Remember When

he'll be very... oh dear, insistent about my following through."
    Obligingly Vince opened a drawer, took out a file. "Nothing like that here. Clothes, toiletries, keys, a watch, cell phone and recharger, wallet and contents. That's it. Guy was traveling light."
    "I see. Perhaps he put it in a safe-deposit box for safekeeping until we met. Of course, he wouldn't have been able to retrieve it before... I've taken enough of your time."
    "Where are you staying, Mr. Pinkerton?"
    "Staying?"
    "Tonight. Where are you staying, in case I have something further on those arrangements."
    "Ah. I'm at the Wayfarer tonight. I suppose I'll fly out as scheduled tomorrow. Oh dear, oh dear, I don't know what I'm going to say to Mr. Mantz."
    "And if I need to reach you, in Boston?"
    Jack produced a card. "Either of those numbers will do. Please do contact me, Chief Burger, if you have any word." He offered his hand.
    "I'll be in touch."
    Vince walked him out, stood watching as he walked away.
    It wouldn't take long to check the details of the story, and to run the names Pinkerton and Mantz.
    But since he'd looked through those cheap lenses into Laine's blue eyes, he figured he'd find they were bogus.
    "Russ, call over to the Wayfarer, see if they've got this Pinkerton registered."
    He'd confirm that little detail, haul one of his men out of bed to keep tabs on the man for the night.
    He'd have another look at the effects, see what O'Hara-if that was O'Hara-had been interested in finding. Since he was damn sure he didn't have a few million in diamonds sitting back in the property room, he'd just have to see if he had something that pointed to them.
    ***
    Where the hell was it? Jack walked briskly for two blocks before he began to breathe easily again. Cop houses, cop smells, cop eyes tended to constrict his lungs. There was no ceramic dog on the list of effects. Surely even a suspicious cop-and that was a redundant phrase-would have listed something like that. So there went his tidy little plan to break into the property room and take it. Couldn't steal what wasn't there to be stolen.
    The dog had been in Willy's possession when they'd split up, in the hopes that Crew would track Jack himself to give Willy time to slip away, get to Laine and give her the figurine for safekeeping.
    But the vicious, double-crossing Crew had tracked Willy instead. Nervous old Willy, who'd wanted nothing more than to retire to some pretty beach somewhere and live out the rest of his days painting bad watercolors and watching birds.
    Should never have left him, should never have sent him out on his own. And now his oldest friend in the world was dead. There was no one he could talk with about the old days now, no one who understood what he was thinking before the words were out of his mouth. No one who got the jokes.
    He'd lost his wife and his daughter. That was the way the ball bounced and the cookie crumbled.
    He couldn't blame Marilyn for pulling stakes and taking little Lainie with her. She'd asked him, God knew, a thousand times to give the straight life a decent try. And he'd promised her that many times in return he would. Broken every one of those thousand promises.
    You just can't fight nature, was Jack's opinion. It was his nature to play the game. As long as there were marks, well, what the hell could he do? If God hadn't intended for him to play those marks, He wouldn't have made so damn many of them.
    He knew it was weak, but that was the way God had made him, so how could he argue the point?
    People who argued with God were prime suckers. And Kate O'Hara's boy, Jack, was no sucker.
    He'd loved three people in his life: Marilyn, his Lainie and Willy Young. He'd let two of them go because you can't keep what didn't want to be yours. But Willy had stuck.
    As long as he'd had Willy, he'd had family.
    There was no bringing him back. But one day, when all was well again, he'd stand on some pretty beach and lift a glass to the best friend a man ever had.
    But meanwhile, there was work to be done, thoughts to be thought and a backstabbing killer to outwit.
    Willy had gotten to Laine, and surely he'd had the dog in his possession when he had or why make contact? He could've hidden it, of course. A sensible man would've locked it away until he was sure of his ground.
    But that wasn't Willy's style. If Jack knew Willy-and who better?-he'd make book he had that statue with the diamonds in its belly when he'd walked into Laine's little store.
    And he hadn't