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  “Personal question?”

  She shook her head, and then offered me the sliver of a smile. “Oh, why not?”

  “You’re too intelligent to marry a household appliance. Why?”

  “Would you buy it if I told you I was girlishly swept off my feet?”

  “Not by a tailor’s dummy.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Tony is really good. He has two skills. The first one is to stand there and let people look at him. He’s pretty enough to preserve in amber, and he knows how to use it. The second thing is talking people around. You’ve dealt with sociopaths?”

  “Who hasn’t? In our line of work, I mean.”

  “Well, Tony qualifies. It’s not just that he doesn’t have a conscience, although he doesn’t. I think he could shoot you and his major worry would be the price of the bullet. But mostly it’s the way he can read you, play to your weaknesses, make you feel like-like whatever your question is, he’s the answer. He read me down to my gene sequence. I was twenty-two and dumb and in full revolt against everything my father wanted for me. Like most kids in criminal families, I was brought up on the straight and narrow, Catholic school and everything. Tony was so far off the path my father had planned for me he might as well have been on another continent. And he played that for all it was worth. Defying my father, who didn’t like Mexicans and would have been horrified at me marrying some mid-level knuckleduster. And aiming that face straight at all that pent-up Catholic schoolgirl lust. I’d never felt so brave and alive in my life.”

  “Danger is addictive.”

  “Sure, but I knew I wasn’t really the one who was in the line of fire. My father might just have resolved the situation by having him killed. Dad favored direct solutions. Tony said he was willing to risk that, and I have to admit that my reaction was pretty much, For little me? I figured it proved he loved me.” She sat back, hearing herself. “I’m telling you this because I suppose there’s a chance you’re going to come up against him.”

  I knew the next remark might take me straight off the map, but I needed to say it, if only to begin to figure out how much trouble I was in. “But your father didn’t kill Tony.”

  Trey’s eyes were on me, and they didn’t waver a hundredth of an inch. She held my gaze, and then said, “That’s right. He might have, in a week or two, but he didn’t. As you know, his plans, whatever they were, were rudely interrupted.”

  I said, “Yes,” and let it hang.

  After a moment, she said, “I don’t actually know that Tony did it. Not for a fact.”

  This was pretty close to exactly what I didn’t want to hear. “But you suspected it.”

  “I tried not to. Tony and I were already married. That’s why my father was so furious. We eloped. I was in New York on business, staying at the Carlyle, and one evening there was a knock on the door, and surprise, surprise, guess who. We had a ridiculously romantic week, real gigolo stuff. And I fell for it. We stopped in Las Vegas on the way home. I thought my father was going to have a heart attack. Me, trading my last name for Ramirez.”

  “You’re aware,” I said, “that people think you had your father done.”

  “Sure,” she said. “And I let them. I’m a girl, remember? Everybody figured I was going to be Miss Valentine, the sweetheart of the underworld. So I took the blame, and it made a lot of people afraid of me, people who wouldn’t have been afraid of me otherwise. It was useful.”

  “And I might be up against the guy who had your father killed.”

  She drew a square on the surface of the table with a carnelian-tipped index finger. “Believe me,” she said, “I never thought it would get to this point.” She erased the imaginary square with her palm and offered me a slender smile. “And maybe it won’t.”

  “Whether it does or not, here’s the problem. I’m only one guy. I haven’t got a squad I can deploy. I can check out your ex, or I can stick with Thistle. I can’t do both. And I can’t protect this whole movie, although I’m pretty sure that Thistle is the obvious target.”

  “She’s the only indispensable element.” Trey said.

  “But you’ve got resources,” I said. “It’s just you and me here, and nobody else is listening. Why don’t you kill somebody?”

  She didn’t look surprised, although she let a three-heartbeat pause go by before answering. “Kill whom? If I put Tony under, I’m the first place the cops will look. Lots of public rancor there, wrangling over assets, the whole mess.”

