“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m not bothering you, am I?”

  “No, of course not.” I was just sleeping off an overdose on the floor, Mom, nothing to be concerned about. Happens all the time. “So what’s happening down on the farm?”

  “Your sister’s having another baby in October, isn’t that nice? And Ron Junior, he’s thinking about buying old Ned Armstrong’s hardware store and turning it into one of those chain stores. Oh, I don’t mean they’d sell chains, I mean—well, you know what I mean. And your Aunt Jane Lee had the flu, but she’s better now. Happy birthday, honey.”

  “It’s not my birthday, Mom.”

  “Oh, sure it is, honey. Your twenty-seventh birthday. Remember?”

  Velvet pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her forehead on them, trying to press out the ache, but it kept tunneling deeper. It was somewhere around her stomach again.

  “No, Mom, you’re talking about Amy.” Her voice was patient and not quite steady. Why didn’t she remember this would happen? It was the same every year, just the same, and she was always surprised. Maybe that was her part of the agreement, her half of the masochism. “Amy’s dead, Mom.”

  The silence lasted for several seconds before the crying began, gentle empty sobs. In the middle of one of them the phone went dead, and Velvet listened to the flutter of the line and tried to find the strength to hang up.

  Amy’s ghost hadn’t shown up in the night; it never did. Amy was the forgiving one of the family.

  Velvet let the phone fall back into the cradle, and curled up on her side while the sun beat down and tried uselessly to warm her.

  When the phone rang again, she ignored it. Three rings. Four. A click, and the answering machine rescued the call.

  She didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Hi, um, Miss Daniels, my name is Lenny Bradshaw and I’m a reporter, um, with the Big D Gazette. You know, the one with the color cover? I understand you have some information about the fire at the Adolphus. Give me a call and we’ll talk it over. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He gave a number. As she slowly twisted around to look at the answering machine, he hung up. The tape whirred. The light blinked.

  She played the message again, listened to the number, one finger on the erase switch.

  Money. I’ll make it worth your while.

  What was it Ming had said? Don’t cause any trouble?

  Velvet tapped the switch with a fingernail, lightly, then again, harder. Not quite enough to erase.

  That sonofabitch Paolo had laughed at her.

  She moved her finger over and hit play. While his message recited again, she found a scrap of paper and a pen.

  Really, it was just another slower way to commit suicide.

  She met him at Fong’s Deli on Maple, a dusty little place that even the hungry hordes of downtown workers avoided. A parade of them passed outside, second-rate suits and boring ties and women in ugly skirts and walking shoes. She was on her second Ginseng Special when Bradshaw slid into the booth with her.

  She had expected a guy in a hat. In the movies reporters wore hats and leisure suits that had celebrated Nixon’s inauguration. It bothered her that Lenny Bradshaw was a clean prep-school kid with short hair and a button-down shirt. He didn’t look old enough to be delivering papers, much less writing for them.

  “Hi,” he said, and stuck a hand in her direction, palm sideways. She shook it limply. His smile brought out dimples, not the Kirk Douglas aggressive kind, but suburban ones, inoffensive. “Hope you weren’t waiting long. Can I buy you another one of those—uh—”

  “Nope.”

  “Right. Fine. Well, I’ll just get a Snapple …” His voice trailed off vaguely as he looked around at the bottles in the case. He had a little crisp frown that started right in the center of his forehead. “They don’t have Snapple?”

  “Here, have the rest of this, I’m not thirsty anyway.” She shoved her Ginseng Special over. He eyed it and pushed it back into neutral territory. She smiled. Too good to drink after a hooker, but probably wouldn’t turn down a free blow job. “Let’s not beat around the bush, okay? So how much?”

  “How much for what?”

  She stared at him until his dimpled smile faded.

  “You trying to be funny?”

  “Well, no, I—I’m sorry, maybe I didn’t understand you. You’re asking me …” He paused. She didn’t help him. “How much I’ll pay you for the story?”

  “Ooh, you’re so smart. Yeah, that’s what I’m asking, you think I’m trying to buy your watch or something?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m authorized to offer you the standard fee, three-fifty.”

