"My husband is out of town on business," she said.

I could hear that hint of emotion in her voice, the same hint Flo and I had heard on the phone.

"Your husband is missing," I said. "He is also very ill, too ill, from what I hear, to be traveling on business or pleasure."

"You are wasting my time, Mr. Fonesca," she said, starting to close the door.

"I'm here to help find him," I said.

"And you are...?"

"By trade? A process server. I'm good at finding people. I can find your husband and I can do it quietly."

"And you want money," she said.

"No," I answered. "I've got a client. I'm poor but honest."

"I can see that," she said. "The poor part."

I was wearing my freshly washed black jeans, Cubs cap, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt with a collar and a little toucan embossed on the pocket. My socks were white and clean. So were my sneakers.

"Take off your hat and come in," she said after a long pause.

I took off my cap and little smile lines showed in the corners of her mouth. I wasn't sure what amused her, my receding hairline or the total picture of a less than threatening, poorly dressed creature.

I stepped in and she shut the door. We were in a ma.s.sive living room. The floors were cool, tavertine marble. The place was furnished like something out of Architectural Digest, something that a movie star might live in, if the movie star liked early Fred Astaire movies. Everything was either black or white. White sofa and chairs, white bookcases filled with expensive-looking gla.s.s animals, black lamps, a black, sleek low table that ran almost the length of the wall across from the bookcases. A stack of unopened mail stood on the table. Over the table was the only real color in the room, a huge painting of a beautiful young woman in a satin white dress, sitting on a black sofa. The woman's legs were crossed and she leaned forward, her head resting on the fist of her right hand, her other hand dangling languidly at her side.

The room had been furnished to complement the painting. It was also a room that wouldn't welcome the intrusion of grandchildren with unwashed hands and shoes that tracked in sand from the beach.

"That's you," I said, looking at the painting.

"You're showing your brilliance already," she said, sitting in one of the white chairs.

"You're Claire Collins," I said.

"Now, I am impressed," she said.

Claire Collins had been a starlet in the late Fifties and early Sixties. She was in a handful of RKO movies, usually as a bad girl with a smoldering cigarette in the corner of her mouth suggesting close encounters of the third kind with the likes of Glenn Ford and Robert Mitchum.

"I've seen a lot of your pictures," I said.

"There weren't a lot," she said with a sigh. "There were twelve, none of them big, only three in color."

I looked at her.

"I think I can name them all," I said.

"Please, no. I'll take your word for it," she said, shaking her head.

"On television, videotape," I said. "Black Night in December, Blackmailed Lady, Dark Corridors, When Angels Fall, The Last-"

"Stop," she said. "I believe you."

I was afraid to sit on her white leather furniture so I kept standing.

"Mrs. Trasker...," I began. "Do you know where your husband might be?"

"No," she said, "but he can't be far and I don't think..."

"He's a very sick man," I said.

She gave me shrug, which suggested indifference or that I was simply repeating something she already knew. I recognized the shrug as one she had given Dane Clark, in Outpost, one of the movies she made in color.

"Who told you that?"

"My client," I said. "My client is well-informed. My client wants your husband found."

"Why?"

"So he can be at the commission meeting on Friday," I said. "There's an important issue. His vote is needed."

I didn't like the way I had said that. It sounded hollow.

"I want him back too," she said. "I don't care about any vote. I want to be with my husband when he dies. I owe him that and a lot more."

"He's really that close to dying?" I asked.

"He is really that close," she said.

Her eyes were moist now. She looked like her character in The Falcon in Singapore in the scene where she was trying to convince Tom Conway that she was broken up by the death of her sister. It turned out that her character had killed the sister over a small man and a lot of money.

"Tell me about your husband," I said.

She stiffened a bit and looked at me as if what her husband was like was none of my business. But she saw something in my face, knew I would pay attention and be nonjudgmental. People seemed to feel safe talking to me.

"Bill? Now, he's a little bit bitter and a lot crotchety," she said. "Not with me. He knows better. When he was young, he didn't just walk over people, he trampled them into submission. And he had and still has a temper. All three of our children left us the moment they were of legal age. It wasn't just Bill. Bill runs far too hot and I run far too cold. It may add to the appeal I built my career, for what it was worth, on, but it didn't serve me particularly well with my family. Does everyone open up to you like this?"

"Almost," I said.

"I can't believe I'm...where was I?"

"Your family."

"I can't say I was particularly unhappy about my sons and daughter leaving," she said. "I was happy with Bill. He was happy stepping on people. Then we moved down here so he could find new fields of gra.s.s to trample."

"You admire your husband's ruthlessness," I said.

"As he admires what he calls my *mystery.'"

