I had followed the case long before I became a part of it because the dead woman was Chinese. Not Chinatown Chinese, like me: Patricia Lin had been uptown Chinese, a doctor's daughter raised on ballet lessons and music classes, summer camps and private schools. When she'd enrolled at The College of Communication Arts, where she'd met the man alleged to have murdered her, Patricia Lin had been slumming.

I hadn't known Patricia Lin. I wasn't tied to her by blood or marriage, home province or village, but she was Chinese, so I followed the case.

It seemed over, of course, before I ever got involved. There was the finding of the body, the arrest, the trial. There was Mitch Ellman, with his gloating, victorious grin, his short blond hair lifting in the wind outside the courthouse as reporters crowded near him. When we'd seen his arrest on the eleven o'clock news his hair had been shoulder- length, tied in a ponytail. I wondered if he would grow it again, now that he'd been found not guilty of murder.

There was the jury forewoman, short-tempered, correcting a reporter: the jury's task had not been to find on the defendant's guilt, but on the question of whether the prosecutor had proved the defendant's guilt, which he had not done. She sped away in a taxi as the camera returned to Mitch Ellman being hugged and pounded on the back by his family and friends. His lawyer, Jay Berlow, known to those of us in the crime-related occupations as a high-priced oil slick, beamed beneficently in the background.

I was disgusted that night when I turned off the news, and my mother had to listen to me spout for awhile. She sat silently hemming a pair of my pants until I stopped for breath. Then she said, "How do you know he's guilty? Maybe he's innocent. This is America."

My mother says 'This is America' the way I imagine Dorothy explaining the Technicolor miracles whirling around her by saying 'This is Oz.'

"He's guilty, Ma," I said. "Did you see his face? Hear his voice? His body language?"

"Body language?" She looked at me blankly. There really is no Chinese word for it, and the phrase I had dredged up to use has a more formal, ritual meaning.

"Never mind," I said.

'Never mind' always annoys her. "Arrogant girl." She pursed her lips. "You think because you waste your time with criminals and policemen you know everything. Always so sure. One day you'll be surprised—" "Not by you, Ma. Everything that happens you turn into a complaint about my profession. The only surprise is how you'll do it." "Oh, smart mouth," she said. "But wait. One day—whoosh! The world will show you where you belong." She nodded sagely to herself. I went to bed.

The case didn't become mine until three months later. It was April by then, a time of soft nights and warm, breezy days. A phone call came from John Kimball, a lawyer I didn't know, but that wasn't unusual: a lot of my work is for lawyers, and lawyers talk to each other. Kimball said he'd gotten my name from a colleague, and would tell me about the case when we met at his office.

So we met at his office. It was on the forty-fourth floor of a blue-glass building on Park Avenue just north of Grand Central. The lobby was polished green stone and the directory was one of those computer touch-screens. I was early so I stood and played with it, moving the little orange person down the blue hallway. It told me where to find John Kimball, with a map and everything, and it told me where the ladies' room closest to his office was, just in case.

When it was time, I went up. The firm's name, O'Herlihy Davis Kimball, was spelled out in big stainless steel letters on the taupe wall opposite the elevators. I wondered if lawyers didn't use commas or ands because they didn't want to pay for the extra stainless steel.

To the right was a glass wall with glass doors where a woman with big glasses sat behind a taupe counter. To the left was taupe door with a tiny sign: "ODK Deliveries." I suppressed the urge to go that way, strolled briskly to and through the glass doors.

By the time I was seated in John Kimball's office I had seen more shades of taupe than I'd ever thought possible. I was glad I'd dressed conservatively, brown suit and white cashmere sweater, low brown heels and briefcase; it would be very easy to stick out like a sore thumb around here, and as a small, young Asian woman I usually stick out like a whole sore hand anyway. Especially in the kinds of places I sometimes go.

Right now, though, I wasn't the only small young Asian woman in the place. "Miss Chin, this is Janet Woo," John Kimball said, reseating himself behind his broad, glass-topped desk, his back to a window I could see Chinatown from. "Janet, this is Lydia Chin, the private investigator I was telling you about." Janet Woo half-rose from her chair, smiled shyly. We shook hands, Janet Woo and I, while John Kimball went on explaining to me why I was here. Janet Woo's hand was soft, dry and limp. Kimball's had been fleshy and firm.

"Janet has a story I want you to hear, Miss Chin," he said. "I'm hoping you'll be able to help us."

"I hope so too," I said politely, and I did hope so, because O'Herlihy Davis Kimball did not seem like a client who would need to pay my bill in barter instead of cash.

Janet Woo gave me a serious look, her head held low; she gave John Kimball the same look, and it seemed to me she held her head even lower.

"Go on, Janet," Kimball ordered, leaning back in his chair. He was a big man in a pale blue shirt, navy suit, blue striped tie. His hair was beginning to thin and his chin was pointy. He wore a gold wedding band on his left hand.

Janet Woo wore no jewelry at all, and her only makeup was lipstick of the shade you wear less to attract than to keep people from noticing you because you don't wear makeup. Her blouse was high-necked, her skirt a noncommittal, below-the-knee length, and her long, straight black hair was pulled back from her face with two silvery clips. I had time to catalog all this because she sat staring at her hands, saying nothing.

After a full minute's silence, Kimball asked, a little coldly, I thought, "Do you want me to start?"

Janet Woo nodded.

"Miss Chin," he turned his intense blue eyes to me, "do you remember the Patricia Lin case?"

"Yes, of course," I said, surprised.

"Can you summarize it?"

I could and did, although it felt a little like a high school pop quiz. "Patricia Lin's body was found in Central Park. She had been strangled somewhere else and dumped there. She had died during or soon after having sex. The man she'd been dating, Mitch Ellman, was arrested, tried, and acquitted." Janet Woo did not look at me while I spoke, and she blushed faintly. John Kimball's eyes, on the other hand, never left me.

"How do you characterize the verdict?" he asked.

I thought. "I don't have access to all the facts."

"Nevertheless."

I looked at Janet Woo, and then back into Kimball's eyes. They matched his shirt perfectly, I noticed.

"I thought the verdict was wrong."

Kimball nodded, and Janet Woo seemed to soften a little. "Why," Kimball asked, "do you think he was acquitted?" "Because the evidence was all circumstantial. And because he had a very expensive, very slimy attorney." In a lawyer's office, I'd learned, you don't say 'lawyer'.

"Janet..." Kimball said; when she didn't respond he went on, "Janet has some evidence pertinent to that case."

Janet Woo looked up hurriedly. "I don't know if it's evidence," she said. "I only think so." Her voice was high and hushed, breathy. Oh, well, I thought, at least it's a voice.

