I had a good view of that unit, and staring out the window wasn’t suspicious, because some good-looking women in their early twenties and skimpy bikinis were using the diving board and splashing around in the pool when they weren’t sunning themselves.

I hadn’t eaten for a while, so I ordered a Diet Coke and the Famous Wheelhouse Bacon Cheeseburger, which somehow I’d managed never to hear of. Just didn’t get around enough, I guess. The famous burger came with fries, which were worthy of fame, because they were hand-cut, not frozen.

These I fearlessly salted and dragged through ketchup and nibbled while I watched the unit; Dionne Warwick was singing “That’s What Friends Are For.” I’d felt lucky getting hand-cut french fries, but I got luckier yet: Monahan and a skinny blond kid I didn’t recognize (not a face in the Broker’s file, new blood) exited the motel room and they were walking and talking, casually, and heading my way.

Actually, the restaurant’s way. The place had enough patrons to make me inconspicuous, and when Monahan and the blond kid took a booth at the back, against the wall, where I had a good view of them, I managed not to smile.

I say the blond was a kid, but he could have been thirty. He had that blue-eyed Beach Boy look that makes you a kid your whole life (as long as you don’t get a gut), including shaggy soup-bowl hair and a tan that said he probably operated out of somewhere coastal. He was wearing a black Poison t-shirt with a skull and crossed guitars, so he was a metal head, despite his Mike Love demeanor.

In his short-sleeve light blue shirt with darker blue tie and navy polyester slacks, Monahan looked like the kid’s high school counselor. Or he would have if they both hadn’t been smoking. Christ, didn’t those two know that shit could kill you?

The hardest part was not staring, because they were close enough to lip read. Though surveillance had never been my specialty, I’d done enough of it to pick up the skill in a rudimentary way. What follows is part guess, but it’ll give you what I got out of it.