He was breathing shallowly, like he was trying to remember how. When he looked at me and laughed, the noise sounded more like a pained whimper, like he was getting something cauterized.

"I can talk, son," he told me. "I'll talk. Hell, I've weathered worse."

As the sirens approached and I tended to Milo's wounds Sheckly paced around the warehouse, kicking at the pirate CDs, laughing and mumbling to Jean Kraus' corpse that he'd weathered worse, like maybe if he said it a few hundred more times he might come to believe it.

Tuesday and Wednesday were a blur. I remember cops, Milo Chavez in the hospital, more cops. I remember sleeping in an interrogation room for several hours, speaking to Sam Barrera and Gene Schaeffer on several occasions and meeting Barrera's nice friends from the FBI and ATF. When I dreamt I dreamt about giving pints of blood over and over and asking for donuts and water and getting nothing but little smiley face stickers that said: I'M A DONOR.

I woke Thursday morning on the futon at 90 Queen Anne, wondering how I got there.

Vague memories started surfacing about a ride in the back of a mustard yellow BMW, someone who smelled like Aramis cursing my father's name as he trundled me out of the car and dragged me up the stairs and tucked me roughly into bed.

I blinked the crust out of my eyes. Robert Johnson was curled around my feet. The TV

was on.

I stared at the pretty colours and the plastic faces of anchor people. Slowly the sounds they were making became English.

They were recapping the story of the week, telling me things I already knew. We'd had the second largest bust of pirate and bootleg audio CDs in U.S. history, right here in the Alamo City—$1.5 million netted in cash over the last two days and 350,000 titles by over ninety country artists—all precipitated by a police response to gunfire at a North Side warehouse Monday evening. Three men had been killed before police arrived. One of the victims was an Avalon County deputy who'd apparently been in collusion with the pirates. The other two victims were Luxembourg nationals. A falling out among thieves, one reporter had called it.

Tilden Sheckly, country music entrepreneur, had been taken into custody at the scene and was cooperating with authorities about his connections to the European smug

gling ring. He had led Customs officials to three separate warehouses full of merchandise and cash and several boxes of automatic weapons that the ATF claimed were the first shipments of a fledgling gunrunning operation, piggybacking off the CD

distribution network. Several recent murders in the San Antonio area had now been linked to the Luxembourg organization and at least one foreign national was still at large, wanted for the slaying of the Avalon County deputy Elgin Garwood. The anchorman showed the wanted man's face—the third man who'd been in Jean Kraus'

BMW—and gave a name I didn't recognize. The murder weapon had been found several blocks away—a .357 calibre pistol, wiped of prints, unregistered.

A search was under way for locally based talent agent, Les SaintPierre. According to Samuel Barrera, RIAA's contracted private investigator and hero of the day, Mr. SaintPierre was not a suspect in any crime. Rather, SaintPierre had disappeared while acting as an informant for the authorities and was, sadly, presumed dead.

As for Tilden Sheckly, he was a small fish. When pressed the SAPD spokesman confirmed that Sheck stood a good chance of lenient charges if, as promised, he could help authorities in several states and at least three E.U. countries with information on his Luxembourg partners.

I turned off the TV.

I managed a shower, then some cold cereal.

Around ten o'clock I called a friend of mine in the ExpressNews entertainment section and got the rest of the story. The inside scoop in music industry circles was that Les SaintPierre had actually embezzled tens of thousands from his own agency and disappeared to the Caribbean. Some said Mazatlan. Others said Brazil. Many said he'd been working with the Luxembourgians. The agency he'd headed had collapsed over the last forty eight hours, although one of Les' associates, Milo Chavez, had heroically confronted the pirates and blown the whole operation open. Chavez was said to be recovering nicely and putting together a lucrative deal for Miranda Daniels with Century Records. As a result of that, and the good publicity, Chavez had employment offers from several large Nashville agencies. Reportedly with Milo would came Miranda Daniels as a client and a large number of former SaintPierre talent.

Milo had apparently underestimated himself.

According to my friend at the ExpressNews, the Miranda Daniels developmental tape featured strong material and was as good as a surefire gold record. It had a strong buzz going, whatever that meant. My friend expected the deal to go through with Century Records and Miranda to be on the Billboard charts by New Year's. He said the human interest angle really helped— first and foremost the recent tragic death of Miranda's brother, who had written some of her best songs. The murder of her former fiddle player helped too.

"The tabloids are eating this up," Carlon McAffrey told me. "You don't happen to have an in with this Chavez guy, do you? Or Daniels?"

I hung up the phone.

I did tai chi on the back porch until almost noon. Halfway through the long form my muscles started to burn the right way again. The vacuous sick feeling in my stomach faded. Once I got into the sword form I could almost concentrate again. The phone rang just as I was completing the last section.

I went inside and caught it on the third ring.

Kelly Arguello said, "Allen Meissner."

"What?"

"Get a pen, stupid."

I pulled one out of the crack in the ironing board. Kelly rattled off a social security number, a Texas driver's license number, a flight number.

"Meissner applied for the social security number two months ago," she said, "at age fortyfive. Got his license at DMV two weeks ago, then plane tickets to New York on American, booked for tomorrow. Good trick considering the guy died in '95. Meissner used to be an inhouse auditor for Texas Instruments."

"Holy shit," I said.

"You did say before Friday, didn't you?"

"You found him."

Kelly laughed. "That's what I've been trying to tell you, chico loco. Your client's going to be happy?"

I stared at the flight number. "When was this reservation made?"

"Yesterday. Hey—this is good news, right?"

I hesitated. "Absolutely. You're incredible, Kelly."

"I've been trying to tell you that, too. Now about that dinner—"

"Talk to Ralph."

"Oh, please, not that again."

I leaned down against the ironing board and ran my fingers into my hair. I closed my eyes and listened to the slight crackle of the phone line.

"No," I said. "I mean you should call him."

She spent a few silent moments trying to interpret my tone. "What happened? What'd you two get into this time?"

"You just need to call him, okay? Even better, get down here. Spend a day with him, okay? He needs—I don't know, I think he needs to be reminded you're around. Some niecely influence."

"Niecely is a word?"

"Hey. English Ph.D. here. Back off."

"This is the thanks I get for helping you?"

"You'll do it?"

Kelly sighed. "I'll do it. I'll also come to see you." She said it like it was the deadliest threat she could make. I smiled in spite of myself. "Bueno?" she asked.