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would you ever have gotten that job if I hadn’t given you the card for this building? Think about that. We both know you came to this city for a reason; I heard what you said to your sister. Well, I’d say you’re well on your way to realizing your dream. And tell me, would you really be there this soon, this fast, if it hadn’t been for me?” And he smiled, a big guileless smile with a little desperate twinkle in his eye.
    Tricia wanted to tell him he was wrong. She wanted to slug him again, knock him off the straight-back chair he was sitting in and show him you didn’t take advantage of a South Dakota girl, no sir. But there was just enough truth to what he said, and she was tired, and the cot across the hall was no feather bed but right now it was calling to her as if it were.
    “All right, Mr. Borden. Here’s my offer to you, you can take it or you can leave it. I didn’t plan to invest thirty-five dollars in your company and I don’t mean to do so now. So we’ll call it a loan. You’re going to pay it back to me, with interest, at the rate of five dollars a week. Let’s say eight weeks instead of seven—that should cover it. If, at the end of eight weeks you haven’t paid me in full, I’ll go to the police and tell them what you did.”
    “They’ll arrest you for usury,” Borden said. “That’s something like one hundred percent interest.”
    “Well, your other choice is that I can go to the police right now,” Tricia said. “Take it or leave it, Mr. Borden.”
    He turned to Erin. “How old would you say she is? Our little usurer? Nineteen going on forty-five?”
    Erin grinned. “I think you’d better agree to her terms, Charley, before she tightens the screws some more.”
    “All right,” Borden said. “All right. I’ll pay. But there’s something you’re going to do for me in return.”
    “What’s that?” Tricia said.
    “You’re going to be working at the Sun, right? That’s Sal Nicolazzo’s joint.” He fished around on his desk, found another book and tossed it to her. Tricia caught it. This one wasn’t a Hard Case Crime title; it said Gold Medal Book in the upper left corner and I, Mobster across the top. The author was identified as “Anonymous.”
    “You’re going to work for your money,” Borden said. “You’re going to keep your eyes and ears open, and you’re going to bring back a story that’ll sell a million copies.”

4.

Little Girl Lost
    The lights went down everywhere but on the little podium where Roberto Monge stood, baton in hand, and the men of his orchestra waited, poised for the downstroke, trombones and clarinets raised, lips puckered. Then the stroke, and music began to flow, like an undulating river, the percussionist in the corner adding a jungle beat by smacking the skins of a bongo. A spotlight splashed the center of the dance floor, so recently filled with swing-dancing couples, illuminating first the ankles, then the legs, then the spangled torso and cleavage and shoulders and beautifully made-up face of Miss Kitty Dufresne, looking so different now from the terrified girl on the bench in Madame Helga’s office. She waited four beats and then launched into her song: When they begin the beguine...it brings back the sound of music so tender...
    It was when Kitty stepped back and returned the microphone to its stand that Tricia and Cecilia came out from the wings on either side, each dressed in a flowing, feather-trimmed skirt and halter top, each swaying to the music. And Tricia looked different, too. Whatever had been left of the innocent eighteen-year-old girl from South Dakota was definitely gone now. Tricia was not only blonde but coiffed like a starlet out of a Hollywood musical. Her lips were pomegranate red, her eyebrows tweezed and shaped and accented with pencil, her eyelids powdered a sultry charcoal blue. Cecilia was the older of the two—by seven years, as she’d confided to Tricia in the dressing room they shared