  “Somebody close to him. Somebody you think might be working for him, helping with this. Send a message right back, let them know that the film is not to be fucked with.”

  “Aren’t you the cold one? Kill this one, kill that one. I thought you were a burglar, not a hitman.”

  “They killed a friend of mine. Somebody’s probably going to die for that, anyway.”

  “I see,” she said. “But it’ll wait until you have some time on your hands.”

  “It might, it might not. So what about it? There’s nothing like a well-placed bullet for getting people’s attention.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m supposed to be turning my back on all that. Kicking it off with a murder seems inconsistent, to say the least.”

  “Just a thought.” I got up. “By the way, as long as we’re talking, you know that this movie isn’t good for Thistle.”

  “That’s on my conscience, not yours.” She stood as well. “And listen. Underneath all the dope and the psychic wreckage, Thistle may be a perfectly nice girl. I admit that. You might be right about her. And you know what? That’s too bad. For my purposes, she’s irreplaceable. She did to the whole world what Tony did to me. Hundreds of millions of people bought into what she was selling, and she blew them off. She’s my primary asset here. I’m deadly serious about protecting her, up to the point where it endangers her making the movie. Don’t make any mistakes about that.”

  “Noted,” I said.

  “And as you said, as long as we’re talking, I think you have a problem with women. You sympathize with Thistle in a way you wouldn’t if she were male. And you don’t take me as seriously as you would if I’d been my father’s son instead of his daughter. But I’m telling you now. I am every bit as dangerous as my father was. And if you find yourself torn between taking care of Thistle or taking care of me, just remember that I’m an Annunziato, and we don’t deal well with betrayal. Is that clear?”

  “Transparent.”

  “Your job is to help me get this movie done, no matter what you think about it. Understand?”

  “No one would accuse you of ambiguity.”

  “When it’s all over, we’ll sit down and discuss things.” She smiled and put a hand on my upper arm. “We can probably wind up friends, as hard as that may be to believe right now.”

  “Oh, good,” I said. “A man can always use a friend.”

  25

  The truth,unless a lie works better

  Her hand in mine was a surprise.

  Trey had commandeered a large screening room for the press conference. It seated maybe forty people, and from the sound of it, it was jammed. We could hear the hubbub the moment we opened the door into the backstage area, a jumble of voices like a crowd scene in an old radio show.

  The moment she heard them, Thistle reached over and grabbed my hand. Her palm was damp and her hand was as small as a child’s.

  It was dark backstage, but there was a spill of light from the proscenium, which was brighter than the equator at high noon. We came in stage left, about ten feet from the brilliant stage, and the first things I saw were two sixty-inch flat-screen TVs with a tall wood-and-canvas director’s chair dead center between them. The chair was on the monitors, too. And then I saw the five gigantic blow-ups of Thistle, taken when she was fourteen or fifteen, propped up on easels. Judging from their underexposure and general graininess, they were probably blowups from video. Technically they were a mess, but their message was clear, and it was sick enough to stop Thistle in her tra
cks.

  “How could she?”

  “She’s smart, Thistle. She knows what her visual is. You, talking about doing this kind of a movie, in front of those pictures.”

  She was shifting from foot to foot, still hanging onto my hand. “I can’t. I can’t go out there. Not with those.”

  I thought, the hell with it. I gave her hand a tug. “Good. Let’s go.”

  “But she’ll fire me. I need-I need that money.”

  “She can’t fire you. If she fires you, she hasn’t got a movie.”

  She put both hands over mine, squeezing hard. “She will. She’s using this to figure out whether I’m going to do what she wants me to do. If I don’t go out there, I won’t get anything.”

  “Thistle. Listen to me. I’m working for her. It’s my job to make sure she gets this movie done. But I’m telling you that this isn’t worth a couple hundred thousand. Let’s go.”

  “I can’t. It’s not … you don’t know. I can’t even pay my rent.”

  “I’ll pay your fucking rent.”

