“I picked it up in prison.”

“You were there two nights.”

“Two nights more than you,” she said.

She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled again before tapping her ashes into an empty crystal liquor glass on the table beside her. Beside the empty liquor glass was an empty bottle.

“You didn’t kill your husband, Julia.”

“No?”

“I know it for sure now.”

“You didn’t before?”

“How could I?”

“Because I told you I didn’t.”

“You told me you’d marry me, too.”

She took a moment to fiddle with the cigarette, take another inhale. “So that’s where we are, Victor, in an endless loop.”

“No,” I said. “Not anymore. That’s over, all of it is over. I’m going to help you now.”

“I don’t need your help. I have Clarence.”

“Clarence is out of his league. Clarence is going to help you into a jail term if you let him. But I’m not just talking about the murder investigation, Julia. I found the purse you left in my desk, I followed the clues within it. I know what you were doing at the time of your husband’s murder. You were buying drugs from a dealer named Jamison. And I can prove it.”

“Don’t.”

“I can get you cleared.”

“Keep your nose out of my business.”

“I won’t. You’re an addict. You’re buying heroin regularly from a street dealer in North Philadelphia. You have a problem, and you need help.”

“I do have a problem, Victor, but it’s not what you think.”

“Clarence said you had a cold in jail. I bet it’s gone. I bet as soon as you got out of jail and had a moment alone, you had your little fix and cured it right up.”

“If you’re so clever, sweetheart, then why are you always wrong?”

I went to her, knelt in front of her as if she were a child, placed my hand on her bare leg. Even as I knew her to be half drunk and loaded with hop, I couldn’t stop thinking how beautiful she was. I could smell the soap on her, make out the swell of her breast beneath the shirt. The skin on her leg felt warm and smooth. I patted it gently, then let my hand fall so my palm was flat on her flesh. My head swam as if it were I who had emptied the bottle, not she.

“Julia,” I said, trying to regain control of my senses.

I looked up at her. She stared down coolly.

“Now that I know you didn’t kill your husband, we still might have a future together. If you get help, go into treatment, deal with the drug thing, we’ll be free to start again and this time do it right. Without any encumbrances.”

“That’s all life is, encumbrances.”

“We can be free of them.”

“You never knew me, did you, Victor?”

“I loved you.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“But you have to admit the truth if we have any chance.”

I grabbed her right arm, pushed up the sleeve, turned her wrist so the underside of her arm glowed dully from a dim shaft of light. She didn’t do anything to stop me. The skin was flawless. I grabbed her left arm and tried to do the same but felt a sharp, jabbing pain on the back of my hand.

I snatched my hand away, and sparks flew from the cigarette she had jammed into my flesh.

I jerked myself to standing, backed off, lifted my burned skin to my lips. She sat there calmly, staring at me with dead eyes.

“What the hell was that?” I said.

“Clarence showed me your statement,” she said. “It read like a Harlequin romance. ‘I unbuttoned her shirt. I unhooked her bra.’ If the law doesn’t work out, you can write bodice rippers.”

“I just told them the truth.”

“That’s funny. I thought we agreed not to tell them anything.”

“With all the evidence they had, the only thing that could help you was the truth.”

“It was never about the truth, Victor. It was about keeping what was ours to ourselves. About keeping what was growing again between us private, because that was the only way it had a chance to survive. And we agreed. And the first bit of pressure, you blurted out everything.”

“I was just trying to help you.”

“You were just trying to save yourself.”

“Maybe I was. But now I’m going to save you.”

“You have no idea what you are doing.”

“Where are you shooting it?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you smoking it, snorting it? How are you using it?”

“You’re refusing to believe me again.”

“But you had the kit in your purse. You were buying drugs from Jamison. And you hid it in my desk to keep it from the police.”

“Maybe all that wasn’t for me, Victor.”

I looked at her, stepped back, and thought about it for a moment. Then I turned my head until I was staring at the vaguely outlined body on the carpet.

“Your husband?” I said.

“I won’t talk about it, Victor.”

“You have to.”

“No I don’t. Leave it alone.”

“I can’t.”

“Promise me you’ll leave it alone,” she said.

“Julia.”

“Promise me,” she said coolly as she tossed her cigarette into the empty glass, “or go away.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

She unfurled the leg that was curled beneath her body and stood from the chair. Her shirt flared open, exposing the whole of her breasts, the hollow of her belly, the narrow black straps of a lacy lingerie bottom. She stepped toward me until we were an arm’s length apart. Even though we weren’t touching, I could feel her, like a heat all across the front of my body, a magnetic heat pulling me forward.

“You said you loved me,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“If it was ever true, then that should be enough.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So no more questions about the drugs and who they were for. No more questions about where I was when my husband was killed.”

“No more questions.”

She stepped forward and put her hands on either side of my neck. “And we’ll trust each other again.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said, and then she pulled my head toward her and kissed me.

And this is what she tasted of. She tasted of alcohol, sweet and swollen. She tasted of tobacco, dark and loamy. She tasted of yearning and desperation and a fatal sadness. And oh, yes, she tasted of deceit.

“So what do we do now?” she said after she stopped kissing me, and grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands out from beneath her dead husband’s shirt.

“Breathe?” I said.

“About the police.”

“Oh,” I said. “Them.” I bit my lip to try to bring the feeling back. “We can do nothing and see what happens.”

“Or,” she said.

“Or we can find out who the hell really killed your husband.”

“What if I don’t care who it really was?”

“The police care.”

“Do they? Or do they just want to find someone to pin it on?”

I thought of Sims and his political smile. “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t we find out?” she said.

“You want us to find someone to blame.”

“If you think it will help.”

“An innocent dupe.”

“Maybe not so innocent. But someone to draw attention away from us. At least for the time being.”

“A fall guy.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I thought you were making of me.”

“Oh, Victor,” she said as she grabbed my tie. She pulled me close, kissed me quick, then let me go and turned away. “Don’t be silly.”

“So who do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. I’m just thinking.”

That’s what I did for a bit. Remember I said her kiss tasted of deceit. That’s what I was thinking of. She was keeping something from me, something crucial, I could tell. But just then I didn’t want to dig for it. So I searched where the light was better.

“Tell me about Gregor Trocek,” I said.

She spun around. “How do you know about Gregor?”

“I had an early dinner with him just tonight.”

“With Gregor?”

“We shared tapas and beer. And he told me a peculiar story. That your husband tried to hire him to kill me.”

“Gregor and his stories.”

“But I believed him. And I’m afraid the cops will, too.”