"Fuck us and our premonitions. Nothin' is ever simple, huh? The first cop goes inside, takes one look, and calls back to his partner, 'Hey, come here! We got 'Ripley's Believe It or Not.'" Dominic took a manila envelope from under his arm and opened it. Sliding out some pictures, he handed them over.

"Holy God!"

"James Penn, ex-out-of-work actor, ex-waiter at Jack's –"

"Ex-human being!"

"You got it, Finky. The guys in pathology are still trying to figure out what happened to him."

"What was the cause of death?"

"Electrocution, blood loss . . . shit, I don't know. Everything. Ha! That's one for you – guy died of everything!"

"And this is the same man who went around pretending to be Strayhorn?"

"Look at the other pictures."

There were some of Penn alive and smiling. He did look like Phil, and it was easy to see how some might have mistaken him for the other.

Something ball-shriveling came to me. I looked at Dominic.

"It's a scene from Midnight Always Comes!"

He nodded. "You got it. The ultimate Hollywood crime: Guy goes around impersonating Philip Strayhorn, then ends up getting killed the way Bloodstone did a guy in one of his movies. Cinematic justice. Other places you got poetic justice, out here we got cinematic justice!"

"Can we go inside?"

"Speak for yourself, Weber, I'm not going in there."

"Yeah, you can go in, but don't touch anything, huh? They're still checking the place out. I'll stay here with Finky. I want to ask him a couple of questions about the old show. I got this great Finky Linky T-shirt at home. Wish I'd brought it with me so you could sign it. Here's the key, Weber."

There was a brick path up to the front porch. The lawn smelled fresh-cut. Two of the steps creaked when I put pressure on them. I thought about walking up to Rainer Artus's house a few days before. Inside his place had been a vague madness; inside this one was the bitterest kind of death.

I unlocked the door and stepped in.

Eerily, everything was in perfect order. Clean wooden floors, a smell in the air of some kind of pine disinfectant. Spotless, ordered. When he was technical adviser on one of my films, Dominic had taken me to other murder scenes. They'd reflected the chaos of the act – blood, scatter, curtains torn from windows in the desperation of the soon-dead. Not here. James Penn's house appeared ready for a party to arrive any moment.

I walked into the living room and saw Pinsleepe sitting on a blue couch eating a red ice-cream cone.

"Hi, Weber."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. I've been waiting for you. I just finished cleaning up."

"Did you know this man?"

"James Penn? No. But it's another part of the Phil thing."

"Penn was killed the same way Bloodstone killed someone."

"That's right. It's what I told you: When Phil did that scene, everything bad got loose."

"You mean Bloodstone's alive?"

She smiled and licked a corner of her cone. "No. Phil thought up that scene, not Bloodstone. All the Midnights are Phil."

"He's alive?"

"No. He's dead. But what he was is still alive. Do you get it? If we could put all the children we have been across the sky, we'd understand ourselves a lot better.

"No matter how many times Phil killed himself, by making that scene in the movie after I told him not to, he was only killing himself then. All the other thirty years of Strayhorn were around and alive: the little boy Phil who ran away from the bogeyman Rock and Roll, the Phil who thought up Bloodstone, all of them. Who you are now controls all the people you were. If this now-you dies for the wrong reason, the other ones get to do what they want. And if they don't have any guide, they go crazy."

"They killed Penn?"

"Sure. Maybe it was the eight-year-old Phil with the bad temper who was angry at the man for impersonating him. Or the twenty-six-year-old Phil who was stoned all the time and did strange things. . . . I couldn't tell you which one. Maybe it was a combination. Maybe they ganged up on Penn.

"Did Sasha ever tell you why they really broke up? Ask her. Ask her about 'A Quarter Past You.' She still has it. Don't let her tell you she doesn't. That'll show you some of the different Phils you didn't know.

"You're the only one now who can do anything about it, Weber. If you don't film that scene, everything's over. Other things too, besides Sasha dying."

"Like what?"

She shook her head.

"If I film it . . . right, then Sasha lives, and her baby – you – die. Right?"

"Right. I go away. I don't have to be here anymore."

It began innocently enough, sort of. They loved each other. They wanted to grow old together, and that is the only real proof of great love. But recently there had been one thing, one large speck of dust on their otherwise clear lens: sex. It had always been fine with them, and there were times when they reveled in each other. But sleep with another person a thousand nights, and some of sex's phosphorescence rubs off under the touch of familiar fingers.

One time, as they worked to catch each other's rhythms, she'd uttered something inadvertently that made him smile and want to talk about later, during those fading soft moments before sleep.

"You shouldn't!" was what she'd suddenly said.

He hadn't been doing anything new or special, so he had to assume she was fantasizing a naughty scene with someone else. The thought excited him, particularly because he himself had often done the same thing.

Afterward, in the blue dark, he touched her hand and asked if he was right.

"I'm embarrassed." But then she giggled – her sign she was willing to talk.

"Come on, don't be embarrassed. I've done it too, I promise! It's just another way."

"You promise you won't misunderstand?"

"I promise."

"Okay, but I'm really embarrassed."

He squeezed her hand and knew not to say anything or else she would shut right up.

"Well, it's not anyone in particular, just this man. It's a fantasy. I see him on a subway and can't stop looking at him."

"How's he dressed?"

"The way I like – jacket and tie, maybe a nice suit. But he's also wearing fresh white tennis sneakers, which throws the whole thing off in a great way. It's a touch of humor that says he wears what he wants and doesn't give a damn what others think."

"Okay. So what happens then?"

She took a deep breath and let it all out slowly before continuing. "I see him and can't stop looking, as I said. He's sexy and that's part of it, sure, but there are other things that make him more special than just that.

"He has these great Frenchman's eyes and is carrying a book I've been meaning to read for a long time. Finally he looks at me and I'm hooked completely. The best part is, he doesn't check out my body or anything. Just looks at me and I know he's interested. I love that. He doesn't go over me like I'm a new car in the showroom."

Her story was much more detailed than he'd have thought. In his own fantasies, he'd make eyes at waitresses in high heels or shopgirls with thick lips. Things were arranged. They'd go back to her apartment. Once there, they'd leap to it with instant heat and curiosity.

Moments pass before he realizes she's begun speaking again.

". . . follows me when I get off the subway. Knowing he's there behind makes me incredibly excited. I know what's going to happen and I know I'll do it, no matter what."

She talked on, giving the most minute, loving details. She and Mr. White Sneakers never speak, not once. As things get more intense, they slow down until it's all movement under water.

The single sentence ever said aloud is the line "You shouldn't!" This is something she says each time, but only once it's actually happening and she feels a momentary pang of guilt. But that passes quickly because the experience is simply too rare and extreme for guilt to enter into it.