CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hector Cesare was in the hallway when Allison got there, and for one bad moment she thought that he was trying the door to her apartment.

He was a good-looking eighteen, with a smoldering dark sullen air that the girls who went for bad boys must find irresistibly appealing. Short, compact and fit, he sported an eagle tattoo and a bracelet made of heavy silver and turquoise links.

Allison stopped short, more alarmed by what he would find in there than by the prospect of him breaking in.

She had never exchanged a cross word with Hector, not even over the Mountain Dews he sometimes pilfered from her side of the fridge she shared Eva. She knew that despite his tough-guy image, he was at heart a good guy.

He and Eva had, like phoenixes, risen from the ashes of a disastrous family. They had a father in jail, a stepfather on drugs, a mother who silently accepted regular beatings as part of her wifely due, a sister who was a burnt-out wreck of a prostitute by the time she'd turned twenty, a brother who had been killed in a drive-by shooting, another brother in jail for knifing a rival gang member, a third brother who'd been killed in a middle-school shooting, a half-sister who was pregnant at thirteen by a thirty-year-old man, and two still-younger half-siblings at home.

Eva and Hector had gotten away from all of that as untouched and unscathed as could be hoped for. Or, at least, Eva had, and was trying to save Hector by encouraging him to ignore the ridicule he got from his peers and the rest of the family, encouraging him to stay clean. He had dropped out of high school but was, with Eva's constant support, working toward getting his G.E.D., and escaped to her place whenever things got too rough at home.

Allison knew he was an okay guy, but still the sight of him at her door dumped quarts of adrenaline into her veins. That purse and its contents could tempt even the saintliest of people. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for Hector's fall from grace after his long struggle to climb above his beginnings. She would never be able to look Eva in the eye again. Never be able to look herself in the mirror again.

Hector must have heard her, because he turned. His dark eyes were hooded and something long and thin glittered in his hand.

A stiletto.

No.

A pen.

A silver pen, and in his other hand he had a notepad. A plain brown grocery sack rested at his feet.

"Allison, hey," he said. The hooded look disappeared as he flashed her a smile. "I was just leaving you a note."

"Me? Why?"

"I owe you some sodas," he said, and nudged the bag with his toe.

Closer now, she saw that it contained two six-packs of Mountain Dew, and that her name was scribbled on the top sheet of paper. She felt ashamed of herself for jumping to conclusions.

"I would have left it in the kitchen," Hector continued, "but Eva's got to work early tomorrow and I didn't want to wake her. They work her to death at that hospital, you know?"

"Yeah," Allison said. "I wonder who ever thought it would be a bright idea to do that to med students? Run them ragged, make them try to get by on pure caffeine and three hours' sleep, and then put other peoples' lives in their hands. It'd make me crazy. I don't know how Eva does it."

"Hey, you want some good news?"

"I could really used some good news."

"Our brother Juan is getting out of jail next week."

"Oh," Allison said, thinking that this did not exactly sound like good news to her.

Juan Cesare's street name was Rattlesnake, for the tattoo on the back of his hand and for his penchant for jabbing people with sharp objects. She had never met him, but Eva had once shown her a picture, and Juan had the flat, dead eyes of something you'd expect to see sunning itself on a rock, coiled but always alert and ready to strike.

"He's coming back home," Hector said. "And Juan, he won't take any crap from Miguel. Won't let our mom take any crap from him neither. Isn't that great?"

She failed to see how it was great. It was worse and worse all the time. Miguel was the drug-using, wife-beating stepfather. She could only hope that Hector was nowhere in the vicinity when Juan and Miguel started mixing it up.

"How's school going?" she asked.

Hector shrugged and sighed. "I thought it would be easier studying for this G.E.D. test, you know, on my own. School was hard enough with teachers who don't give a shit and everyone else in the class only caring about making it to the weekend so they can get some beers and get laid."

Her high school had not been equipped with metal detectors at all of the entrances, but her fellow students had for the most part not been able to see beyond Friday either. Beers and getting laid. Rich or poor, inner city or country club, deep down everybody was exactly the same.

"Don't you give up, though," she said.

"No way," he said. "And let Eva down, like the rest of our family? No way." He put the pen and notepad back in his pocket and picked up the grocery sack. "Here you go, Allison. Besides, last time I was here you were out, so I figure I should make sure you have some next time I'm thirsty."

She laughed and took the bag. Hector gave her a grin and headed off down the hall, which at this time of the night was quiet except for the television turned up loud in Mr. Kaminski's apartment. It brayed an infomercial about the latest orange-oil cleaning product while Allison unlocked her door and went inside.

The room was not dark, enough light filtering in through the curtains and spilling past her from the hallway to let her recognize the familiar shapes of furniture. Her tension returned as she stood on the threshold, a target in the open rectangle of the door, gaze flicking from one possible hiding place to the next searching for movement.

Nothing. It all looked exactly as she'd left it.

Switching on the lights, she went in and shut and bolted everything behind her. The purse, which she hadn't wanted to touch, sat beside her bed with its zippered mouth gaping. Beside it on the floor rested the miniature tape recorder and the folder. Because Allison knew where to look, she could see the corner of the manila bubble-wrap envelope that contained the gun, sticking out from under the recliner. The money, when she checked, was still under the seat.

