Free The Fame Thief by Timothy Hallinan Page A

have a daughter.”
    Debbie said, “I like her better than I like you.”
    “I’m not looking for your vote,” I said. “I have rules, and that’s one of them.”
    “So Louie said.” Debbie was alone on the love seat, and it dwarfed her, making her look like a ten-year-old. A ten-year old who had a great many notches on her water pistol. “I’m going to pick up the bag now,” she said. “Don’t get your intestines in a knot.” She bent down and hoisted the carpetbag, just barely muffling a grunt.
    “Jesus,” I said. “What’s in there, your bowling equipment?”
    “It’s mostly makeup,” she said, up to her elbow in the bag. “Don’t you carry a lot of makeup?”
    “I think that one was for you,” I said to Ronnie, who was watching Debbie as though she were something coiled in a circle on the other side of a plate of four-inch-thick glass.
    “No,” Ronnie said, keeping her eyes on what she could see of Debbie’s hands. “I kind of do it in the morning and forget about it.”
    “You’ve got that kind of skin,” Debbie said. “Wish I did. Hold this.” She extended a hand that had a 22 automatic in it. “I keep bending my nails on it.”
    Ronnie took the gun and gave me a helpless look.
    “That should relax everyone,” Debbie said rooting around in the bag.
    “You’ve got others,” I said.
    “Well, sure I do. And that one’s empty, anyway. It was just a gesture. What kind of moisturizer?”
    “Clinique,” Ronnie said. “The yellow stuff.”
    “Pricey.”
    “You’re only young for free once. After that, they charge you.”
    “Ah, here we are.” Debbie pulled out a thick envelope. “You can thank your little friend Louie for one thing. He inflated your fee for saying yes.”
    “He’ll hit me for the difference,” I said. I got up and took the envelope, giving it an experimental heft. “How much?”
    “Thirty-five hundred.”
    “The piker,” I said. “He could’ve said five.”
    “With all due respect to you and your friendship, he was walking a balance beam. He figured you wouldn’t want me to be too highly invested in the outcome. As a disappointed customer, I’m a nightmare.”
    “I don’t have any disappointed customers.”
    “Not what I hear. Trey Annunziato isn’t crazy about you.”
    “Trey’s the only one.”
    “Or Jake Whelan.”
    I said, “Oops.”
    “Just messing with you. He thinks you’re terrific.”
    “That’s a relief.” Jake Whelan, once Hollywood’s hottest producer, had paid me some of the money he had left overafter buying all the cocaine in the western hemisphere, and had received in return a picture he thought was a genuine Paul Klee. I’d been waiting for that shoe to drop for more than a year. “You’ve been busy.”
    “Attention to detail is essential to success.” She said it almost automatically, as though it were a mantra. “Don’t you find that?”
    “Sometimes,” I said.
    I got the pursed mouth of disapproval. “If you don’t, you won’t be in business long.”
    “I also believe in unprepared improvisation. You can’t always have a plan. Sometimes you have to make your leap and grow your wings on the way down.”
    “Did you make that up?”
    “No,” I said, “but I believe it. So, your daughter.”
    She waggled her hand,
mas o menos
. “My daughter
maybe
.”
    “Okay. Take it in order. How do you know anyone is looking for you, why do you think it might be your daughter, and why—if it is your daughter—would she want to kill you?”
    “That’s what I like about men,” Debbie said. “No emotions at all.”
    “I didn’t see you break out a hankie.”
    “How do I know someone is looking for me, right? That was the first question. Someone, a young woman of about eighteen, has been knocking on doors in my hometown—”
    “Which is?”
    “Las Vegas.”
    Ronnie said, “I didn’t think anyone came from Las Vegas.”
    “Yeah?” Debbie said. “Where are you from?”
    “Trenton,” Ronnie said.
    I