  “What, for the rest of my life? Are you hearing yourself?” She dropped my hand and turned away from me, the carefully brushed hair catching fire in the light from the stage. She put both hands on top of her head, one atop the other, palms down. “Ohhhh,” she said. “Oh, I am so fatally fucked.” One hand dropped to her stomach. “I don’t feel good.”

  “Come on. We’ll get out of here and think about this later.”

  “Later. Later. There isn’t any later. This is later. Before is over, it ended a long time ago, and this is where I am. Oh, God, look at those dickheads out there. I need a wastebasket.”

  I didn’t see one, but there was a fire bucket against one wall, and I said, “Over there,” and Thistle ran to it, bent over, and vomited. She heaved until there wasn’t anything left, and all I could do was watch the spasms rack her narrow shoulders and listen to her cough as she tried to bring up more. The cough turned into a sob and then two and then three, her body forcing them out as though something massive was squeezing her, and I thought she was going to lose it completely, but she choked it off somehow and remained there, bent over the bucket, as the chatter continued from the screening room and erupted into laughter. Her fists were clenched, her arms straight down with the elbows locked. Then, when she knew she had it under control, she relaxed her back and arms, straightened, and wiped her mouth.

  She turned around and looked back at the light pouring off of the stage area, as though she wouldn’t be surprised to see an arena full of lions, lazily waiting for her. Then she closed both eyes tight, squared her shoulders, and breathed out, hard. Her eyes opened again, and she was looking at me.

  “Relax,” she said. “I used to do that before the first take every day. Is my chin clean?”

  “Immaculate.”

  “How’s my makeup?”

  I looked closely. “It’s okay. Your mascara ran a little bit.”

  “I always tear up when I vomit.” Her eyes dared me to contradict her. “Can you fix it for me?”

  “Not one of my specialties, but I can try.” I put my left hand on her shoulder and used the tip of my right little finger to wipe away the errant black tracks. Beneath my hand, she was shuddering as though she was moments from freezing to death. “You’re okay,” I said.

  “I doubt it,” she said. Her voice was steady. “But it should at least be interesting. I just heaved Doc’s pills, all the downers and smoothies, everything that was supposed to slow me down, and he gave me a second shot. Oh, and one of the makeup girls had some coke. So I’m going nowhere but up.” Her face was slick with sweat, and she mopped it with the back of her hand, then slipped her hands into the neck of her T-shirt and put them under her arms. She pulled her hands out and wiped them on her jeans. “I’m sopping,” she said. “Dead wet girls. I remember you talking about dead wet girls. Claudette Colbert and dead wet girls. What a frame of reference.”

  I took my hand off her shoulder. “I’m telling you for the last time, don’t go out there.”

  Her eyes came up to mine. “Why? You’re working for Trey, right? What do you care?”

  “This sounds corny, but beautiful things shouldn’t be wrecked. It’s nothing to cheer about when trash gets wrecked, but you have something only one person in ten million has. You need to take care of it.”

  “You still don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t have anything. That wasn’t me. I’m trash, and I need two hundred thousand dollars. Trash buys dope. Are you coming?”

  “I said I would.”

  “People say a lot of things.” She turned to face the stage, just in time to see Trey step into the light on the other side. “I didn’t mean that,” she said without turning back to me.

  “What the hell are you going to tell them?”

  “Trey said, tell them the truth,” she said in Trey’s voice. “So I will. Unless a lie works better.”

  “You’re absolutely certain.”

  “I’m waiting for the alternative.”

  “Okay, I’m with you. Give me your right shoe.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Trey said. “I’m Trey Annunziato, the executive producer of Three Wishes. Thank you so much for coming.”

  “My shoe? Why do you need-”

  “I just need it. Right now. Hurry.”

  She put a hand on my arm for balance, bent down, and pulled off her right sneaker. I took it and used the little penknife I always carry to worry a hole in the toe. “I’ll buy you a new pair,” I said. “Get this back on.”

