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had been right. If I’d been born a good-looking blonde girl, I might have sold my body and my soul to be in her shoes. Then again, maybe not.
    “By the way, can you park your car in front of my condo tonight?”
    “Sure.” James was going to pick me up and drive me back to our dingy apartment.
    “Sandy seems to think his wife is suspicious of me.”
    Suspicious? From what Sarah had told me, Carol Conroy could have enough evidence to kick Sandler out for good.
    She slowly stood up, letting me admire her figure in a short red dress that pulled tight at her chest. “God, I hope he gets his paycheck soon.”
    I hoped I got mine soon. What had started out to be a really good opportunity was fast becoming a nightmare.
    “Then, I’ll see you tonight.” She paused for a moment. “Well, I’ll see your car. She gave me that soft smile. Sarah reached down and touched my hand giving it a gentle squeeze.
    “One more thing.” I hesitated. I hated this part of the sale, especially when I knew the client. “The contract calls for fifty percent up front and—”
    “Skip. Are you afraid you won’t get paid?” She let go of my hand and gave me a quizzical look.
    “No, no. But Michael, the boss, plays by the rules.” I figured if they didn’t pay half up front Michael would still authorize the installation. There was no way he was going to lose a sale this big.
    “I’ll get you the check before you start the job. Which,” she looked at her gold Rolex watch, “should be in two days. Right?”
    I nodded.
    “We’re anxious to get started on a new project, Skip, and I know that Sandy wants the security system functional before we go into production.”
    “You never did tell me what this big project is.”
    Sarah put an index finger to her lips. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone. I’m not even supposed to know.”
    All kinds of secrets going on at Synco Systems.
    “But it has something to do with the Department of Defense. I’m pretty sure that’s who it is. Pretty sure.”
    “The federal government?” I pushed my chair back and stood up. The top of her golden head barely reached my shoulder.
    “You can’t tell anyone.”
    “No.”
    “They’re putting in a new computer network program and we’ve come up with a system that is fool proof. Ralph,” she hesitated, a catch in her voice, “Ralph told me just yesterday, that there was no way anyone could hack this system.”
    I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that our job involved the Department of Defense. I wasn’t supposed to mention the fact that I was Sarah’s pretend boyfriend, and I certainly couldn’t tellSarah that I knew she was a prostitute. And, oh yeah, I wasn’t going to tell anyone that Carol Conroy wanted to talk to me about Ralph Walters’s suicide. And I was this guy who wasn’t any good at keeping secrets.

CHAPTER NINE
    The Red Derby was a tiny bar that was crammed into a little stucco strip of four buildings on Biscayne Bay Boulevard. The lounge sported a neon red derby hat that flashed outside the door, and I wondered how a bar like this got its name. Did the owner wear a red derby? Did anyone wear a red derby? I’d never even seen anybody wear a derby in my entire life.
    I parked down a couple of spaces from the dirty white front of the building and walked up, past a small barbershop, studying the yellow stains where the cracked sidewalk met the stucco. I didn’t even want to think what those stains might be. What was Carol Conroy thinking about when she called a meeting in a place like this? The Red Derby wasn’t even a place that James and I would usually go, and we’d go just about anywhere that served cold beer.
    Inside, the odor hit me fast. The smell of stale beer that had soaked into the carpet, the cigarette smoke that had permeated the heavy curtains, the curtains that hung in shreds from the window, and a sour smell that I couldn’t quite place. A lone drinker with long hair and jeans and a T-shirt sat at the bar,