"I"m sorry I"m not being more helpful."

"No, you are," I said. "I just think ... couldn"t you have told me this over the phone?"

He glanced to the right. A man with a suit was walking a Doberman-sans suit.

"You can"t trust phones," he said, sotto voce. "Who knows who might be listening."

I felt the hair on my arms p.r.i.c.kle up, and I shifted my gaze to surrept.i.tiously study the overdressed gentleman. He remained facing forward.

"Really?" I whispered.

D stared at me with serious intent, then said, "No," and laughed. "I just wanted to see you. Give you another chance."

It took me a moment to get my head back in the game. "At?" We had returned to the parking area near the languorously leaning walnut tree.

He took my arm and tugged me into the shadows.

"Sleeping with me," he said.

My mouth dropped open.

"This is a pretty spot," he said.

"Here?" My voice had zipped from wobbly to squeaky, missing all areas in between.

"Warm," he said, and stroked my arm. "Not too many onlookers."

"Not too many..." I glanced around, horrified and kind of turned on. "There are dozens."

"Want me to get rid of them?" he asked, and brushed a few strands of hair behind my ear.

"No." I felt a little breathless. A little overheated. A lot h.o.r.n.y. I can"t help it. It"s not as if every wannabe cowboy makes me hot. Well, maybe it is, but...

"You deserve better, Chrissy" he said, and leaned in, but just then something wet touched my hand.

I glanced down. It was a nose. The nose was attached to a smiling blond canine.

"Rocky," someone called.

The voice rumbled across my quivering inner ear and straight to my nipples. I turned-sure, absolutely certain, Rivera couldn"t have ended up in the same dog park at the same time. He didn"t even have a dog, except for the retriever named Rockette he shared with his ex-wife, who was as cute as a...

I glanced up and there he was, standing just a few feet away, looking hard and intense in the dark-s.e.x way only truly difficult men can achieve. I froze like dried linguine. Harlequin wasn"t so inhibited. He romped giddily around Rivera"s legs, then gamboled off with the retriever, apparently unconcerned about his beloved"s canine infidelity.

Rivera lifted his midnight eyes. Our gazes clashed like thunderclaps. Silence echoed between us.

"This him?" D asked. The world came crashing back around my ears. "The infamous Jack Rivera?"

"Yes. Yes." It seems I had forgotten that Rivera affected me like a half-gallon jug of fermented moonshine, but it all came rushing back now. "D ..." I didn"t know the exact etiquette for introducing a crime boss to an officer of the law. "This is Rivera. Rivera-"

"He"s shorter than I expected," D said.

"D," Rivera said, and took one taut step toward us. "That your first name or your last?"

D didn"t answer.

My mind was jumping in concert with my nerves, but I tried to make nice. "I was just walking Harlequin. Lovely evening, isn"t it?" Lovely evening! Holy c.r.a.p! I sounded like a constipated librarian. "I mean, it was too nice out to-" I was yapping like a lapdog, but just then Rivera reached into his back pocket. I braced myself for an ensuing gun battle, but he only pulled out a badge. "I"m Lieutenant Rivera. LAPD." He flipped the badge shut and shoved it back out of sight. "And you are?"

A grin twisted D"s mouth into what some brave souls might have considered a smile. "Your lieutenant seems a little insecure," he said.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Rivera asked, and took another step forward, but I shoved myself between them.

"D"s a friend. From Chicago," I yammered. "Just in town for a couple of hours before his-"

"How good a friend?" he murmured, and lowered his hot-tamale eyes to mine.

I was breathing hard. There was a dark chemistry brewing between us. It may have been toxic and deadly, but it was also hopelessly alluring.

"We met years ago when-"

"How good a friend?" he asked again, and seared me with his eyes.

I felt the draw of him like a fist around my senses, squeezing me close, stopping my breath, but I fought the weakness. He had given up on me, walked out, quit the fight when I was just gearing up for battle.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you to ask?" I gritted.

He jerked his head toward D but never dropped my gaze. "Who the h.e.l.l is he?"

"You made it pretty clear you weren"t interested."

"That doesn"t mean you have to-"

"Are you or aren"t you?" I snarled.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. He fisted his hands, controlled his breathing, then lifted his attention with slow deliberation from me to D. Their gazes struck like lightning. "If you hurt her, I"ll carve my name on your f.u.c.king heart," he said, and, turning, stalked away, Rockette bounding along beside him.

The world returned to normal by slow increments. My heart was thudding heavily in my chest. Harlequin was still s...o...b..ry, and D was grinning like an ecstatic monkey.

"Well," he said, "that went better than expected."

16.

I ain"t taking no more rides on the stupid train.

