I marked my card after six attempts on a par three hole.

"Three brothers." I decided to cut the interrogation.

"They are called... John, Joe, and Jim."

"Oh. How old are they?"

She got me on that one. I didn't even know where they lived, let alone how old they were.

"I don't know really."

"Why not?"

I found it hard to explain because I really didn't know the answer.

"Because." I positioned the ball for her to putt.

"Come on or we'll hold everyone up."

On the way back I felt strangely close to her, and that worried me. She seemed to have latched on to me as a stand-in parent and we'd been together only six days. I couldn't take the place of Kev and Marsha, even if I wanted to. The prospect was too scary.

Next day. It was ice cream for breakfast, then we logged on at ten-fifteen. There was a message waiting for us, telling us to visit a certain chat room. Kelly hit a few keys and there we were. De Sabatino was waiting for us, or at least someone called Big Al was. A dialogue box invited us to a private room for a one-on-one; thank goodness Kelly was there to do the navigating.

I got right down to it. Kelly typed with two fingers: I need your help.

What do you want?

I've got something here that I need you to decode or translate--I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I know you'll be able to do it, What is it? Work?

I needed to get him hooked. For him, half the point of stealing all that money had been the sheer kick of doing it-"the juice." Thinking about it now, Pat had probably got the term from Big Al in the first place. This guy enjoyed putting one over on the big boys; he needed to be involved, to be part of something, and I knew that if I used the right bait, he'd come and see me.

I spoke and she typed: I'm not going to tell you! Believe me, it's good. If you want to look, you'll have to see me. I'm in Daytona. And then I started to lie. Other people say it's impossible.

I thought of you.

He came back at once: What format? I'd got him.

I told him all the details.

He said. Can't see you until 9 tonight. Outside Boot Hill Saloon, Main Street.

I'll be there.

Big Al came back: Yeehaa! Yeehaa!

There was nothing changed about him, then. Kelly logged off, and we paid the twelve dollars. About a hundredth of what a private eye would have cost me.

Now we had hours to kill. We bought sunglasses, and I also got Kelly a fashionable pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. I had to stay as I was, wearing my shirt over my pants to cover my pistol. The only addition was a bandanna to cover the cut on my forehead. Chrome aviators covered the lower one.

With the wind on our faces, we sauntered along the beach.

It was that time of day when the restaurants were starting to fill up with people wanting early lunches.

Back at the hotel I made some calls to check flights out of the country. If the stuff Big Al decrypted for me seemed to be what Simmonds needed, Kelly and I were out of here. I knew Big Al would have the contacts and resources to get passports for our exit, even money.

We had lunch, followed by eighteen holes with the pirates I let her win and then it was time to start getting ready for the meet.

At about 7:30 the sun started to go down and the street neon came on. Suddenly it was another world, with music pumping out of the stores and the kids now driving up and down the strip faster than the legal ten miles an hour.

I didn't know what it was, the weather maybe, but I felt detached from the situation I was in. It was just the two of us, we were having fun, eating ice cream and walking around looking in shops. Kelly was doing usual kid things, even to the point of spotting something in a store window and doing the "Look at that!" act as in. Hint, hint, are you going to buy it for me? I found myself acting the parent, saying, "No, I think we've had enough for today."

I did worry about her. I felt she should be more upset, shouldn't really be taking it so well. Maybe she hadn't under stood what I'd said to her about her family; maybe her sub conscious was putting a lid on it. At the moment, however, that was exactly what I needed: a child looking and behaving normally.

We stopped outside a toy store. She asked for a ring in the window that glowed in the dark. I lied and said I had no money left.

"Couldn't you steal it for me?" she said.

She was getting into this on-the-run thing too much. We had a serious talk about right and wrong.

It was about a quarter of nine by now; we'd had a pizza, and at that time of night on vacation, the next thing you should always have is a Haagen Dazs. Afterward, we started to wander to the RV with Big Al. We squeezed past ranks of parked motorcycles and jostling crowds, most wearing T-shirts with bike slogans.

