Hi and Eva were having coffee, soon after Hi's return to Buenos Aires from his third expedition, in a confiterķa--one of the city's innumerable sidewalk cafes--when she finally told him what was bothering her. It was devastating news.

"I can't believe what you're saying," Hi said.

"He asked me. I said yes."

"You're going to marry Juan Perón?"

"Please understand, Hi. It's been wonderful, what you and I have had together. But I must think of the future. Juan is the Minister of War--"

"I thought he was the Secretary of Labor."

"He is Minister of War in the morning and Secretary of Labor in the afternoon. With luck, or a coup, he could be the next president."

"Big deal," Hi said. "So you're going to give up your acting career?"

"With Juan I'll be politically involved. There are things more important than radio soap operas."

"Eva, I thought you loved me. How can you do this?"

"I do love you, Hi. But you have your lost cities to look for, and --"

"Forget the lost cities," Hi interrupted. "I don't even think there is one. We'll go live in the states. We'll get politically involved. You'll love it in Apalachicola."

"But don't you see, Hi? I don't want to go to--uh . . . "

"Apalachicola? Then you name it. New York? We'll go to Chicago."

"I don't want to go to New York or Chicago."

"Why not?"

"Because Chicago is . . . "

"Not your kind of town?"

"This is my home, Hi. My people. I don't want to leave Argentina."

"Okay then, we'll stay here."

"I'm sorry, Hi. My future is with Juan."

Hi bristled at the memory. My future is with Juan. How Hi hated the man, though he had never met him. Juan, with his political ambitions, had made Eva thirst for power. She had good intentions. She knew what it was like to be poor, and wanted to help Argentines who still were. But Hi wondered, as he signaled for a refill, if Eva might still be alive had she not married Perón. The colonel had been married once before, and that wife died of cancer too. Not that Juan Perón was some kind of carcinogen, but Hi still had to wonder.

Looking in the mirror behind the bar, Hi noticed Soto, who saw Hi look at him. Hi was sure he had seen this guy at least once before there, trying to hide his face with his cigarette hand the same way he was doing now.

Then suddenly something happened that really caused Hi to wonder. Glancing over his shoulder, he caught sight of what seemed almost an apparition. It was strange, to begin with, to see a woman in mourner's apparel in a cabaret. Of course all of Buenos Aires was in mourning, so this woman in black, with pale but youthful features behind a thin veil, would not be out of place outside Cuco's. But Hi was struck by something else as he gazed at her. And it wasn't just the way she stood there, looking the room over as if with nostalgia, or how Hi had somehow failed to notice her entrance in the large mirror behind the bar into which he'd been staring, however vacantly, all evening. What struck Hi, what had him staring transfixed at her, was who she seemed to be. She was a dead ringer, behind that thin veil, for Evita. She looked pale, though. What Hi could see of her hair looked brunette--just like young Eva Duarte's.

Her sad eyes, looking over the room, moved to Hi. They were Eva's eyes, and they clearly registered surprise at the sight of him.

"Eva?" he said, loud enough to draw a few curious looks, including one from Soto, who was also regarding the woman.

Under Hi's gaze she turned hurriedly to leave. Hi rose quickly to follow, but just before reaching the door he ran into a large clenched fist that seemed to come out of nowhere. It caught him squarely on the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. Knocked out momentarily, Hi found himself groggily looking up from the floor at a large, muscular man in a business suit and hat. The man was pale-faced and grinning. With a courteous nod toward Hi, he quickly turned and went out.

Hi gingerly felt his nose, found no damage. Struggling to his feet, he again tried to rush out, but a strong hand on his arm jerked him back. Hi turned to look into the face of a tall, broad Latino. He was the cabaret's bouncer, and his smile said he enjoyed his job.

"You didn't pay for your drinks," the bouncer cheerfully told Hi.

Still seeing stars, Hi hastily took out a large bill and handed it to the bouncer. "A roundhouse," Hi said. "No! I mean a round for the house."

The bouncer thanked him, and Hi hurried out. Ever alert, the bouncer then grabbed Soto, who was rushing for the door after Hi.

"You didn't pay for yours either," the bouncer told Soto.

It was foggy outside, which, added to four scotches and a blow to the head, didn't help Hi's visibility. But the street was well lit, and Hi reached it just in time to spot the woman and his assailant turn the corner onto Calle Florida.

Hurrying to the corner and around it, Hi could barely make out through the fog what appeared to be the same couple, going into a shop down the street. Calle Florida was a street of chic shops and restaurants, for pedestrians only. Making his way through evening shoppers, Hi was unsure which store the couple had gone into. He began walking along looking in windows. At the third window he stopped. There in a clothing shop stood the couple Hi had seen enter, both with their backs to the window. Seeing the shapely, black-clothed lady from behind, Hi was sure that it was the woman who had fled Cuco's, and that the big guy in the suit who stood near her was the oaf who had slugged him.

Hurrying into the shop, Hi went straight to the woman, took hold of her arm, and turned her around. "Eva," he blurted, before he realized that this wasn't the woman. The man with her grabbed Hi's arm and spun him around. Hi just had time to see that this wasn't the oaf. The man's fist slammed into Hi's face, knocking Hi backwards into toppling clothes racks. The blow had caught him squarely in the forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.

What a coincidence, Hi thought as he woke up minutes later.

After paying for the damage to the shop, Hi headed straight for the Ministry of Labor building, where somebody still lay in state. As usual, Hi didn't know he was being followed. The only thing on his mind, besides a terrific headache, was finding out who, or what, he had seen in the cabaret.

I've got to find a dead woman, Hi thought, so I might as well start with the corpse.

When Hi reached the ministry, people were queued as usual in the cold down both sides of the street, which was heavily lined with flowers. But Hi wasn't going to wait. Going into the building, he headed straight for the upper lobby, ignoring the two lines of people standing patiently on the stairway as he went striding up past them. Some looked at Hi curiously, others reacted verbally with anger, drawing the attention of a policeman in front of the stairway. But Hi, jerking his arm from a couple of people who grabbed it, didn't care. He had one thing on his mind, and he knew he would have only moments--assuming he even got to the coffin--before he would be apprehended.

In his favor was the element of surprise. Striding into the upper lobby, where all the complaints on the stairway had been unheard or were incomprehensible, Hi quickly stepped through one of the two lines, right up to the coffin. He had already decided what specifically to look for first, then he would try for a more general impression of the face, before they took him away.

As rushed as he was, Hi still marveled, as he gazed down through the glass, at how much like Eva it was. But then he saw--or rather didn't see--what he had decided to look for, and that for Hi was the clincher. As one policeman took hold of Hi's left arm, and another the right arm, Hi glanced anxiously at both officers and announced, almost jubilantly, "It's not her!"

After being thrown out of the building and told not to come back, Hi headed back toward Cuco's. He was filled with exhilaration. Eva was alive. He knew it. What's more, she had come nostalgically to Cuco's Cabaret. Why? She had only worked there, ten years before, for one night. Hi was sure he knew why she was drawn there. It was where she and Hi had first met. Hi knew that Eva still loved him.

But he still had to find her. He had to know what she was up to, and why she had fled. He would start by questioning witnesses at Cuco's about the woman in black and her oafish companion.

As usual Hi didn't know, as he left the ministry building, that he was still being followed.