"So who was it?" she asked.

"My lawyer again."

Uh-oh, she thought, reaching for her robe. "Bad news?"

"Sort of," Tom Krome said. "Apparently I'm dead." When he turned around, he appeared more bemused than upset. "It's going to be on the front page of The Registertomorrow."

"Dead." JoLayne pursed her lips. "You sure fooled me."

"Fried to a cinder in my own home. Must be true, if it's in the newspaper."

JoLayne felt entitled to wonder if she really knew enough about this Tom fellow, nice and steady as he might seem. A burning house was something to consider.

She said, "Lord, what are you going to do?"

"Stay dead for a while," Krome replied. "That's what my lawyer says."

15

Bodean Gazzer instructed Chub to cease shooting from the truck.

"But it's him."

"It ain't," Bode said. "Now quit."

"Not jest yet."

Shiner cried, "My eardrums!"

"Pussy." Chub continued to fire until the black Mustang skidded off the highway on bare rims. Fuming, Bode braked the pickup and coasted to the shoulder. He was losing his grip on Chub and Shiner; semiautomatics seemed to bring out the worst in them.

Chub hopped from the truck and loped with homicidal intent through the darkness, toward the disabled car. Bode marked his partner's progress by the bobbing orange glow of the cigaret. The man was setting a damn poor example for Shiner – there was nothing well-regulated about sniping at motorists on the Florida Turnpike.

Shiner said, "Hell we do now?"

"Get out, son." Bode Gazzer grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and hurried after Chub. They found him holding at gunpoint a young Latin man whose misfortune was to vaguely resemble the obnoxious boyfriend of a Hooters waitress, who even more vaguely resembled the actress Kim Basinger.

Bode said: "Nice work, ace."

Chub spat his cigaret butt. It wasn't Tony in the Mustang.

Shiner asked, "Is it the same guy or not?"

"Hell, no, it ain't him. What's your name?" Bode demanded.

"Bob." The young man clutched the meaty part of his right shoulder, where a rifle slug had grazed it.

Chub jabbed at him with the muzzle of the Cobray. "Bob, huh? You don't look like no Bob."

The driver willingly surrendered his license. The name on it made Chub grin: Roberto Lopez.

"Jest like I thought. Goddamn lyin' sumbitch Cuban!" Chub crowed.

The young man was terrified. "No, I am from Colombia."

"Nice try."

"Bob and Roberto, it is the same thing!"

Chub said, "Yeah? On what planet?"

Bodean Gazzer switched off the flashlight. The heavy traffic on the highway made him jumpy; even in Dade County a bullet-riddled automobile could attract notice.

"Gimme some light here." Chub was pawing through the young man's wallet. "I mean, long as we gone to all the trouble and ammo."

Jauntily he held up four one-hundred-dollar bills for Bode to see. Shiner gave a war whoop.

"And lookie here – 'Merican Express," Chub said, waggling a gold-colored credit card. "Fuck is the likes a you doin' with anything'Merican?"

Roberto Lopez said, "Take whatever you want. Please don't kill me."

Chub commanded Shiner to search the trunk. Bode Gazzer was a basket case; any second he expected the blue flash of police lights. He knew there would be little chance of satisfactorily explaining a shot Colombian to the Florida Highway Patrol.

"Hurry it up! Goddamn you guys," he growled.

They found a briefcase, a holstered Model 84 Beretta .380 and a new pair of two-tone golf shoes. Shiner said, "Size tens. Same as me."

"Keep 'em!" Roberto Lopez, calling from the front seat.

Bode aimed the flashlight inside the briefcase: bar charts, computer printouts and financial statements. A business card identified Roberto Lopez as a stockbroker with Smith Barney.

Here Chub saw a chance to salvage merit from the crime. Even though the guy had turned out not to be Amber's asshole boyfriend, he was still a damn foreigner with fancy clothes and too much money. Surely Bode would agree that the rifle attack wasn't a total waste of time.

In a tone of solemn indignation, Chub accosted the fearful young Colombian: "You fuckers sneak into this country, steal our jobs and then take over our golf courses. If I might ast, Mister Roberto Stockbroker, what's next? You gone run for President?"

Shiner was so stirred that he patriotically kicked the car, the golf cleats leaving a flawless perforation. Bode Gazzer, however, showed no sign of indignation.

Chub set aside the rifle and seized Roberto Lopez by the collar. "OK, smart-ass," Chub said, recalling Bode's piercing roadside interrogation of the migrant workers, "gimme the fourteenth President of the U.S.A."

Tightly the young Colombian answered, "Franklin Pierce."

"Ha! Frankie who?"

"Pierce."Bode's voice dripped bitterness. "President Franklin Pierce is right. The man got it right."

Deflated, Chub stepped back. "Jesus Willy Christ."

"I'm outta here," Bodean Gazzer said, and headed toward the pickup truck. Chub vented his disappointment by punching the luckless stockbroker in the nose, while Shiner concentrated his energies on the exterior of the Mustang.

To elude the process servers hired by her estranged husband, Mary Andrea Finley Krome began calling herself "Julie Channing," a weakly veiled homage to her two all-time-favorite Broadway performers. So determined was Mary Andrea to resist divorce court that she went a step further: At a highway rest stop outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she cut her bounteous red hair and penciled in new full eyebrows. That same afternoon she drove into town and unsuccessfully auditioned for a ragged but rousing production of Oliver Twist.

Back in Brooklyn, the resourceful Dick Turnquist had compiled from the World Wide Web a list of theater promoters in the rural western states. He faxed to each one a recent publicity shot of Mary Andrea Finley Krome, accompanied by a brief inquiry hinting at a family emergency back East – had anyone seen her? The director in Jackson Hole was concerned enough to reply, by telephone. He said the woman in the photograph bore a keen resemblance to an actress who had, only yesterday, read for the parts of both Fagin and the Artful Dodger. And while Miss Julia Channing's singing voice was perfectly adequate, the director said, her Cockney accent needed work. "She could've handled Richard the Second," the director explained, "but what I needed was a pickpocket."

By the time Dick Turnquist retained and dispatched a local private investigator, Mary Andrea Finley Krome was already gone from the mountain town.

What impressed Turnquist was her perseverance for the stage life. Knowing she was being pursued, Mary Andrea continued to make herself visible. And although changing one's professional name might tax the ego, as subterfuge it was pretty feeble. Mary Andrea could have melted into any city and taken any anonymous job – waitress, receptionist, bartender – with only a negligible decline of income. Yet she chose to keep acting despite the risk of discovery and subpoena. Perhaps she was indomitably committed to her craft, but Turnquist believed there was another explanation: Mary Andrea needed the attention. She craved the limelight, no matter how remote or fleeting.

Well, Turnquist reflected, who didn't.

She could call herself whatever she wanted – Julie Channing, Liza Bacall, it didn't matter. The lawyer knew he would eventually catch up to the future ex – Mrs. Krome and compel her presence in the halls of justice.

He therefore was not at all distressed when The Registercalled to inform him that Tom Krome had died in a suspicious house fire. Having only an hour earlier chatted with his client, alive and uncharred in a Coral Gables motel, Turnquist realized the newspaper was about to make a humongous mistake. It was about to devote its entire front page to a dead man who wasn't.