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said.
    Darling turned his head very slowly.
    “Hello, Shepherd. You look tired. Up late
last night?”
    “No. Must be all the excitement. It’s a shame
you missed it.”
    Shepherd knew he sounded testy and frankly he
didn’t give a fig. What was with the you-look-tired shit? Darling was just the kind of guy who always had to take a shot,
even when there was nothing to shoot at.
    Adnan quickly rolled up whatever it was they
had been examining. He blocked Shepherd’s view of it with his body
until he was done, then turned around holding it in his hands.
    “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.
    “So I see.”
    Adnan had a stiff smile that bared his teeth
far more than was really desirable. Sometimes Shepherd thought he
looked downright reptilian. Today was one of those times.
    “What do you want?” he asked.
    Darling seemed quite amused at Adnan’s
belligerence. He folded his arms and waited, a half smile on his
face.
    “Charlie said you have some documents for
me,” Shepherd said.
    “They’re in my office.”
    “Fine.”
    Adnan just stood and looked at Shepherd and
said nothing else.
    “May I have them?” Shepherd prompted.
    “I would have sent them to you if you had
telephoned.”
    “I’m sure you would. But I’m here, so I’ll
take them with me.”
    Adnan still looked irritated and Darling
still looked amused. Shepherd couldn’t work out what the hell was
going on.
    “Look, guys, I’m sorry I interrupted whatever
you were doing,” he said. “If somebody will just give me the stuff
I came for, I’ll be on my way and leave you to it.”
    Darling glanced at Adnan and gave a little
jerk of his head and Adnan scurried off. He carried his rolled up
map or whatever it was with him when he left.
    That was interesting, Shepherd thought. He
didn’t even realize Adnan knew Darling. Now here they were huddled
together looking as if they were plotting something and Darling was
running whatever it was. Shepherd filed the observation away with
the large stockpile of other curiosities he had already collected
in his wanderings around the royal court of Charlie Kitnarok. You
could never tell when little things like that might turn out to be
useful.
    After Adnan had gone, Darling took a blue and
white box of Gitanes Brunes out of his inside jacket pocket, the
non-filter kind, and held them out.
    “No thanks,” Shepherd said.
    Darling grunted, shook one out, and lit it
with a gold lighter. He was a small man with a large head. On each
occasion Darling and Shepherd had met, Darling had worn a well-cut
dark suit, a white shirt, and a bow tie. His clothing gave him an
air of primness. He looked like a man constantly smelling something
unpleasant and suspecting it might be you.
    “I keep trying to quit,” Darling said,
sliding the box of Gitanes back into his pocket. “I’ve even done
hypnosis and acupuncture. Nothing works.”
    Darling loosed a world-class shrug, one any
genuine Frenchman would have been proud to author.
    “I just like the fucking things too much,” he
said.
    Shepherd nodded but he didn’t say
anything.
    Darling took a long pull on his cigarette.
“What are you up to these days, Shepherd?” he asked.
    “Same as always. Just practicing law. Trying
to get by.”
    “I hear you’re living in Hong Kong now.”
    “That’s right.”
    “You like Hong Kong better than Bangkok?”
    “Yeah. You meet a better class of bar trash
there.”
    Darling nodded slowly, almost as if Shepherd
had made an interesting observation worthy of reflection, and drew
on his cigarette again.
    “You’ve really been up and down these last
few years, haven’t you, Shepherd?”
    Shepherd wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Actually, he was sure since Darling was absolutely right. He
just wasn’t about to give the bastard the satisfaction of agreeing
with him.
    “You should have tried Paris,” Darling nodded
as if he knew exactly what Shepherd was thinking. “There’s a long
tradition of Americans running away to