"I don't understand," I said. "Mitch Ellman's been acquitted. What good is evidence now? They couldn't try him again even if he confessed."

"Not for murder," Kimball said. "But if it were solid evidence the Department of Justice might be willing to undertake a civil rights prosecution."

"Civil rights?"

"It's a violation of someone's civil rights to kill them."

I almost laughed. I controlled myself and said, "I'm glad to hear that." "Yes." Kimball frowned. Nothing funny about the law. "Well. I'm a friend of Janet's family, and recently Janet came to me. She didn't know where else to go. She feels she cannot tell her family what she has told me. In fact it would be a disaster if her parents found out. Isn't that right, Janet?"

She nodded. John Kimball waited a few moments, then said, "Janet knew Mitch Ellman too. Didn't you, Janet?"

I wondered if the whole rest of our meeting was going to be a silent-response Q&A, but suddenly Janet Woo spoke up.

"I dated him."

I waited, motionless, afraid any movement or sound would stop her again. "I studied acting at CCA two years ago," her soft voice went on. "I dated Mitch Ellman. Not for long."

"Why not for long?" I finally asked, when it was clear she was stalled. "He was...exciting." She started slowly, then warmed to it. "Wild and...powerful. He attracted me." She gave me an earnest look, as though trying to make sure I believed such an odd thing could happen, a shy woman attracted to a powerful man. "For awhile we dated," she said, "without...physical intimacy." She blushed furiously; even the part in her hair grew crimson. "But he became more insistent. And I also..." She swallowed. "We began to have sex."

This last line was delivered in a whisper so low I had to lean forward to hear it.

"Go on, Janet," Kimball said.

Janet Woo jumped in her chair. Maybe she'd forgotten he was there. She looked at him, then at me. I tried to smile encouragingly.

"But..." She straightened her skirt and continued. "At first it was exciting. Then it got frightening. I stopped seeing him."

"What about it," I kept my voice soft, "was frightening?"

"He likes to," she looked at Kimball's desktop, but not at him, then down at the taupe carpet, "to tie you up. If a man likes to do that, that can be exciting..." she brought her eyes to mine again, "...but only if you trust him. I found I couldn't trust Mitch. Sometimes he hurt me. He always scared me. He...I didn't know what he would do. I was afraid. So I stopped seeing him."

Janet Woo was staring into her lap now, twisting her hands. I looked at John Kimball, raised my eyebrows inquiringly. As hard as this might be for Janet Woo, I didn't see that it added significantly to any case against Mitch Ellman.

John Kimball seemed to sense what I was thinking. "Tell Miss Chin," he said to Janet, in a voice with an edge of demand in it, "what you told me about Patricia Lin."

She raised her head and blinked. She said softly, "I think there is a tape."

"A tape?" I repeated, not sure what she meant.

"A video," she nodded.

I didn't know what expression was on my face, but she looked down again, spoke to her hands. "He liked to tape us. Not every time, just some. The camera was hidden; at first I didn't know. Then he told me. I even saw one. The important thing," she said with a rush, "the important thing is, the times he taped were the times he scared me most. He changed then. Well, not changed: he got more like himself, got... wilder. Those were the times he hurt me. If he..." she swallowed again, preparing for the words she was about to say. "If Mitch killed Patricia Lin while he was having sex with her, it must have been one of those times. It must have been while he was taping it." "Oh," I said. I let my eyes wander to the window, where pretty, innocent clouds floated across Manhattan. "Oh."

"Do you see, Miss Chin, why I called you?" John Kimball's edgy voice almost made me jump, the way Janet Woo had done.

"I think so," I said.

"If we had that tape," Kimball said, "we could take it to the FBI."

"But we don't know if there really is one."

"No."

"And if there is, why on earth would Mitch Ellman give it up?"

"Mitch Ellman," John Kimball said carefully, "obviously finds Asian women...attractive."

I looked at him coldly. "I suppose," I said, "that I might get him to go to bed with me. I don't think that necessarily means he'd give me a videotape that could send him to jail for the rest of his life." And I'm a private eye, not a concubine, you stuffed shirt lawyer, I thought.

"He wouldn't have to give it to you." John Kimball ignored my attitude, which gave me time to get myself back under control. "If you could swear you'd seen it, the FBI could get a search warrant. Once they found the tape, they could use it."

"If it exists," I said.

"If it exists."

I looked at him steadily for a few moments, then looked at Janet Woo. She instantly dropped her gaze to the floor.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked.

"Get the tape," Kimball said. "Or at least see it."

"Do you care how?"

Kimball frowned again. "Yes. Nothing that will discredit this office, or expose Janet to any publicity." Janet's eyes widened. "I think I should be informed of what you're planning, and how each step is progressing," Kimball said.

"That may make it harder."

"It's necessary."

I thought, letting the carpetted silence settle in the room.

"I can see a way to do this," I finally said. "It may work. I'll need to bring my partner in."

Kimball seemed taken aback. "I didn't know you had a partner. I was told you were a sole proprietor."

"I am. So is he. But we work together well, and we work together a lot. If it makes you feel better, think of him as someone I'm hiring to work on the case. It'll cost you the same either way."

"There's an issue of privacy here, Miss Chin."

Janet, whose issue it apparently was, nodded, her face very serious. "Mr. Kimball, there's an issue of privacy in every case I take. The only way I can think to pull this off—and it's a long shot—will involve two people and some money. And some risk. Bill and I know how to watch each other's backs. Do you want us to try?"

"What are you thinking about?" Kimball asked.

I shook my head. "I want to try it out on Bill first. If he thinks it might fly, I'll outline it for you before we start."

"And you'll keep me apprised throughout the course of the investigation? I really will require that, Miss Chin."

"I understand that, Mr. Kimball."

"And your partner? He's a sole proprietor also, you say? No staff to share this with, no chance of accidental slips?"

"He's been an investigator for twenty years. I think he's learned to keep his mouth shut." Something they don't teach lawyers, I thought. Along with manners.

"All right," John Kimball said. "Talk to him and get back to me."

"Fine," I smiled. "Now, so that we all know what we're talking about, shall we discuss fee?"

The air was cool and breezy but the sun was warm when I came out onto Park. I found a pay phone on the corner, called Bill.

He was at his office, and picking up the phone.

"Smith," he said.

"Chin," said I.

"So what?"

"I'm wearing heels."

"I'll be right over."

"I'll buy you lunch."

"That's your best offer?"

"Wear a tie."

It would have been a shame to waste the outfit, so we met at the Mesa Grill, a southwestern place in the Flatiron district where the clientele and the prices are usually too upscale for me, but the food is good.