On her way home from Jamie's, comfortable and full of meatloaf, mashed potatoes and pie, warmed by the kiss and the flirtatious exchange, she had thought that she'd be able to get into bed and forget about the purse until morning. Seeing Hector in the hallway had changed all that, and seeing the purse right there waiting for her made any thoughts of sleep impossible.

She popped open one of the lukewarm Dews and took a deep, steadying breath. Then she went back to the purse and resumed her investigation through its contents.

Next was a compact with a mirror framed in a ring of battery-operated light, the make-up bed divided into a subtle dusty-pink blusher and powder while a thin tube of lipstick – a sort of pearly cream-red shade that Allison rather liked – fitted into a notch beside an eyeliner pencil. A folding hairbrush and a slim plastic holder for tampons.

Three pens, all garden-variety ballpoints, one with the name of a downtown hotel stamped into its barrel. A matchbook from a bar on 12th Street. A box of mint-flavored Tic-Tacs. A bottle of Purell antibacterial hand gel.

She dug deeper.

A parking stub from a garage near Century Plaza. A toothpick in a paper wrapper. A crumpled receipt for a latte and a croissant from a downtown coffee stand, paid in cash, ninety-three cents in change. The ninety-three cents were loose in the bottom of the purse – three quarters, a dime, a nickel and three pennies. No other money.

No other money … no wallet. No credit cards. No identification. No keys. No business cards.

No name for the mystery blonde.

All afternoon and evening, Allison had been trying to think of some other explanation for what she'd found in the purse. Few realistic answers had presented themselves, and she'd hoped that she would find something else in there that would make her slap her head and say, "Oh, of course!"

This didn't. This made her think that maybe she'd been right after all.

The blonde wasn't carrying anything to identify her. While she might not have been thinking of a robbery in particular, there was always the possibility of some sort of accident. So she'd been careful.

"Okay," Allison said, having exhausted the purse and even turned it upside-down to shake out a few bits of lint. "The next question is … was she being hired, or doing the hiring?"

Her gut told her that the blonde was the killer. The would-be killer, anyway.

But maybe she was wrong.

Maybe the man in the photographs was the blonde's husband and she'd decided to have him put out of the way. Maybe for the insurance settlement. Maybe he was about to divorce her for some younger brainless bippy with fake California breasts and a fake California tan, and she wasn't happy with the prospect of alimony. Maybe some prenuptial agreement had come back to bite her in the butt.

Allison knew from observation of her own parents, her parents' friends and her friends' parents that nobody got more worked up about money than the people who had it. A taste of the good life left you hungry for more.

Unless you were a renegade like Scoot, who had a taste for the wild life instead.

She pushed "Play" on the tape recorder and listened to the whole thing.

It opened with the bustling sounds of a crowded restaurant. She heard a woman – the blonde? – and a man ordering drinks, ordering fish and chips. The man had a low, suave, sexy voice. The woman's was a cool contralto.

He called her Jade. Whether it was really a name, or an alias, it fit her and Allison was relieved to finally have an identity for the mystery blonde.

The way they talked suggested that they were on familiar enough terms, and maybe even more than a little bit interested in each other.

And then they were talking about the gun.

"You'll like this one. It's practically an antique, but in beautiful condition. Ivory-handled."

Allison hit "Stop" and peeked at the gun again.

Practically an antique. Beautiful condition. Ivory-handled.

And she'd thought, in listening to the first few exchanges earlier, that this was just a business lunch.

Then again, wasn't it? A kind of business, anyway.

She pushed "Play" again.

The two went on to discuss corporate cases and personal motives, and it was soon obvious that they were discussing the man in the photographs. The shirtless man on the sailboat. The target. The speaker with the suave, sexy voice was hiring Jade to kill him. He, and whoever he worked for, wanted that man dead. Jade was getting double her normal fee … a quarter now and the rest on completion …

Allison stopped the tape again and rubbed a hand across her brow. Her mind hurt. If what she had found in the envelope was only a quarter of the fee instead of the half she had assumed, that meant a grand total of a hundred thousand dollars. Forget a new car; that was a nice condo, or a small house in an outlying suburb.

A hundred thousand dollars.

And the woman, this Jade, was no stranger to killing-for-hire.

The man with the suave, sexy voice invited Jade to contemplate a dinner date with him some time. When she said she didn't think it would be a very good idea, he came right back with, Hell, I know it isn't. But think about it anyway.

Then, knowing a good exit line when he got one in, the man with the suave, sexy voice left. Allison listened as Jade finished her meal, listened as Jade moved out of the restaurant and onto the street where traffic noises replaced those of diners.

Listened, with her mouth open in a daffy, unwilling grin, to the familiar growing sound of Scoot's wheels on the pavement, the scuffle and thud as Scoot hooked the purse and knocked Jade down.

She was hearing the purse-snatching, hearing Scoot in action. The whir of wheels and Scoot's light puffs of breath, the blurred sounds as Scoot sped past pedestrians and in front of cars.

The tape reached its end sometime before Scoot got to the junkyard, and the machine turned itself off with a final resolute click.

**