thought of my own Fritz Lang movie print, bought with such pride at a schlock shop on Hollywood Boulevard the week I'd graduated college. I'd thought it was my initiation into the club, but I was just another kid trying too hard, buying a leather jacket two months after they'd gone out of fashion. If they don't let you walk the walk, doggone it, you can still lease a PT Cruiser.
'If I found you,' I said, 'they will, too.'
'Roman gave you my address, I'm sure, because it's clear that you're harmless.'
'You want to stake your life on Roman's backbone?'
'Roman would never hurt me,' she said. 'He's part pimp, sure, but part daddy, too. No one else connected to this knows my name or this address.'
'What is your name?'
'This week? Does it matter?'
It did matter. Paired with an address, a real name--and, I hoped, a real rap sheet--it seemed concrete enough for me to try to reenlist Sally. But I'd have to let it go for now. 'Can I call you Deborah?'
'Honey,' she said, in a perfect Marlene Dietrich, 'you can call me whatever you want.'
'Does a company called Ridgeline, Inc., ring a bell?'
'Ridgeline? No.'
'You never met whoever hired you,' I said. 'Phone calls and money orders.'
'That's right.'
'You must have thought . . .'
'What?'
We were still standing, a few feet inside the closed front door. I noticed her nails, that beautiful manicure that had seemed so out of place on a penniless waitress. 'That I was an idiot.'
'Oh, no,' she said. 'Not at all. You were so goddamned sweet it about killed me.' Humiliation coursed through me like a fever; I couldn't meet her eyes. 'That's why most cons work,' she said in consolation . 'Everyone wants to believe they're more important than they are.'
The pity was worse somehow. And worse even than that, her empathy. I wanted to be nothing like her, and yet of course we shared the same broken promise, the same stymied dreams; she had reached right through the looking glass and tapped me down the primrose path.
'How did you even . . . ?'
'I was e-mailed a script. Well, more like a treatment. It had all the basics--sob story, sick kid, stingy health- insurance company. I filled in the rest. My background is mostly Russian, but how standard is that? Plus, with my luck you'd have had some bubby from the old country and known something about it. But I'm also Hungarian, I guess, and who the hell knows anything about Hungary? So you know how it works--it's like writing, I'd imagine. Those telling details. Budapest is too obvious, so I picked Debrecen, the second-largest city. They'd provided the affliction--the heart thing. But the bananas were my own touch. I figured you'd ask, you know? Sometimes you lead someone in from an angle, they don't see the obvious.'
Despite her nod to our colleagueship, I doubted I'd ever had her talent or professionalism. I could no more contain my bitterness than she could her pride. 'You're a gifted actress,' I said. 'You'll go far in this town.'
'Too late for that. But I make a living.'
'The cash . . . ?'
'A few hours after you left, I delivered the duffel bag to the trunk of a parked car on a quiet street.'
'A white Honda Civic.'
'How'd you know?'
I shook my head, not wanting to get off track. 'They told you about me.'
'Little bit. No more than last time.'
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Last time?'
'There was another guy.' Now with the accent. 'He come also to help poor Elisabeta and granddaughter with terrible illness.'
I stared at her, dumbfounded. 'Do you . . . Who? Who was he?'
As quickly as she'd transformed into the world-weary waitress, she'd morphed back again. 'I don't remember his name. But he gave me his card. He was big on his business card. I have it here somewhere. . . .' She crossed to an apothecary cabinet with more tiny drawers than I could count and started searching them.
I said, 'You don't understand what this whole thing is, do you?'
But she didn't break focus. 'Hang on, I know I kept it.'
After a few more moments watching her open and close drawers, I said, 'Mind if I use your bathroom?'
'Not at all. The damn thing's here somewhere. . . .'
The bathroom window looked across a narrow strip of quartz and succulents to a matching window in the neighboring complex. The waiting bathwater thickened the air, misted the mirror. After closing the door behind me, I eased open the medicine cabinet, praying it wouldn't squeak. No prescription bottles inside, but I found a few in one of the drawers. The neat type read, Dina Orloff.
'Got it!' she called out triumphantly, mimicking my own sentiment. I gently pressed the drawer closed and turned to go, reaching for the knob. The doorbell shrilled in the tiny condo. I froze, the knob twisted in my hand. The button lock popped open into my palm.
Through the door I could hear her mutter something. Then a few padded footsteps.
The door opened with a jangle, and then there were two muffled percussions. A thump of body hitting carpet. Then the door closing, at least two sets of footsteps moving. Dragging.
My stomach clutched, and I fought not to gasp, not to start, not to do anything but breathe and rotate that doorknob slowly and silently back to its resting position.
If they'd followed me, then her death was my fault. And, obviously, they'd know I was here. If that were the case, I wouldn't live long enough for the guilt to seep in.
Barely audible--'Let's move, let's move.'
The bedroom door banged open.
They were searching.
Holding my panic at bay, I crept across the bathroom and started turning the crank to open the casement window. The pane made a soft pop as it broke the seal and began to swing outward.
Now I heard the closet shutters one room over, raked back on their rails.
A drop of sweat ran down my forehead and stung my eye. I rotated the crank as quickly as I could, but the window seemed to move in slow motion.
That same voice: 'Check the bathroom.'
I tried to swallow, but my throat clicked dryly, wanting to gag.
Approaching footsteps. The window lazily rotated outward, wide enough for my foot, my calf, my thigh. Judging from the creak of the floorboards, the guy was right outside the bathroom door now.
I slithered through, the gap still tight enough to mash my nose against the pane. My sneakers grinding the rocks outside, I flattened to the wall, just out of sight of the window.
The bathroom door shoved open, banging the wall behind. Footsteps.
The sidewalk was no more than twenty yards away, but a single step on the rocks would broadcast my position. My head was craned to the side, taking in a thin sliver of bathroom floor. I breathed, prayed, willed my muscles still. If he came to the window and peered through the gap, I was dead.
When the next step creaked the floorboards, I saw the toe of a black boot come into view. Through my terror it hit me that I was probably looking at a size-eleven-and-a-half Danner with a pebble jammed in the tread.
If they had followed me here, he'd probably think to check outside. But that boot remained, still. What was he looking at?
Held breath burned in my lungs. Every muscle taut. My unblinking eyes stung. He was maybe four feet away; I could probably reach through the window opening and tap him in the chest. The faintest sound would buy me a face-to-face. My hand curled into a fist. I forced myself to plan an attack in case a face appeared in that narrow window gap. Eyes and throat. Then a wind sprint.
The boot withdrew silently, and I heard a hand stir the water, no doubt parting the bath bubbles. Then the steps moved away, and it took a few wild and disbelieving moments for it to sink in that he'd gone.
In the main room, they mumbled, conferred. The front door opened and shut, and then there was a moment
