3

Ali Azad had given me a lot of heat on Iranian politics, but nothing but smoke on Phil Statler’s missing strongman. At the moment I wasn’t prepared to take too much of what the Iranian had said at face value; the man was simply too emotional. It was time to talk to Darius.

The professor wasn’t in his office, and when I called his home there was no answer. I still had two hours before I was scheduled to teach a seminar; not wanting to waste them, I climbed into my Volkswagen and drove uptown to my brother’s precinct. I was told he was having lunch in the small restaurant across the street.

I was happy for the excuse to see Garth. The pressure cooker that was New York City was making strangers of us, and I regretted it. Garth, along with my parents, had been the calm eye in the storm of family tragedy that had been my birth. While my other relatives were moaning and debating which limb of the family tree I’d dropped from, my parents had been buying me books and Garth had been reading them to me; Garth had carried me on his shoulders, literally and figuratively, across the bleak, lunar landscape of my childhood, leaving behind a trail of broken noses attesting to his touchiness on the subject of jokes about his dwarf brother. It was this simple kindness toward another human being who was at the same time a source of considerable embarrassment that would always mark Garth, in my eyes, as a truly great man. I loved him, and wished that life could be as kind to him as he’d been to me.

He’d married young, only to see his wife and twin baby daughters killed in a highway smashup a year and a half later; the loss had seemed to jerk his life permanently off track. Although on the surface he seemed to carry his grief well, I always knew better. His scars had never healed, and he’d traded the isolation of being a sheriff in the Great Plains country for the even greater isolation of being a police detective in the jungle of glass and steel that was New York City. A compleat professional, he was nonetheless—to those who knew him—a lonely, shy man prone to spells of deep depression and chronic insomnia.

But he’d been deliriously happy—and, I assumed, sleeping like an exhausted lover—for the past few weeks, and the reason for this rejuvenated mental health was sitting next to Garth’s gaunt, rawboned frame at a rear table in the restaurant. Neptune Tabrizi was five feet five of Middle East exotica; physical perfection except, perhaps, for a little plumpness in the bust—which was just fine for a confirmed breast man like my brother. Neptune was thirty-nine, and her jet black hair was naturally streaked with individual gray hairs, providing her with an ebony-and-silver crown that no hairdresser in the world could have matched. She had almond-colored eyes, olive skin and a full mouth with perfect teeth; the constant laughter in her face and voice was the only makeup she’d ever need. She worked for the Celanese Corporation, and she’d met Garth when he’d investigated the burglary of her Riverside Plaza apartment in early February. They’d been inseparable ever since. As far as I was concerned, Neptune was the best thing that had ever happened to Garth—and that included his first wife, whom I’d never much liked anyway.

“Company!” I announced, executing a little two-step in front of their table.

“Company,” Garth groaned, while Neptune giggled and clapped her hands.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said, kissing Neptune on the cheek.

She put her hand behind my neck and kissed me on the mouth. “Hello, you precious little thing.”

I sighed and put my hand over my heart. “You’re the only person in the world who could call me a precious little thing and not make me want to hit them.”

Garth picked up a table knife and grinned wickedly. “Neptune’s the only person in the world who’d think you were precious—little thing.”

“Arrgh! Gasp! Choke!” I snatched up Neptune’s knife and fenced with my brother until we’d managed to disturb the entire restaurant, at which point I made an apologetic bow to the angry manager and sat down next to Neptune.

“You’re both crazy!” Neptune whispered with delight.

“Has my brother found your jewelry yet?”

She shook her head. “And here I thought I could assure myself of special treatment by falling in love with the investigating detective.”

That made Garth uncomfortable, although I didn’t think Neptune noticed. “Who’s minding the ivory tower, brother?” he asked me.

“That task has fallen to my subordinates for the day,” I said archly. “I am exploring the world of the great unwashed, the selfless guardians of our society.”

“And what role are we playing today?”

“I have shed my cloak of anonymous, mild-mannered professor to reveal my true identity.”

Garth almost smiled. “That would be Master Investigator?”

“You’ve got it.”

The waiter brought salad and looked inquiringly at me. I shook my head.

“Bad week for investigators,” Garth said seriously. “Day before yesterday we fished a colleague of yours out of the East River.”

“Who?”

“John Simpson. You know him?”

