"Why can't you get the money tonight?"

"Because I don't have any fucking money," I said, raising my voice.

A couple of guys at the bar looked over. I ignored them and they turned away.

"Can't you get anything tonight?" Charlotte asked.

There was a different kind of desperation in her voice, and I realized she was more concerned about getting her next fix than getting Kenny his money.

"Just get the hell out of here," I said. "I can't deal with any more of this bullshit right now."

"What about the»

"Just go."

Charlotte sat there, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand, then said, "You better get some money tomorrow at least a thousand bucks.

I'll meet you tomorrow morning at Starbucks on Astor."

"I won't have the money in the morning."

"Then I'll meet you at noon."

"I have to work tomorrow»

"Six o'clock," she said. "You better fucking be there."

Charlotte got up and wobbled toward the door. As she passed a few drunk guys at the bar, she stopped and said something to each of them, obviously trying to pick them up. Two guys ignored her, and then one old guy grabbed her arm, trying to pull her toward him. The bartender said something, and the guy, laughing now, let go. Rubbing her arm where the guy had grabbed her, Charlotte left the bar.

I remained seated, figuring I should allow some time for Charlotte to leave the block before I left.

After listening to the end of "Wish You Were Here" and a live version of "Sweet Jane," I put the scraps of the ripped-up photos into my jacket pocket and went outside. It was raining lightly. I didn't see Kenny or anyone else who looked suspicious, so I headed toward First Avenue. No cabs were coming, so I put my hood on and started walking uptown with my head down against the wind.

I CONTINUED WALKING in the rain. Somewhere around Fourteenth Street I dropped the ripped-up photo pieces into a sewer grating. At Twenty-third Street, the rain started coming down harder and my jacket was getting soaked and my face was wet, so I gave in and took a cab the rest of the way home.

At my apartment, Rebecca was still asleep in the bedroom. I changed out of my wet clothes into sweats, and then took a spare blanket and pillow out of the closet.

"You can join me anytime you want to, baby," Rebecca said seductively, sounding wide-awake.

Without answering, I went out into the living room and plopped down on the couch. Eventually, I fell asleep.

At eight a.m." out of the shower and getting dressed for work, I decided I'd have to bring Charlotte the thousand bucks. I'd been going back and forth on it since leaving the bar last night, but I realized I had no choice. Paying off a blackmailer for something I hadn't even done still seemed crazy, but the pictures were just too incriminating.

Maybe if I made it clear to Charlotte that the thousand was all I had, Kenny would leave me alone. My only problem was that I didn't have a thousand bucks, although I had an idea where I could get it.

I'd managed to get my work clothes out of the bedroom without waking Rebecca up and I made it out of the apartment without another confrontation.

It felt strange arriving for another day of work when, after I'd left yesterday, I was convinced that I would never be back.

I was hanging up my coat on the hook in my office when Peter Lyons came by. He craned his head down to glare at me, and then, in the voice of a wanna-be Shakespearean actor, he said, "E tu, Brute!"

I looked at him, confused. "Excuse me?"

"You'll get your just desserts," he said. "All back stabbers ultimately do."

Suddenly I remembered my conversation with Jeff yesterday and realized Peter must've been fired.

"I swear, Peter I had nothing to do with this."

"I'm sure you didn't," he said sarcastically. "I'm sure you haven't been campaigning for this behind my back for months. I'm sure you didn't spread nasty rumors about me throughout the office and create a general feeling of malcontent about my editing style."

Peter sounded like a parody of himself, and if I hadn't been in such a bad mood to begin with, I probably wouldn't have been able to restrain myself from laughing.

"Look, I really didn't want to see you lose your job," I said. "If you want me to talk to Jeff»

"Don't bother," Peter said. "To be quite honest, I've been contemplating jumping ship for some time. The quality of this magazine has been deteriorating rapidly over the past few years, and with you as associate editor I am quite certain that the pattern is not likely to correct itself."

Peter stormed away melodramatically. I felt bad that he'd been fired on account of me, and then it sank in that I was the new associate editor. It wasn't exactly like getting an editor's position at the Journal, but Manhattan Business had a lot of subscribers in the New York area, and the job title would certainly help my resume stand out.

If I weren't being blackmailed for murder I might've been excited about it.

I sat at my desk and called my aunt Helen at her work number. Helen had had the same job for years, as an office manager for an outerwear distributor in the Garment District. When I was a kid it was great, because I always got a new parka or down jacket every winter. Over the years, she continued to offer me free coats, but they were all so dorky-looking I always had to think of inventive ways to decline. I spoke with my aunt on the phone every once in a while, but I hadn't seen in her in over a year. She still lived alone, in the house I'd been raised in, in Dix Hills, Long Island. Her husband, my uncle Howard, had died of a heart attack a few years after my parents were killed, and Helen had never remarried.

Helen's voice mail answered. I left a message for her to call me back as soon as she could, and then I booted up my computer. A memo had been added to my calendar about a two o'clock staff meeting that Jeff was conducting in the conference room. I wondered if the meeting was to announce my promotion.

My phone rang and I answered it. It was Helen.

"Thanks for calling me back so soon," I said.

"No problem, David. I was just on the other line it was so good to hear your voice. How are you?"

"Okay," I said.

She must have detected my uncertainty. "Is something wrong?"

"No, everything's fine totally fine," I said. "I just need to see you.

Can we meet for lunch today?"

"You sure everything's okay?"

"Yes, everything's fine. Can you do lunch?"

"Of course."

"How's noon?"

"Noon's okay," she said, sounding concerned.

"Great, I'll come by your office," I said, and hung up.

I called my voice mail and listened to an angry message from Robert Lipton, the CEO of Byron Technologies. He said that a fact-checker had faxed him a copy of the story I'd written, and that if the magazine published "this bullshit" he would take legal action. He was still screaming at me when I deleted the message.

I went down the corridor to where Theresa, Jeff's assistant, sat and said, "Who fact-checked my Byron Technologies story?"

"Sujen," Theresa said. "Why? Is there some problem?"

Sujen was the new intern, a young Korean-American student from Columbia University.

"She faxed the CEO the entire story," I said.

"She wasn't supposed to do that," Theresa said.

"Really?" I said sarcastically.

I went to Sujen's cubicle, ready to give her hell, but when I got there and saw this pretty, innocent girl sitting in front of her computer monitor I lost my edge. She'd been working at the magazine for only a few weeks, so it was understandable that she'd had a slipup. We'd had one conversation, in the elevator one morning. She'd told me she was a journalism major and hoped to write for the Times someday.