"Why's that?" I asked.

"There's security in cynicism," she said. "Usually it covers up a lot of loneliness."

"You the town philosopher?" I asked, although I had to agree with her thesis.

"Nope," she said rather sadly. "I'm the town cynic, so I know one when I see one."

"So what's the pipeline saying about all this?" I asked, changing the subject.

She lowered the gla.s.ses again, peering over them at me. "That he's a gangster from Toronto," she said with a smirk.

"Couldn't be, I never heard of him," I said.

"Just what is your angle?"

"I do travel pieces."

"Really."

"Yeah."

"And lie a lot?"

"That too."

"To gossip columnists?" she said.

"I don't discriminate."

"Thanks."

"Maybe I ought to try and get a job on the Ledger," I said, changing the subject.

"Why, for G.o.d's sake?"

"I don't know much about women's clothes but I can tell a silk designer dress when I see one. They must pay well over there."

She threw back her head and laughed hard. "Now that is a joke," she said. "Did you ever know any newspaper that paid well?"

The waiter brought my screwdriver. I took a swallow or two and it definitely got the blood flowing again.

"Actually my husband died young, the poor dear, and left me wonderfully provided for," Babs said.

"You don't sound real upset over losing him."

"He was a delight, but he drank himself to death."

"What did he do?" I asked, sipping at the screwdriver.

"Owned the hotel," she said casually, but with a glint in her eyes.

"What hotel?"

"This hotel."

"You own the Ponce?" I said.

"Every creaky inch of it. Actually I hired a very good man from California to run it before Logan died. I love owning it but I dread the thought of having to run it."

"You live here?"

She nodded and pointed toward the ceiling. "Six flights up. The penthouse, darling. Owning the joint does have its perks. I have a beach place out on the Isle of Sighs but I don't go out there much anymore. It's a bit too solitary."

"I'm on the third floor," I said. "I don't have any perks."

"Is there something wrong with your accommodations?" she asked. "If there's a problem, I have a lot of pull with the management."

"The room's fine, thank you." I ordered coffee to chase the taste of vodka out of my mouth.

"What's your room number? I'll have them send up a basket of fruit."

"Three sixteen. I love fresh pineapple."

"I'll remember that. You were telling me what you're doing here. "

"I was?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Actually I'm interested in doing a piece on the social order in Dunetown. Movers and shakers, that kind of thing."

"For the Los Aghast Gazette or whatever it was?"

I would have bet my underwear that she remembered the name of the paper and everything else I had said since joining her.

"Yeah, kind of a background piece."

She said "Mm-hmm" again and didn't mean a syllable of it. She lit a pink Sherman cigarette, leaned back in her chair, and blew smoke toward the ceiling. "Well, it was founded in 1733 by- "

"Not that far back."

"Just what do you want, Wilbur whatever-your-name-is, and I don't believe that for a minute, either."

"Who would make up a name like Wilbur Rasmussen?" I said.

She dipped her dark gla.s.ses at me again but made no comment.

"I hear it's an old town run by old money," I said.

"You're looking at some of it, darling."

"Accurate?"

"Fairly accurate."

"They making any money off the track?"

"Honey, everybody's making money off the track. If you own a bicycle concession in this town you can get rich." She sighed. "I suppose we are going to have to talk about this, aren't we?"

"Sooner or later."

The waiter brought my coffee and as I was diluting it with cream and sugar she made an imperceptible little move with a finger toward the hostess, a pretty, trim young black woman, no more than nineteen or twenty, who, a second or two later, appeared at the table.

"'Scuse me," she said. "You have a phone call, Ms. Babs."

"My public is after me," she said with mock irritation. "Excuse me for a moment, would you, darling?"

I watched her in the row of mirrors at the entrance to the restaurant. She picked up the phone at the hostess desk and punched out a number. That would be the desk she was calling, checking me out. She said a few words, waited, then hung up and came back to the table, still smiling, but a little colder than when I first sat down.

I smiled back.

"Jake Kilmer," she said.

"Nice trick with the hostess. I could see you calling the desk in the mirrors."

"That obvious, huh? Hmm. I wonder how many other people have caught me at it."

"Lots. The others were just too nice to mention it."

"Why do I know your name?"

"It's fairly common."

"Hmm. And you're a cop," she said.

"Kind of."

"How can you be kind of a cop?"

"Well, you know, I do statistical profiles, demographic studies, that kind of thing."

"You're much too cute to be that dull."

"Thanks. You're pretty nifty too."

"You're also an outrageous flirt."

"I am?" I said. "n.o.body's ever complained about that before."

"Who's complaining?" she said, dipping her head again and staring at me with eyes as gray as a rainy day. I pa.s.sed.

"So tell me who makes Dunetown click," I said.

"Persistent too," she said, then shrugged. "Why not, but it'll cost you a drink at the end of the day."

"Done."

She knew it all. Every pedigree, every scalawag, every bad leaf on every family tree in town. She talked about great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers who came over in the early 1800s and made a fortune in privateering, cotton, land, and shipping; who rose to become robber barons and worse, what Babs called "varmints," a word that seemed harmless somehow, the way she used it, but which I took to mean tough men who destroyed each other in power brawls. She talked about a onetime Irish highwayman named Larkin who escaped the noose by becoming an indentured servant to a Virginia tobacco man and then ran off, arriving in Dunetown, where, fifteen years later, he became its first banker; about Tim Clarke, the stevedore from Dublin who stowed away to Dunetown and ended up owning the shipyard; and an Irish collier named Findley who once killed a man in a duel over a runaway pig, and who went on to make a fortune in cotton and converted his millions to land before the bottom dropped out, and was the man who talked Sherman out of burning Dunetown because he owned most of the town and didn't want to see it torched like Atlanta. Doe's great-grandfather.

Hooligans, the bunch of them, the Findleys, Larkins, Clarkes, and the second generation, with names like Colonel and Chief, the ones who said yes, no, and maybe to every decision that affected the city for two centuries. And finally the third generation, the Bubbas and Chips and Juniors, so intimidated by their fathers that they were reduced to panderers, more interested in golf than empires.

Once she started, it was like turning on a tape recorder with no stop b.u.t.ton. A twenty-minute dialogue, at the end of which I knew about every inbred mongoloid child, every lady of color who had married across the line, all the b.a.s.t.a.r.d and aborted children, the adulterers and adulteresses, the covered-up suicides, the drunks, gays, and feuding families, the banker's daughter who was a prost.i.tute in L.A., and the two Junior Leaguers who ran off together and left two confused husbands and five children behind.

Routine for any small money town.

Three names stood out: Findley, Clarke, and Larkin.

The Findleys and the Larkins had been cautious partners through the years.

The Clarkes were their adversaries-in politics, business, even in love affairs.

"Jimmy Clarke would have died to marry Doe Findley," Babs said, "but Chief wouldn't hear of it. He picked an outsider for her. Not old money but respectable. His father was a lawyer and later a judge."

"Harry Raines?" I said. Funny, I couldn't remember Jimmy Clarke, although the name rang a bell.

"You do get around," Babs said.

"What about Raines?"

"What about him?"

"The way I get it, he married rich and got richer."

"My, my," she said caustically, "aren't we being a little catty?"

"No, I've been doing a lot of listening, that's all."

"Did they tell you Harry's going to be governor one of these days soon?"

"I keep hearing that. Has he been nominated yet?"

"Cute," she said.

"Well?"

"As well as, darling."

"Why?"