“No.”

Garth shrugged and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “What are you working on?”

“I thought you’d never ask. I’m looking for a missing Iranian.” I showed him Khordad’s photograph. “His name’s Hassan Khordad. I wanted to check the Missing Persons and morgue sheets.”

“You have his stats?”

“They’re on the back of the photo.”

Garth flipped the photograph over and studied the information sheet taped to the back. Neptune had pushed her salad to one side and was watching him with intense interest. “Performer?” Garth asked.

“Circus; muscle act.”

Garth copied the name and stats in his pocket pad and handed me back the photo. “I’ll check it out. Get back to me this afternoon.”

“God, I’ve never seen you so cooperative. It must be love. By the way: if it makes any difference, he was supposed to be on his way to New York when he dropped out of sight.”

“Mongo should try The Santur,” Neptune said to Garth.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Neptune touched my hand. “It’s a nightclub just down the street. If your man’s Iranian and he’s been anywhere near the city, chances are he may have shown up there at least once. Someone may know him or remember seeing him there.” She turned to Garth. “Garth, let’s go with him.”

“Uh, I had other plans for this evening, sweetheart.”

She squeezed his arm hard. “But I’d really like to go,” she said seriously. “It’s all very exciting.”

Garth shot me an icy warning look; Garth was horny.

“Sorry, beautiful,” I said, rising, “but I never mix business with pleasure. With you along, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my incredibly exciting, perilous work. Thanks, folks. See you.”

After shaving and showering at my apartment, I went downstairs and had copies made of Khordad’s photo. Then I drove back over to the university to teach my seminar. In the evening I phoned Garth, who told me that Khordad’s name was on an M.P. list from Chicago, but that was all. His body wasn’t in the morgue, so it looked as though I’d have to do things the hard way, as usual.

I called a cab, which took me across town. I found The Santur tucked away between a dry-cleaning store and an antique shop. The club was a puddle of laughter in the middle of an otherwise somber neighborhood that barricaded itself behind thick ribbons of steel when darkness came. Neon and music dribbled out into the darkened street; it was still early in the evening, but a steady stream of people flowed back and forth through the painted doors.

Inside, I found myself sucked into the middle of a milling crowd where all attempts at conversation vied with a wailing din of Eastern music. I steered toward the sound of clinking glasses to my left, wedged myself into a corner of the bar and managed to signal the bartender.

From the vantage point of my bar stool, I sipped my Scotch on the rocks and studied the layout of the club. There was a slightly elevated platform in the bar area near the entrance; to the rear was a large dining area and dance floor. The music came from a stage to the right of the dance floor, where a group of dark-skinned Middle Eastern musicians held forth. The lead instrument was some kind of reed affair which sounded like a cross between a saxophone and an oboe, its intricate rhythms flitting, sweeping and dancing atop a steady beat laid down by a set of what looked like bongo drums, but were larger.

After a few minutes the closeness of the room, the Scotch and the strange, haunting quality of the atonal music began to have an effect; I whooped along with the others at a particularly exciting passage of music. People stared, but strangers usually stared; I simply nodded my head and stared back. It was a technique that invariably worked. The staring number finished, I continued my inspection of the club.

Like the bar, the dining and dancing area was jammed with people. Most of the faces looked foreign and were probably Iranian; they had the same dusky features and dark hair as the man whose picture I carried in my pocket. There were a few Americans—mostly tourist types, with one notable exception; this particular American was dressed in an expensive suit, and his gold watchband glittered somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand dollars. Barely holding his own against a waistline that was running to fat, he had a florid face that was bracketed by thick, reddish sideburns which only served to draw attention to the fact that the rest of his head was bald. I put his age at around fifty.

What set him apart were his dinner companions and his bearing; unlike the other Americans, he seemed completely at home in The Santur as he laughed and joked with the Iranian men and women on either side of him. Occasionally he would rise and dance with a woman. She wore a quarter-inch-wide gold wedding band; from the way they danced, I hoped she was the American’s wife.

A man sitting alone at an adjacent table rose and staggered drunkenly toward the exit. I walked quickly across the room and sat down in his seat. The American’s table was directly behind me.

