"Thank you," I said, and hugged my damp towel to my chest. "That was unusually kind."

"I have the halvah," she said.

I raised a brow or two. "What?"

"Come." Folding her paper neatly, she stood up and traipsed past me into the kitchen. An oblong table boasted a pan of bars sprinkled with powdered sugar. "I have made the halvah. But I have no sisters with who to share."

In the end, we sat eating a foreign ambrosia that had apparently been created in her very own kitchen.

"Are you not lonely?" she asked finally.

I glanced up. The remainder of the bars were calling to me with b.u.t.tery goodness, making me wonder a little obsessively if it would be rude to grab the pan and make a dash for my front door. "Lonely?" I asked.

She pursed her lips and studied her fingers, entwined upon the tabletop. Shame crossed her pleasant features. "I have the guilt," she said.

"It"s going around," I admitted, still eyeing the bars.

"My husband says I should be in the song."

I tried to understand her meaning, but the bars had almonds and sugar, and did I mention b.u.t.ter? I love b.u.t.ter more than I love Francois.

"He say I am the lucky woman. My children are healthy. There is food." She motioned to the table.

It seemed like the perfect time to segue into a request for more heaven in a pan. In fact, I was choosing my next piece of ambrosia when I heard a strange, strangled noise coming from the far side of the table. Wrenching my gaze away from the dessert, I saw that Ramla was crying.

Now, I"ll be the first to admit that if anyone is comfortable with tears, it should be a psychologist, but I"m from Chicago, where we only cry when the Bears lose and/or we run out of beer.

"Mrs. Al-Sadr?" I ventured, voice tentative.

"My sister, she is troubled," she said.

I nodded and listened.

t was fully dark when I left her house and trekked up the crumpling walkway to my front door. Harlequin did a few prancing leaps to demonstrate his happiness, and I smiled. Loneliness is a funny thing. Sometimes abated by nothing more than a flop-eared dog the size of a small satellite. Sometimes not abated at all.

at.u.r.day arrived right on schedule. Not wanting to overuse the peeing privileges at my neighbors", I walked down to the nearest Exxon to use their restroom, then had a bowl of cereal in lieu of nutrition and spent the remainder of the day at my computer.

I had promised Ramla I would do what I could. Her sister, it seemed, was in a bad marriage with a bad man in a bad part of Yemen, so I Googled immigration laws and settled in.

By five in the afternoon my bladder was making believable threats about implosion. Latching on Harley"s leash, I popped into the Saturn, peed at Vons supermarket, then filled a cotton tote with groceries and headed back home.

Sunday went much the same, except that I had fresh milk and bagels in the fridge.

My Internet system is slower than an Ashtanga yoga master, but I eventually learned that immigration possibilities were grimmer than I realized. By comparison, my little corner of the world seemed relatively placid, but hate crimes were hardly unheard of. A Muslim man had been shot in Detroit for no known reason other than his faith. A woman in Atlanta had her burka torn off while being chastised for wickedness.

The Moral Majority seemed to be having a field day with us imperfects lately: the gays, the ...

My mind fumbled off on a tangent. Both Baltimore and Casero had, at least by some standards, wandered off the straight and narrow. One was a lesbian, the other an alcoholic. Did that suggest a trend, or was the majority of the population on a broader, curvier path?

Back to my investigation, I Googled odd deaths again. A rock climber had died while rappelling down a cliff in New Mexico. Authorities believed he died of an internal hemorrhage. A woman in Minnesota had been killed by a moose. The moose in question had declined comment. Chances were good, however, that he was disgruntled about human encroachment. But as far as I could discern, neither the victims nor the moose had any connection with Senator Rivera.

The rest of the reports were both revolting and mesmerizing. I stared at my computer screen, Google-eyed, and narrowed my search to deaths and Rivera. Salina Martinez popped up in a thousand formats. There were photos and accusations and long-winded stories concerning her job, her acquaintances, and her pulchritude. I moved on. I knew who had caused her death. In fact, the memory of an old man with a poker made me check the locks on my doors before settling back in my thumb-size office.

Sometime later I found the obituary for Francis Rivera. He was a shortstop for the Atlanta Braves. There was talk of steroids and batting averages, but no one suggested he had been either the senator"s illegitimate son or his longtime lover.

Jimmy Rivera had died in Arizona, but he was ninety-two at the time of death, so murder seemed unlikely. I moved on.

Two months ago a woman named Carmella Ortez had perished in a house fire in her home in Baton Rouge. She"d been a Rivera before her marriage and subsequent divorce, but there must be thousands of Riveras on the Gulf Coast. I was scrolling dismissively downward when a photo snagged my attention.

A dark-haired woman was smiling at the photographer. Standing beside her, arm wrapped around her back, was a Latino demiG.o.d.

I glanced down at the caption, read the words, and felt my heart thump to a stop in my chest.

Miguel Geraldo Rivera, it read.

17.

It"s not what you know, it"s who you sleep with.

-The Magnificent Mandy N THE FOLLOWING DAY I focused on my clients as best I could, but sometimes their problems seemed a little less pressing than my own.

Micky Goldenstone was one of the exceptions.

He sat on my couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He had wide palms, shiny nails, and the lean, hungry look of a fighter.

