At breakfast I told him about the Rocko-Brucey affair, as much as I knew of it. We agreed it fit with Bruce Bundy's asking us in when I used Rockland's name on him. He had to know if Rockland had devised some way to make him unhappy and-had sent us around to set him up.

Meyer worried at it, hairy dog with an old meatless bone. "Then we go another step. Bundy had to believe Rocko could make trouble."

"It begins to look," I said, "as if Rockland knew just how to make trouble for people. I think the hotel covered up the ugly truth with those hints about theft. I think he was scavenging the older lonely ones. Hustling them. Setting them up with pot, hustling them with s.e.x, male and female, and then putting the squeeze on."

"So a type like that comes to Mexico in a truck and camper? Roughing it?"

"Bix drew out part of the money before they left. She drew out the balance from Mexico. Twenty Isn't a bad score."

"If he knew she had it," Meyer said.

"And he could lever it out of her easier out of the country. But we have to find one of the others to find out what went on, dammit. Either Rockland himself or the musician or the sculptor or the other girl."

At this stage of the game it seemed to be a good Idea to split up. Meyer acquires people as easily as a hairy dog picks up burrs. He smiles and listens carefully, and the little blue eyes gleam with good humor and personal interest. He says the right things at the right time, and surprisingly often the random stranger tells him things he wouldn't tell a blood relative or a psychiatrist. No bore, no matter how cla.s.sic, ever manages to bore Meyer. It is a great talent, to be forever interested in everyone.

We agreed that the best thing to do would be for me to drop Meyer downtown and then go off and see what I could learn at Eva Vitrier's place. I got lost twice in the Colonia district before I located Avenida de las Mariposas. A man driving a delivery truck helped me locate the home of Eva Vitrier.

It was an estate, enclosed by a high stone wall. The morning sun shone through the shards of gla.s.s of the ten thousand broken bottles cemented into the top of the wall. I found a vehicle gate, double-chained and locked. I rattled the gate and hollered, to no effect. I could look through the bars at a curve of driveway paved with brick, disappearing into the trees and plantings, but I could see no part of any building inside the compound. I located the main pedestrian entrance, a solid and ma.s.sive door of ancient wood, iron-studded. There was a bell b.u.t.ton set into the recessed stone beside the door. No one answered.

Around the corner, on a narrower street, I found a smaller wooden door and, beyond it, a double door which could open wide enough for* a goodsized truck. I pushed another bell b.u.t.ton by the smaller door and heard a distant ringing. As I was trying it for the third and last time, a hinged square set into the door swung open and a broad, bronze, impa.s.sive Indio face looked out at me.

I asked for the senora. He said she was not there. I asked when she would be back. He said he could not know. Tomorrow? Oh, no. Maybe many weeks, many months, maybe a year. Where is she, then? One does not know. Who does know? One must ask el Senor Gaona. Who is he? He is the lawyer of the senora. Where is he? In his office, doubtless. Where is his office? It is in the city. In this city? Where else? On what street is his office? It is on Avenida Independencia. What number? One cannot say. It is near the corner of Avenida Cinco de Mayo.

As I started to thank him, he slammed the little opening. It startled me. A rude Mexican is a great rarity.

I had to wait fifteen minutes before Senor Alfredo Gaona y Navares could see me. I waited on a rump polished wooden bench in a musty ten-by-ten office dominated by a large old lady at a large old typing desk, operating a machine that looked as if Mark Twain had invented it. At last two women in black came out of the inner office, arms around each other, sobbing soffly. I was directed to go in.

Senor Gaona was elderly. He had a small pale face and an expression of weary distaste. He did not get up or extend a hand. Complex aluminum crutches leaned against the wall behind him.

"What is your reason for wishing to see Senora Vitrier?" The English was precise, unaccented, with a delivery that sounded like a programmed computer.

"I wanted to talk to her about the two American girls who were staying with her as her guests."

"With what purpose?"

"Senor Gaona, I am doing a personal favor for the Bowie girl's father. He was injured in an automobile accident, or he would be here himself. He was out of touch with his daughter for seven months. He is curious about how she lived here, where she lived, what kind of life it was for her."