The dancers were performing a type of circle dance, frequently stopping to clap their hands or stamp their feet as if to punctuate their difficult in-and-out, back-and-forth maneuvers. A few non-Iranians joined in, but they were clumsy and always at least a half beat behind the others. The man with the sideburns was the exception again; he moved gracefully with the music, anticipating every move, swaying with the rhythms. Finally the music soared to a crescendo, then stopped; the exhausted dancers began making their way back to their seats. The American and his Iranian wife, their faces flushed with heat and pleasure, passed close to my chair.

I smiled and spoke to the man. “That looks like a lot of fun, and you look right at home. I envy you.”

The woman reacted first, lightly touching my arm and smiling. Her face, like Anna’s, seemed to carry a vast reservoir of emotions close to the surface; her eyes were limpid and hot, too large for the rest of her face, which was thin and ethereal. She filled her dress well, but her magnetism was completely internal. The man projected the opposite image; his eyes were cold, polished green agates pushed into the puffy flesh of his face. Off the dance floor, up close, he seemed stiff and defensive, like a man who’d tried to buy the grace that sometimes comes with culture and been shortchanged. As he studied me his eyes seemed to constantly change focus, as though he were looking at me through a series of emotional lenses. Finally he smiled thinly and asked me something in Farsi.

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “I only know a few words. Actually, my interest in Iran is fairly recent—but growing fast.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place if you’re interested in Iran,” the man said over the easy ripple of the woman’s laughter.

“Here,” the woman said, indicating an empty chair at their table. “Come and join us.”

“Bob Frederickson,” I said, extending my hand as I moved to the table. The man’s grip was weak, bony and uneven for his size, as if his hand had been broken and never properly reset.

“Orrin Bannon,” the man said. “This is my wife, Soussan.”

The woman and I exchanged pleasantries; then I settled back in my seat and tried to think of a way to gracefully steer the conversation around to the picture and poster folded in my pocket. The band had left the stage for the bar, and the platform was now bare except for a single straight-backed chair and a low, broad bench. The lights blinked on and off.

Soussan Bannon leaned across her husband. “The man you’re about to hear is the greatest santur player in the world,” she whispered to me. “His name is Omar.”

“Then a santur is something besides the name of this place?”

“Yes. It is an instrument. You will see.”

Omar stepped from behind a green velvet curtain to my left and walked across the floor to the stage. A thin, short man with sharp, angular features and graying hair, he would have been lost in a crowd of three—except for the instrument he carried under his arm; its mere presence seemed to stiffen his spine, and he carried it as a man might carry his soul. The instrument consisted of a hollow wooden sounding board about a yard long and a foot wide. The surface of the board was covered with taut gut strings anchored on either side of the board by steel tuning pegs.

Omar cocked his head to one side and smiled shyly at the audience, then sat down and positioned his santur on the bench in front of him. He removed a metal device from his pocket and began an intricate tuning procedure with a fragile wooden mallet shaped like a toothbrush which he held in his other hand. Occasionally he would merely brush the strings with the side of the tiny mallet and the air would fill with a lush, enameled sound, like the whirring wings of a flock of metal birds.

There was no pause between tuning and actual performance; one merged into the other, until finally both hands held the delicate mallets which moved in a perpetual blur, like hummingbirds’ wings, over the santur. Separate notes and chords were woven together into a curtain of sound that was exquisitely finespun, yet overwhelmingly powerful with a sinewy, achingly beautiful force that spoke to me of sadness, of mountains and heat and ruined, ghostly cities; I heard the terrible, deadly beauty that must be the soul of the desert.

The music, even the more spirited passages, seemed built on scales of sadness; the santur was a weeping instrument that worshiped the trinity of life, death and land, dripping tears over this triumvirate of existence that for the Iranian, I realized, must seem one. There was an air of immediacy to the music—thousands of split-second decisions enforced by a pair of flying hands building tiers of chords through which individual notes scampered and dipped like fragments of half-remembered dreams.

Then it was over, the last delicate chords drifting away like wisps of clouds. The lights came up. Somewhere behind me a woman was softly crying. Omar acknowledged the applause with a slight bow, then stood with his santur and walked back through the velvet curtain.

Bannon lighted a cigarette. “Did you like it?” he asked gruffly.

I tried to think of something original to say, and couldn’t. “It was beautiful,” I said simply. “I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Why isn’t Omar in Iran? I wouldn’t think there’d be much demand for santur players in the United States.”

