knew.“
She was still standing stiffly,, but he had allowed her head to rest lightly against Jesse’s shoulder.
“He wasn’t the first man, but he
was the worst one.”
Cissy said. “And the worse he was, the
worse I was.”
She stopped talking and seemed to be thinking about her badness.
“The pictures?” Jesse said.
“They were my idea. I… liked
being that way and I liked to see myself that way.”
“There are more pictures?”
“Many.”
?‘And he has them.“
“Yes.”
“Probably been better,” Jesse said,
“if you kept them.”
“Maybe I half wanted him to tell,” she
said.
“Maybe.”
She half turned and dropped her cigarette in the sink and repeated the process of washing it down the disposal. Then she settled back against Jesse’s shoulder.
“So why did he go public now?” Jesse said.
“I think he’s mad at Hasty,” she
said.
“About what?”
“They had some kind of a business deal that went badly.
Hasty blamed Jo Jo.“
“What kind of business deal?”
“I don’t know.”
Cissy turned in against Jesse and put her face into his chest.
It was hard to hear her voice, muffled as it was against him. He could feel her trembling and he patted her shoulder a little. Over her shoulder he looked at his watch.
Whatever was coming was coming slow. Finally she spoke again, her voie muffled against his chest.
“Jo Jo killed Tammy Portugal.”
There, Jesse thought. Cissy kept her face buried in his jacket. She was hanging on to him as if she might blow away if she let go.
“He used to tell me how he did it.”
“How he killed Tammy?”
“Yes.”
She began to sob against him. Big paroxysmal sobs, her body heaving. She said something he couldn’t understand.
“What did you say?”
She shook her head.
“No, you’ve come this far,”
Jesse said, “and we’re still okay. You can say it.
I can hear it.”
“I liked hearing-.about it,” she said,
gasping the words out between sobs. “And he knew I wouldn’t tell anyone because then I’d have to tell how I knew.”
Jesse was silent for a moment, patting her shoulder gen-fly.
He had hold, finally, of the grotesque animal he’d been hunting. And he would have to pull it, snarling and vicious, slowly out of its hole. He didn’t know yet how big an animal it was going to he.
“I’m going to have to ask you to