  She got up and started to slide out of the booth. He reached out to put a hand on her arm, but thought better of it and just waved her to a stop instead.

  “Four hundred,” he amended, and she sighed and sat back down. “But that’s only if you give me some very interesting information.”

  “Five, and it’s the best shit you’ve ever heard, kid. Let’s see cash.”

  They settled for five hundred, two-fifty up front. She counted the bills and stuffed them in her purse. He took out a pad of paper and a pen and waited expectantly.

  And suddenly she had no idea what to say. She looked around at the rice-paper menus glued on the walls, the faded paper dragons fluttering overhead. What did he want to hear? Always give the customer what they want, that was Ming’s first rule. Ming’s second rule was, always charge more than they intend to pay.

  “First of all, you have to understand, I don’t normally do this kind of thing. I’m new at it.” Velvet tapped long fingernails nervously on the table. The fallen-angel thing was always good with prep-school guys—that and cheerleader outfits. “Used to be a model, you know? But then I got too old. This date thing, this is pretty new to me.”

  “You like it?” Bradshaw asked. She glanced up at him. His face was innocent and chubby-cheeked. “Just asking.”

  “I like it okay. Most guys are nice enough.”

  “How about Burt Marshall? Was he nice enough?”

  She fought the urge to look away, because she just knew that if she did, she’d see Burt out of the corner of her eye, burnt red and black like Fong’s barbecued pork ribs. Oughta tell him he beat me, she thought. Oughta tell him about bruises and broken bones. Good copy. But she couldn’t lie like that, not for this little stack of bills.

  “He was nice,” she said. “Nothing special. Never done him before, but yeah, he seemed pretty nice.”

  “He has a wife and three kids out in Lakewood, did you know that?”

  Time to look away, now. The street was safe, cars a bright smear of speed, a few pedestrians bundled in coats and scarves. Behind her, on the other side of the counter, Fong cursed his cook, a singsong wave of sound. The cook sang harmony.

  She smelled something burning and closed her eyes, felt for her abandoned Ginseng Special and sipped half-heartedly. It tasted like old sweaty socks.

  “Sex scandals make good copy. Did you have sex with him?”

  “No.” A glance at his face warned her it was the wrong answer. “Well, yeah, sure. Took my clothes off. I was sucking his dick when it happened. Hey, can you print that? Sucking his dick?”

  He looked uncomfortable, tapped his pen on the pad.

  “We can call it engaging in oral sex.”

  Velvet waited for him to break a grin, but he looked serious.

  “So I was engaging in oral sex with the guy when he started burning. Poof.”

  “Where did it start?” Lenny Bradshaw was studying her carefully, maybe wondering why her hair wasn’t burned off. She hadn’t thought of that. Wig. Yeah, she’d tell him she was wearing a wig, and the wig got burned.

  “Jesus, I don’t know.” She rolled her bottle between two palms and thought about it. “His chest. Around his chest, I guess.”

  “Was he smoking?”

  “Like a sonofabitch.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I mean cigarettes.”

  She shrugged and went back to staring out the window. Traffic was tying itself into a knot; the rumble of frustration came through the glass like airplane turbulence.

  “I tried to help him, swear to God. Got water, tried to put it out, that kind of stuff. Then the alarm went off, and the sprinklers.”

  Bradshaw made a little mmm-hmm sound, one they probably taught in reporter school. He hadn’t made very many notes, she noticed. Mostly doodles. Did he think she couldn’t read upside down? Probably thought she couldn’t read, period.

  “When you left, was he dead?” he asked. She snapped back around to look him in the eye. Cute little prep-school asshole, all smiles, just like the ones back home with their she’s-an-easy-lay grins. Some of it must have shown in her face, because he looked startled and a little ashamed.

  “Of course he was dead, I wouldn’t leave him there like that if he wasn’t dead. Jesus.”

  God, she hoped to hell he was dead. He had to have been dead. Why the hell would he ask something like that—unless Burt hadn’t been dead. Unless she’d left him there melted into the carpet like somebody else’s garbage, oh Jesus, no.