“There isn’t, but there is some money in it for him here. More than in Iran.”

“I thought it might be his politics,” I said carefully.

Bannon took a long time to answer. “You didn’t mention that you were interested in Iranian politics,” he said quietly.

“Actually, I only know what I read in the newspapers or see on television.”

“Oh? What do you read and see?” Bannon was staring into his drink.

“Well, I know that Pahlavi—” I stopped in mid-sentence. Soussan Bannon had stiffened; a couple at an adjacent table had paused in their conversation and were staring angrily at me. I was definitely in Shah Country. “Uh, the Shah,” I continued, lowering my voice, “is a tough man to get a line on. On television—and you see a lot of him on television—he comes across as urbane, intelligent and tremendously proud of his country. He obviously loves Iran, and he spends an enormous amount of money here promoting it. But the day after some great puff piece in Newsweek his jailers will get caught torturing political prisoners, and all that expensive public relations work goes down the drain. Anyway, I know Iran is a police state, and I thought that might have something to do with a musician of Omar’s caliber being here.”

Bannon was half-turned in his seat and it was hard to tell what, if anything, was going on in his face. Soussan Bannon, perhaps sensing the tension in her husband’s voice, was chatting determinedly with the woman next to her.

“Don’t believe everything bad you hear about the Shah,” Bannon said evenly. “Most of it’s garbage.”

As I was trying to think of a tactful way to frame my next question the lights dimmed again. A spotlight stabbed through the darkness, skittered across the floor and came to rest on the green curtain.

“Here’s Leyla,” Bannon continued tightly. “I think you’ll find her more interesting than Iranian politics.”

Once again the room was filled with the wailing music of the band, this time underlined by an even heavier drumbeat. The woman, clothed only in a brief halter and flowing silk trousers, leaped through a fold in the curtains, went rigid for a moment in the smoky cone of light, then bumped her hips to one side and raised her arms; suddenly the air was filled with the staccato clash of the tiny cymbals she wore on her fingers. She closed her eyes and stiffened, the spotlight caressing her body, the music of her cymbals challenging the drums and reeds.

Then Leyla began to dance, slowly at first, her body undulating in slow, peristaltic waves like some great, lovely serpent. Gradually the pace quickened and her breasts bounced in time to the music. Her flesh was moist; large droplets of perspiration oozed from her pores and ran in glistening rivulets down her body. The overall effect was electrifying, an erotic marriage of life and the earth.

I kept my eyes on the girl and leaned toward Bannon. “Iranian?”

Bannon shook his head. He smelled of expensive cologne and the musky odor of desire. “Egyptian,” he said. “Iranian men are great connoisseurs of the belly dance, but they don’t like their women doing it. Performers in Iran are looked down on.”

He signaled to the waiter, who moved over and took our orders.

“Tell me,” I said, “how does an American learn so much about Iran?”

Bannon touched his wife’s shoulder solicitously. “My teacher.”

“Mrs. Bannon is a lovely woman,” I said, flashing my best Sunday smile. “How did the two of you meet?”

“Through my business,” Bannon said. “I spend a great deal of time in Iran. I met Soussan there.”

Hearing her name, the woman turned and patted her husband affectionately. Bannon smiled and kissed her gently on the cheek. Whatever his other faults, he had good taste in women.

“Tell me, Mr. Frederickson,” Mrs. Bannon said, “what work do you do?”

“I teach criminology at N.Y.U.” I decided not to mention the private-investigator business until I had to. I had no idea if Bannon could help me, but he seemed to be a regular at The Santur and he spoke my language; private detectives, like questions, tend to make people nervous, and I wanted to make certain I approached the subject properly.

Bannon grunted noncommittally; if he was surprised, he had the grace to hide it.

“You’ve piqued my curiosity,” I said casually. “Aside from the torture, what are some of the other bad things I’m likely to hear about the Shah and his people?”

“Childish mouthings from people who should know better; people who talk about freedom when they mean anarchy.”

“There must be a middle ground for discussion somewhere. Wouldn’t you agree that Iran’s a police state?”

“Sure,” Bannon said, lighting a cigar, “but that’s as it should be. You can’t compare Iran to a country like the United States. There is no place like the United States. This country functions better as a democracy because it developed as a democracy. Iran, on the other hand, is better off as a monarchy—or police state, if you will.”