I got us into a position from which I could see both approaches to the Boot Hill Saloon from the old graveyard on the other side of the street. It was all that remained of the original town, the only thing that couldn't be ripped apart and have a hotel built on it. As bikers parked and opened the doors, loud rock and roll thundered from the bar. It collided head-on with the Latin and rap that were blaring from the vehicles cruising up and down; it was that body-fluid time of night, and groups of breakers were hanging out of Jeeps and pickups with banks of six or seven speakers in the back.

Some even had electric blue lights fitted under the car; as they drove past, they looked like hovering spaceships playing music from Mars. I thought about our friends in the Cherokee. I wondered if they'd gotten home yet.

Kelly and I just waited, eating our ice cream and sitting on a bank next to Mrs. J. Mostyn, who went to Our Savior on July 16, 1924, God rest her soul. Main Street wasn't in fact the main drag but a road that led from the sea to a bridge over the inland waterway. Daytona has a bike week each year, and this was the street on which the thousands of bikers descended. It was a one-theme street, and that theme was Harleys. If it wasn't a bike bar, it was a store selling spare parts, helmets, or leather goods. And even when the convention wasn't on, bikes with helmets on the seats were lined up by the dozen outside bars with names like Dirty Harry's or Froggie's, where there was even a bike made of dusty bones in the window.

I could spot Big Al a mile away as he shambled toward us from the direction of the bridge. He was wearing a blue, white, and yellow Hawaiian shirt and pale pink pants, both straining against a body that was even fatter than I remembered; his outfit was set off by white shoes and the same shaggy hairstyle. He looked like an out-of-work extra from Miami Vice. In his left hand he carried a briefcase, which was a good sign; he'd brought the tools of his trade with him. He ducked into the Main Street Cigar Store and emerged chomping on a huge corona.

He stopped outside the Boot Hill Saloon, Harleys all around him. He put his briefcase down between his feet and stood there sucking his cigar as if he owned the place. Behind him was an enormous mural of a biker on the beach, covering an entire wall of the saloon. A board announced no colors, CLUB PATCHES, OR LNSIGNIAS.

I nudged Kelly: "See that man over there?"

"Which one?"

"The one with that really big flowery shirt on, the big fat man."

"You mean the geekazoid?"

"What?"

"It's like a double geek."

"Whatever." I grinned.

"He's the man we're going to see."

She said, "Why didn't we wait over there for him?"

"No, no--what you do is 'stand off' and watch. See what I'm doing? I'm looking up and down the road, just to make sure there's no bad guys following him. Then I know we're safe. What do you think? Think it's OK?".

All of a sudden she'd become very important. She looked up and down and said, "All clear." She didn't have a clue what she was looking for.

"Come on then, give me your hand. We've got to be careful with these cars driving so fast."

We left Mrs. Mostyn and stopped at the curb. I said, "When we go and meet him, I might have to do something that looks funny, but actually it's not--we do it all the time.

He understands it."

As we dodged through the traffic she said, "OK." After what she had seen lately this would be kindergarten stuff.

We got closer; he was certainly looking older. He recognized me from twenty yards away and was suddenly starring in The Godfather again. Cigar in his right hand, arms thrown out wide, head cocked to one side, he growled, "Aaaggghh!

It's Nicky Two!" He had a smile on his face the size of half a watermelon. It was probably shit living in hiding; at last he had somebody from the past he could talk freely with.

He jammed the cigar back into his mouth, picked up his briefcase in his right hand, and walked toward us, his fat thighs rubbing together.

"Hey! Nicky! How's it going!" He beamed and started pumping my hand, at the same time studying Kelly. He stank of flowery aftershave.

"And who's this pretty little lady, then?" He bent down to greet her and I felt a slight twinge of wariness. Maybe the charm was genuine, but for some reason it made me feel a bit revolted.