  She couldn’t think about that. She just couldn’t.

  He was doodling again, but stopped when she slammed her hand down over the page.

  “Listen. I don’t know where the hell you got my name, but don’t use it. Don’t even use the initials, understand? You can call me Deep Fucking Throat or whatever you want, I don’t give a shit, but I got to protect myself.”

  “My sources are always confidential,” he said, and looked pointedly at her hand covering his pad. She pulled it back. “So, um, what else?”

  “What do you mean, what else?”

  “Well—” He gave her an under-the-lashes look, an aw-shucks-ma’am look of discomfort. “Well, I can’t just take this back to my editor. I mean, you know, he’s kind of a hard ass. I need—more. For the amount of money I paid you, I mean.”

  “I don’t—”

  Lenny stared at her with eyes as blue as a Disney character. He smiled. Dimples. His expression clearly thought he was adorable.

  “Um …” He leaned conspiratorially forward over the table and tried for a sexy whisper. “Maybe I could, you know, let it go. For a consideration. Give you the, you know, the rest of the money.”

  She smiled, a seething lazy smile, and under cover of the table put her foot up and rubbed the toe of her shoe along the inside of his thigh, right up to the crotch. She gave him a slow gentle pressure, just enough, and when she was sure she had his attention, she flicked her toe up. The sharp point of her four-inch stiletto heel dug hard into his balls.

  “You know,” she said, “come to think of it, there may be a few things I could do to you for a couple hundred. Want me to give you a free sample?”

  Lenny’s face turned the color of old paper. The plastic bench seat made popping sounds as he tried to press himself back through it. She wiggled her heel deeper and balanced her leg comfortably on the seat, ready to shove hard.

  “You’re going to be a good boy, aren’t you, Lenny? I would hate to think you were trying to take advantage of me. Reach in your pocket and take the money out and put it on the table. Now.”

  He licked his pale lips and nodded.

  “Um, could you—you know—move your foot first?”

  “Nope, sorry, not possible.”

  He gingerly eased one hip up off the bench and dug in his pocket, until she heard the sound of crackling paper. He slid an envelope over the edge of the table toward her. She counted it slowly; when she felt Lenny getting restless, she jabbed him a little, and he settled down.

  “I don’t like it when assholes like you try to shake me down, Lenny. Now we’re even.”

  “Well, not quite.” His voice wasn’t steady, but he was making a good run at it, and she eased the pressure in his crotch a little. Relief spilled over his face like water. “Uh, look, what you gave me is good, sure, but I need more. I need—something great. Something I can run with.”

  “Even if I have to make it up?” she asked, and drained the last of her Ginseng Special, a mouthful of sweat and bubbles. He attempted a grin.

  “Well, you know, my editor—I really need the story. I’m desperate.”

  “Okay.” She took her foot completely out of his target area and crossed her legs. He crossed his. She leaned forward.

  So did he.

  “I think,” she said, and widened her eyes, “I know who killed him.”

  Chapter Eight

  Velvet

  She felt like an alien from outer space at the library. People stared at her with that weird what-the-fuck-is-she-doing-here look, even the shuffling drunks with their paper bags, and the librarians—Jesus, you’d think she’d come in with a spinning chainsaw and a severed head. The cops—there were so many on duty at the doors you would have thought the fucking President was in the Periodicals—eyed her like they were measuring her for mug shots.

  Velvet sat down in an orange 1970’s chair too ratty for a yard sale, and tried to figure out where to go. Hell, she hadn’t been in a library since her sophomore year in high school, when Miss Ardelia Ferguson had made her write a paper on salmonella. A long-haired guy in a ratty old army jacket shuffled toward the magazines—wino, looking for a place to snooze. A yuppie-looking asshole in big-butted Dockers and a ski jacket insulated with shredded twenties asked the librarians about financial statistics—she yawned, on reflex. A guy came by looking for newspapers.

  Ah.

  She got up and followed him to the elevators, up to the third floor. He sneaked little glances at her lace-inset blue jeans, her high-heeled red shoes, and gave her a smile small enough to have come off a chihuahua. She gave him a go-to-hell-you-asshole look. He shrugged and wandered off to the right.

