member of some other sect that took great pains to cloak the female figure in
garments that would not lead a man into temptation.
He and Einstein continued their walk through the park. Later, they went to the
beach, where the retriever seemed astounded by the endless vistas of rolling sea
and by the breakers foaming on the sand. He repeatedly stopped to stare out at
the ocean for a minute or two at a time, and he frolicked happily in the surf.
Later still, back at the house, Travis tried to interest Einstein in the books
that had caused such excitement last evening, hoping this time to be able to
figure out what the dog expected to find in them. Einstein sniffed without
interest at the volumes Travis brought to him—and yawned.
Throughout the afternoon, the memory of Nora Devon returned to Travis with
surprising frequency and vividness. She did not require alluring clothes to
capture a man’s interest. That face and those green-flecked gray eyes were
enough.
3
After only a few hours of deep sleep, Vincent Nasco took an early-morning flight
to Acapulco, Mexico. He checked into a huge bayfront hotel, a gleaming but
soulless high-rise where everything was glass, concrete, and terrazzo. After he
had changed into ventilated white Top-Siders, white cotton pants, and a
pale-blue Ban-Lon shirt, he went looking for Dr. Lawton Haines.
Haines was vacationing in Acapulco. He was thirty-nine years old, five-eleven,
one hundred and sixty pounds, with unruly dark brown hair, and he was purported
to look like Al Pacino, except that he had a red birthmark the size of a
half-dollar on his forehead. He came to Acapulco at least twice a year, always
stayed at the elegant Hotel Las Brisas on the headland at the eastern end of the
bay, and frequently enjoyed long lunches at a restaurant adjacent to the Hotel
Caleta, which he favored for its margaritas and its view of Playa de Caleta.
By twelve-twenty in the afternoon, Vince was seated in a rattan chair with
comfortable yellow and green cushions at a table by the windows in that same
restaurant. He’d spotted Haines on entering. The doctor was at another window
table, three away from Vince, half-screened by a potted palm. Haines was eating
shrimp and drinking margaritas with a stunning blonde. She was wearing white
slacks and a gaily striped tube-top, and half the men in the place were staring
at her.
As far as Vince was concerned, Haines looked more like Dustin Hoffman than like
Pacino. He had those bold features of Hoffman’s, including the nose. Otherwise,
he was exactly as he’d been described. The guy was wearing pink Cotton trousers
and a pale-yellow shirt and white sandals, which seemed, to Vince, to be taking
tropical resort attire to an extreme.
Vince finished a lunch of albondiga soup, seafood enchiladas in salsa verde, and
a nonalcoholic margarita, and paid the check by the time Haines and the blonde
were ready to leave.
The blonde drove a red Porsche. Vince followed in a rental Ford, which had too
many miles on it, rattled with the exuberance of percussion instruments in a
mariachi band, and had fragrant moldy carpet.
At Las Brisas, the blonde dropped Haines in the parking lot, though not until
they stood beside her car for at least five minutes, holding each other’s asses
and soul-kissing in broad daylight.
Vince was dismayed. He expected Haines to have a stronger sense of propriety.
After all, the man had a doctorate. If educated people did not uphold
traditional standards of conduct, who would? Weren’t they teaching manners and
deportment in the universities these days? No wonder the world got ruder and
cruder every year.
The blonde departed in her Porsche, and Haines left the lot in a white Mercedes
560 SL sports coupe. It sure wasn’t a rental, and Vince wondered where the
doctor had gotten it.
Haines checked his car with the valet at another hotel, as did Vince. He tailed
the doctor through the lobby, out to the beach, where at first they seemed
embarked on an uneventful stroll along the shore. But Haines settled down beside
a gorgeous Mexican girl in a string bikini. She was dark, superbly proportioned,