"Senora Vitrier would not care to discuss it."

"What makes you so sure?"

He hesitated. "I do not have to explain; but I will. Out of her generous heart she offered the two young women lodging when they had no place they could go. This was not a wise thing to do. One cannot judge by appearances. The young women might have been of a kind one does not want in the home. After they quarreled and one departed, the other one was killed, as you must know, in an accident in the mountains. Senora Vitrier appeared and performed the duty of identifying the dead young woman, and turned over her possessions to the police. It was a very ugly experience for her. I am quite certain she would not care to be reminded of it, or to discuss it."

"Couldn't you let her decide that? Where can I get in touch with her?"

"She is a very, very wealthy woman. The house she maintains here is one of several in various parts of the world. I am retained by her to keep her from being approached by strangers, and also to keep her house here in good order so that she can return, unannounced, and begin living here at any time."

"What would happen if I were to write her a letter?"

"It would come here to this office and I would open it and read it and decide if it is a matter which she would wish to know about. If I so de cided, I would mail it to her bank in Zurich and they would forward it to whatever address she is using at the time."

"What would you do if her house here burned down?"

"So advise Zurich."

"And my letter would not get past you?"

"a.s.suredly not, sir. She gave explicit instructions to me that she did not want to hear any more of this affair, not even if the surviving young lady attempted to reach her by letter."

"And has she tried?"

"No."

"Has anyone else tried, I mean in relation to the death of the girl?"

"I have explained the situation to you, sir, in more detail than is my habit. There is no way you can approach Senora Vitrier, no way whatsoever. So we must consider the matter closed. Good day."

And indeed it was good day. The old lady had entered behind me, unheard, and she startled me when she said, "Theees way ow." I was on the sidewalk nine seconds later. And ten minutes after that I was in a briskly modern office where mini-skirted darlings came beaming in and out, emptying the "out" baskets and putting doc.u.ments in the "in" baskets, and I was shaking hands with Ron Townsend's friend in the local power structure, Enelio Fuentes. A gla.s.s panel in a wall overlooked, from about a thirty-foot height, about two acres of concrete shop s.p.a.ce where bug-swarms of Volkswagens were being tuned, inspected, and repaired.

Enelio was thirty, or a little over, ruggedly handsome, with a yard of shoulders, a contrived casual lock of black hair across the forehead, a narrow waist, a big friendly grin, a ma.s.sive and powerful handshake.

"Ol' Ron phoned me about you. Hey, sit down. How you like our town? How about that bird Ron has got himself? You meet her? That big Miranda. Fonny G.o.ddam thing. Ron spend half his life running like h.e.l.l every time any bird looks at him with that marriage look. This big Miranda, she doesn't want not any part of it, and he wants it so bad he can't breathe deep. That one is some batch of girl, I tell you. Hey, you want a b.l.o.o.d.y mary? Good. Hey you, Esperanza, go make b.l.o.o.d.y marys for Mister Travis McGee, here, and me, and stop making the hot eye at him and waving that little b.u.t.t around. Mr. McGee isn't interested in short, ogly little girls." She was a lovely little thing, and she went running out, giggling. "Soch a one that is," he said fondly. "Can't type, can't file, can't run the switchboard. But she can make any drink you ever heard of, man. My old man says, 'Nelio, why the h.e.l.l did I waste my money sending you to the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, all you do is hire pretty girls all the h.e.l.l over the place?' Me, I don't say a word, just give him the quarterly breakdown, show the profit we're turning, ask him if he'd rather give it back to his brother, my oncle, hired women looked like dogmeat, worked their a.s.s off on overtime, and sometimes didn't even break even. Now my oncle is c.r.a.pping around with the little feeder airline we bought las' year, Aeronaves Fuentes, and from the way the books look, I got to pretty soon go shake things up over there. Hey, here she is. Try that, Travis McGee. Delicious? Don' stand around bugging the boss fellas, girl. Go file something in the wrong place so n.o.body ever finds it again." He looked out through the gla.s.s wall and suddenly stiffened, the smile gone. He pressed the bar on a call box and bent toward it, and the Spanish was much too fast for me to follow. I looked out at the shop area and suddenly saw a man in a white jacket heading at a half run toward a couple standing helplessly beside an old black Volkswagen.

