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might not need bail, but I’d plan to spend the weekend in here.” Eagle tossed the file and the pad into his briefcase, stood up and offered Big Bear his hand. “You’ll be hearing from me.”
    “Okay,” Big Bear said.
    Eagle left the jail and went back to his car. Big Bear’s story was simple enough to check out. If he wasn’t lying, why hadn’t he already been released?

Eight
    O NE THING EAGLE COULD GET DONE BEFORE MONDAY: the Gun Club was no more than a quarter mile from the jail. He parked out front and went inside. It might as well have been midnight, for all the light in the place. It seemed entirely lit by beer signs. At the end of the bar, a sign over a doorway said, simply, HELL. Eagle didn’t want to go in there. The lunchtime crowds were digging into their beer and pork rinds, and the bartender was busy. Finally, he came to Eagle’s end of the bar.
    “What’ll it be, sport?” Broad southern accent.
    “You Tupelo?”
    “Who’s asking?”
    “Name’s Ed Eagle; I’m Joe Big Bear’s lawyer.”
    “I already told the cops; you want me to tell you, too?”
    “Please.”
    “Right. Joe got here Wednesday afternoon around four-thirty-something, shot some pool with a guy I’d never seen before, had a couple of beers and left around six o’clock.”
    “Describe the other pool player.”
    “Short, scrawny, dark hair under a baseball cap, couple days’ beard.”
    “What did it say on the baseball cap?”
    “Who knows?”
    “How was he dressed?”
    “Dirty jeans, checkered shirt.”
    “How’d he pay?”
    “American dollars. We don’t take nothing else.”
    “Anything you didn’t tell the cops?”
    Tupelo shrugged. “Did Joe waste those folks?”
    “Not if you’re telling the truth.” Eagle gave him a card and a twenty-dollar bill. “Call me if you remember anything else. I’ll be in touch. Appreciate your time.” Eagle went back to his car, glanced at his watch and drove slowly toward the airport. He passed a liquor store with a drive-up window. Just for the hell of it he turned in and stopped.
    “Yessir?” the clerk asked through a bulletproof glass window.
    “A fifth of Knob Creek, please.”
    The clerk went away, came back with the bottle, stuffed it into a paper bag, took Eagle’s fifty and gave him change through a slide-out cash drawer, like at a bank.
    Eagle drove back to Airport Road and continued his journey. He turned left at the sign for the airport and noted the large automobile graveyard on his right, a sight he saw every time he drove out to visit his airplane. Just past that was a battered house trailer with a new-looking green pickup parked out front. He turned in. The trailer door was sealed with police tape. Eagle looked at his watch: eight minutes since he’d left the Gun Club. He got out of his car and into the unlocked pickup; the briefcase was there, just as Big Bear had said.
    Eagle opened it and found the two pads. Apparently, one was for credit card payments, the other for cash. Joe was filing a tax return but not reporting everything. He also found a receipt from the liquor store with a date and time stamp that said last Wednesday, 6:06 P.M.
    He broke out his cell phone and called both of Big Bear’s Wednesday clients, taking the numbers from the receipts. The guy on Agua Fría backed Joe’s alibi, and Eagle left a message on the other guy’s answering machine. If he came through, his client was looking clean.
    Still, he’d need the medical examiner’s report on the time of death and the detectives’ report. That wouldn’t happen until Monday. He did some grocery shopping and drove home.
    As he turned onto his road from Tesuque, he noticed a black car with darkened windows behind him, and when he turned into his drive, past the stone eagle that marked the entrance, the car followed him in.
    Eagle got out of the car with his groceries and stood, waiting for his visitor to emerge from the black car. After a moment, the car door opened, and the