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days.”
    “Bodyguards are just nightlights, like fingerprinting your kids at school. It means their corpses can be identified.”
    “Also gives Big Brother a line on them early.”
    “That’s ACLU’s headache. I’ll drive you home. We can pick up your car later.”
    She patted my cheek and opened the door and slid in under the wheel. “Find my old man.” The engine ground over twice and caught.
    I leaned an arm on the open door. “Any chance somebody doesn’t want him found?”
    “They had to have followed me all the way from Kingston. I was just starting to ask questions here when that card turned up in my jewelry box. Why would somebody not want him found?”
    “I don’t know. Probably the two things have nothing to do with each other. Life doesn’t hang together that neat. I’m just spitballing.”
    She put the car in gear but left her foot on the brake. I stepped back. Grasping the door handle she looked up at me with thought on her face. “Are you getting enough sleep? You look beat.”
    “The kind of beat I am sleep can’t cure,” I said. “Call me if it rains.”
    She said she would and pulled the door shut and backed out of the space. After she hit Grand River I stood on the corner and smoked a cigarette. None of the cars parked against the curb pulled out behind her. A rattletrap Pinto hatchback with a busted tailpipe left the lot a couple of minutes later but turned in the other direction with an old lady at the wheel. I went back to the office.
    I called police headquarters and while it was ringing I took the bullet out of my pocket and looked at it. A property clerk answered, went away, and came back to tell me Lieutenant John Alderdyce was on indefinite leave.
    “Since when?”
    “Since last week,” the clerk said. “Is it an emergency?”
    I hung up and tried John’s home number. The line was busy. It was still busy a minute later and I called Astaire’s.
    The bright voice answered again, but this time it was live. I asked if Darryl Astaire was back from his trip. She put me on hold.
    He came on a moment later, a deep quiet voice like wrapped thunder. He was cautious at first when I told him who was calling, but when he found out it wasn’t about Clara Rainey he loosened up a notch. He didn’t know anyone named George Favor. When he bought Harold’s he’d let the kitchen staff go and replaced the dishwasher with a machine. If he kept up with the lives of all the people he’d had to fire, he said, he wouldn’t have time to look after his present employees.
    “Would Harold know?”
    “I doubt it. He moved to Texas, where I heard he died.”
    I drew an empty circle on my telephone pad, a face without features. I had run out of questions. “Okay. Thanks, Mr. Astaire.”
    “Thank you. For holding off telling Clara’s husband.”
    “How is she?”
    “She took the day off. She should be with him now.”
    “Good luck.”
    “It’s been nothing but good since she came here.” He thanked me again and hung up.
    John’s line was still busy. The name of the motel Iris had stayed in her first three days in town stared up at me from the pad, next to the blank face. I looked it up in the telephone directory, then decided to go there in person.
    I still had my hat and coat on and it would be a shame to waste them. I took along the bullet.
    It was steel cold in the car. The wheel was icy and when I hit the ignition cold air stiffened my face and went down my collar before I got the heater fan switched off. It was getting dark out at just past one in the afternoon. I drove the entire twenty-odd blocks without seeing a scrap of color. When it’s February in Detroit it’s been winter forever.
    The motel took up a block of Tireman, two square redbrick buildings connected by a walkway sealed in clear plastic with its name out front in green neon. In the parking lot a slim black youth in a red blazer walked from car to car recording license plate numbers on a sheet attached to a metal