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don’t remember anything about me. And I was
always so certain that you would.”
    Without another word, without telling me
anything of what she meant, she kissed me on the side of my face
and vanished into the night.

CHAPTER Three
    It made me a little crazy, trying to remember
a face that was impossible to forget. I could not have known her,
despite what she said. Perhaps we had met at some gathering, a
large party, in San Francisco or New York, where I did not know
anyone and, to hide my awkward self-consciousness, I had had too
much to drink. But she had meant more than that, more than some
chance meeting that had lasted only a few, brief seconds. We had
known each other well enough that I would have remembered – should
have remembered - things about her, not just her face. I lay there
in the darkness, searching through my past, wondering why I could
not find her, how she could have vanished. The next morning, when I
went up on deck to join the others, I could almost hear the
laughter in that silky voice of hers, telling me all about a memory
I did not share.
    The motor launch was heading toward the
shore. Sitting next to her husband, Danielle, a white scarf
whipping in the breeze, was looking back over her shoulder, trying,
as it seemed, to catch one last glimpse of what she had left
behind. I thought she saw me, and I thought she smiled.
    “Mr. and Mrs. St. James had to fly back to
New York.”
    I turned and found myself under the watchful
gaze of Blue Zephyr’s captain who immediately offered his hand.
    “Mustafa Nastasis. We haven’t met. I’m
acquainted with the other guests, but this is your first time,
isn’t it?”
    There was something out of place about him,
something that did not feel right. His manner was too formal, too
studied, everything too perfect. His dark gray hair was cut just
right, his black mustache trimmed with precision. His
double-breasted blazer gleamed like a dinner jacket, and his
tailored flannel slacks broke at exactly the right angle across a
pair of soft Italian loafers. He spoke English with the meticulous
pronunciation that a native speaker never uses.
    “Greek,” he explained in answer to the
question he read in my eyes. “On my father’s side; my mother was
from Istanbul. They usually hate each other, the Greeks and the
Turks, but my parents did not care for politics, only each other.
They had nine children.”
    His eyes, shrewd and observant, moved past me
to the motor launch, barely visible in the morning haze.
    “Are they coming back?”
    “To Blue Zephyr?” His glance was full of
meaning, or rather the suggestion of one, because there was
something enigmatic in his look. A smile of cheerful malevolence
suddenly started across his mouth, but then he shrugged his
shoulders and made the vague remark, “Always, but when, or
where….”
    “They decided to leave rather suddenly. They
didn’t say anything about it last night.”
    His gaze turned inward, as if to shut out the
question, or any other inquiry about what Nelson St. James might be
planning to do next.
    “Tomorrow, in Los Angeles, a plane will take
you back to San Francisco.”
    “That’s very kind of Mr. St. James,” I
replied, “but it won’t be necessary.” With an expression as
enigmatic as his, I added, “I have other plans.”
    I was telling the truth. I did have plans of
my own, something I had been meaning to do for a long time. Tommy
Larson was just about the only friend I had. Though we lived only
an hour’s plane ride apart, he never seemed to get to San Francisco
and I almost never went to L.A. We talked on the phone once in a
while, usually after I had won a case and he called to complain
that, thanks to me, the streets were now less safe than they had
been and all the women were in danger, but I had not seen him in
nearly a year. A lot had happened and not all of it was good.
    Tommy had moved out of Los Angeles, from
Pasadena where he had lived for years, since shortly after
finishing law