When he got back to the Coconut Palms there was Nolen Tyner out by the pool with a six-pack.

Jerry Shea, sitting at the office desk with a pile of bills, was whistling as he made entries in the ledger. Moran never knew the songs Jerry whistled. He asked him today, what’s the name of that? And Jerry said, “This Year’s Crop of Kisses.” Jerry was a retired insurance salesman, sixty-seven, who cocked his golf cap to one side, slapped his broken blood vessels with Old Spice and went after lonely widows who’d invite him up to their condominiums for dinner, happy to cook for somebody again, have some fun. Moran pictured withered moth-eaten flanks, or else globs of cellulite getting in the way. Jerry said there was more active poon around than you could shake a stick at. With the fat ones, you rolled them in flour and looked for the wet spot.

Moran said, sitting down, taking off his tennis shoes and socks, “That guy out there drinking beer-”

“Mr. Nolen Tyner,” Jerry said. “Works for Marshall Sisco Investigations, Incorporated, Miami. Actually their office is in Coral Gables.”

“He told you that?”

“Ask a person what they do, they generally tell you,” Jerry said. “Especially since I recognized the address. We used to use Marshall Sisco on insurance investigations from time to time; it’s a good outfit. Nolen says he’s been with them a year, but I think he’s part-time help. Before that played dinner theaters up and down the coast and says he’s been in movies. He was an actor.”

“I think he still is,” Moran said. “He checked in yesterday about two and left at six, didn’t use the room.”