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probably a mistake.”
    “And maybe it isn’t.”
    “She could’ve come from anywhere in the parking lot.”
    “But since we have to start somewhere, we might as well begin with the van,” he said patiently.
    “She might’ve come from another row of cars altogether. We might just be wasting time. I don’t want to waste time. She isn’t wasting time. I have an awful feeling we don’t have much time.”
    Her nervous, fidgety movements escalated into uncontrollable shivers that shook her entire body. Charlie realized that she had been maintaining her composure only with considerable effort.
    “Easy,” he said. “Easy now. Everything’ll work out fine. We won’t let anything happen to Joey.”
    She was pale. Her voice quavered when she spoke: “He’s so sweet. He’s such a sweet little boy. He’s the center of my life . . . the center of everything. If anything happened to him . . .”
    “Nothing’s going to happen to him. I guarantee you that.”
    She began to cry. She didn’t sob or wail or get hysterical. She just took deep, shuddery breaths, and her eyes grew watery, and tears slipped down her cheeks.
    Pushing his chair back from the desk, getting up, wanting to comfort her, feeling awkward and inadequate, Charlie said, “I think you need a drink.”
    She shook her head.
    “It’ll help,” he said.
    “I don’t drink much,” she said shakily, and the tears poured from her even more copiously than before.
    “Just one drink.”
    “Too early,” she said.
    “It’s past eleven-thirty. Almost lunchtime. Besides, this is medicinal.”
    He went to the bar that stood in the corner by one of the two big windows. He opened the lower doors, took out a bottle of Chivas Regal and one glass, put them on the marble-topped counter, poured two ounces of Scotch.
    As he was capping the bottle, he happened to look out the window beside him—and froze. A white Ford van, clean and sparkling, with no advertising on it, was parked across the street. Looking over the tops of the uppermost fronds of an enormous date palm that rose almost to his fifth-floor window, Charlie saw a man in dark clothing leaning against the side of the van.
    Coincidence.
    The man seemed to be eating. Just a workman stopped on a quiet side street to grab an early lunch. That’s all. Surely, it couldn’t be anything more than that.
    Coincidence.
    Or maybe not. The man down there also seemed to be watching the front of this building. He appeared to be having a bite of lunch and running a stakeout at the same time. Charlie had been involved in dozens of stakeouts over the years. He knew what a stakeout looked like, and this sure as hell looked like one, although it was a bit obvious and amateurish.
    Behind him, Christine said, “Is something wrong?”
    He was surprised by her perspicacity, by how sharply attuned to him she was, especially since she was still highly agitated, still crying.
    He said, “I hope you like Scotch.”
    He turned away from the window and took the drink to her.
    She accepted it without further protestations. She held the glass in both hands but still couldn’t keep it from shaking. She sipped rather daintily at the whiskey.
    Charlie said, “Drink it straight down. Two swallows. Get it inside you where it can do some good.”
    She did as he said, and he could tell that she really didn’t drink much because she grimaced at the bitterness of the Scotch, even though Chivas was about the smoothest stuff ever to come out of a distillery.
    He took the empty glass from her, carried it back to the bar, rinsed it out in the small sink, and set it on the drainboard.
    He looked out the window again.
    The white truck was still there.
    So was the man in the dark pants and shirt, eating his lunch with studied casualness.
    Returning to Christine, Charlie said, “Feel better?”
    Some color had crept back into her face. She nodded. “I’m sorry for coming apart on you like that.”
    He sat half on the edge of his desk, keeping