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had the strength of a woman who did things for herself. Her face was full and she had a black woman’s lips. The bones of her face made her features point downward like a lovely, earthward-bound arrowhead. Her eyes were light brown and a smile flitted around her lips as she regarded me regarding her beauty.
    She would have been tall even if she were a man—nearly six feet. But unlike most tall women of that day, she didn’t let her shoulders slump and her backbone was erect. I made up my mind then and there that I would get on naked terms with her if it was at all possible.
    She nodded and smiled and I believe she read the intentions in my gaze.
    “Maya Adamant,” Saul Lynx said, “this is Ezekiel Rawlins.”
    “Easy,” I said, extending a hand.
    She held my hand a moment longer than necessary and then moved back so that we could step off of the platform.
    “Saul,” she said. “Come in. Would you like a drink?”
    “No, Maya. We’re in kind of a hurry. Easy’s daughter is sick and we need to get back as soon as possible.”
    “Oh,” she said with a frown. “I hope it’s not serious.”
    “It’s a blood condition,” I said, not intending to be so honest. “Not quite an infection but it really isn’t a virus either. The doctors in L.A. don’t know what to do.”
    “There’s a clinic in Switzerland …,” she said, searching for the name.
    “The Bonatelle,” I added.
    Her smile broadened, as if I had just passed some kind of test. “Yes. That’s it. Have you spoken to them?”
    “That’s why I’m here, Miss Adamant. The clinic needs cash and so I need to work.”
    Her chest expanded then and an expression of delight came over her face.
    “Come with me,” she said.
    She led us toward a wide, carpeted staircase that stood at the far end of the library.
    Saul looked at me and hunched his shoulders.
    “I’ve never been above this floor before,” he whispered.
     
     
    THE ROOM ABOVE was just as large as the one we had left. But where the library was dark with no windows, this room had a nearly white pine floor and three bay windows along each wall.
    There were maybe a dozen large tables in this sun-drenched space. On each was a battle scene from the Civil War. In each tableau there were scores of small, hand-carved wooden figurines engaged in battle. The individual soldiers—tending cannon, engaged in hand-to-hand combat, down and wounded, down and dead—were compelling. The figurines had been carved for maximum emotional effect. On one table there was a platoon of Negro Union soldiers engaging a Confederate band.
    “Amazing, aren’t they?” Maya asked from behind me. “Mr. Lee carves each one in a workroom in the attic. He has studied every aspect of the Civil War and has written a dozen monographs on the subject. He owns thousands of original documents from that period.”
    “One wonders when he has time to be a detective with all that,” I said.
    For a moment there was a deadness in Maya’s expression. I felt that I had hit a nerve, that maybe Bobby Lee really was a figment of someone’s imagination.
    “Come into the office, Mr. Rawlins. Saul.”
    We followed her past the miniature scenes of murder and mayhem made mythic. I wondered if anyone would ever make a carving of me slaughtering that young German soldier in the snow in suburban Düsseldorf.
     
     
    MAYA LED US through a hand-carved yellow door that was painted with images of a naked island woman.
    “Gauguin,” I said as she pushed the gaudy door open. “Your boss does paintings too?”
    “This door is an original,” she said.
    “Whoa” came unbidden from my lips.
    The office was a nearly empty, windowless room with cherry floors. Along the white walls were a dozen tall lamps with frosted glass globes around the bulbs. These lamps were set before as many floor-to-ceiling cherry beams imbedded in the plaster walls. All the lights were on.
    In the center of the room was an antique red lacquered Chinese desk that had