82 Desire

people who hired assassins.
    Hiring Allred was the best thing he’d ever done, and simultaneously the worst. The detective was your basic sleazebag incompetent, but somehow he’d lucked into this Talba Wallis babe. Ray wasn’t sure where she came from and what her experience was—Allred never told him how long she’d been with him—but he’d seen her work and the girl was good.
    He’d gone to see Allred every single day Talba worked for United Oil, and gotten a detailed report. He didn’t want to meet her for obvious reasons—the fewer people who knew who he was, the better. But he’d spied on her going to work and heard tapes of her conversations with Allred, and now he’d heard her read her poetry. He’d run a company a long time, and employees like her didn’t come along every day—smart, resourceful, able to think on their feet.
    If she were the damn detective, everything would have been fine. But Allred had to mess it up by getting greedy. That last night, the night she came back with the disk, Allred broke his standing date with Ray. Said he was sick or some such bull. And then he called later and changed the terms.
    Well, no problem. No fucking problem at all. Ray Boudreaux was as damn resourceful as Ms. Talba Wallis. He could break into a penny-ante dick’s office and steal what he had to.
    But, Jesus, he nearly threw up when he saw those damn open, staring eyes with bugs trucking across them like they were the 1-10 of Bugland. And then, along came Talba Wallis herself. Well, he blew the whole damn thing, but he’d recovered nicely.
    Impersonating Langdon was a good touch. Or it had seemed so at the time. Now it appeared that was what was pissing Talba off.
    Goddammit, he had to get her. What if the seven-fifty didn’t work?
    He sat down and he thought about it and, as always, the threads began to come together.
    Once more, he dialed her number. “It’s me again.”
    “Hello, asshole.”
    He hated that. Just hated it. How dare she? “How’d you enjoy meeting Jane Storey?”
    “You need to get to the point, asshole.”
    She had courage, he had to give her that. She didn’t know if he was a murderer or what, and here she was calling him “asshole.”
    “Is she going to do a story on you?”
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “Because, Baroness, Ms. Storey happens to be a good friend of mine. Why do you think she went to your reading in the first place?”
    “Something to do with Russell Fortier. Somehow, she thought I knew him or something. You responsible for that, shithead?”
    He was going to have to backpedal—he had no idea Storey had showed her hand so fast.
    “You want her to do a story or not?”
    “Yeah, and I want to win the Pulitzer for poetry. She made it clear that’s just about as likely.”
    “Uh-uh.”
    “Uh-uh? What you mean, ‘uh-uh’? You speak English or not?”
    “You help me and Jane Storey’ll make you famous. That’s a promise.”
    “Ho and hum.”
    “And maybe we could get an art critic to take a look at the boyfriend’s work.”
    “What are you talking about? What do you know about Lamar?”
    He hung up, thinking maybe he’d overplayed his hand. She might realize he’d seen Lamar at the reading.
    But probably she hadn’t noticed him. Probably he was just another white potato face.
    ***
    I’m beginning , Jane Storey thought, to feel like a windup doll.
    Worse, she was feeling sheepish about it. She was starting to live for the tipster’s calls. It’s like dating a married man , she thought. And I ought to know . You don’t go out because he might call. You don’t even want to take a shower because you might not hear the phone ring and he might not leave a message. You spend ninety percent of your time waiting to hear from him and one-tenth of one percent actually with him.
    Only she’d never been with the tipster at all, to her knowledge; she’d gotten a great many more promises than stories; and she still didn’t know what any of it was all about. How, for instance, did he know about Russell Fortier’s disappearance, and how did he know about Cindy Lou, and what did he know about Talba Wallis? And, most worrisome of all, how did he know Gene Allred was dead unless he killed him?
    She wasn’t at all sure why she’d wasted an evening going to a poetry reading. True, Talba Wallis was probably a story—not only had Jane heard about the black names for years, she’d been as intrigued as she was horrified by it. But she’d assumed