"No, Frankie's not that kind of friend."

I decided to keep the conversation going, as she would be asleep in no time at all. The rhythmic sounds and motion of the train would soon send her off.

"Who is your best friend? Is it Melissa?"

"Yes."

"How come she's your best friend?"

"Uh we ride bikes together, and go to each other's houses a lot. We have secrets."

"What kind of secrets do you have?"

"Silly, that would be telling! Who's your best friend?"

That was easy, but I wasn't going to say his name. If we were lifted again, I would hate it if he was mentioned and put in danger. The sun was starting to burn through the windows; I leaned across her and pulled down the blind.

"My best friend is called ... David." It was about as far away from Euan as I could think of.

"Just like you and Melissa, we tell each other things that no one else knows. In fact, he has a daughter who's just a little bit older than you.

No one else knows about her apart from David and me and now you!"

There was no reply. It seemed she was starting to doze off. I continued anyway, I didn't know why.

"We've known each other since we were seventeen, and we've been friends ever since." I started to stroke her hair. I was going to talk more but found it really hard to tell her. I couldn't put it into words. Euan and I were just there for each other and always had been. That was it, really. I just didn't have the tools to describe it. Frank de Sabatino had been crossed off the Christmas-card list of LCN La Cosa Nostra in Miami and for his own protection had been sent over to the UK as part of the federal witness protection program. I had been one of the team charged with looking after him for the three months he spent in Wales before returning to the US. I remembered Frankie as about five-foot-five and seedy; he had very black, tight, curly hair that looked as if it had been permed in the style of a 1970s pop star.

The FBI had been investigating LCN in South Florida they don't use the word "Mafia" and had discovered that de Sabatino, a thirty-four-year-old computer nerd who worked for one of the major players, had been skimming off hundreds of thousands of dollars from their drug operations. The government agents coerced de Sabatino into gathering evidence for the prosecution. He had no choice if he were arrested, LCN would be told what he'd been up to. LCN members in prison would have done the rest. Pat had had a good relation ship with him during the job, and we'd later joked that maybe that was why he'd got out right afterward. I now knew that Pat had liked to sample the goods a bit too much.

Frankie's clothing had been anything but low profile; to him, "subdued" meant a pale orange shirt with purple pants and alligator skin cowboy boots. Whatever he was wearing, his fat would push up against his shirt. The last I'd heard of him, he'd been given a new identity after the trial and, very surprisingly, had opted to stay in the States and, even more weird, in Florida. Maybe the shirt selection wasn't so good elsewhere.

I'd thought again about calling Euan, but what could he do for me at the moment? I decided against it; better not use up all my resources at once. Frankie would help decrypt the PIRA stuff, then Euan could help me once I was back in the UK.

We got to De Land station just before 2 p.m. The bus was waiting to take us to the coast. After so many hours of air-conditioning on the train, the Florida afternoon hit me as if I'd opened the door of a blast furnace. Both of us were blinking like bats under the clear, oppressive sky. We were surrounded by people wearing tans and summer clothes. The electronic information scroll at the station told us it was ninety-one degrees.

We boarded the hot bus, sat down, and waited for the PVC to stick to our backs as we chugged along the highway to the Daytona Beach bus depot.

It was an uneventful trip. Occasionally from behind us would come the sound of rolling thunder, and a blur of chrome, leather, and sawed-off denim would flash past with the distinctive, explosive bubbling gurgle of a Harley-Davidson. I'd forgotten Daytona Beach was a mecca for bikers. From the bus window, the roadside diners looked black with them.

Two hours later we trundled across the bridge over the inland waterway into downtown Daytona Beach. We peeled ourselves off the seats, and I reclaimed our bag. The first thing I did was buy us two fresh-squeezed orange juices, and as we walked from the shelter of the bus depot I could feel the sunlight burning through my shirt.

At the taxi stand I asked the driver to take us to an ordinary hotel.

"What kind of ordinary?" he asked.