Enelio grinned and stretched. "Chrissake, tell them five million times anybody comes in, you find out what the h.e.l.l they want right away. Quick. Then you tell them how long it takes and how much it costs. And you do it in the time you say, and you charge what you say, and get them out on the street fast." I saw something I had overlooked. The big grin did not change the eyes. They remained cool and shrewd and appraising.

A tall solemn girl came in with letters for signature. He nodded and motioned her closer. He read the letters swiftly, scrawled his big signature on each and handed them to the girl, then slapped her smartly across the seat of her skirt as she turned. She yelped and jumped, and he said something in swift, slurred Spanish. She spoke in tones of protest. He spoke again. She smiled and flushed and walked swiftly out.

"That one." he explained, "that Rosita, she had the unhoppy love affair and now she has the long face. I told her I wanted to see if there was any feeling left in the back side. She told me I should have more respect. Then I said something it doesn't translate. But it made her face hot and it made the smile, no? Hey, anything you want, just say what it is. Okay?"

I briefed him on the situation, and on what we were trying to do, and showed him Bix's photo. He caught on quickly. He understood the father's need to have all the blanks filled in.

He looked in the phone book and gave his switchboard a number to call. In a few moments his desk phone rang. He picked it up and, after a few minutes wait, got through to somebody he called Roberto. I could make out a word here, a phrase there. He asked some questions and then thanked the man and hung up.

"The sergeant who did the investigation has no English at all. Nada. Here is how it will go. At two o'clock today he will come over to the Marques del Valle. We close this place at noon today. I will come over in my car. You and your friend and the sergeant, we will go up into the mountains and he will show us the place and I will tell you what he says."

"I don't want to put you to-"

"Silencio, gringo! How do you know it doesn't give me the chance to get out of something I didn't want to do, eh?"

"Okay. Next problem. How do I get to talk to Mrs. Eva Vitrier?"

"That one is one rich lady. I remember it was maybe eight, nine years ago, that place was sold. Nearly two million pesos. And then a lot more to fix it up. All the other ricos out in the Colonia, they can't wait to find out who the owner is. They think there will be entertaining. They want to see how the house has been fixed. All of a sudden they find out the owner is there, this Frenchwoman. They go calling. She will not see them. They leave cards. Nothing. Oh, she has guests come in sometimes, very few, from far away. Sometimes she is seen in the city. She shops, and has servants with her to carry packages to the car, and a man to drive the car. People say crazy things. Maybe she is the mistress of a king. Maybe she is a political refugee. Maybe it is stolen money. I think it is easy, man. I think the lady wants to be left the h.e.l.l alone."

"What does she look like? Have you seen her?"

He leaned back eyes half closed, a gentle smile on his lips. "She has no age. She could be thirty. She could be fifty. No difference. She looks like that queen of Egypt, you know. The one with the nose."

"Nefert.i.ti?"

"That one. Very proud. Head high. Very hot eye. One day, three or four years past, I walked behind her from one jewelry store to her car. Black hair. Cool day. Had on a dark red wool dress. She walked slow, like music, man. Long narrow back, narrow little shoulders. Not much in front, but one truly fantastic a.s.s. Firm, round, heavy but not too heavy. Wide but not too wide. It moved just right when she walked. Nothing under that dress, man. She had some great kind of perfume. It came floating back. You know; she got in that car and it drove away, and what I wanted to do, I wanted to lean against a building and pant like a dog. h.e.l.l, I tried to meet her. She was worth a good try. Twenty good tries. I never got to first base. First base! I never found the road to the ball park. I tell you, one long look at her, and that Miranda bird of Ron's looks like somebody's brother."

"So there's no friend of hers here who could put me in direct touch?"