I took the bus down Fifth; there was a limit to my splurging. The restaurant was bright and airy, ceiling fans spinning, stainless steel handrails and bar. Stainless steel was becoming a theme of the day.

Bill was waiting when I got there, at an balcony table. We could watch the comings and goings from there. There was, as far as I knew, no need for that in our present circumstances, but it was the table I'd have chosen if I'd gotten there first, too.

He stood when he saw me, but he didn't pull out my chair. Bill's twelve years older than I am, and sometimes there's tension between the things he does because they're ingrained, and the things I can put up with. But mostly we've worked it out.

"Hi," I said. He leaned to kiss me. He had on a gray sport jacket and a black knit tie. "You should wear a tie more often."

"You should take me to lunch more often. What's the occasion?"

"We have a wealthy client."

"What you mean we, white man?"

"No, you're the white man. I'm the Chinese woman."

"Did I get that wrong again? Damn."

The waiter came, bringing blue corn chips and salsa loud with cilantro. We ordered, and he left. Bill asked, "Who's our mysterious benefactor, and how do you know I'll take the case?"

"For the same reason he knew I'd take it. You won't be able to resist." I told him who, and what.

When I was through, he was quiet, sipping a Mexican beer. "Mitch Ellman," he mused.

"You see?" I said. "You can't resist the chance to nail the little worm, can you?"

"He was acquitted," Bill said.

"Oh, come on! You don't believe there's any chance he didn't kill her, do you?"

He put his beer down on the sand-colored tablecloth. "No," he said. "I don't."

The waiter came with lunch. Mine was mesquite-grilled salmon with a yogurt-dill glaze, though as Bill pointed out none of that was native to the southwest except the mesquite. He had a chickpea and tomatillo tortilla.

"You're only eating that because you can pronounce it," I accused.

"Possibly true," he agreed. "I'll examine my motives in the small, dark hours. Do you have a plan for Mitch Ellman?"

"I do." I tasted my fish. It was smoky and smooth. I ate a baby carrot and told Bill my plan.

He nodded a few times while I was talking, asked a few questions. When I finished, we ate in silence for awhile, and I knew he was going over it in his head, looking for trouble spots we would have to deal with.

"It could work," he said, as I reached my fork into his plate for a bite of tortilla. "You should wear a wire." He thought. "Unless you're afraid he'll find it?"

"He'll never get that close, if that's what you're really asking."

"Of course it is."

"Relax."

"Okay."

So we decided to do it. Bill had a few more suggestions, and we played around with the plan through the warm apple tart, which we shared.

There were risks, of course, and we discussed what they were and how to minimize them. Then we went on. That's one of the great things about Bill: he never suggests, as everyone else who claims to care about me does constantly, that I should avoid something just because it's dangerous.

Over his coffee and my peppermint tea Bill said, "Tell me about the client."

I'd already told him who the client was, but I knew he didn't mean that.

"Him?" I asked. "Or her?"

"Which one did you dislike more?"

"I didn't really dislike her," I began.

"No," Bill said. "But she gave you hives."

"Well, she's such a cliche. The terminally shy Chinese girl, afraid of bringing disgrace to her family but dynamite in bed. I have a cultural issue with that."

"I wouldn't touch it. What about him?"

"You're the one who should have a cultural issue with him. Pompous rich white guy, patronizing and totally unsympathetic."

"What's the issue?"

I gave him a narrow-eyed stare. "If I didn't know you to be, deep in your heart, the perfect model of a caring, empathic, anti-macho post- feminist male—"

"Yo, my sister, you wanna step outside?"

"You and who else?"

"Every other anti-macho post-feminist male in here."

We looked around at the cutting-edge crowd of photographers and architects finishing their lunch.

"Well," Bill said, "maybe not. Let's get back to John Kimball."

"Pompous rich—"

"I heard that part. So why is he bothering?"

"With this case? I get the feeling he thinks he's stuck. And resents it, by the way. He's a friend of the family."

"Why didn't he just send her home? 'Thank you, Janet, but there's nothing that can be done about that case anymore. I suggest you go home and forget it.'"

"You underestimate the terminally shy Chinese. It took her months to work up to this, and I'm sure the only way she did it was by convincing herself it was more important than saving face. So following up on it becomes The Correct Thing To Do. She'd lose face in her own mind if she let it drop now."

"And you think he knows that?"

"She may have told him she'd go to the police or something if he didn't help her. We can be very insistent."

That, of course, was all wrong, but it seemed right to us at the time.

When we left the restaurant Bill went back to his office and I went across Fourteenth Street to Paterson Silks. The next few moves were mine; I'd call Bill when everything was set.

And, of course, I'd call John Kimball, to keep him apprised.

At Paterson I bought a few yards of wine-colored raw silk. I bought thread, light-weight silk for a lining, and a pattern, and took them home to my mother.

"This is what people wear now?" she sniffed, examining the pattern.

"Fancy Hong Kong ladies," I said. "Businesswomen. That's a very high-class suit."

She gave me a long, appraising look. "If you let your hair grow," she said, "if you did something about your nails, and put some color on your face..."

"I'll fake it, Ma. Can you make the suit?"

She gave me a look full equally of disapproval and disappointment. "Ling Wan-ju," she said, "did you ever bring me a pattern I couldn't make?"

It took her four days to make the suit, and it was very high-class indeed. I could never have afforded it at a toney boutique uptown, but my mother spent thirty years as a seamstress in a sweatshop in Chinatown, and the truth is that everything that's sold at those toney boutiques is made in the sweatshops of Chinatown.

By the time the suit was ready the operation was ready, too.

I had called the CCA Film Program, spoken to the Director, Harry Lang. I explained who I was and what I wanted. He believed every word of it. Three days later, in my new suit, a pale pink blouse, and a little too much gold jewelry, I was sitting in a fluorescent-lit classroom, being introduced to a special meeting of directing students by Harry Lang.

"This is Ms Lydia Chin, of Black Tiger Films in Hong Kong," he told the eighteen or twenty students who had gathered to meet me. CCA, on West Forty-Fifth Street, is one of those specialty institutes you find on every other block in New York. A CCA degree, students hoped, would get you a foot in the door in TV or film; or, in the case of the acting students, in to see agents and casting directors you would otherwise not get close to. CCA did, in fact, have its share of well- known alumni; but it wasn't UCLA.

"And this," Harry Lang went on, "is her American associate, William Smith."

"Hardball Productions," Bill said, giving them a California smile. He was California all the way, tan jacket, linen shirt, ironed jeans, cowboy boots. He even wore tiny round sunglasses, and a thin silver chain around his neck with a tiny silver rattlesnake hanging from it.