"So, Micky," I said, and prepared for battle, "how was work this week?"

He brought his gaze to mine. Pa.s.sion was running wild in his eyes. "The kid"s seven."

I debated pretending ignorance, but why pretend when reality is so handy?

"Kaneasha"s child," I said.

He jerked to his feet. "He"s in the first grade. Or should be." He paced toward my lone window, body language growling.

"Have you spoken to her?"

I wasn"t sure if he heard me.

"Name"s Jamel. Lives in Lynwood with his aunt."

I said nothing. Micky would talk when he felt ready. "Don"t know where his mama is. The sister-Lavonn-I remember her from the old neighborhood. Not pretty like Kaneasha." He stopped. Silence ticked off seconds.

"Does Lavonn know who the father is?"

He said nothing. Time echoed along.

"Do you think-"

"Didn"t really seem like something I could ask," he said abruptly, and faced me. "Hey, this is Pitt from the hood. I raped your sister about the time she got knocked up. You think the kid"s mine?"

"He may not be," I said, tone carefully steady.

He closed his eyes. I settled in for another silence, but he spoke in a moment. "Got ears like d.a.m.n propellers."

Micky"s were small and flat against his skull. I didn"t make mention.

"Where did you see him?"

"Drove by Lavonn"s house."

"Are you sure it was him?"

"He"s got the ears."

I opened my mouth.

"My mother was a..." He paused, gritted his teeth, glanced toward the ceiling. "She taped my ears down when I was a baby. Taped "em to my skull so they wouldn"t stick out like a d.a.m.n chinchilla"s." He closed his eyes. Anger danced in his dark jaw. "n.o.body even cared enough to tape his ears down," he said, and suddenly he was crying.

The remainder of the day went just about as well.

I discovered that I had gained another pound. I was still peeing in distant locales, and, if the truth be told, I still had no idea how or if Carmella Ortez fit into the big picture.

By the time I reached home, I was exhausted. There"s nothing like a day of sitting on your a.s.s, followed by a climate-controlled ride home, to really take it out of a girl, but a bowl of Haagen-Dazs revived me. Glucose disguised as a dairy product. Can"t beat it.

Duly rejuvenated, I printed up photos of Carmella, Kathy and Emanuel.

At one time or another they all had ties to Senator Rivera, and all died in some bizarre circ.u.mstances. Okay, maybe the deaths weren"t all that bizarre, but none of the deceased lived a particularly high-risk life and all had died in unusual ways: Kathy Baltimore had been dismembered by a machine she was familiar with and usually kept shielded. Manny Casero-an excellent swimmer, according to Mac-had drowned. And Carmella Ortez had died in a house fire. Granted, fires could ignite anywhere, but according to the almighty Internet, Baton Rouge was the sixth wettest city in the United States, so it wasn"t as if the region was plagued by prairie fires. That added her death to the rather unlikely category in my mind. On the other hand, why would anyone want to kill any of them? The question was burning a hole in my head.

I picked up the phone before I could stop myself. The senator himself answered on the second ring.

"Christina." His voice was like liquid s.e.x. "It is good to hear your voice." I was never certain how to talk to liquid s.e.x.

"Do you have a minute?"

"For you I have several."

I took a deep breath. "I"d like to ask you a few questions."

"Regarding?"

"Acquaintances from your past."

There was a long note of silence, then: "Christina, I want you to refrain from delving into this. Indeed, after some deliberation I realized that I was-"

"I cashed the check," I blurted. Despite my capitalistic bent and aspirations for larceny, I felt guilty as h.e.l.l, but the SuperSeptic guys were demanding money if I wanted them to continue annihilating my yard.

"Good. I am glad," he said. "Consider it a gift. If one cannot give a small token of-"

"Do you remember a Carmella Ortez?"

The line went quiet, then: "She was a distant cousin. Why do you ask?"

"Do you know how she died?"

"What are you getting at, Christina?"

"Fatal house fires are pretty uncommon, especially on the Gulf Coast." And as far as I could tell, the cause of hers had been undetermined. "Less than fifty a year in Louisiana. I checked."

"Luck is a fickle mistress."

"And seems to be in short supply for your kith and kin. Did Carmella smoke?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Cigarettes are the number-one cause of house fires in the United States."

"Christina-"

"Your son and I are no longer seeing each other, Senator," I blurted.

"I don"t know what that has to do-"

"So there"s no reason for me not to delve into this. Did she smoke?"

"I am certain he will come to his senses in time. He-"

"Did she smoke?" I repeated.

He sighed. "Carmella"s mother"s name was Inez. It means "chaste" in my native tongue. A chaste woman did not go to church with her head uncovered. She did not take the Lord"s name in vain, and she did not smoke. Violators were known to have their mouths cleansed with soap."

"It happens," I said, remembering my own sudsy childhood.

"Inez had her own recipe made from animal fat and lye."

I considered that fact but secretly doubted the use of Dove made the process a h.e.l.l of a lot more pleasant. "So Carmella didn"t smoke," I deduced.

"No."

"How do you account for the fire, then?"

He was silent for a moment, perhaps thinking. Perhaps wondering which hit man to hire to get rid of me. "Carmella had a fondness for candles," he said finally. "Perhaps one of them tipped."