our way. I get out and go around to her.
“Are you stalking me? You could have just asked for an autograph.”
She takes a startled step back.
“What are you doing here?” she says.
“I asked first.”
She nods toward Cairo’s place.
“You know King lives over there, right?”
“Yeah. When he comes back, I’m going to kill him.”
She pushes her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket. Takes a breath. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“How is it you know him and want to sell him out to a bad person like me?”
“We went out for a while,” she says. Shakes her head. “I don’t like what he’s become since Aelita arrived. He’s out of control.”
“He’s always been out of control.”
“Not like nowadays.”
“Why did you send me to that stiff, Manimal Mike? He was pretty much useless.”
“What does ‘pretty much’ mean?”
“It means I have important questions and he didn’t know shit.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the girl tried to cut Saint James and that he ran off somewhere called Blue Heaven but he didn’t know where it was.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing. I had to twist his greasy arm to do some Tick Tock work for a guy I know. That’s all.”
She nods like she’s deep in thought. “So, he told you where this Saint James is and his motives for going there. And that the ghost girl attacked him specifically, not randomly. He also agreed to do tens of thousands of dollars of Tick Tock work for, I’m guessing, free. You call that nothing?”
“When you put it like that, it sounds like something, but I’m telling you, the way it came out of his whiskey hole, it sure seemed like a lot of nothing.”
“I’m glad I could help you take a second look. Now I’d like to go before anybody sees me talking to you.”
“What happened to your face? Did Cairo do that to you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I know but I’m uncouth, so I thought I’d ask.”
“And I answered.”
There’s something about her.
“Have we met before? I mean before Blackburn’s.”
“Why did I even bother talking to you? You’re as bad as King. Leave me alone.”
She takes a couple of steps back and detours around me, heading the way she’d been walking when I stopped her.
I’m making all kinds of friends today.
When I get back to the van, Candy says, “Who was that? Another one of your porn stars?”
“Someone who tried to help me but then I asked a dickheaded question.”
“She’s the one who told you about Cairo?”
