No Immunity

now it’s their song, too, and that’s all the better. But a comic, dang, you better be fresh, fresher, freshest every night or you are stale meat. I’ll tell you I don’t see anything without trying to twist the humor out of it. You can believe—Brad, right?—that the strange guy in the bathroom’ll turn up somewhere in my monologue.”
    A muted sound, possibly a knock, came from the front of the house. The real photographer? If it wasn’t, it would he in a minute. He didn’t have time to ogle and dream. Jeez, he’d just about forgotten about Grady Hummacher. Some detective he was. “Cassie, do me a favor. Think. Have you seen anything of Grady Hummacher in the last two days? Seen his car? Seen him going in or out?”
    She shook her head unconvincingly.
    Tchernak had gotten into the house here, into her bathroom, for Chrissakes, he couldn’t come up empty! Think on your feet, Kiernan would say. Make up something that’ll get her attention. Sickness? It had sure gotten Kiernan’s attention when that doctor buddy of hers called. And Adcock did say Grady could have picked up something in Panama. “Look, Grady may be sick. He’s been in Panama, in the rain forest. He could have caught a virus down there, he could be really out of it. He—”
    “Virus? You mean like a contagious virus, like the Legionnaires’ disease that wiped out whole hotels?” For the first time her hands stopped moving and she looked directly at him. Under her thick makeup her forehead winkled in horror.
    He’d overdone it. He didn’t even know if Kiernan’s case of supposed hemorrhagic fever was really epidemic stuff, much less what was going on with Grady Hummacher. Kiernan wouldn’t care, but he did. “I don’t mean he’s got j anything that’ll wipe out the city overnight—”
    “Are you out of your mind? Plague? Do you know what that’d do to business?” Her face had gone clown white against her red hair. She shuddered, and for a moment he thought she was going to start throwing the bags of makeup at him.
    “Really, I’m sure you’re not in any danger. But the sooner I find Grady, the sooner I can get him checked. Did you see—”
    She lurched forward. “I’m calling the cops. They can check the hotels.”
    Tchernak held up a hand. “Hey, wait. This may be nothing more than the flu. Don’t create panic. I just need j to find Grady.” He took a breath, watching her body for charge-on or hesitate-back. She stayed put. Tchernak took that as hesitation. “Sorry if I upset you.”
    “Upset! Jeez, my whole damned career could be going down the toilet and you talk about upset!”
    “Did you see Grady?”
    “No, dammit, I didn’t see him this week. Not him, not his damn car, not his damn spots or glow or whatever. You know that’s one subject there’s not a hook anywhere. No one no-how’s going to get a laugh out of an epidemic.”
    “Did he ever mention a woman named Leah or Lindsay or Luanne?”
    “Him? My neighbor? I think maybe I said hello to him once. Look, I’ve lived here only a couple months. The Millennium was going to use Ginger Staley until she got too big for her corset and they canned her, and voilà, me. So most of my two months here has been in and out of sequins. I wouldn’t have had time to chat him up even if he weren’t married.”
    “Married? He’s married? You sure?”
    “No, of course I’m not sure. Whadaya think, I asked? Nah, they just had that look, you know, like they’d been together long enough for the glow to be caput. She could have been his sister, but not quite, you know what I mean?”
    “How about a girlfriend he wants to break up with?” She cocked her head to one side, thinking. “Yeah, could he. But he said something.... What did he say? It was on the steps out front. He was— Oh yeah, he introduced her as Doctor.”
    “Doctor what?”
    “See, that’s why I didn’t catch her name, I was so stunned with her being a doctor. I mean, doctors, they’re serious people, and I’ve been around enough to know a pod-time boy when I see one, and I’ll tell you, my neigh-or there, he’s one. The two of them, Brad, they just didn’t go together. I mean, I even wondered if he was sick and she was making a house call; that’s how not-together those two were.”
    The doorbell rang.
    “I need to find her. Did Grady ever say her last name or where she lived or—”
    “Honey, I don’t think so. But, you know, it’s not on the top layer of my mind right now,