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only rang once. She hollered something, but I couldn’t make it out over the sound of the water. The next thing I heard was the door slamming, and when I came out, she was gone.
    A book she’d been reading, Man Trap , was on the table. I took it to bed with me, figuring it would either be good for a few laughs or put me to sleep. It was frankly hard to resist the testimonials on the back from women who had almost lost hope, then found the men of their dreams thanks to the Man Trap Way. It wasn’t Nadia’s book. According to the note inside, it had been loaned to her by someone named Maggie M., who wrote, “When your man is starting to drift away, use this book to bring him back.”
    Louise Bryant jumped up and parked her carcass next to mine on the loft bed as I opened Man Trap. A matchbook Nadia had used as a bookmark fell out. Thinking it might provide a clue about where she was from, I picked it up and looked at it. But it was local, from a place called Bus Stop Bar & Grill, and it showed a black silhouette of a building on a red background. The match-book was either really outdated or really retro and cool. I couldn’t decide.
    Inside, in Tamayo’s handwriting, were the words, “Say hey to Stinky for me. T.” I had to laugh. It was just like Tamayo to know a guy named Stinky.
    Man Trap was a very Machiavellian program of tyranny tempered with indulgence, with chapter headings like “Choosing Your Prey,” “The Right Bait,” “Setting the Man Trap,” “It’s Kind to Be Cruel,” “Pulling the Strings,” “When to Use Tears” (and other weapons God gave us), and “Playing Hard to Get.” This book was the latest in a whole industry of books telling women how to plot against men to get commitment without sex, and books telling men how to plot against women to get sex without commitment.
    Two pages into chapter two, as I was learning how to feign a combination of simmering sexuality, sexual innocence, and moral superiority (because men are supposed to find this irresistible), my eyelids grew heavy. I was almost asleep when I thought I heard the front door slam.
    â€œHello?” I called out.
    There was no answer.
    â€œHello?” I said again, then got up, grabbed my rifle, and went to the door. I couldn’t see through the peephole and figured some jokester had his or her finger over it. Very quietly, I slipped the chain off, planning to open the door really fast so whoever it was would lose their balance and stumble into the apartment.
    But when I jerked the door open, a body fell forward onto me, landing on me with such force that I almost lost my footing and fell flat on my ass. I was face-to-face with Gerald, the man who kind of looked like Gregory Peck. I pushed him off me, and he fell backward, onto the hallway floor.
    He was bleeding. He opened his mouth and said something that sounded like, “Bye,” and then he died.

chapter four
    â€œYou have a curse on your head?” NYPD detective Barry Burns asked me, not making any effort to suppress his skeptical smirk.
    Burns, a portly black man with a very wrinkled forehead, had asked what my connection was to the dead guy, and I’d had to explain that I had no known connection beyond some curse that had me stumbling over murder victims about once a year, though this was a new one—it had stumbled on me this time, and while I was inconveniently holding a firearm. He then wanted to know about the previous victims, making a lot of notes and looking at me with narrowed eyes of suspicion while I told him. You can’t blame him, really.
    Burns turned to a uniformed cop and said, “Get me the arrest record on this woman, PLEASE.”
    I was sitting at the Formica kitchen table in bloody clothes staring out into the hallway. A cop was drawing an outline around the body, which was still on the floor, the feet in Tamayo’s apartment, the rest of the