-Shirley Templeton,

fed up with infidelity,

excuses, and men in

general

HE SEPTIC GUYS began digging up my yard the next day. It was Friday. I pretended my life wasn"t a wasteland, woke early showered, washed my hair, and artfully applied half a dump truck of makeup. After that I carefully dressed in a mulberry skirt and an ivory blouse with a little ruffle down the front.

I looked good. And why shouldn"t I? There was no telling who I might see today. Maybe a mob boss. Maybe a senator with presidential ambitions. Maybe a rabid lieutenant who made me hot and angry and psychotic all in one fell swoop. Or maybe I"d meet someone normal. Stranger things have happened.

As far as I knew, D had returned to Chicago, but I didn"t know much. We"d parted at the dog park after our surreal meeting with Rivera, and I hadn"t heard from him since.

I can"t remember which clients I saw that day. I can only a.s.sume I spoke to a few and didn"t screw up their lives any worse than they already were, but my mind was scrambling. Every spare second, I was on the Internet, researching recent California deaths.

There was a b.u.t.tload of them.

By the time my final client left, I felt like my mind had been run through a Cuisinart.

"You okay?" Shirley asked as I staggered out of my office for the final time that day. The Magnificent Mandy had been kind enough to remain bedridden. "You look a little punch-drunk."

I took the chair not far from her. "Do you believe in coincidence, Shirley?"

"Coincidence?"

"Yes."

"Like, every time my ex had a poker game with the guys, it just happened to be the same time that tramp Malika was in town?"

I gave that a moment of judicious consideration. "Yes," I said finally. "Like that."

She sighed heavily. Her majestic bosom heaved. She crossed her arms over it and narrowed her eyes. "I maybe used to believe in coincidence. Sometimes bad things just up and happen. But more often than not, I think bad things happen "cuz somebody somewhere"s been taking them for a ride on the stupid express. Why do you ask?"

"I don"t know." I leaned my head back against the chair. "Maybe I"m just searching for the meaning of life."

She made a hmmmfffmg noise deep in her chest.

"Do you think there is one?" I asked.

"Sure there is."

I perked up a little. Which means I managed to lift my head. "Do you want to share it with me?"

She nodded. "It"s chocolate," she said.

I wasn"t really all that surprised. I just hadn"t heard it verbalized with such succinct eloquence before. "Chocolate?"

"Yeah. Chocolate and babies and the kind of dark jazz that makes your toes curl up in your shoes."

"Jazz."

She lifted her heft out of the chair and rounded her desk. "It"s the good things in life, honey. The things that make you happy way down in your humming place."

I straightened a little. "I"m not sure I have a humming place."

"Oh, you got one. Maybe you just ain"t heard from it for a while. I been around a long time, and I figured out this much: It ain"t the big things that count. Not fame or bank accounts or who you know. It"s those little moments when you smile to yourself and you don"t really know why. You find a few moments like that for yourself or someone else and you got it all."

She shooed me out of the office a few minutes later. I draggled home like a lost puppy. There was a mound of dirt reminiscent of the Sierra Nevadas in my backyard, suggesting bad things for future showers and the contentment of my bladder, but I strapped on my running shoes and took Harlequin for a jog. It was getting dark by the time I got home, and I was dripping fluids from every pore.

"Miss Christina." I glanced up. Mrs. Al-Sadr stood on the opposite side of the fence. Below her long paisley skirt, her gra.s.s was as uniform and green as outdoor carpeting. "Your yard is ugly mess."

In all the time I had lived on Opus Street, I hadn"t exchanged more than two sentences with Mrs. Al-Sadr, but I had to admit, five truer words had never been spoken.

"Yes, sorry about that," I said.

She shrugged. "A neat yard, it is the concern of husbands, yes?"

Having neither a neat yard nor a husband, I had no idea. I nodded and turned away, but she spoke again.

"Do you bath?" she asked.

"What"s that?"

She was silent for a moment as if searching for the right words, then motioned, indicating me or the dirt mound or both. "You have need of bath."

Ten minutes later I was gathering up my toiletries. I didn"t know the proper etiquette for using other people"s water, so I packed my own bathroom condiments and trekked down the sidewalk. Mrs. Al-Sadr greeted me at the door with a shy smile. I schlepped past two solemn-faced, dark-eyed children and in moments found myself in heaven.

Their bathtub was one of those Jacuzzi types. I washed my hair, soaked, and found that I was smiling as I shaved my legs. Who would have suspected I would find my humming place in someone else"s tub?

Finally, squeaky clean and as sweet-smelling as cookie dough, I pulled on sweatpants and T-shirt, then wandered, wet-headed, out into the living room.

Ramla, as she had introduced herself earlier, was reading a newspaper called Al-Ayyam. No one else was in sight.