"I don't know how many of you are familiar with Black Tiger," Lang was saying. "They're a fairly new studio. About four years old, am I right, Ms Chin?"

"Not even," I said with a smile and a British accent, because Hong Kong English is British English. "Closer to three-and-one-half."

"Yes," said Lang. "Well, for such a short time, you have an impressive record." He was holding in his hand our impressive record, which I'd made up and had printed yesterday, along with the letterhead it was printed on. Copies had been distributed to the students as they arrived.

"Thank you," I said. "You have to understand that in Hong Kong there is a time pressure which perhaps is not felt in Hollywood." I smiled knowingly at Bill. He smiled knowingly back.

"The Hong Kong film industry has experienced explosive growth in the last decade," I told the students. "To stay competitive a studio must produce quantity as well as quality. It is not unusual for a director, under contract to a studio, to make four films a year."

I looked out over my audience, saw all their little eyes light up. Mitch Ellman's little eyes, in the second row from the back, were as bright as anyone's.

He was, I noticed, wearing the ponytail again.

"However," I went on crisply, "you have all probably heard of Hong Kong's difficulty in holding on to talented professionals in these troubled times. Fear of 1997 is rampant, and many people have, unfortunately, chosen to leave the island.

"There has developed quite a competitive situation in regards, especially, to directing talent. Many studios, faced with rising demand and a shrinking talent pool, have, I regret to say, resorted to the use of...mediocre talent." Bill grinned. Mediocre, his face said, was a kind word.

"But Black Tiger refuses to do that," I said. "I don't know how many of you are familiar with our films." I looked around the room. All the glowing little eyes were trying hard to look familiar. "If you know us, you will know that there is a...philosophy, a series of threads that runs through our work."

I could almost hear the mental keyboards clicking as resumes were rewritten to highlight philosophical threads running through people's work.

"This is a hard world, ladies and gentlemen," I told them, sweeping the room with a long, slow glance. I let my eyes rest, for a moment, on Mitch Ellman's.

A smile touched the corners of his mouth and his gaze merged with mine with a presumptuous intimacy.

It made me want to get up and sock him.

Bill, seeing our eyes meet, frowned slightly, uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way. I shot him a swift look, began again.

"Black Tiger is unafraid of the darkest recesses of this world. We believe it is the mission of the media—even the so-called entertainment media —to lift the curtain from the hidden pain in the human soul." I went on like that for awhile. They ate it up.

"However," I said, building to my finale, "it takes a particular sort of artistic vision to do what we do. An unflinching vision, a courageous vision. Without that, works of our sort can become mere exploitation films, violence and sex, blood and fear without meaning. Vision in Hong Kong," I swept the room again, "is becoming scarce. I have come to America in search of vision."

Bill and I searched for vision in the halls of CCA for two days, and a dreary search it was. In stale screening room with a sticky carpet we saw at least one work by each directing student, including four who had not made it to the meeting. We asked for a second film from five of those students, and viewed them with the student present. We discussed, commented, asked the student to explicate. We heard some thoughtful, intelligent presentations, and we heard a lot of nonsense.

And we heard, of course, from Mitch Ellman.

We heard from him last, because we set it up that way. Two others of the final five were also good-looking blond men, and I displayed a great deal of interest in their work. I made eye contact when we talked, touched their manly arms with my manicured fingertips. Bill smoked and grew progressively more sarcastic and nasty in his questions and commentary. At one point, in the middle of a film, he got up and stalked out. Just before Mitch Ellman's turn we had a fight.

"I don't know how you people do it in Hong Kong," Bill's snarling voice was loud, "but the casting couch is passe, here."

"Don't be ridiculous," I answered airily. "That was very interesting work. A fresh approach—"

"Approach? You practically ran him over. And there was nothing fresh about it. You have a very stale technique."

"It worked on you."

"My mistake."

"I can't believe you're jealous of men twenty years younger than yourself."

"I can't believe you're making cow eyes at men ten years younger than yourself."

That was an exaggeration, but anything for art.

"I think we'd better have the next one in." My voice was icy. "Don't you agree?"

He gave me a silent stare. Then he stood abruptly, stuck his head out the already-open door, and called, "Ellman!"

Mitch Ellman, cassette in hand, came in struggling to keep his face straight.

"Hello, Mitch." I gave him a warm smile, ignored Bill as he sat heavily in the row in front of me. "What do we have?"

"Hello, Ms Chin," Ellman grinned, his eyes catching mine as though there were already secrets between us. "Hi, Mr. Smith." You couldn't miss, in the way he addressed Bill, the derisive generosity of the young toward the over-the-hill.

Bill didn't miss it. He turned, gave Ellman a long, cold stare, turned back to the screen.

"This is called 'Within Wheels,'" Ellman said, putting his tape into the VCR. He sat beside me, smiled at me as the lights went down.

As it had when our eyes first met, my skin crawled now, so near Mitch Ellman. The way he leaned a little too close; the way his teeth seemed pointed when he smiled; the way his eyes held mine too long every time they met: I wanted to get up and move, to put actual, physical distance between us.

I didn't. I sat there, smiled back, and he rolled the film.

His second film was like his first, dark and pretentious, filled with rats and trash cans and lonely beer bottles rolling in the gutter and steam rising from street grates in the rainy New York night. I asked him whispered questions all through the thing, forcing myself to lean close, to touch his hand. Bill kept his eyes fixed on the screen; you could see the anger expanding and surrounding him like the blue halo of cigarette smoke he was producing.

"Mitch," I smiled again when the lights came up, "I like this very much. Let me see...do I have your resume?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure," Mitch Ellman said eagerly. "I gave it to you yesterday." He produced another copy while I fanned through the papers in front of me. I read it over, nodded, passed it to Bill. Bill barely glanced at it, dropped it onto the chair next to him.

I shifted my eyes to the back of Bill's head, then to Mitch again. "I think," I said, "that I shall have to call you, Mitch."

"Great," he said, seizing onto my eyes. "When?"

"Soon," I told him, indicating Bill. "Thank you for coming."

"Sure," Mitch Ellman grinned. "Sure."

Bill grumped and glowered as we left CCA, kept it up the whole time we were hailing a cab. It was rush hour on the west side; it took awhile. He stood in the street with his arm in the air, wearing more California clothes—a rumpled linen jacket over a white T-shirt—while I stayed demurely on the sidewalk in a blue silk dress my mother made me last year.

"How're you doing?" I asked when we were safely and privately in the cab.

He leaned back against the seat. "I could do without the cowboy boots," he grinned.

