I leaned back and closed my eyes, my imagination drifting. In that brief moment, my mind floated back to yesterday afternoon at Lou's loft, and Sarah. Her hallucinations still haunted me. What had happened to her in the rain forest? And why would she say she wanted to go back?

Then I snapped back. "All right. Try and ring him if you think he can help. Right now I need all I can get."

He got up and worked his way to the phone, past the crowded bar, while I tried to contemplate the night sky. I looked up again, hoping to see Orion, but now a dark cloud had moved in, leaving nothing but deepening blackness. He'd said there was a storm brewing, part of an out-of-season hurricane developing in the Caribbean, so I guessed this was the first harbinger.

"Tonight's out, but tomorrow's okay." He was striding back. "Crack of dawn. Which for him is roughly about noon. We'll have a quick get-together and then I've got to run. Re­ally. But if this guy doesn't know what's going on down here, nobody does. He's probably laid half those hot tomatillos there at the bar. The man has his sources, if you get my meaning."

"Then let's go back to the glorious Camino Real." I took his hand. "We'll split the check. At the moment, even that seems romantic."

"I'm still thinking about—"

"Don't. Don't think." I touched his lips, soft and moist, then kissed him. An impulsive but deeply felt act. "We've all had enough thinking for one day."

[Chapter Seventeen]

Alan Dupre didn't ring till almost ten-thirty the next morn­ing, and I had the feeling even that was a stretch. He then offered to meet us in the Parque Concordia, right downtown. As I watched him ambling toward our bench, my first im­pression was: Why'd we bother?