The Cove

that leaves just Rita. I don't think I could take it if Rita started on me about calling Scott. This was enough-much too much, as a matter of fact."

    "Okay, no more work today, all right?"

    "That was work?"

    “Certainly. We just filled in another piece of the puzzle."

    "James, who knocked both of us out in The Cove and brought me back to Doctor Beadermeyer's?"

    "Beadermeyer or a henchman. Probably not Scott. It was probably the guy who played the role of your father that night in your bedroom window. But now that you've got me, you don't have to be depressed at the number of bad people in the world."

    "They all seem to have congregated around me. Except Noelle."

    He wanted to ask her to go over everything with him, from the day she met Scott Brainerd to now, but he didn't. Give her the day off, make her smile. Maybe they could make love in front of the fireplace. He wanted to make love to her very much. His fingers itched remembering the feel of her, the way she moved against his fingers, the softness of her flesh. He tried to focus on his African violets.

    That evening she pulled her hair back tight, securing it with a clip at the nape of her neck. She put on a big pair of dark sunglasses. "No one would recognize you," Quinlan said, coming up behind her and putting his hands lightly on her shoulders.

    "But let's get a wig anyway. You know something? Your father was killed, what, three weeks ago or so? It was splashed all over TV, all over every tabloid, every newspaper. You, the missing daughter, got the same treatment. Why take the chance on someone recognizing you? I have to tell you, I like you in those sunglasses. You look mysterious. Are you really the same woman who's agreed to marry me? The same woman who woke me up this morning lying on top of me?''

    "I'm the same woman. James, really, the other-I thought that was just a glitch on your part. You really meant it?"

    "Nan, I just wanted to get you in bed and make you come."

    She hit him in the stomach. "Yeah, Sally, I really meant it."

    The Bonhomie Club on Houtton Street was in an old brick building set in the middle of what they called a "border" neighborhood. It was accepted wisdom to take a cab to and from the club or else take a huge risk of losing your entire car, not just the hubcaps.

    James had never really thought about the possible dangers in this area until he handed Sally out of the cab. He looked around at the streetlights, many of them shot out.

    There was litter on the sidewalks, none in front of the club because Ms. Lilly didn't like trash-real trash, white trash, any kind of trash.

    "Like I told you, boy," she'd said when she hired him some four years before, “I like the look of you. No earrings, no tattoos, no bad teeth, and no paunch.

    "You'll have to watch the gals, now, they're a horny bunch and one look at you and they're gonna have visions of sugar cocks dancing in their heads." And she howled at her own humor while James, an experienced agent, a man who'd heard just about every possible combination of crude words, just stood there, embarrassed to his toes. She tweaked his earlobe between two fingers with inch-long bright-pink fingernails and laughed some more. "You're gonna do just fine, boy, just fine."

    And he had. At first the customers, a loyal bunch, the large majority of them black, had looked at him like he was something escaped from the zoo, but Lilly had introduced him, made three off-color jokes about his sax playing, his sex playing, and his red sox playing.

    She was one of his best friends. She'd even given him a raise in January.

    "You'll like Ms. Lilly," Quinlan said to Sally as he shoved open the heavy oak door of the club. "I'm her token white." Marvin the Bouncer was just inside, a heavy scowl on his ugly face until he saw it was Quinlan.

    "Hullo Quinlan," he said. "Who's the chicky?"

    "The chicky is Sally. You can call her Sally, Marvin."

    "Hello, Marvin."

    But Marvin wasn't up for names. He just nodded. "Ms. Lilly is back in her office playing poker with the mayor and some of his lame-assed cronies. No, James, there ain't no drugs. You know Ms. Lilly, she'd shoot anybody before she'd let 'em take a snort.

    "She'll be out before it's time for you to play. As for you, Chicky, you just stay in my eyesight once James is up there wailing his heart out on the stage, all right?

    "She's a cute little chicky, Quinlan. I'll take care of her."

    "I appreciate it, Marvin. She is cute, and a lot of bad