"They make you look sexy."

"They do?"

"No, wait, I meant bowlegged."

"I thought bowlegged men were supposed to be sexy. It's because their— "

"I don't want to hear why. I can guess."

"You want to investigate?" He lifted his sunglasses and leered.

"No." I leaned back against the seat of the cab, too. "I also don't ever want to see another movie."

"That'll make you a cheap date."

"And speaking of cheap," I said, "that's a pretty chintzy place, CCA. Where's the glamour? Where's the glitz? Where's the excitement of life in the fast lane?"

"Where," said Bill, "is Janet Woo's transcript?"

That sat me up again.

"What are you talking about?"

"This afternoon," Bill said, "while you were making eyes at muscled young blonds, I was making eyes at muscled young blondes. Two charming work-study students in the registrar's office. Janet Woo never went to CCA."

I stared at him for a moment, then leaned back again. "Oh," I said. "Ho. What do you suppose that means?"

We discussed what we supposed it meant for the rest of the ride. At the end of the ride we sat in a diner on Canal Street and discussed it some more. We discussed what we supposed some other things meant, too; and then we thought of things we hadn't even wondered about, and discussed them as well.

We took turns filling in the details, convincing each other. It didn't take all that long, that part. When we were convinced, we discussed we were going to do about it.

When we'd settled on a plan I had another cup of tea and he a cup of coffee, to celebrate.

"What if we're wrong?" I said.

"It's the same as with the tape," Bill said. "This is bait only the guilty will rise to."

Bill's a fisherman; he was probably seeing trout in a sun-dappled stream when he said that.

Me, I was seeing Jaws. It was time to call John Kimball and give him an update.

"Things are going well, Mr. Kimball." I was in my office, which is a room I sublet from a travel agent on Canal. This way people coming to see me can pretend they're looking for a cheap flight to Taiwan. It saves a lot of face.

"Have you found out yet whether the tape we discussed actually exists?" Kimball got right down to business.

"No." I sketched out the rest of the scenario for him. "If it works out, I'll call you tomorrow night with the final details."

"Fine," Kimball said, and hung up.

One friendly guy.

I let Mitch Ellman stew until the next afternoon, then called him at CCA. Last year, before his arrest, Mitch had been a work-study student himself, answering the switchboard three afternoons a week. Wouldn't that have been convenient, I thought, as I sat on Hold while someone raced around looking for him. I was sending very strong ESP signals to the receptionist to just come back so I could leave a message when Mitch Ellman's eager voice blossomed in my ear.

"Can you meet me for a drink tonight?" I asked, after he was through telling me how glad he was I'd called. "We're staying at the Paramount."

"Great," he said. "Great. Will you be," his voice lowered, "alone?"

"Yes." I lowered my voice, too. "Bill has plans. I don't expect him back until...late."

"I'll be there," Mitch Ellman promised me.

The bar at the Paramount Hotel is a dark place of sharp edges and things that reflect. Wearing a black velvet cocktail dress and a rhinestone choker I sat in a black leather booth softer than my best pair of gloves. I sipped a club soda with both lime and lemon in a black glass and watched for Mitch Ellman. The quiet music in the air was jazz piano and bass. Bill would have known who the musicians were.

When Mitch came through the dark glass doors I didn't stand or wave to him, but when he spotted me I lifted my drink and smiled.

He made a beeline across the room. He was wearing a loose double- breasted suit and a wide silk tie, right in the heart of fashion. His ponytail was tied back with a black leather thong.

"Hi, Ms Chin," he said, a little breathlessly, when he reached the table.

"Hello, Mitch." I smiled my quietest smile. "Please sit down. And please call me Lydia." I signalled a waiter.

Mitch slid onto the opposite banquette. "Lydia." He leaned toward me. "You look great."

"Thank you, Mitch." I wondered, now that my arms were bare, if he could actually see my skin crawl.

The waiter came. Mitch ordered a martini. He looked around the bar, at the chic patrons, the hard edges and soft lights. "Is this where you always stay when you come to New York?"

"When I can," I told him. "Bill likes the Plaza. But I prefer things that are...new."

"Bill and you," Mitch said, bringing his eyes back to me, "you work together a lot?"

"Hardball Productions is our American distributor." I sipped my drink, smiled at him again. "But I work with many people, Mitch."

His martini arrived, in a wide black glass. He lifted it. I lifted mine. "To the future," he said, and our eyes locked. I pulled mine away.

After we drank to the future, I put my glass down. "Unfortunately, Mitch, I don't have very good news for you."

His face clouded. "What do you mean?"

"I don't think I can offer you anything, Mitch."

"What? But I thought you liked my work. When you saw 'Within Wheels'—"

"I do like it, Mitch. You have a fresh, raw approach, a sharp, dark vision. I believe you would be an asset to Black Tiger. That's why I called you." I drank again. "Right up to this evening I believed I could persuade Bill to my point of view. But he doesn't like your work as much as I do, and I can't seem to change his mind."

"Yeah, my work," Mitch sneered. "I'll bet that's what he doesn't like."

I smiled over my drink, didn't answer.

"Look," Mitch said, "do you have to listen to him? He's just your distributor. Why can't you do what you want?"

"Hardball is investing a large amount of capital in the development of Black Tiger; very valuable to us in the current economic climate. I'm afraid I can't go against Bill's judgment. Especially when I have only...feelings...to go on."

He leaned a little closer. "Feelings?"

"I think," I said, drawing his eyes into mine, "I sense, that there's something in you, Mitch. Something wild and raw and untameable. Something animal. Exciting. Beyond the rules, beyond the boundaries. Something I would like very much to—to meet." I traced the back of his hand with my fingertip, watched his pupils widen. "It's that," I whispered, "that's what I wanted...for Black Tiger."

Then I slipped my hand away, picked up my drink. "But Bill doesn't agree. He doesn't have my certainty, my sense of your potential. He's only seen the films we've seen, and based on them, he doesn't think you have it, Mitch."

"Doesn't think I have it?" Mitch's voice was husky.

"He thinks you're young. He thinks—no, forget it."

"Tell me what he thinks."

I shook my head.

"Tell me!"

I let my own eyes widen; then I told him. "He thinks it's fake, Mitch. The wildness, the power I see in your work, that I sense in you: he thinks it's phony. He doesn't think you have..." I searched for the word.

A different voice said, "Balls."

My head and Mitch's snapped up at the same time. Bill loomed over our table, dressed completely in black. He still had the sunglasses on.

"I don't think," Bill fixed his black-glass stare on Mitch, "that he has any balls."

"Hey —" Mitch began to rise; I put a hand on his arm.

