone and my mother is dead, so I don’t see who could be offended by them.”

“And you bought them all from the same store?”

“The same dealer, yes. I don’t think I’d describe his premises as a store. A stall, maybe, but not a store. If you’ve seen the ceramics, you’ve seen the invoice as well, because I made sure to pack it alongside them. You know, just in case.”