  “… one of the most talented actresses ever on American television, and the youngest Emmy winner ever,” Trey was saying. She looked across the stage and saw me standing over Thistle, who was on one knee pulling her shoe on. Trey raised both eyebrows at me, clearly in the imperative and meaning Get her ready right now.

  “I think this is your cue,” I said.

  “Wooo, that’s a lot of dope,” Thistle said, standing back up. “Going up. Wish I hadn’t heaved those Percocets. Listen, if I say too much, put your hand on my shoulder, okay? If I keep talking, squeeze. I might not notice if you don’t.”

  “… my great pleasure,” Trey said, “to introduce you to Thistle Downing.”

  “Fuck you and hello,” Thistle said, smiling at Trey.

  She stepped out on the stage with me two paces behind her, and every light in the northern hemisphere flashed at us. A few people clapped, but it didn’t catch on. Cameras exploded all over the room, and the lights on half a dozen TV cameras did their electric supernovas. The light was so thick I felt like we were wading through it.

  The director’s chair I’d seen on the monitors was dead center on the stage, positioned in front of the earliest of the photos of Thistle. This close to the picture, I revised my guess at her age downward to thirteen. Thistle hoisted herself up into the chair and the image was echoed on the monitors. I stood next to her, and the bulbs all went off again as I blinked against them. I caught a sudden whiff of something sharp and acidic and realized it was Thistle’s fear.

  “Could you move away?” a photographer shouted at me. I started to step aside, but Thistle sunk nails into my wrist. I stayed where I was.

  “Who is he?” someone else called out.

  People were shouting questions, and Thistle didn’t respond, just sat perfectly still, her eyes floating somewhere above the crowd as though there were a ball of light drifting there, maybe bringing the Good Witch of the East to her rescue. Trey watched nervously. To her it may have seemed as though Thistle was in command of herself, waiting calmly for order, but her grip on my wrist actually hurt, and the knuckles of her other hand, clasping the arm of her chair, were about to burst through the skin. Eventually, the noise died away.

  “That’s better,” Thistle said. Her voice was very small. People in the four rows of seats leaned forward to hear her and some of them held up small tape recorders. The film crews standing at the back of the room fiddled with their equipment. “Someone as
ked-” She cleared her throat and started over, louder this time. “Someone asked who this man is. He’s my personal burglar. Every girl needs a burglar, and he’s mine.” They started to shout again, and Thistle held up both hands. When it was relatively quiet again, she said, “I have very sensitive hearing. Especially right now. If you keep yelling, I’ll have to leave. Just put up a hand, and I’ll call on you one at a time.”

  From her side of the stage Trey said, “I thought I might choose the questions.”

  Without turning her head, Thistle said, “Did you really?” Trey gave her a smile that should have sliced her in half, and stepped back in retreat.

  “What’s his name?” a photographer called. “For the captions.”

  “My name is Pockets Mahoney,” I said.

  “Pockets is a nickname,” Thistle said. “You should put it in quotation marks, those of you who bother to punctuate.” She pointed to a woman in the middle of the first row and said, “You. You get to shoot first.”

  “Thistle,” the woman said, oozing empathy. “You were a big star. Why are you doing this?”

  Thistle said, “I need money. Don’t you ever need money?”

  “But you sold your residuals,” the woman said. “You got hundreds of millions of dollars for them. What happened to all that?”

  “I made bad investments,” Thistle said.

  Other people were waving their hands, but the woman persisted. “Investments in what?”

  Thistle said, “Pharmaceuticals,” and pointed at a short man with a toupee so bad I could spot it past all the lights.

  “You have a whole generation of new fans,” he began.

  Thistle said, “If you say so.”

  “Most of them are young girls. How do you think they’ll feel to know you’re making an adult film? Do you think that you’re a good role model for them?”

  The girl who did Thistle’s hair had put some sort of guck on her bangs to make them look spiky, and she took one of the spikes and twirled it between her fingers, her hand hiding part of her face. “Do you want a serious answer?”