"Took too much effort to love anything else. How about you?"

I glanced around the room. California had gone smokeless in the 90s, but judging by the haze, Sespe might not have gotten the memo.

"I"m a c.o.c.ktail waitress," I said.

"Yeah? You meet Lyda here?" he asked, as the bartender returned with my drink. She set it in front of me and nodded.

"Hey, Mac," she said, then to me: "Four-fifty."

"I got it," he said, and lifted his almost-empty gla.s.s in a well-understood signal. She gave him a near smile and moved down the bar to fulfill his wishes.

"Thank you," I said.

He shrugged. "Friday"s payday."

"No point letting all that potential money go to waste."

"Almost be a sin," he said. "Where do you work?"

"L.A."

"Yeah?" He jiggled his ice. "I heard of that place."

I smiled and tasted my drink. It wasn"t bad, maybe a little heavy on the vodka.

"What are you doing here!" he asked.

Honesty may get you to heaven, but a couple of handy lies will get you answers. "I was visiting my brother. Just on my way home."

"What"s his name?"

I took another sip. "What?"

"Your brother. Could be I work with him."

"Oh. No. He lives in Santa Barbara. Just had a new baby."

He smiled a little. Lyda replaced his drink. "Babies are nice. New life and all that," he said, and gazed with melancholy at the bottle-lined wall in front of us.

It seemed a perfect segue. "I heard a guy drowned here the other night."

He drew a deep breath. "Weird."

I felt my stomach cramp. "How so?"

He took a swig. "Manny liked the water. Could swim like a fish, or so he said."

"So you knew him."

He shrugged.

My heart was racing. "Did you work with him?"

"He got himself fired a few months back."

His answers seemed strangely succinct after his former verbosity.

"I"m sorry. Were you two close?"

"Me and Manny?" He glanced at me. He had kind eyes, pale green, a little sad.

"Evening," said an aging man in a sport coat.

"Hey, Milt," he said, then sipped some more and shrugged. "Actually, I don"t think he liked me very much."

A blue-jeaned man in a sweatshirt paused in pa.s.sing. "Hey, Mac. Me and Garrett are goin" to Burley"s come Friday. Wanna come?"

He nodded. "I"m driving this time, though."

Garrett"s friend laughed and moved on.

"You seem like a pretty popular guy," I said. "Why would anyone dislike you?"

He sighed, glanced at the bottles again, then looked at me. "You must be tired of listening to peoples problems all day."

I drew back a little, wondering wildly how he had known my true occupation.

"Delivering drinks," he said.

"Oh, yes. Well..." I tried to relax, but tense was becoming so comfortable. "I like talking to people. It"s kind of...therapeutic."

He smiled. "You get a lot of drunks where you work?"

"It"s not uncommon."

He nodded. "Manny was an okay guy."

"Just okay?"

He took a sip of gin. "Were your parents really mean or do you have another name besides Mac?"

He seemed like a nice guy. But other guys did, too, and sometimes they tried to kill me. "Truth is," I said, "I"m a little uncomfortable about giving out my name."

He watched me for a minute, then: "I"m sorry," he said.

"For..."

"Whatever made you skittish. Sometimes life kind of sucks."

It was one of the wisest things I"d heard in weeks. "Sometimes."

"Manny"s wife left him "bout a year back."

"The guy that died?"

"Yeah."

"Do you think it was suicide?"

"There"s talk, but..." he said, and shrugged.

"He got fired. Lost his wife. Sometimes people get depressed."

"They do indeed."

"But you don"t think that was it."

He shrugged again.

"Why?"

"Word was he might be expecting some money."

"Money? What kind of money?"

"He was suing Ironwear for a ..." He nodded at his unspoken thoughts. "A hefty sum."

"For what?"

"Racial discrimination."

"And he had won the suit?"

"Guess it"s a moot point now."

"A hefty sum should have put a smile on his face."

"It"s the last thing he needed."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing," he said. "Sorry. What do I know?"

"Mac," someone said in pa.s.sing.

"Woods," he responded, lifting a hand.

"I thought everyone needed a... hefty sum," I said.

He smiled, but the expression was grim. "Maybe some people know how to spend it better than others."

"He didn"t?"

"Some guys are sweet as puppies when they"re drunk," he said. I wondered if he was one of them. If you listened closely, you could hear his words beginning to slur.

"He wasn"t?"

"Maybe we could talk about you for a while," he suggested.

"I get weepy when I drink," I said.

"I pa.s.s out."

"Often?"

"Not as much as Manny," he said.

"He was an alcoholic?"

"I don"t know what"s wrong with me," he said. "I"m trying not to talk about him."

"Sometimes it"s just best to get it out of your system."

"I thought women liked to talk about themselves."

I shrugged. "Maybe it"s the c.o.c.ktail girl in me. Tell me about him."

He examined his drink. "He really was an okay guy" he said. "Worked for Ironwear for a bunch of years. Always had a new joke. Some of them were even funny. Liked to talk politics. But usually didn"t let it get sticky."

I felt my heart lurch. "Usually?"

"He could get pretty steamed up sometimes. Heard he used to campaign for some senator."

My gut cramped. I took a drink and tried to remember to breathe. "Some senator?"

"Yeah. The Latino one."

I felt a little sick to my stomach, but I felt excited, too. "I"m afraid I don"t know-"

"The good-looking guy with the great voice," he said. "Roberto. Remono."

"Rivera?" I said.

"Yeah, that was it. Rivera."