I found the spot I wanted and pulled all the way in, leaving the Plymouth with its nose pointing back out to the road. The redhead was right behind me, but she didn't have room to turn around-like I wanted it.

I killed the engine.

Her door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass. She stalked over to where I was sitting, her little fox face set and hard.

"You all through playing games?" she snapped.

I got out of the Plymouth, reaching for the flashlight I keep in the door panel. I walked past her to the BMW, opened the door, and shone the light inside. Empty.

"Open the trunk," I told her.

The redhead made a hissing sound, but she turned and reached inside her car for the keys. I shined the light on her to help. She was wearing what looked like half a normal skirt, reaching over to the middle of her thighs. It had vertical black and white stripes and was topped by a wide black belt. Her stockings had dark seams down the back of her legs. She bent inside the car to get the keys-it was taking too long.

"Having trouble?" I asked her.

She looked back over her shoulder. "Just wanted to make sure you got a good look," she said, a bright smile on her face.

"Just get the keys," I told her, an edge to my voice.

She gave her hips a sharp little wiggle, then turned around with the keys in her hand. She walked back to the trunk, opened it, and stood aside. I shined the light inside. Lots of junk, but no humans. I pulled up the carpet, looked inside the spare-tire well. Nothing there either.

I gave her back the keys. "Follow me to the street," I told her. "We'll find a place to park your car and you can come with me."

"No way!" she snarled. "Go with you where?"

"Someplace where we can talk, okay?"

"We can talk right here."

"You can talk here if you want. You want me in on the conversation, you come with me.

"And if I don't?"

"Then we don't talk."

She ran her fingers through her fiery hair, front to back, thinking.

"Julio…" she started to say.

"Julio's not here," I said.

The redhead gave me one of those "You better not be fucking around with me" looks, but that was her last shot. She climbed back into the BMW and started the engine. I pulled the Plymouth away and headed out of the park.

38

I FOUND an empty spot on Metropolitan Avenue, pulled past it, and waited. She wrestled the BMW into the space, put a big piece of cardboard in the side window, and walked over to me. I got out and went over to look at what she left. It was a hand-lettered sign-"No Radio." I thought all BMWs came with those signs straight from the factory.

She slammed the Plymouth 's door closed with all her strength. I made a U-turn on Metropolitan back toward the Inter-Boro eastbound. We pulled onto the highway, following the signs to the Triboro.

"We're going into the city?" she asked.

"Just keep quiet," I told her. "We'll talk when we get there."

She didn't say anything else. I checked the mirror. It was a relief not to have her driving lights burning in my eyes. Just before the turnoff to the Long Island Expressway, I pulled off into Flushing Meadow Park. She opened her mouth to say something, but I held my finger to my lips.

Nobody was following us, but I didn't want her saying where we were going in case Michelle's search had given her some ideas.

"How come you use those driving lights even when there's traffic in front of you?" I asked her.

"They look nice," she said, as if that settled things.

I circled the park slowly until I came to the parking lot on the east side. A few cars were already pulled in, facing the sewage the politicians named Flushing Bay. The cars were spaced well apart, the windows dark. The cops used to make a circuit through here, flashing their lights. If they saw two heads in the window they kept on going. They stopped when the merchants on Main Street complained they needed more coverage of their stores.

Couples used to park back in the bushes too, but a gun-carrying rapist working the area stopped all that. Wolfe had tried the case against the dirtbag when they finally caught him. She dropped him for twenty-five to fifty, but people still stuck close to the water's edge.

I pulled in between an old Chevy with a jacked-up rear end, "José and Juanita" painted on the trunk in flowing script, and a white Seville with fake wire wheels. Lights from the incoming planes to LaGuardia reflected off the black water.

I cracked my window and lit a cigarette. By the time I turned to the redhead, she was already unbuttoning her blouse.

39

WHAT THE HELL are you doing?" I snapped at her, my voice louder than it should have been.

"What does it look like?" she asked. "I'm showing you I'm not wearing a wire." She smiled in the darkness, her teeth so white they looked false. "Unless you have your little whore-friend with you in the back seat…" she said, looking over her shoulder.

"There's nobody here," I told her.

She kept unbuttoning the blouse like she hadn't heard me. She wore a black half-bra underneath, the lace barely covering her nipples. The clasp was in front. She snapped it open and her breasts came free, small and hard like a young girl's, the dark nipples pointed at me in the cool air. I didn't say anything, watching her. When I felt the cigarette burn my fingers I pushed it out my window without looking back.

The redhead reached behind her and pulled the wide belt loose. "I have to unzip this. I've got a big ass for such a small girl and the skirt won't go up. I'm sure you noticed."

I wanted to tell her to stop butmaybe it was a bluff…maybe she was wired and this was a game. I kept quiet.

The zipper made a ripping sound. She wiggled in her seat until the skirt was down past her knees. Her panties were a tiny black wisp, the dark stockings held up by wide black hands across her thighs. If she was wired it had to be inside her body.

"Yes?" she asked.

I just nodded-I'd seen enough. But she took it the other way. She hooked her thumbs inside the waistband of her underpants and pulled them down too. There wasn't enough light to see if her flaming hair was natural.

"Look out the window-smoke another cigarette," she hissed at me. I heard her struggling with her clothes, muttering something to herself. A tap on my shoulder. "Okay, now," she whispered, and I turned around.

"You have another cigarette for me?"

I gave her one and struck a wooden match. She came close to catch the fire. She didn't move her face, but her eyes rolled up to look at me.

I reached over and took her purse from her. She didn't protest while I went through it. She had her own cigarettes, a matchbook from a midtown restaurant, a few hundred in cash, and some credit cards. And a metal tube that looked like lipstick. I pulled off the top. Inside was a nozzle of some kind and a button on the base. I looked a question at her.

"Perfume," she said.

I pointed it outside the window and pressed the button. I heard the thin hiss of spray and smelled lilacs. Okay.

"I'm listening," I told her.

The redhead shifted in her seat so her hips were wedged into a corner, her back against her door, legs crossed, facing me.

"I already told you what this was about. I want you to do something for me-what else do you need to know?"

"Is this a joke? You're nothing to me-I don't owe you anything."

"It's not a joke. I'm not a joker." She drew in hard on her cigarette, lighting her face for a second.

"You don't owe me but you owe Julio, right?"

"Wrong."

"Then why did you do that other thing?"

"What other thing?" I asked her.