After a moment I muttered, "I told you that my guesses haven't been worth shit." What else could I say?

"Later I'll explain how stupid I feel." Apparently telling myself the truth wasn't enough. I had to tell other people, too.

"Right now I need to talk to Ginny."

"I understand." His grin reached me along the phone line.

"When you're done working for Lacone, we'll talk about whether you want a job with Professional Investigations."

Then he hung up. Which spared me having to gape some more.

Until I tried to dial Ginny's number, I didn't notice how badly I was trembling.

No, not now. Not now. I absolutely could not afford to be this stupid, too fumble-brained to dial a fucking phone. There was too much at stake. Not with Ginny. Within me.

I put down the receiver, wrapped mental arms around my guts to contain my visceral frenzy, and tried again.

After an interminable stretch of dead air while the cellular connection went through and my bowels tied themselves in knots, the number rang.

Ginny answered so promptly that she must've been waiting with the phone in her hand.

"Fistoulari."

"Ginny, it's Brew." Now that I had her, I could barely speak.

"What's happened?"

She chuckled grimly.

"Calm down, Brew." She knew me too well.

"I wanted to talk to you before I pick up Mai. She's with her lawyers.

She's supposed to call me when she's ready to come home, but I haven't heard from her yet."

In other words, I'd reached her in time.

Almost involuntarily I sagged back in the chair.

"Don't mind me," I panted unsteadily.

"I'm just having a small coronary. Nothing to worry about."

"I know how you feel." She wasn't amused.

"But you might want to put it off for a few minutes. This can't wait."

"Right." I already knew that she hadn't used her lives-at-stake tone just to scare me.

"Go ahead."

She hesitated, then said, "When you suggested searching her house, I thought you were crazy." Like Marshal, she spoke distinctly, but for different reasons.

"I wanted to ignore you, but you're right too often for my peace of mind. Way too often. And the crazier you sound, the more likely you are to be right."

Recently I hadn't been right about anything and I was getting crazier by the second. About Mai Sternway, however, I had no doubts at all.

"So " Ginny's voice trailed off. When she went on, she sounded angry in the cold businesslike way that meant she was at her most dangerous.

"You'll never guess what I found."

"Tell me," I murmured softly.

"It's like a duffel bag." Her tone had teeth in it.

"The kind athletes carry gear in. With a shoulder strap. Black plastic, not cloth do they make these things out of vinyl?"

Sweet Christ. I sat up as if she'd yanked me by the hair.

"It closes with a flap instead of a zipper."

There she stopped.

The inside of my head began to clang like a cathedral bell. At the same time I seemed to become translucent, the way flesh does in the glare of a thermonuclear blast. Piercing light shone through me. If I'd looked fast enough I would've seen everything.

"What's in it?" I asked, suddenly calm. A flood of illumination washed away my tremors.

"Well, for one thing," she replied harshly, "there are a dozen or so watches, wallets, bracelets, money clips. No more than that. Not a very successful haul."

"And ?"

"And nothing," she snapped.

"A flik, for God's sake. With dried blood on it. Bits of skin. Maybe a few fibers of some kind. Hair or something, I don't know." Then her voice softened. She sounded sad, rueful over a crime that she couldn't have prevented.

"It smells like a murder weapon, Brew."

That was it, right there in front of me. The connection. The link that bound everything together. If I could just grasp how that one link attached to all the others.

"No, it doesn't," I told her.

"It smells like the murder weapon. The one that killed Bernie Appelwait. At The Luxury."

Ginny recoiled. I sensed it through the phone.

"You didn't tell me he was killed with a flik."

Clanging and fuses, impossible translucence. A concussion like explosive decompression. I'd taken too many blows, landed none. My head should've been full of chaos, a blitzkrieg of possibilities