street through a series of low-bottom bars where no one seemed to possess any memory for either faces or names. Then they reversed direction and went block by block through a district of secondhand stores, and missions that sheltered the homeless, and bars with darkened interiors, where, like prisons, time was not measured in terms of the external world and the patrons did not have to make comparisons.

Hackberry didn?t know if the cause was the smell of the alcohol or the dissolute and wan expression on the faces of the twenty-four-hour drinkers at the bar when he opened the front door of a saloon, but he soon found himself revisiting his long courtship with Jack Daniel?s, like a compulsive man picking up pieces of glass with his fingertips.

Actually, ?courtship? wasn?t the appropriate word. Hackberry?s experience with charcoal-filtered whiskey had been a love affair as intense as any sexual relationship he?d ever had. He?d dreamed about it, awakened with a thirst for it in the morning, and turned the first drink of the day into a religious ritual, bruising a sprig of mint inside the glass, staining the shaved ice with three fingers of Jack, adding a half teaspoon of sugar, then setting the glass in the freezer for twenty minutes while he pretended that whiskey had no control over his life. The first sip made him close his eyes with a sense of both release and visceral serenity that he could associate only with the rush and sense of peace that a morphine drip had purchased for him in a naval hospital.

?Not much luck, huh, kemosabe?? Pam said as they entered a saloon that was defined by an old checkerboard dance floor and a long railed bar with a big yellowed mahogany-framed mirror behind it.

?What?d you call me?? Hackberry asked.

?It?s just a joke. Remember the Lone Ranger and his sidekick, Tonto? Tonto was always calling the Lone Ranger ?kemosabe.??

?That?s what Rie, my second wife, used to call me.?

?Oh,? Pam replied, clearly not knowing what else to say.

Hackberry opened his badge holder and placed the photo of Liam Eriksson on the bar for the bartender to look at. ?Ever see this guy in here?? he said.

The bartender wore a short-sleeve tropical print shirt. His big forearms were wrapped with a soft pad of hair, and just above his wrist was a green and red tattoo of the Marine Corps globe and anchor. ?No, cain?t say I?ve ever seen him.?

?Know a gal by the name of Mona, maybe a working girl??

?What?s she look like??

?Middle-aged, reddish hair, five feet three or four.?

The bartender propped his arms on the bar and stared at the painted-over front window. He shook his head. ?Cain?t say as I remember anyone specific like that.?

?I noticed your tattoo,? Hackberry said.

?You were in the Corps??

?I was a navy corpsman attached to the First Marine Division.?

?In Korea??

?Yes, sir, I was.?

?You made the Chosin or the Punch Bowl??

?I was at the Chosin Reservoir the third week of November, 1950.?

The bartender raised his eyebrows, then looked at the painted-over window again. ?What?s the beef on this gal Mona??

?No beef at all. We just need some information.?

?There?s a woman who lives at the Brazos Hotel about five blocks toward downtown. She?s a hooker, but more of a juicer than a hooker. Her dance card is pretty used up. Maybe she?s your gal. Y?all want a drink? It?s on me.?

?How about carbonated water on ice?? Pam said.

?Make that two,? Hackberry said.

Neither Hackberry nor Pam noticed a solitary man sitting at a back table, deep in the gloom behind the pool table. The man was holding up a newspaper, appearing to study it in the poor light that filtered through an alleyway window. His crutches were propped on a chair, out of sight. He did not lower his newspaper until Hackberry and Pam had left the saloon.

THE BRAZOS HOTEL was made of red sandstone, built in the 1880s, and seemed to rise like a forgotten reminder of lost Victorian elegance in the midst of twenty-first-century urban decay. The lobby contained potted palms, a threadbare carpet, furniture from a secondhand store, a telephone switchboard with disconnected terminals jacked into the holes, and an ancient registration desk backdropped by pigeonholes with room keys and mail in them.

A short-necked, heavyset Mexican woman was behind the desk, a big smile on her face when she talked. Hackberry showed her the photo of Liam Eriksson.

?Yeah, I seen him. Not for a few days, but I seen him here a couple of