"Midnight Pa.s.s," I said.

"Midnight Pa.s.s," she repeated, pursing her lips and looking at her portrait. "Since he found out he was dying, my husband's interest in trampling people has turned to nearly sweet compa.s.sion, at least for him. That makes him less attractive to me than what the disease has done to his body. If he lives long enough, he might even decide to publicly declare every shady deal he's ever made, though I doubt if he'd go so far as to try to provide rest.i.tution. There are just too many he's wronged and not enough money to go around and leave me comfortable."

"And you'll be comfortable?" I asked.

"Very," she said. "I like money. I like spending it and I love my husband."

"Any idea of what happened to him?"

"I don't know," she said, looking at me. "Maybe he didn't want me to see him die. My husband used to be a big, powerful man. As I said, tough, ruthless. He would probably prefer that I remember him that way."

"So you think...?"

"He is dead or in some hotel room or with some friend."

"He didn't call you?"

"n.o.body called me," she said, straightening her back as if she had just remembered that good posture was essential to a beautiful woman.

"Any suggestion about where I might start looking?"

"You can try the people at his office," she said. The word "people" came out with the suggestion that they were something less than what she considered real "people." "I've called repeatedly. His secretary, Mrs. Free, says she has no idea where William is or might be."

"Enemies?"

This time she did an Audrey Hepburn, narrow-shouldered, almost gamine shrug with a matching who-knows pursing of her lips.

"My husband is a politician and a contractor. Two occupations that make very few friends and very many enemies. You'd get a better sense of who his friends and enemies are from his secretary. If Bill is in a hotel or motel, she might even know that. I know he's not in any of the hospitals in Sarasota, Manatee, or any adjoining county."

That was all I had to ask for the moment. I liked looking at her, but I was getting a little tired of standing.

"Thanks," I said.

She got up.

"If you find him, you will let me know."

She was touching my arm now, her eyes searching mine. I had the feeling that performance and persona were merging for a second.

"I'll let you know," I said.

Outside the door in a blast of heat and humidity I put my cap back on. I knew where William Trasker's office was on Clark just east of Beneva on the south side of the street. I'd pa.s.sed the two-story white brick building dozens of times, and a few of those times the big red-on-white sign that said "Trasker Construction" had managed to register.

I stopped at a phone booth outside of a 7-Eleven on Beneva and called Dixie at the coffee shop. The manager told me she had taken the day off.

"A cold, flu, tuchisitis, who knows," he said. "I'm up to my a.s.s in latte orders and I'm getting a migraine from the smokers. Good-bye."

He hung up and I called Dixie at home. She answered after three rings. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e when she said, "h.e.l.lo."

"Me, Lew Fonesca."

"Hi, Lew," she said, the hoa.r.s.eness gone. "I thought it was Creepy Cargroves, my boss."

"You're okay?"

"Got a good freelance hacking job for a local merchant whose name and business are confidential. You know what I'm saying?"

"I know. Can you do a quick check for me? See if you can find William Trasker's trail. He's missing."

"The County Commission guy?"

"That's the one."

"He's been in the shop a few times. Last time about a week ago. Looked awful. Likes his coffee straight and black with something sweet."

"He come in alone?"

"With something straight, black, and sweet," she said.

"Know her name?"

A ma.s.sive truck whizzed by and I missed what Dixie said next.

"What was that?"

"Don't know her name, but she's always dressed for business."

"Hooker?"

"Not that kind of business. Business business. Suits, serious shoes, white blouses, pearls, costume ones. I've got an eye. How long's he been missing?"

"About four days," I said.

"I'll do the job for thirty bucks if I don't run into complications," she said.

"How long?"

"No more than half an hour, if I don't run into complications."

"I'll call back. Dixie, you know any good jokes?"

She told me one. I wrote it down in my notebook.

Twenty minutes later I was talking to a woman who was black, sweet, and dressed for business right down to the serious shoes and costume pearls.

Before I got to her, I had to get by the receptionist at Trasker Construction, who was well-groomed, late forties, early fifties, with a nice smile. She seemed like more than receptionist material when she deftly parried my lunging questions about Trasker. I figured her for a mom who was just rejoining the workforce and starting at the bottom.

She finally agreed to talk to Mr. Trasker's secretary, which she did while I listened to her side of the phone conversation. She handled it perfectly, saying a Mr. Fonesca wished to speak to her on a matter of some urgency regarding Mr. Trasker and that Mr. Fonesca would provide no further information. There was a pause during which I a.s.sumed Trasker's secretary asked if I looked like a badly dressed toon or acted like a lunatic. The receptionist cautiously said, "I don't think so," to cover herself.