"But he's an important client, so I do my job and make nice. Most of the time his propositions are easy to ignore.

"Mr. Sternway joined us after a while. I suppose we'd been making small talk" she consulted her memory "for maybe five minutes when we realized something was wrong."

"How did you know?"

She claimed the check before I could reach it.

"We saw hotel security running. They looked upset. And one of them blocked the men's room." She smiled wryly.

"That was enough for me."

"Can you remember where you were standing?" I pursued.

"Which direction were you facing? What could you see?"

"Brew." She put her hand on my arm.

"I'll think about it. I'll tell you everything I can remember. But I'd like to go now.

Please?" Mischief and desire shone in her eyes.

"The way you talk about your work I don't know how much longer I can keep my hands to myself."

I nearly fell over getting out of my chair. Then, just in case I didn't already look foolish enough, I bowed to the floor.

"Yours to command, my lady."

Laughing again, she stood to join me.

Through the windows the storm looked fierce enough to overturn cars.

After each hot strike of lightning, the thunder fell like buildings under demolition. She offered to give me a ride, bring me back to the Plymouth tomorrow, but something nagging in the back of my head told me that I might want the van. So she led me out the restaurant's rear entrance and up an escalator to the parking garage, then drove me in her sleek robin's-egg blue Audi into the lashing torrents and around the block until we were right beside the Plymouth. From there I heaved myself out in one stride, hauled open the van, and dove in. Altogether I wasn't exposed to the storm for more than three seconds.

It soaked me to the skin. Drenched me completely. I couldn't have gotten any wetter if I'd strolled here from Chicago.

The Plymouth didn't want to start. I could barely see the lights from Chez Amneris. The rain fell like reified darkness, driving every scrap of illumination to its knees. Whenever a bolt of lightning hit, the buildings on both sides of the street seemed to jump into existence as if they were crowding closer. Then the sudden impact of thunder restored the dark, tightened its noose around me. I felt like a fugitive from justice, desperate for escape, as I cranked the starter again and again.

Invisible through the rain, Deborah waited for me. Only her headlights showed that she was still there.

Finally the engine coughed a few times and sputtered to life. I revved it hard, trying to burn the damp from the plugs. When I'd snapped on my headlights and flicked them two or three times, Deborah's Audi began to creep ahead of me.

Guided by her taillights, I followed her through the smothering storm.

I didn't know where her apartment was, so I concentrated on not losing her. Unless lightning cracked open the torrents at just the right moment, I couldn't make out street signs. And I had too many other problems to wrestle with.

Clinging to Deborah's taillights as if they might save me, I asked myself the same question I'd almost asked her. What did she want from me? I couldn't avoid it any longer. I was on my way to spend the night with her when some part of me believed that I should be standing guard over the chops and Sifu Hong.

Lightning gave me a clear white look at the Audi. Buildings that might've been banks crowded the road, leaning inward like they were being thrashed by the rain. Thunder pounded overhead, so close that it made the Plymouth shudder on its tires.

What did she gain by distracting me?

By distracting me tonight?

From a loyal insurance company employee's point of view, Watchdog would lose major bucks if something happened to the chops. Therefore of course Deborah wanted me to do my best for Lacone and Nakahatchi.

But suppose she wasn't a loyal employee What if instead she was a greedy woman with tastes too expensive for her salary and a secret yen for just picking a name at random T'ang Wen? Think of the cash she could get her hands on if she helped him steal and fence the chops.

The idea made me want to puke Chez Amneris' cuisine all over the van.

According to this theory, she'd arranged for Hardshorn and his team to make Posten and Watchdog nervous by working the tournament. Then, when she was sure that I'd jump through any number of hoops for her including ditching my former partner she'd urged Lacone to hire me. So that she could get me away from Martial America tonight.

Then it followed that Hardshorn had killed Bernie. They must've been alone in the men's room. Deborah was out in the lobby with Lacone and Sternway, and no one else had a motive to crush Bernie's larynx and take the flik.

But I didn't believe that Hardshorn killed Bernie. Hardshorn's willingness to kill me only made sense if he had more at stake than a bag of petty loot. But nothing except the presence of a recognizable partner explained Bernie's death.

And the bag later ended up hidden in Mai Sternway's house? How crazy was that?

No matter whose name I substituted for T'ang's in this theory,

I couldn't make the pieces fit. If Deborah had larceny in her heart when she invited me to her apartment, nothing added up, and I was utterly lost.

For a moment her taillights eluded me. The deluge swarming down my windshield drained my self-confidence as it ran, washing me by scraps and shreds into Garner's overfilled sewers. If I were that wrong, absofuckinglutely anyone could've killed Bernie.

Then the Audi braked for a turn. I'd almost overshot it in the blackness.

Maybe everything in my head was just so much lightning and thunder, a tension reaction, neurons making themselves insane under the strain of the storm. Or maybe Garner itself lay so far beyond any reality I understood that I couldn't think straight.

I needed an answer, and I needed it soon.

At the next slash of lightning, I heard myself yelp. How long had I been doing that? My throat felt tight and raw, as if I'd already howled half a dozen times without noticing it.

Incoherently I began to fear that I'd have to follow Deborah through this pummeling chaos for the rest of my life. God alone knew how she coped without a set of taillights to guide her.

When she swung left, I assumed that she'd turned to another street. But the roadway sloped suddenly downward, and then between one heartbeat and the next the rain stopped, cut off as cleanly as if we'd fallen over the edge of the world. We were in an underground parking garage.

A swollen river accompanied us downward. As the pavement leveled out the rainwater spread into a surging lake that covered the Audi's wheels to the hubcaps.

Deborah sculled her car into a parking space. I found one nearby for the van. When I opened my door, she stood on the Audi's running board, facing me over the roof.

"Now that," she called through the muffled clamor, "was horrible."

Enforced gaiety strained her voice.

"I haven't seen a storm like that in my life."

"Stay there," I shouted back. My whole body ached with the absence of torrents. My head felt like it'd been packed with cabbage and buried to rot.

"I'm already wet. I'll carry you."

She made a noise that might've been laughter or hysteria.

"Don't be silly. I'm a big girl." She removed her shoes, then hopped off the running board, closed her door, and splashed toward me.