"She has some friends, I think. I don't know exactly. Those friends would not be my friends. People I think who tuck their lives behind walls here, like she does. Because here they are left alone, and it is a freedom for them. I know that Gaona won't help you. That is one tough old man. Long ago there was an election when there were strong feelings. He wanted to be a politico. Somebody shot him in the spine. He dragged himself home in the night. Four miles. Took him all night. Wore his hands to ribbons. Would not say who shot him. If I had to trust a secret to any lawyer in the world, it would be Alfredo Gaona."

"About Mrs. Vitrier's friends. One of them would be Bruce Bundy?"

He looked startled, then impressed. "Yes, it was his car. He loaned it to someone who loaned it to the Bowie girl. I know Bundy by sight. Three or four years he's been here. There's a little group of them here. n.o.body pays much attention, if they stay out of trouble. But if one of them starts taking little boys from the public market home, then the police will make their life very ogly. To find out so soon that Bundy and the French lady are friends, something I did not know, means you are very quick with these things, eh?"

"I tend to go in like a bull, Enelio. Or like a kid busting into a room full of slot machines. I pull levers and kick things and usually end up with pure lemons. So I found that Bundy is a friend of Eva Vitrier, and Bundy is a friend of Lady Rebecca Divin-Harrison, and Lady Becky doesn't like Eva worth a d.a.m.n."

He looked at me with a speculative appraisal, head c.o.c.ked slightly, and then a slow grin came and widened and then he threw his head back and laughed and slammed the desk top with a big hand.

When he caught his breath, he said, "So! You do not always have those black circles under the eyes, amigo! And that mark on your neck is not a strawberry birthmark. And maybe your hands do not always tremble a little, eh? My G.o.d, you are a rare one, McGee! You and me, we are members of one club now. G.o.ddam, there are plenty members, and I joined-let me see-fifteen years ago, and she looked exactly, I swear, the way she looks today. She had a beautiful car and she asked me if I would like to drive it. I was young. I could conquer anything. Car or woman. Perhaps it is good to learn humility when young. Four days I was not a part of the world. Four days and nights, and then ejected, blinking, weak as a new kitten, dazed, d.a.m.n near destroyed. Ah, that one is legend, my friend. Muy guapa. As much woman as there can be. Too much woman. The club is big, but she selects with great care, believe me. One cannot ask to be a member. One must be invited. Some day, McGee, we will be wheeled into the sunshine with the blanket over our knees, and we will have that memory, and we will smile a nice and dirty-old-man smile. There is an old saying among the Oaxacanos: The most bitter remorse is for the sins one did not commit. She is quite mad, of course. But it is an agreeable madness, no?"

"If I recover, I'll let you know."

"One always recovers. I even wished to see if it had all happened as I remembered, or if I had dreamed portions of it. But she patted my face and she said, 'Nelio, you are a dear boy and I am very fond of you, but I have turned the page you were written on. It is a very long book, and I do not have time in my life to reread any part of it if I am to finish it.' For a time I was hurt and angry. Then later I understood. She was written in my book too, and by then I was writing a new chapter.

"About Bundy being friends with such total female creatures as Becky and Madame Vitrier, I think it is a common thing among women who do not have tea-party friendships with other women, to have a Bruce Bundy to make girl talk with. And I think he helps them with decorating things in their homes. Look maybe it is like this. Can Becky have a close friend who is a normal man or normal woman? Bundy is, for her, neutral ground. A relaxinent? Bad English. A... relaxation. I do not pry. How is it now with Becky? Not ended, I would think."

"She thinks it isn't. She thinks she told me just enough to keep me on the hook." I told him about Walter Rockland moving in with Bundy, trying to hit him up for a large loan, and then trying to clean out Bundy's little store of art treasures and getting a quick education in karate.

I said, "She told me I'd made Brucey very nervous, but there isn't enough there, in her story, to make him nervous, so the best part is yet to come. So I am supposed to drop in, alone, for drinks and dinner tonight. And be spoon-fed another little fragment. By the time I know it all, she'll be able to bury me at the foot of her garden, so it will be less wearing to find out what color belt Brucey earned from Brucey himself. Anyway, I'm imposing. I'm taking up too much of your time."

