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looking through it—for old times’ sake, as it were—and there were three or four photos missing.”
    “How could you tell?”
    “Arthur was very meticulous about certain things,” he said. “His album was full—photos on every page, all neatly arranged chronologically with little captions underneath. Once, long ago, I’d commented on that, and he said he liked to hold on to his past.
    “And yet, when I looked that last time, there were two or three pages in a row with photos missing, and the captions had been scrawled out. That was most unusual, now that I think of it.”
    The sirens in my head were very loud now.
    “Did you happen to keep the album?”
    He shook his head.
    “No. The family demanded they get everything that wasn’t sold. Not very nice people, I’m afraid. They insisted on a complete inventory both before and after the sale, and an exact accounting of every penny.”
    “Do you have any idea of what the missing photos might have been?”
    This time, I didn’t mind the pause. Bell traced the outline of his lower lip with thumb and index finger, opening and closing the gap between them time and again. Finally, he shook his head.
    “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. They were from the period when I was back in Missouri, but that’s all I can say for sure. Probably of people I didn’t know, anyway.”
    A tiny buzz—this one not in my head—signaled the opening of the shop door. Bell rose and smoothed his tie against the front of his shirt with his palm.
    “I’m afraid I have a customer. Is there anything else you’d like to know at the moment?”
    “No,” I answered, also getting up. I reached into my shirt pocket for my card. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Bell.” I handed him the card, which he slipped into his jacket pocket.
    “I’m not quite sure how,” Bell said, motioning for me to precede him from the alcove office. “I’m afraid I rambled far more than I intended.”
    The customer, a paunchy little man in a very expensive-looking jumpsuit, smiled and waved at Bell, who nodded and smiled in return. Walking with me to the door, Bell turned and offered me his hand, once again the efficient businessman. I took it, and just before releasing my hand, his grip tightened momentarily.
    “Tell me, Mr. Hardesty, what have you learned?”
    Once again our eyes locked.
    “Something, Mr. Bell,” I said. “Something very important. I just wish I knew what it was.”

Chapter 4
    Damn it, why do I always expect things to be easier than they inevitably turn out to be? (Well, what the hell do I expect—a printed program?) I carried on this internal bitch fight all the way downtown and to the front door of the El Cordoba Hotel.
    It was a grimy, narrow building six stories high with a four-story, equally grimy double-faced sign—the kind they always use in detective B-movies to illuminate otherwise-dark street-facing rooms. The recessed entry was littered with torn newspapers, used paper cups, and the assorted windblown trash that adds to any downtown’s charm. In one corner near the door, a small brown paper bag was molded around an empty wine bottle. A real classy joint, the El Cordoba. It was the kind of place where the management’s experience with dead guests was, you could tell, considerably higher than, say, at the Waldorf.
    The lobby furnishings consisted of four overstuffed chairs and a sofa, all bolted to the chipped linoleum tile floor; two artificial palms that had seen better days; and three large blown-up photos of the city taken around 1947. A small glass panel in a closed fire door showed a long, murky corridor with doors set at monotonously regular intervals. An elevator somewhere behind the door whirred and ground noisily on its way up or down.
    The “front desk” was a window with dirty glass that ended about four inches above a small ledge. As I’d halfway expected, no one was in the tiny room behind the window. A badly smudged card taped to the wall to the left of