“You’re speaking as someone who enjoys all the freedoms of this country,” I said, smiling so hard it hurt.

“I’m speaking as someone who knows Iran,” he replied evenly.

Leyla danced on, her eyelids half-closed and fluttering, completely lost in the music. She came off the dance floor and began to writhe her way between the tables. Her body glistened. She seemed to take no notice of the hands that reached out and stuffed dollar bills into the moist cleft between her breasts.

Nor was it only the men who enjoyed Leyla’s dancing. I’d stolen a glance at Soussan Bannon; the slim woman was sitting on the edge of her chair, her fingers white from the pressure they exerted on the tabletop, her eyes smoldering.

Leyla was close now; her eyes passed over me, then came back. I stared into them; the intelligence in their brown depths blended nicely with an uninhibited sensuality. Together, the two elements made a heady brew. She was an artist who spoke with her body, and that was something I could appreciate.

It wasn’t likely she’d forget the only dwarf in the place, but I wanted to make sure. I reached into my wallet, fished out a twenty. Leyla removed the other bills from the cleft and bent over, momentarily exposing the topography of her breasts. I slipped the twenty into the inviting space and stared after it. Her brown, taut nipples were surprisingly dry, dancing to a beat of their own on the rounded surfaces of her breasts. I quickly looked away; the musky odor of her hot body was in my nostrils, and I gulped at my drink as Leyla returned to the center of the dance floor, finished her dance in a wild, blurred spin, then crumpled into an exhausted mound of slippery flesh. I applauded with the others, clapping until my hands hurt.

“How did you find out about this place?” Bannon asked as the roar of the crowd subsided.

“It was recommended. Actually, I came here looking for a certain Iranian.”

It seemed to me that Bannon’s clapping hands missed a beat, but that could have been my imagination. Gradually the last beats of applause faded away and the waiters started their rounds. Leyla, still breathing hard, rose from the floor and disappeared through the curtain. I stole a glance at Bannon’s wife; she seemed almost as exhausted as the dancer. Her hands were trembling as she reached for her drink.

“This Iranian you’re looking for,” Bannon said, turning toward me. “A friend?”

“No. I’m working for a client. I’m also a private investigator.”

“You didn’t mention that you were a detective,” he said tightly, quickly looking away. “It must be an interesting line of work.”

“It can be.”

“Then it was no accident that you came over by our table?”

“You’re American, Mr. Bannon. You speak English, and you looked like a regular. I thought you might be able to help.”

Bannon’s thick, stubby fingers flexed, and his right hand closed around his glass. He didn’t drink, and he didn’t look at me. “You should talk to Leyla. She sees everyone who comes in here.”

“Thank you. I was thinking of doing just that. In the meantime, I thought you might have seen him.”

Bannon glanced quickly at the photograph I showed him, then shoved it back at me. I thought his movement was just a bit too quick, too tense. “I haven’t seen him,” Bannon said shortly. “Besides, the chances are slim that he’d show up here.”

“Really? What makes you say that?”

Bannon swallowed hard, and the worms of muscle in his jaw worked rapidly. “Why should he come here? The Santur isn’t very well known.”

He was lying, and I felt my pulse quicken. “Well, maybe your wife will recognize him.”

When I started to lean across to Soussan Bannon, her husband made a sudden move, knocking over his water glass, drenching my hand and the photograph; it hadn’t been an accident. The florid-faced man shoved my hand away and forcefully dabbed with his napkin at the spreading blotch of water. Finally he signaled the waiter, who hurried over and assumed the job of mopping up.

A number of people had turned to stare at us. Soussan’s face was flushed. She started to speak to me, but her husband interrupted, speaking sharply to her in Farsi. She tensed and quickly looked away.

Bannon turned to me. “We came here to enjoy ourselves, Frederickson,” he said, “not to spend an evening answering silly questions from a dwarf pretending to be a private detective!”