I said, "This is Kelly, one of my friend's daughters. I'm looking after her for a while."

I very much doubted he knew what had been going on up north. He certainly didn't know Kev.

Still bending down and shaking her hand for a bit too long, he said, "Welcome to the Sunshine State! It's great here we've got Seaworld, Disney World, everything to make a little lady happy!"

He stood up and said, slightly out of breath, "Where are we going?" He pointed hopefully and said, "Main Street Pier?

Shrimp?"

I shook my head.

"No, we'll go back to our hotel. I've got all the gear there I want you to have a look at. Follow me."

I held Kelly's hand in my left and got him on the right. As we walked we made small talk about how wonderful it was to see each other again, but he knew very well that this meeting wasn't casual and he liked it. He got off on this sort of stuff, just like Al and Bob.

We turned right and then took the first left, which was into a parking area behind the shops. I looked at Kelly and nodded to show everything was fine, then let go other hand. Big Al was still jabbering away. I grabbed his left arm with both hands and used his own momentum to turn him against the wall. He hit it with quite a bounce. I pushed him into the doorway of a restaurant's fire exit.

"It's cool, I'm cool." Big Al was keeping a low voice. He knew the score.

Just looking at him, it was obvious he couldn't conceal as much as a playing card under his clothes, let alone a weapon, the material was stretched so tight against his skin. However, I ran my hand down the back of his spine in case he had some thing concealed in the lumbar region; the natural curve makes it a wonderful place to hide odds and ends, and Big Al's was curvier than most. I continued frisking him.

He looked down at Kelly, who was watching everything.

He winked.

"I suppose you've seen him do this all the time?"

"My daddy does it, too, in heaven."

His answer was quick.

"Ah, OK, yeah, smart kid, smart kid." He looked at her and tried to work that one out.

Then came the bit that he probably enjoyed most, me running my hand up his pant legs. I checked thoroughly at the top. I said, "You know I need to look in your briefcase now, don't you?"

"Yeah, sure." He opened it up; I found two cigars in tubes, and all his work tools floppy disks, a backup drive and disks, cables, wires, all sorts of shit. I had a quick feel around to make sure there wasn't a secret panel.

I was happy. He was also. In fact, he probably had a hard-on.

I said, "Right, let's go."

"Let's get some ice cream on the way," he suggested.

We waved down a cab. Kelly and I got in the back and he squeezed in the front, resting a pint of Ben & Jerry's on his briefcase.

We got to the hotel and went to the room. His body language was excited, probably because he thought it was like the old days, all spies and shit, and the cheapness of the room only made it all the more exhilarating for him. He put his briefcase on one of the beds, opened it up, and started taking out all his gizmos. He fished, "So what are you up to these days?"

I didn't reply.

Kelly and I were sitting on the bed, not really doing much except watching what was going on. Kelly started to take quite an interest.

"You got any games?" she said.

I thought de Sabatino would look at her in disgust: I'm a technician, I don't have games. But he went, "Yeah, loads!

Maybe, if we get time, we can sit down and play a few. What ones do you like?"

They went off on a tangent about Quake and Third Dimension. I cut in and said, "So what do you do with yourself nowadays?"

"I just teach people how to work these things." He pointed at the laptop.

"Also, I do a bit of work for a couple of private eyes down here, getting into bank accounts, that sort of thing.

It's pretty low-key but it suits me I have to keep my head down."

Almost choking on Kouros cologne and looking at his choice of clothes, I wondered what his idea of high profile would be.

Without a reply to his original question, he seemed to feel compelled to fill the silence. He started sniggering and said, "Still managed to tuck away a few hundred thou! So, plus the resettlement, things ain't too bad."

He was fiddling about, attaching more cables to the laptop; God knows what he was doing, so I let him get on with it. He tried again.

"What about you? Same old thing?"

"Yeah, same sort of stuff. Bit of this, bit of that."

Now sitting at the table with his back to me, he was concentrating on the laptop.