"What are you doing here?" My words, to Bill, were as cold as I could make them. "I thought you and Paul—"

"I'll bet you did. Paul's twelve-stepping; we ran out of things to do. What's he doing here? Going over his resume?"

"Please sit down. You're making a scene."

"You usually like that. Maybe you should know that about her, Ellman. She likes public scenes. And Chinese food."

"Hey —" Mitch began again.

"Come on," Bill said, grasping my arm. "Bedtime."

I pulled sharply away. "I'm not finished."

"Yes, you are."

"No, she's not." Mitch was finally on his feet. "The lady says she's not finished, bud."

Bill looked at him in surprise, then laughed. "Lydia," he said, his eyes still on Mitch, "did I ever tell you about the dogfight I saw in Tiajuana? Doberman and a cocker spaniel. Doberman just about chewed the spaniel's balls off. Not that it was much of a mouthfull—"

"Stop it!" I ordered. "You're being ridiculous. You're drunk. Go upstairs. I'll be up soon."

"Now," he said.

"No," I said, my eyes burning through his dark lenses, finding his eyes. "Soon."

He stood for a moment, shoulders tight, hands curled into fists.

Then his hands opened, his shoulders dropped. He laughed.

"Okay," he said. "Why not? I'll see you later, sweetheart. Enjoy your drink." He turned his head suddenly, barked at Mitch. Mitch flinched. "'Night, Spot," Bill said. He was laughing as he turned and left.

"Hey —!" Mitch started after him.

"Sit down," I said sharply.

He stopped. After a few seconds of staring at the black glass doors still swinging from Bill's exit, Mitch sat.

His face glowed red. I signalled the waiter, who, like half the bar, had been watching us anyway. I pointed to Mitch's drink.

"That bastard," Mitch growled, after the waiter had brought his second martini. "That motherfucking bastard!"

"Yes," I said, sipping my drink. "With money."

"Fuck his money!"

"I never do that."

Mitch stopped, confused.

"For money," I said. "I'll do many things for money, but that isn't one of them."

Mitch frowned, the confusion growing. "You mean—you and he—" He looked over his shoulder to the door, turned back. "I thought—"

I laughed. "Oh, Mitch, just forget it. You're so young. Perhaps Bill's right. I may be wrong; this whole thing may be a mistake. Let's just finish our drinks and say goodnight, what do you say?"

"No!" he burst. "You're not wrong. I do have it! I have what you need, you and Black Tiger both!"

Another laugh; I tried to make it tinkle. "Why, Mitch, how sweet. Still, it won't do any good. Bill's a bastard but he's a businessman. If he can't see anything that's worth risking his money on—"

"What if he could?"

"Well, if he could, it wouldn't matter to him that he doesn't like you." Mitch's face, which had been fading back to its normal pallor, reddened again. "But, Mitch—"

"There is something."

"Excuse me?"

"There is something." Mitch had slurped up half his new martini. His eyes were shining now. "There's a film I didn't show you."

"Mitch, I don't understand. If you have a better film, why didn't you bring it?"

"It's not better. It has—technical difficulties." He grinned. "But it shows what you want to see. It shows I have more balls than that drunk cokehead motherfucker ever dreamed of!" He pounded the table with the flat of his hand.

I raised my eyebrows, in awe at his manliness. "I would have liked to have seen that, Mitch."

"I can still show it to you. I can show you tomorrow. You can --"

"I'm afraid I have meetings all day tomorrow. And we're leaving the following morning for Los Angeles. Early," I added.

"It's short. It just takes—"

"I have meetings all day, Mitch."

He gulped some martini in agitation. Then suddenly he brightened. "Tomorrow night. Whenever you say. I can bring it here."

I considered. "Well," I said slowly, drawing it out, "well, I suppose that's possible. Bill's planning a late night, but I had no intention of accompanying him."

"Can I then? Can I bring it up?"

I looked at him thoughtfully. "You say it's—different? Unusual?"

He nodded rapidly, eyes huge.

"I suppose, if I liked it," I said, "I could persuade Bill to view it when he returned. He doesn't like to go directly to sleep, in any case."

"Well, then? Well? Can I bring it?"

I thought I'd better agree before he crawled over the table and into my lap.

"Yes, Mitch. Bring your film tomorrow night. I'll look forward to it."

I called Bill as soon as I got home.

"Let me speak to the Doberman," I said.

"Is this that Siamese cat with the rhinestone collar?"

"That dogfight thing wasn't fair. I almost cracked up."

"Just keeping you on your patent leather toes. Did it work?"

"Uh-huh." I told him the plan.

"All right," he said. "I'll meet you there around nine."

"How about seven?"

"Okay, but why?"

"Because I'll never get a suite at the Paramount again. If John Kimball's cash advance is covering this, I think he should buy us a room service meal."

"Heartless hussy."

"We could have told him we needed the suite tonight too, for authenticity. Think of all the money we're saving him."

"It's a warm, cozy thought. I think I'll go to sleep curled around it. Unless you want to come over—?"

I hung up.

In the morning I called John Kimball, to apprise him.

"He fell for it, Mr. Kimball. He's coming to the hotel tomorrow night."

"Good, fine. How is it exactly arranged?"

I'd been expecting that question. "Mitch will show up at ten- thirty, with his tape. That will give us time to view it, remove it from the VCR, and for me to make the switch. Bill will come charging in at about eleven-thirty, drunk and looking for a fight."

"How will he get in?"

"I'll leave the door unlocked."

"Then what?"

"Bill and I have a roaring fight. Yelling, screaming, things thrown and broken. I hustle Mitch out with the dummy tape, telling him I'll call him in the morning."

"And?"

"And we pack up and bring the real tape to you."

"It sounds as though you've thought of everything, Miss Chin."

I thought it sounded that way, too.

The next morning I'd intended to sleep late, but I was too keyed up for that. After breakfast I did some errands for my mother, then grabbed my Rollerblades and did an hour in Battery Park City, back and forth on the Esplanade. At eleven I went up to the dojo and took a Tae Kwon Do class. Finally, just after two, dressed in a loose green jacket over a short black skirt, carrying a suitcase that was nearly empty, I went uptown and checked in to my suite at the Paramount.

I told the desk clerk my husband would be in about seven. She smiled and said that was fine. I spent the afternoon just playing tourist on the upper east side. At six I went back to the hotel to take a nap. I was still asleep when Bill came in.

"Lydia?" I heard his voice from the outer room. "It's me."

"I'm in here," I called.

"Are you decent?"

"No."

"I'll be right there."

"Don't you move."

I washed my face, brushed my hair, slipped my skirt back on. When I came out to the other room he was fixing himself a drink from the bar near the windows.

