The Key to Midnight

swallowed. When he spoke, he expelled butter-rum fumes. 'That's the way it is, I'm afraid.'
        The senator strove to control his temper, for to lose it would be to give the fat man an advantage. 'These reports are important to me, Anson. Very personal, very private.'
        Peterson smiled. 'You know perfectly well that they're read by at least a dozen other people. Including me.'
        'Yes, but then I always get to read them too. If you just summarize them instead… then suddenly you become an interpreter. It's not as private that way. I wouldn't feel as close to her.'
        Everything he knew about his daughter's current activities was third-hand information. In twelve years not one spoken word had passed between him and Lisa; therefore, he jealously guarded these few minutes of reading, the first of every month.
        'That day in Jamaica,' he said, 'you promised I'd get written reports of her progress, her life. Always written. You hand it to me, I read it by a flashlight in a moving car, then I give it back to you, and you destroy it. That's how it works. I haven't agreed to any changes in the routine, and I never will.'
        'Calm down, dear Tom.'
        'Don't call me that, you bastard.'
        Peterson said, 'I'll take no offense. You're distraught.'
        They rode in silence until Chelgrin said, 'Do you have photos?'
        'Oh, yes. We have photos, as we do every month. Though these are exceptionally interesting.'
        'Let me see them.'
        'They need a bit of explanation.'
        The senator's mouth went dry. He closed his eyes. All anger had been chased out by fear. 'Is she… is she hurt? Dead?'
        'Oh. no. Nothing like that, Tom. If it was anything like that, I wouldn't break the news this way. I'm not an insensitive man.'
        Relief brought anger back with it. Chelgrin opened his eyes. 'Then what the hell is this all about?'
        As the driver slowed the Mercedes, turned left onto a narrow lane, and accelerated again, Peterson picked up his attache case and put it on his lap. From it, he withdrew a white envelope of the type that usually contained photographs of Lisa.
        Chelgrin reached for it.
        Peterson wasn't ready to relinquish the prize. As he undid the clasp and opened the flap, he said, 'The report is spoken this time only because it's too complex and important to be committed to paper. We have a crisis of sorts.'
        The fat man took several eight-by-ten glossies from the white envelope, and Chelgrin accepted them with trepidation.
        A flashlight lay on the seat between them. Chelgrin picked it up and switched it on.
        In the first photograph, Lisa and a man were sitting on a bench in a tree-shaded plaza.
        'Who's she with?' the senator asked.
        'You know him.'
        Chelgrin held the flashlight at an angle to avoid casting glare on the photograph. 'Something familiar…'
        'You'll have to go back in time. Before he had the mustache. Go back at least ten years to the last time you might've seen him.'
        'My God, it's the detective. Hunter.'
        'He's become bored with his business and with Chicago,' Peterson said. 'So he's been taking a couple of month-long vacations every year. Last spring he went to Brazil. Two weeks ago - Japan.'
        Chelgrin couldn't look away from the photograph, which ceased to be merely a picture and became an omen of disaster. 'But Hunter turning up in the Moonglow Lounge, that place of all places - the odds must be a million to one.'
        'Easily.'
        'She's changed over the years. Maybe he-'
        'He recognized her at once. He's compared her fingerprints to Lisa's. Encouraged her to call London. Took her to a psychiatrist for hypnotic regression therapy. We had the office bugged.'
        As Chelgrin listened to what Dr. Omi Inamura had achieved with Joanna, the motion of the car began to make him nauseous.
        'But why was this allowed to happen?' he demanded.
        'We didn't expect this Inamura to be successful. By the time we realized that he was achieving a breakthrough with her, it seemed pointless to threaten or kill him.'
        Jagged lightning stepped down the dark sky, gouging the thick cloud cover with its spurred heels.
        'And why hasn't Hunter contacted me?' the senator wondered. 'I was his client. I paid him a hell of a lot of money to find her.'
        'He hasn't contacted you because he