"No. There are some small things I must do here, then it is enough for this day. Let me say one thing. In the picture you showed me, that is one lovely little chicken. I have respect for what you do, Travis. A father should know more of how such a one came to die. He will never understand why. But to know a little-not too much-will help."

Seven.

MOST OF the tables on the hotel porch were full when I got there. I spotted Meyer at the far end, sitting at a table with a portly man wearing a pale tan suit and a yellow sports shirt.

While the waiter was hustling me a chair, Meyer introduced him as Wally McLeen from Youngstown, Ohio. Mr. McLeen's handshake was moist and unemphatic. His hazel eyes were magnified by the thick lenses of gla.s.ses with thick black frames. There were steel-wool tufts of hair on his sunburned skull.

Meyer said that Wally had sold out his business and had been in Oaxaca since August first, looking for his daughter, Minda.

"It's more than just looking for her, Mr. McGee. It's trying to understand more about what the young people are looking for. Way back in January she wrote me that she was going to go to Mexico with some friends. Just like that. Well, I wrote airmail special to the University of Miami asking them if she left any forwarding address or anything like that, and they wrote back that she'd stopped going to cla.s.ses way back last year, before summer started. She came on home last summer for about ten days and then went back. She told me she was doing extra work over the summer. I sent my little girl money every month. Then I just didn't know where to send it, or where she was or anything.

"You know, I got to thinking, Mr. McGee. I had four establishments, located real good in nice shopping centers, turning a nice profit. I worked hard all my life. Connie died three years ago. We had one other daughter, older than Minda, but she died in infancy. I got to wondering just what the h.e.l.l I was working for. My little girl came home and didn't have much to say. She acted sour, sort of. It was like lying to me, her not telling me she'd already dropped out of college. Once I decided, it took me a long time to make the right deal on the stores. I figured this way. The only thing I've got in this world is my daughter, Minda. And if I can't communicate with her, then there's no point in anything. If I kept working we'd be in two different worlds. She couldn't or wouldn't move into mine, so what I have to do is move into hers. It's the only way I'll be able to talk to her when I find her."

"You expect to find her soon, Mr. McLeen?"

"Wally, please. Yes, I've got it pretty well pinned down that sooner or later she's coming back down here. I'm right in this hotel, right in the center of things. Room number twelve, on the second floor, looking out over the zocalo. When she gets back, I'll be here."

"Where is she?"

"Someplace in Mexico City, but there's six million people in that city... What do people call you?"

"Travis. Trav "

"Trav, you're one h.e.l.l of a lot younger than I am, but you're older than these kids. I don't know what you think about them. But I've been talking to them now for a long time, and I've changed a lot of my ideas, like I was telling Meyer. It used to make me so d.a.m.ned irritated just to look at those young boys with all the long hair and beards and beads. I figured them for fanatics and dope addicts and degenerates. I can't stand that rock music and those songs about freedom. All right. Some of them are nuts, so far gone on pills and drugs, they're dirty, dumb, sick, and dangerous as wild animals. But most of them are d.a.m.ned good kids. They care about things. They've taken a good long look at our world and they don't like it. They don't like the corruption, and the way the power structure takes care of its own, and the way we're all being hammered down into being a bunch of numbers in a whole country full of computers. They believe that each individual person is getting so insignificant you can't really change anything by voting for a change. You get the same old c.r.a.p. So what they want to do is get away from all the machinery that makes Vietnams and makes slums and discrimination and legalized theft and murder. How do you get away? Well, you have to go against the establishment in visible ways, so n.o.body will have any chance of ever thinking you are part of it. And so you can identify the other people who don't want any part of it either. You pick ways to dress and act and look that turn the establishment people off. You're against the idea of acc.u.mulating money and things, so you cut life down to the simplest kind of food and shelter you can scrounge. Because establishment morality is a lot of hypocrisy, like Lenny Bruce pointed out, you say and you write the words that shock the establishment, and you turn s.e.x into something simple and natural and easy. The art and the music-everything has to be something the establishment can't stand. Because, little by little, or maybe in one big fire, you're going to tear all the false fronts down and start everything over again, in a lot simpler and more decent way, without a lot of hangups about money and race and s.e.x and war. I didn't see where pot and pills and LSD fitted in for a while, but I think I do now. They want to turn on because they believe every person has the right to do anything to himself that doesn't harm others. Society makes laws about that because society doesn't want people to make themselves unusable to the power structure. If everybody turned on every day, what would happen to industry? They're saying this, Trav. They're saying, 'I don't want any part of things the way they are, man. So don't tell me I'm ruining my life because I'm ruining just that part of me that you'd want to use up if you had a chance. The rest of me belongs to me to do what I want with. And what I want is everything you despise. So don't make a lot of value judgments about a scene you can't dig. You are all caught in the machinery, and you want everybody else to get caught in it, too. I make you uncomfortable, old man, because I get more out of every week of my life than you ever got out of a whole year of yours."