"Hi," he said. "You have a crease down your cheek. Want a drink?"

"The usual," I said breezily. I crossed the thick carpet, felt the pile squash under my stockinged feet. I flopped onto a huge ice- blue sofa, stretched myself out.

Bill brought me a club soda with lime. He sat at the other end of the sofa. There was room for two more people between us.

"I can't believe we're finally alone in a hotel room and all you want to do is have dinner," he said.

"At least I invited you. I could have asked Mitch."

"I doubt if he'd have been the gentleman I'm planning to be."

"Thank you for letting me in on your plans. How about some music?"

We had music from the stereo, and dinner from room service, and bizarre, out-of-scale reproductions of famous paintings to look at on the walls. It's a cutting-edge place, the Paramount. We had fun, eating steak and grilled capon and berries with creme fraiche. We talked about the city and we talked about the music, and then we talked about the plan.

We went over it again, co-ordinating with each other, making sure we hadn't overlooked anything so big we hadn't noticed it. We gave each other what-if situations and decided how to handle them. Then we had coffee and tea. Then it was time to get ready.

I went into the bedroom, laid out my things from the suitcase. I showered in the huge marble bathroom, dried myself on towels that seemed an inch thick. I blew my hair dry and dressed.

Bill was still in the outer room; he'd had less to do. I clipped on the tiny remote microphone. "Is it working? Can you hear me?"

"It's not clear," Bill called.

I moved it. "Is this better?"

"Maybe I should come in and show you how to do it." I could hear the grin in his voice.

"I've worn one before."

"Not like this. It's brand new, I just bought it. I think I should come adjust it for you—"

"If you come in here I'll shoot you."

Talking about my gun reminded me, so I checked it. Everything seemed perfect. I clipped it to the waistband of my silk pajamas and covered it and the mike and everything else I was wearing with my yellow silk kimono.

"Jesus," Bill said as I came into the outer room. "That's just how I always imagined you'd look in a kimono."

"You've imagined about that?"

"Incessantly."

"That's an invasion of privacy. I think it's illegal."

Bill had opened the windows; he's a big fan of open windows. The mild April air whispered in, moving the hem of my robe. Bill watched that happen, and he smiled.

Then he said, "I think I'd better disappear. In case he's early. In case he doesn't knock." He asked, "Nervous?"

"A little," I admitted.

"It'll be fine," he said. "It'll go perfectly."

"I bet you say that to all the girls."

"Uh-huh. And I'm always right."

He showed me where the recorder was hidden. He kissed me on the cheek. Then I was alone in the room, waiting.

Mitch was a little late. At the time it annoyed me; later I saw it as a blessing. I let myself think nervous thoughts: he's changed his mind, he won't come. He'll come, but too late. And the worst: he'd come, but he'd bring a different tape from the one we wanted, some murky, incomprehensible garbage I'd have to watch.

I drank some more club soda, paced around the room. I felt silk brush my calves as I moved, felt my heart beat, felt the reassuring solidness of my gun under my left arm. I sat in front of the big-screen TV flipping channels. I was in the middle of some murky, incomprehensible garbage when a knock came on the door. It made me jump.

I turned off the TV, opened the door. "Mitch, you're late." I stepped aside to let him in, unlatched the door before it closed.

"I'm sorry, Ms Chin—Lydia," he breathed. "Bad traffic. I jumped out of the cab and ran the last ten blocks."

"Did you really?" I smiled. "Such devotion. Would you like a drink?"

I waved him in the direction of the bar. He gaped, and seemed frozen with indecision; then he poured himself a large tumbler of Glenlivet.

Bill had said the Glenlivet was the most expensive thing there.

"God, Lydia," Mitch said appreciatively, raising his glass to me, "you are gorgeous."

"Thank you." I smiled graciously. "Did you bring your film?"

"Yes." He grabbed up an envelope he'd put down on the bar. "It's here. You'll love it, especially you. I'll bet you've never seen anything like it."

"I've seen a lot, Mitch."

"Not like this."

He slipped the tape into the VCR, took the remote in hand, sat down beside me on the ice-blue couch.

He was right. I'd never seen anything like it. But he was wrong. I hated it.

There were no titles or opening credits. Just the coarse-grained static of blank videotape; then, suddenly, picture. We were looking down on a large rumpled brass bed. For a short time, silence and stillness. I lifted my eyebrows at Mitch, but he wasn't watching me. His eyes were on the screen, his lips slightly parted. It struck me that he'd watched this tape before.

I heard laughter. Two naked figures danced into the frame, touching and teasing each other. One was Mitch Ellman. The other I recognized only from the graduation photos and family portraits we'd seen on the eleven o'clock news.

It's a shock seeing someone alive for the first time after you know they're dead. I was just getting used to that when, on the screen, Patricia Lin shoved Mitch Ellman away. Laughing, she bounced onto the bed. He laughed too. Then he bent over her. His blond hair covered her face as he pinned her wrists over her head with one hand, kissed her hard. She lifted her lips to his, responding.

Grinning, he snatched up a cord dangling from the brass headboard, tied it around her right wrist. She turned her head to see; he quickly did the other. She arched, laughed again.

He moved slowly down her body, caressing, kissing her. He tied her ankles to the bed, her legs spread wide; she laughed. He moved back up, touching, stroking. They kissed. He moved, made her strain to follow him. He touched her and she moaned, twisted in her bonds.

He mounted her. It was short and violent, animal sounds and the sounds of skin. Spent, he pulled away and stood up.

She raised her head, her face puzzled. She whispered, "Mitch?"

He grinned. "Wait," he said. He walked out of camera range. Patricia Lin lay still on the bed.

I wondered if she was afraid.

Then Mitch Ellman came back into the frame.

He wasn't alone.

Another man, also nude, was with him. I couldn't see him clearly. "Patty, this is a friend of mine," I could hear Mitch say. "He wanted to meet you."

Patricia Lin, bound to the bed, turned her face to the stranger. She looked at him; then a wide, wild smile split her face. "Well," she said huskily, arching toward him, "come meet me."

As the stranger leaned over Patricia Lin I saw his face.

It was John Kimball.

I shot Mitch a glance. He was enrapt, his eyes shining.

In the film, Kimball mounted Patricia Lin.

In the hotel suite, the door flew open.

"Turn it off!" a voice yelled.

It was John Kimball.

Mitch's mouth fell open.

"Turn it off!" A silenced automatic stared from Kimball's right hand.

I grabbed the remote from Mitch, turned the film off. Mitch didn't move.

"Take it out," Kimball said, "and give it to me."

I started toward the VCR.