  Newspapers. She looked around at the shelves, the stacked papers, and started pulling things out at random. The smell of ink and cheap paper was kind of nice, after a morning of sniffing wino’s b.o.—soothing. It reminded her of Dad reading the farm reports in the morning. There was a very small difference between soothing and boring.

  She found a two-day-old Dallas paper and carried it over to a chair, checked through it page by page until she found the article about the unidentified dead guy at the hotel. She checked the next day’s paper, but there was nothing. He hadn’t even been unusual enough to rate a second notice. They were calling it some kind of smoking accident, the assholes—burying it, whatever it was. She stuffed the paper back haphazardly in the slot and found the new one, today’s paper.

  Nothing. She kept turning pages, checking out police reports, the occasional fashion item, dress sales. She lingered over a three-for-one on shoes.

  Obituaries.

  DALLAS—Burt Everard Marshall, co-owner of the Elegance Dry Cleaners chain, died suddenly Tuesday. He was 47.

  Memorial service will be at 2 P.M. Friday at Faith Baptist Church in Dallas. Eternal Care Services is in charge of arrangements.

  Mr. Marshall was born in Dayton, Ohio. He was a graduate of Texas A&M University.

  Survivors: Wife, Sherry Marshall of Dallas: three children, son Tyler, age 17, and daughters Martha, 14, and Evelyn, 13.

  “God,” Velvet whispered, and realized there were tears in her eyes. She blotted them away with a twisted old tissue, careful of her mascara. One deep breath, then another, and she folded the paper in the wrong places and put it back. “Sorry, Burt.”

  A young woman in standard student attire—sweatshirt and jeans, running shoes, hair well-poufed enough to be SMU-standard—was in command of one of the big tables nearby, five or six newspapers spread out in front of her while she made notes. Velvet blew her nose loudly, stuffed the tissue back in her pocket, and walked over to where the kid sat. Even though she must have known she was coming, the kid didn’t look up until Velvet said, “Excuse me, hon, but I need to find out about spontaneous combustion.”

  The kid blinked at her and looked around uneasily; everybody else in the area deliberately didn’t look back. She gave up on help and stared back at Velvet with big empty blue eyes.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “You know, where people burst into flames and shit. If you were looking for that shit, where would you look?”

  “Um …” The woman shifted in her chair, back and forth, like she was working up to making a run for it. “I guess—start in reference?”

  “Reference. Right.” Velvet gave her a brilliant smile. “Thanks, hon. You have a real nice day.”

  “Sure.” A faint, half-terrified smile. Velvet picked a direction and started walking. When she looked back, the woman was staring at her, but quickly looked away. What? Velvet wanted to yell. I look like a psycho to you?

  Not a psycho. A hooker. Just like the wino looked like a wino.

  Over by the elevators a middle-aged guy with a whining little girl clinging to his pants leg gave her The Look. She returned a professional smile, then she remembered she was on vacation, and dimmed it to something like the librarian’s tight little grin. He kept staring, though. Hungry eyes.

  She slowed as she approached him. His expression perked right up.

  “Hey, buddy, where’s the reference section?” she asked. He offered to show her, she refused, the kid whined, and she ended up in the elevator again, heading down.

  It took an hour and two more unwilling strangers to get what she wanted—mostly crap, hot-brain theories about fat people and alkies and aliens. She found pictures. They looked so familiar. Bright white teeth, black flaking skin, wet muscle.

  When she closed her eyes, she could still see him lying there, melted to the carpet. Her stomach lurched noisily.

  One day to the funeral. Maybe—

  Maybe she’d go. Just as a send-off. Hell, she had nothing else to do.

  Incident Two

  EL PASO, TEXAS

  Jerry Lintz, still dripping from his shower, shoved hangers around in his closet. Blue jeans, suit pants, shirts. He frowned. Things were always like this after vacation—half his stuff missing forever, or, at best, stuck in the wrong place for six months. The first day back was always the worst, and his desk would be an absolute disaster at work. Probably a long day, a late night.