It was ugly, and loud enough for most of the people in the dining area to hear. There was a sudden rush of whispers and tittering laughter. Bannon was trying hard to embarrass me; he had no way of knowing that these laughers were amateurs compared with some of the rubes who’d filled the circus stands. I sat quietly while the band hurried back to the stage and started to play. Bannon turned his back to me and began talking earnestly with his wife while I sipped my watery Scotch and studied the band. I’d left the photograph on the table in front of me, but Soussan Bannon studiously avoided even glancing at it. Half a minute later, Bannon announced, loudly enough for me to hear, that he was going to the men’s room. He rose and headed toward the rear, veering away at the last moment and slipping through the green curtain.

I picked up the photograph and held it in front of the woman’s face. “Mrs. Bannon, I wonder if I might—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Frederickson,” she said, her voice barely audible. Her hands were clenched tightly together and she was staring intently at the tablecloth in front of her. “My husband has asked me not to speak with you further. You are spoiling our evening with your questions.”

“That’s obvious,” I said evenly, putting the picture back into my pocket. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.”

She remained silent, avoiding my eyes. I turned back to the front. A few minutes later, Bannon emerged through the folds in the heavy curtain and returned to the table. He spoke a few words to his wife. She rose, clutching her purse tightly, and moved away. Then Bannon turned to me.

“I’d like to apologize, Frederickson,” Bannon said, his face a relaxed, fleshy blank. “It’s my work: I’ve been under a lot of pressure. I realize you’re just doing your job, and I’m very sorry I lost my temper. I’m also sorry I couldn’t be of any help. I wish you luck.”

He went after his wife, who was standing across the room by the exit. I watched them leave, then moved across the crowded dance floor and through the green curtain. There was a narrow, dingy corridor on the other side, with toilets at the end. To my right was a door with a crack of light showing under it. I knocked, and Leyla’s voice answered.

“Bale?”

Taking that as an invitation, I went in. Leyla was sitting on a wicker chair sipping a Coke. She’d rubbed herself down with a damp towel and her body gleamed like wet brown marble. On the table next to her was a pile of paper money. One of the bills was a hundred, which meant that someone either was a true patron of the arts, couldn’t read zeros or was willing to pay a premium for special service, like silence.

“My name’s Frederickson,” I said. “I’d like to ask you some questions.” Leyla shook her head as though she didn’t understand. Her eyes were very dark, unblinking, as she stared at me. I showed her the photograph of Khordad. “Have you ever seen this man before?” Leyla shook her head, and I acted it out. She looked at the photo, shrugged, then handed it back to me. I pointed to the hundred-dollar bill on the table; it was crisp and dry, unlike its soggy companions. “Bannon?” I asked. Still pointing to the bill, I stepped closer to the table. “Did Mr. Bannon give you this money not to talk to me?”

Leyla laughed pleasantly, reached out and shoved the money into a drawer. What she did next was totally unexpected; she reached behind her back and undid her halter clasp. Her full breasts fell out across her chest, quivering. Slowly she removed the halter, tossed it on the table and stood up, her arms at her sides and her chest thrust forward. Her nipples were hard and pointing directly at me. The muscles in her belly fluttered as she hooked her fingers into the top of her silk trousers, then stepped out of them to reveal a large thatch of moist pubic hair.

It wasn’t money she was after. I knew where she was coming from, because she was the latest in a long, jaded line. I recognized the peculiar breathlessness, the electric aura of anticipation. Leyla was curious; she wanted to see if I was dwarf all over.

But I wasn’t in the mood for a demonstration. Like my other, more public performances, the demonstrations, over the years, had been too many, and they were part of a past I was trying to forget. I dropped my card and a copy of the photo on her dressing table.

“Very kinky,” I said, “but my love life always suffers when I’ve got questions on my mind. I think you can understand me. If you do see this man, I’d appreciate a call.” I walked to the door, then turned and grinned. “I can’t afford your prices, but if you do remember something I’ll reward you with my body.”

Leyla’s smile flickered, then worked it was across her face. It was a pleasant smile which she tried hard to stop and couldn’t. Finally she broke out laughing. “I’ll call you if I see him,” she said in perfect English.

“Call me anyway.”

“I may do that,” she said, still laughing. I stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind me.

Out on the sidewalk I gulped the cool night air. Suddenly I was very tired, the inside of my head swollen with too much Scotch and too many unanswered questions. My watch read three o’clock in the morning. I jotted down a memo of my conversation with Orrin Bannon, then hailed a taxi. I gave the driver my address, then settled back in the seat to stare out at the deserted streets. A light rain had begun to fall.