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driver got out. He was not a big man—maybe five-eight and a hundred and sixty pounds—and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, silver belt buckle, black shirt and a flat-brimmed black hat, pinched at the top like a World War I campaign hat. The face under the hat was brown and smooth, the expression impassive.
    “Ed Eagle?” The man asked.
    “That’s right.”
    “My name is Vittorio. You left me a message.”
    Ah, Eagle thought, the other P.I., the one he’d called when he’d thought Cupie Dalton was out of action. “Sure, come on in.” He lead the way into the house and the kitchen and began putting things away.
    “Can I get you a drink?”
    The man set his hat on the kitchen counter and pulled up a stool. His thick, black hair was pulled straight back into a long ponytail and secured with a silver clip. He nodded at the bourbon bottle. “A taste of that would be good. Ice, if you’ve got it.”
    Eagle poured two drinks and handed him one. “There was an Apache chief named Vittorio back in the late nineteenth century.”
    “He was my great-great-grandfather.”
    “How did your great-grandfather survive the massacre in the Tres Castillas mountains?” Eagle knew that Vittorio had left the reservation and conducted a three-year offensive against the whites. He had been cornered in the mountains, and he and sixty of his men and a group of women and children had been slaughtered there by the New Mexico militia.
    “His mother wouldn’t let him fight; she made him hide in some rocks, where he saw the whole thing. When it was over, he scavenged the bodies for food and water, then he walked seventy miles to another Apache camp, where he was taken in. He was seven years old.”
    “Jesus,” Ed said.
    “Yeah. What can I do for you, Mr. Eagle?”
    “The day before yesterday, my wife cleaned out two bank accounts and my brokerage accounts and chartered a jet for Mexico City. I stopped the transfer from the brokerage in time, but she got away with a million one, in cash.”
    Vittorio nodded but said nothing.
    “I sent a P.I. from L.A. after her, and he caught up with her at a hotel called El Parador last night. He followed her into the street, where he called me on his cell phone and attempted to hand it to her. She shot him.”
    Vittorio’s eyebrows moved a fraction, but he still said nothing.
    “The P.I. wasn’t badly hurt, and he’ll be back on the job soon, but he could use some help.”
    “Does he know he could use some help?”
    “I haven’t told him yet.”
    “How is he going to feel about that?”
    “I don’t much care how he feels about it. Can you leave for Mexico City today? There are flights from Albuquerque.”
    “Yes. What do you want me to do when I find her?”
    “I want to speak to her on the telephone, then I want her signature at the bottom of six blank sheets of paper.”
    “You don’t want her hurt, then?”
    “Not any more than it takes to get her signature. I’ll explain to her on the phone what it’s for. It will probably help if you scare the shit out of her.”
    Vittorio nodded. “I get a thousand a day, plus expenses, for travel out of the country.”
    “Hang on here a minute,” Eagle said. He went into his study and found a legal-size file folder and some of the paper his office used, then he went to his safe, where he always kept some cash, and put five thousand dollars in an envelope. He removed a photograph of Barbara from its frame, returned to the kitchen and handed the paper and the money to Vittorio. “Her maiden name was Miriam Schlemmer before she changed it to Barbara Kennerly; her first husband’s name was Rifkin. Or she could be using Eagle.”
    “You have any idea where she might go, if she leaves Mexico City?”
    “She told me that she had spent a nice week in Puerto Vallarta once. That’s a possibility, but she could go anywhere if she gets her hands on that cash. I’ve got another man trying to prevent that. You’d better take