"You know, they will talk to me about these things once they find out I'm not just trying to tell them the same old c.r.a.p they've always heard. When they find out I want to learn what this is all about, then they'll talk about it. And I'll tell them how I feel about my life. What was so great about my life up till now? Mortgage payments, inventories, worries, sickness... and so d.a.m.ned many things! Color television and the new car every two years, and a lawn mower to ride on. Your friends die and you die, and what's the point of any of it? Who ever misses you? Yes sir, like I've been telling Meyer, when I see my Minda again, I'll be able to talk to her like I never could before. I talk too much about all this, and I guess I bore people, but I have the idea I want to spread the word about these kids. I want to be a sort of... a messenger." He looked at me with a goggle-eyed earnestness. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Sure, Wally," I said, comfortingly. "We dig you."

He smiled. "Jesus! When I think of how the guys back in Youngstown would take it, I get the idea n.o.body over twenty-five can understand what I'm trying to say."

"Wally I understand you've been trying to locate Walter Rockland too."

"To see if he knew anything about Minda. She was with that group for a while. The groups that travel together keep changing. People split and new ones join. I told Meyer that my Minda and the girl that was killed, Bix something, they left at the same time and took a cheap room at the Hotel Ruiz. That's over there, diagonally across the zocalo on Guerrero. They moved in sometime late in May. I saw the room. It's on the second floor in the back. There's a bath down the hall. There's four kids living in that room right now. But only one was there when Minda and Bix moved in. One from the present group, I mean. He thinks there were six or seven kids there in the room while Minda and Bix were there, and as he remembers it, they left at the end of June or early July when Mrs. Vitrier invited them to stay in her guest house. Such a small room, and pretty beat up. You try to give your girl the best of everything. It hurts to think of her living like that. But what can you do? They just don't want the things you can give them. Not this new bunch of kids. They've turned their backs on the whole thing." He shook his head slowly. "Maybe it wouldn't be nice for you men to go back and tell Bix's father about things like that little room in the Hotel Ruiz. It could give him the same feeling I had, thinking of my daughter there at night, in some dirty sleeping bag in a dark corner, and some boy with a dirty beard laying her, and the others sleeping so close, or hearing it happening. Maybe he should think it is all like the posters and the travel ads... A daughter is not like a son."

Meyer tried him on the other names. Carl Sessions, musician. Jerry Nesta, sculptor.

Wally McLeen said he might have met them and talked to them, but he didn't remember those names. He had asked everyone about Minda. He had shown them her picture. And he had added up the little crumbs of information. She had gone alone to Mexico City. She would be back one day. He would wait. If, instead, she showed up in Youngstown, a friend would cable him. He looked at his watch. Some of his new young friends were expecting him. He said he would look us up and let us know if he learned anything interesting, anything that might make that poor girl's father feel better.