"Cheap" The driver was Latino. Gloria Estefan blasted out of the cassette player; he had a little statue of the Virgin Mary on the dashboard, a picture of his kids hanging off the mirror, and he was wearing a big, loud, flowery shirt de Sabatino would have died for. I rolled my window down and let the breeze hit my face. We turned onto Atlantic Avenue, and I found myself staring at a massive white ribbon of hard-packed sand that stretched to infinity. We drove past diners, beachwear and biker stores, Chinese restaurants, oyster houses, 7-Elevens, parking lots, tacky hotels, then more diners and beachwear stores.

The whole place was built for vacations. Everywhere I turned I saw hotels with brightly colored murals. Nearly all had signs saying spring breakers welcome. There was even a cheerleaders convention going on; I could see scores of girls in skimpy outfits strutting their stuff on a ball field outside the convention center. Maybe Frankie was there, sitting in a corner, ogling.

"Are we there yet?" Kelly asked.

The driver said, "Two more blocks on the left."

I saw all the usual chain hotels, and then ours--the Castaway Hotel.

Standing on the sidewalk outside, listening to Gloria's singing disappearing into the distance, I looked at Kelly and said, "Yeah, I know--crap."

She grinned.

"Triple-decker crap with cheese."

Maybe, but it looked perfect for us. What was more, it was only twenty-four dollars a night, though I could already tell from the outside that we'd get only twenty-four bucks' worth.

I came out with the same old story, plus us being determined still to have our Disney vacation. I didn't think the woman at the desk believed a word I was saying, but she just didn't care, as long as I gave her the cash that went into the front pocket other dirty black jeans.

Our room was a small box with a pane of glass in one wall.

The floor had a layer of dust that it would have been a shame to clean, and the heat bouncing off the cinder block made it feel like the black hole of Calcutta.

"Once the air-conditioning is on it'll be OK.," I said.

"What air-conditioning?" Kelly asked, looking at the bare walls.

She flopped onto the bed. I could swear I heard a thousand bedbugs scream.

"Can we go to the beach?"

I was thinking the same, but the first priority, as ever, was the kit.

"We'll go out soon. Do you want to help me sort every thing out first?"

She seemed happy at the suggestion. I gave her the .45 magazines from the Lorton exit shooting.

"Can you take the bullets out and put them in there?" I pointed to the side pocket of the bag. The mags didn't fit into my Sig, but the rounds were the same.

"Sure" She looked really pleased.

I didn't show her how to do it because I wanted to keep her busy. I hid the backup disk inside the bed, using one of the screwdrivers to rip the mattress lining. I got the washing kit out, had a shower and a shave. The scabs were a dark color now and hard. I got dressed in my new jeans and gray T-shirt.

Then I got Kelly cleaned up too.

It was 4:45. She was still getting dressed in black pants and a green pullover as I leaned over to the cabinet between the two beds and pulled out the telephone book.

"What's this?" I pointed a thumb at the TV " The Big Bad Beetleborgs." "The who?"

She started to explain but I wasn't really listening; I just nodded and agreed and read the phone book.

I was looking for the surname DeNiro. It was a crazy name for him to have chosen, but I remembered that was what he'd renamed himself: Al DeNiro. For somebody who was supposed to spend his life keeping a low profile it wasn't exactly the most secure, but he was Al and Bob's biggest fan. The only reason he'd got involved in the drug scene in the first place was that he'd seen Al Pacino in Scarface. His whole life had been a fantasy. He knew all the dialogue from their films; he'd even entertained us in Wales with passable impressions.

Sad, but true.

There was no listing under De Niro, A. I tried directory assistance They couldn't help, either. The next step would be to start phoning all around the state or to get a private eye on it with some story, but that was going to take a lot of time and money.

Scratching my butt until I realized Kelly was watching, I walked over to the curtains, and pulled them back. We were two bats in the bat cave again, exposed to the deadly sunlight.

Craning my neck around to the left, I could just about see the ocean view I'd paid an extra five dollars for. People were strewn all over the beach; there was a young couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other, and families, some with tans and others like us, the lily-white ones, who looked like uncooked trench fries. Maybe they'd come on the same train.

