him.

"Winifred," she said.

"I saw you in The Elliot Bay Book Company," he said. "Last month. Moira
was a guess."

"Oh, yes . . . something funny . . . you had a projection."

"Very funny," Joe said. "Winifred, my name is Joe, Joe Burke. Why not
come sit? Talk story . . . "

"I've given up on men," she said to someone listening in the banyan.

"Very sensible," Joe said.

She hesitated and sat. "I love this tree," she said, placing her sun
glasses on the table between them.

"Didn't someone write about it? Or under it?" he offered.

"Stevenson," she said. "Or was it Mark Twain?" Her eyes were intensely
brown with radiating streaks of garnet.

"It's a literary banyan," Joe said.

"So, what brings you to Hawaii?"

"I used to live here," Joe said. "I stopped computer programming, and I
stopped being married--again. It seemed natural to come back."

"Hawaii gets to you," she said. Winifred lived in Manoa. She was a
photographer. Joe would have bet that she was some kind of artist; he
found them wherever he went. Her sister lived on Queen Anne Hill in
Seattle, close to Kate and the Caffe Ladro. Her father, Arthur Soule,
was a professor, retired in Vermont.

"Lot of Soules on the Maine coast," Joe said. "And a Coffin clan. The
line is: 'For every Soule, there's a Coffin."'

"So my father has told me."

"Win, Winifred . . . what do you prefer to be called?"

"Either works. 'Winny' is what horses do. My father sometimes calls me
Freddy."

"How about Mo?"

"No one calls me Mo."

"Excellent! I shall be the first." She had large features, a wide
serious mouth that turned slightly up or down at the corners. Down in
this case. "I thought of you as Moira," Joe explained, "mysterious
Celt, born for the luck of the Burkes."

"Born to be bad," she said. "You can think of me any way you like, Joe
Burke. I must be going. Bye." She twirled her sun glasses, smiled once,
and left. He watched to see if she would swing her ass a little for his
benefit, but she didn't. Her eyes stayed with him--large and sensitive,
clear. She was nearly six feet tall and broad across the shoulders. Her
hands were as big as his. Not the happiest of campers, he said to
himself.

He went back to thinking about Victor Sperandeo's book. As a teen-ager,
Trader Vic made a living playing cards in New York. Then he moved into
the big casino on Wall Street. His book was straight exposition,
written without pretense. Joe had read other books