"I'm asking you."

"I suppose that's partly it."There was a long silence. "But if you think it's necessary, I won't argue.Laura and I have nothing really to hide."

The bartender said: "Drink up,gentlemen. It's closing time."

We drank up. In the lobby Bradshaw gave mea quick nervous handshake, muttering something about getting back to his wife.He went up the stairs two at a time, on his toes.

I waited for Arnie to finish his game ofgin. One of the things that made him a first-rate detective was his ability tomerge with almost any group, nest into almost any situation, and start aconversation rolling. He and the night man shook hands when we left the hotel.

"The woman your friend registeredwith," he said in the car, "is a good-looking brownette type, wellstacked, who talks like a book."

"She's his wife."

"You didn't tell me Bradshaw was married,"he said rather irritably.

"I just found out. The marriage issub rosa. The poor beggar has a dominating mother in the background. In theforeground. The old lady has money, and I think he's afraid of beingdisinherited."

"He better come clean with her, and take hischances."

"That's what I told him."

Arnie put the car in gear and as we drovewest and south along the lakeshore, recounted a long story about a client hehad handled for Pinkerton in San Francisco before the war. She was awell-heeled widow of sixty or so who lived in Hillsborough with her son, a manin his thirties. The son was always home by midnight, but seldom before, andthe mother wanted to know what he was doing with his evenings. It turned out hehad been married for five years to an ex-waitress whom he maintained, withtheir three small children, in a row house in South San Francisco.

Arnie seemed to think that this was the end of thestory.

"What happened to the people?" I asked him.

"The old lady fell in love with hergrandchildren and put up with the daughter-in-law for their sake. They alllived happily ever after, on her money."

"Too bad Bradshaw hasn't been marriedlong enough to have any children."

We drove in silence for a while. The roadleft the shore and tunneled among trees which enclosed it like sweet greencoagulated night. I kept thinking about Bradshaw and his unsuspectedmasculinity.

"I'd like you to do some checking on Bradshaw,Arnie."

"Has this marriage business escalated him into asuspect?"

"Not in my book. Not yet, anyway. Buthe did suppress the fact that he met Helen Haggerty in Reno last summer. I wantto know exactly what he was doing here in the month of August. He told JudsonFoley he was doing research at the University of Nevada, but that doesn't seemlikely."

"Why not?"

"He's got a doctorate from Harvard,and he'd normally do his research there or at Berkeley or Stanford. I want youto do some checking on Foley, too. Find out if you can why Foley was fired bythe Solitaire Club."

"That shouldn't be too hard. Theirtop security man is an old friend of mine." He looked at his watch in thelight from the dash. "We could go by there now but he probably won't be onduty this late on a Sunday night."

"Tomorrow will do."

Phyllis was waiting for us with food and drink.We sat up in her kitchen foolishly late, getting mildly drunk on beer andshared memories and exhaustion. Eventually the conversation came full circle,back to Helen Haggerty and her death. At three o'clock in the morning I wasreading aloud her translated poem in the Bridgeton Blazer about the violins ofthe autumn winds.

"It's terribly sad," Phyllissaid. "She must have been a remarkable young girl, even if it is only atranslation."

"That was her father's word for her.Remarkable. He's remarkable, too, in his own way."

I tried to tell them about the tough olddrunken heartbroken cop who had sired Helen. Suddenly it was half-past threeand Phyllis was asleep with her head resting like a tousled dahlia among thebottles on the kitchen table. Arnie began gathering up the bottles, carefully,so as not to wake her unnecessarily soon.

Alone in their guest room I had one ofthose intuitions that come sometimes when you're very tired and emotionallystirred up. I became convinced that Hoffman had given me the Blazer for areason. There was something in it he wanted me to see.

I sat in my underwear on the edge of theopen fresh-smelling bed and read the little magazine until my eyes crossed. Ilearned a good deal about student activities at Bridgeton City Collegetwenty-two years ago, but nothing of any apparent consequence to my case.

I found another poem I liked, though. Itwas signed with the initials G.R.B., and it went:

If light were dark

And dark were light,

Moon a black hole

In the blaze of night,

A raven's wing

As bright as tin,

Then you, my love,

© Alexander Sviyash, 2009