I turned to Kelly. She was happy enough that the Beetle-borgs had saved the world again, but looked bored.

"What are we going to do now?" she said.

"I've got to find my friend, but I'm not sure where he lives.

I'm just wondering how to go about it."

"The computer geek you told me about?"

I nodded.

All very nonchalant, she said, "Why don't you try the Net?" She wasn't even looking at me; she was now back to watching the shit on the TV Of course--the bloke is a computer freak, there's no way he's not going to be on the Internet, probably surfing the porn pages for pictures of naked teenagers. It was as good a starting point as any. Better than my private eye idea, anyway.

I walked over to the bag.

"You can use the Net, can you?"

"Sure. We do it at school."

I started to get the laptop out, feeling quite excited about this girl's genius.

I suddenly realized that even if there was an internal modem and Internet software on the laptop, it would be no good to me. I didn't have any credit cards I could use to register with, and I couldn't use the stolen ones because they'd need a billing address. I put the laptop on the bed.

"Good idea," I said, "but I can't do it on this machine."

Still looking at the TV, she was now drinking a warm Minute Maid that had been in the bag, using both hands on the carton so she didn't have to tilt her head and miss anything.

She said, "We'll just have to go to a cyber cafe--when Melissa's phone was out of order, her mommy used to go to the cyber cafe for her email."

"Oh, did she?"

* * * Cybercino was a coffee shop with croissants, doughnuts, and sandwiches, with the addition of office dividers to create small cubicles. In each was a PC, with a little table for food and drink. Pinned on the dividers were notices about session times, how to log on, and little business cards advertising various sites.

I bought coffee, doughnuts, and a Coke and tried to log on.

In the end I handed the controls to a more skilled pilot. Kelly zoomed off into cyberspace as if it were her own backyard.

"Is he on AOL, MSN, CompuServe, or what?" she demanded.

I didn't have a clue.

She shrugged.

"We'll use a search engine."

Less than a minute later we were visiting a site called Info-Space. Kelly hit the e-mail icon and a dialogue box appeared.

"Last name?"

I spelled out De Niro.

"First name?"

"Al."

"City?"

"Better leave that blank. Just put Florida. He might have moved."

She hit Search, and moments later, up came his e-mail address.

I couldn't believe it. There was even a Send Mail icon, which she hit.

I sent a message saying I wanted to contact Al De Niro-or anyone who was a Pacino/De Niro fan and knew "Nicky Two" from the UK.. That was the nickname de Sabatino had given me. There were three Nicks on the team. I was the second one he'd come in contact with. When we met he would do his Godfather thing, holding out his arms, saying, "Heyyy, Nicky Two" as he gave me a kiss and a hug. Thankfully, he did that to everyone.

The cafe would open the next day at 10 a.m. Our session fee included the use of the Cybercino address, so I signed off by saying that I would log on at 10:15 tomorrow morning to retrieve any messages. The risk that his e-mail was being monitored and somebody could make a connection with "Nicky Two" was minimal.

By now I was hungry for more than doughnuts, and so was Kelly. We walked back toward the main strip and stopped at our favorite restaurant. We ordered to go and ate our Big Macs on the walk back. The temperature was still in the seventies, even at this time of the evening.

"Can't we play miniature golf?" Kelly said. She pointed to what looked like a cross between Disneyland and St. Andrews with trees, waterfalls, a pirate ship, all made to look like a floodlit Treasure Island.

I actually enjoyed it. There was no danger, and the pressure release was tremendous, even though Kelly was cheating.

She started to putt on the eleventh hole. A dragon behind us was blowing out water rather than fire from its cave.

"Nick?"

"What?" I was busy working out how to negotiate the ninety-degree angle I needed to hole the ball.

"Can we see your friend, what's his name David?"

"Maybe some day." I swung, and it didn't work. I was stuck on the water obstacle.

"Do you have any sisters or brothers?"

Where was this going?

"Yes, I have."

"How many?"