"Not you." Kimball waved me back to the sofa. "You, Mitch."

Mitch jolted himself from the sofa, stumbled to the VCR. He handed the ejected tape to Kimball.

Kimball put it in his pocket. "Sit down."

Mitch sat next to me again. Kimball looked quickly from Mitch to me and around the room.

"Now what?" I asked, dropping the British accent. Mitch's mouth opened again.

"Now we sit and wait for your partner," Kimball said. As though that sounded like a good idea, he dropped himself onto an ice-blue armchair, positioned to keep the gun on us and an eye on the suite door.

"Then?" Mitch croaked.

"Then he kills us," I said, before Kimball could answer.

Mitch's eyes widened. Kimball shrugged.

"You got greedy, Mitch," he said.

"Mitch was blackmailing you," I said to Kimball. "Over the tape. That was why you wanted it. You were planning to kill him, but you couldn't risk it before you had the tape."

"Hey," Mitch blurted. "Hey. There's another. There's a copy in my safe deposit box."

"This is the copy from your safe deposit box. I saw you pick it up this morning," Kimball said. "There's no other. Why would you risk that? You're a greedy bastard but you're not that stupid."

"Hey —"

"Shut up, Mitch. I'm tired of hearing you. You're a whiner. You whined the night we met in that goddamn yuppie bar and you've been whining ever since. It'll be a pleasure having you out of my life."

Voices and laughter came from the corridor. Kimball lifted the gun warningly. The voices died away.

"Now you," Kimball said to me, "I do regret having to do this to you. You're smart and cute. We could have worked well together."

I could feel my face redden angrily and my shoulders square.

"You know," Kimball said to Mitch, "all of a sudden I don't trust her. I think you'd better tie her up." He waved the gun at me. "Use your belt, Mitch. Who knows? Maybe she'll like it."

I stood, turned my back as the gun directed me to do. Mitch loosened his own belt, pulled my wrists behind me, started wrapping the belt around them.

"Don't do that," Bill's voice said.

It came, not from the suite door, but from the bedroom doorway.

Kimball whipped around, stumbling and firing a shot which caught Bill in the chest, threw him against the wall. I shook off the belt, yanked my gun from its clip, fired at Kimball. I hit him in the wrist. His gun flew across the room as he yelped and grabbed his arm.

"Don't move!" I ordered him. "I'd love to kill you."

Bill stood slowly.

"Are you okay?" I asked, my heart racing.

"Uh-huh. I just wish they'd make a vest that could stop the kick along with the bullet."

"What the—?" Kimball groaned.

"What the hell—?" Mitch croaked.

"What the hell took you so long?" I snapped at Bill.

"You had everything under control." He rubbed his side through his Kevlar vest. "I thought we should get as much as we could on tape. Nice shot, by the way."

"I was aiming at his guts."

"Oh. Lousy shot, by the way."

"I don't believe this," Kimball said, leaning over his wrist.

"Well, it was good, Mr. Kimball," I said, "but not that good. Bill got suspicious because CCA had no record of Janet Woo. I didn't like her anyway. Hopelessly shy, terrified of disgracing her family: so Chinese."

Bill brought Kimball a towel from the bathroom to wrap around his wrist.

"But a woman like that studying acting?" I went on. "That was a mistake, Mr. Kimball. Of course, that was the true part. She was an actress, wasn't she, just hired for the role."

Mitch finally found his voice. "You mean," he choked, "there's no Black Tiger? No Hong Kong?"

"Not in your future, Mitch. I'd wondered how a work-study student at a second-rate school could have afforded such a high-priced lawyer. After I'd met you I wondered about your fancy clothes. And you're back in school this year, and not even on work-study—after the cost of a trial like that.

"And you, Mr. Kimball. You didn't like it that I had a partner, but you didn't mind it so much once you found out that he worked alone, too. And you wanted to know everything we were planning. I thought that was strange. Most attorneys like to know as little as possible.

"So Bill and I worked out a hypothesis. And we tested it. And you're right on time, Mr. Kimball. Halfway between when Mitch came and when you expected Bill to show up."

"What if you'd been wrong?" Mitch asked wonderingly.

"If we'd been wrong, Mr. Kimball wouldn't have come. We'd have taken the tape and there'd have been a civil rights prosecution and everything would have been lovely."

"Civil rights?" Mitch was still behind.

"That's just the beginning," I said. "There's also extortion for you. And kidnapping and attempted murder for you," I turned to Kimball, "just based on tonight. Plus whatever's on the rest of the tape, which thank god I didn't have to see."

"He killed her," Kimball said through teeth clenched in hate or pain, or maybe both. "I didn't even know it was happening."

"You were there," I said. "Now she's dead."

While I'd been chatting with Kimball and Mitch, Bill had called hotel security. They'd called the police. All of them stormed in at once now, and there was a lot of general confusion and people growling orders. They took all the guns and they took everyone's name and statement and finally they took Kimball and Mitch and the tape away.

They needed to take us away too, down to the precinct where they could ask more questions and take more statements and yell at us; but Bill persuaded them to wait outside on the ice-blue side chairs in the corridor while I changed.

I showered again, because watching that film had made me feel as though someone had spit on me in the street. When I was through I packed up my lingerie and my own Kevlar vest. I put my jacket and skirt back on and went out to the other room.

There was music from the stereo. Bill was on the sofa with a drink and a cigarette. I went and sat next to him. He put his arm around me and I leaned on his shoulder.

"What's the music?" I asked.

"Brahms. Piano Quintet."

I looked through the torn place on his shirt to the bruise under it. "Does it hurt?"

"No," he lied. He sipped at his drink. "It was hard watching that film, I'll bet."

"He called her Patty," I said. "He tied her up. She liked it."

I didn't know I was cold until I felt Bill's arm pulling me closer, all solid and warm.

We sat like that for awhile, until Bill's drink was finished and his cigarette was gone and we had no more excuse to sit quietly by ourselves. Then we got up, took our things, and left our suite at the Paramount. We joined the cop in the corridor, who was finishing a cigarette of his own. The three of us rode silently down in the elevator, crossed the marble lobby past the black-glass doors. A uniformed doorman held the street door for us.

Outside, the sidewalk was crowded with reporters. On the street were a couple of TV remote broadcast vans. I looked at my watch; the ones who'd been quick enough could have gotten the arrest of Mitch Ellman and John Kimball onto the eleven o'clock news. There were bright lights and microphones for us, too, but we pushed past them. As we climbed in the police car and pulled into traffic I imagined the entire Paramount Hotel, with its polished lobby, dark, sharp-edged bar, and ice-blue suite, fading to black.