Enelio Fuentes appeared promptly at two, and he had Sergeant Carlos Martinez with him. Martinez, a squat, broad man with very dark skin and several gold teeth, was in civilian uniform. We all got into Enelio's car, a new Volkswagen squareback sedan, custom-painted a strange metallic purple. Enelio took the wheel. Meyer and the sergeant sat in the back. Siesta traffic was light, and Enelio wasted no time scooting north to Route 190, the Pan American Highway, where he turned right on the road toward Mitla. About a mile beyond the city limits he turned left on State of Oaxaca Route 175, and began streaking across the flats at astonishing speed toward the lift of the high brown mountains.

"I didn't know these things had so much snap," I said, speaking loudly over the sound of wind and engine.

"They don't. We put a Porsche engine in this one, race tuned, man. Heavy duty springs and shocks. Disc brakes. I can make Mexico City from Oaaiaca In five and a half hours. Hey, how do you like it? See? One eighty kilometros which is... a hundred and ten."

When we hit the first curves and began climbing, I was able to relax. Roaring along the straights proves nothing. On the curves he proved the nice mating of man and machine. He found the right track around every curve. He was showing off and enjoying himself, and it was a pleasure to watch. But it certainly was one h.e.l.l of a road. It was very narrow asphalt and the climb grew steeper and steeper, with switchbacks, cuts, and no banking on the turns, and not a sign of a guardpost. Ahead I would get glimpses of our road halfway up the next mountain, a little man-made ledge with a rock wall on one side and mountain air on the other. Sometimes I could see where we had been, and it was like an aerial view of a road.

We met two buses hurtling down the mountains, and pa.s.sed one old truck grinding its way up in low-low-low, radiator steaming. The sergeant told Enelio we were getting very near the place. Enelio slowed down and soon found a place to pull off the road, on the outside of a curve where the car was visible from both directions. We got out and chunked the doors shut. The silence was enormous, the air thin, chilly and very pure: We followed the sergeant about a hundred and fifty yards further up the road to the next curve. He sat on his heels and pointed at a black rubber skidmark on the asphalt. The mark ran off the asphalt and he pointed to some small bushes with broken branches. The branches dangled and the leaves had turned brown. It was easy to see where the car had come back onto the asphalt. We walked back down the slope and saw where she had gone across into the wrong lane and off the road. He pointed to the yellow paint marks on the rock wall and, a hundred feet further, to some oddly shaped skid marks on the road, like gigantic commas. He made a fast circular gesture with his hand, fingers down, like somebody stirring something in a bowl. Then he made a thrusting gesture with his hand toward the precipice indicating how it had shot out over the edge. Giving me a broad golden grin, he said, "Too fa.s.sss!"

Yes indeed. It was vivid. She lost it on a downhill curve to the left, maybe because the curve was sharper than she had antic.i.p.ated. She fought for control but went across at a long angle and hit the stone cliff, bounced off it into a spin, and shot backwards or forwards-it didn't matter which-over the edge at maybe a forty-five degree angle, and maybe a hundred feet short of the next curve, also left-hand, where the purple tiger was parked.

The sergeant led me to the brink and pointed down. I could not see what he was pointing at. He spoke to Enelio. Enelio shaded his eyes and looked. "Hey, I see it. Travis, you see those three little bushes that grow out of the edge of shale down here, near that round rock? Okay, now about ten feet to the right of the three bushes, and a little way back up the slope..."

I saw it. A few smears of yellow paint on sharp edges of rock, and a twinkling of broken gla.s.s among the rocks, and a gleaming piece of twisted chrome trim. So that's where it hit first, but the next bounce had to take it out of sight of where we were.

The sergeant walked us down past the purple car, and pointed down at an angle toward the valley floor. From there it was easy to spot the car, or what had been a car. If you took one of those matchbox toy cars and put it on top of the charcoal and cooked steaks for a whole party, then retrieved the little car and stepped on it with your heel, you'd have a pretty good imitation of what was lying in the valley.

"How did they ever get the body?"

"They came down from the other side. There's our road over there. That's where the bus was when they saw the flame when she hit. You can see from here it's not as steep to get down, or as far."

"How was identification made?"

"By Madame Vitrier."

"That's in the report, Enelio. I mean what condition was the body in?"