I find myself asking Janet when her father died.

"Nine years ago," she says.

"How old was he?"

"Fifty-two."

"Wow," I say. The same age as Harry Nilsson.

"Too young," Janet adds.

"Does it worry you?"

She eyes me curiously. "No, Jack. It makes me sad. I loved my old man."

"Of course you did. What I meant was, doesn't it make you wonder about your own ... timetable?"

The question is unforgivably insensitive, which I realize the instant it leaves my lips. This is one aspect of my obsession that aggravates not only my mother but my friends as well.

But Janet's look dissolves into one of understanding. "Oh," she says. "Sure. Dying young and all."

"Not just dying young," I slog on, "but dying at the exact same ageas a parent or a friend or even a famous person you admire."

"You mean, like, fate? Don't tell me you believe in fate?"

"Not fate. Black irony. That's what I believe in."

Janet whistles. "Ever thought about changing jobs?"

"Can I ask what happened to your father?"

"He was screwing one of his students when her boyfriend showed up. It was, like, her nineteenth birthday. My father jumped out the dormitory window to get away, but six stories is a long way down. Too bad he taught English lit and not physics." Janet smiles ruefully. "That's why I'm not too worried about checking out at fifty-two."

"Gotcha," I say.

"I mean there's fate, Jack, and then there's just plain stupidity."

Midnight.

The old days, a newsroom at this hour reeked of coffee and cigarettes and stale pizza.You'd hear the wire machines chittering and the police scanners gabbling and the pasteup guys snorting at dirty jokes.

But like most papers, the Union-Registerswitched to early deadlines to cut costs, so there's hardly a soul around at this late hour. If a plane goes down or the mayor has another coronary, come daybreak we're sucking hind tit to the TV stations.

These days we buy the loyalty of readers with giveaways and grocery coupons, not content. This makes for less clutter, so our newsroom is as spiffy as a downtown Allstate agency, complete with earth-tone carpeting. Every editor and reporter has a personal cubicle with padded pressboard walls and a computer station and a file drawer and a phone with a headset. Some days, we might as well be selling term life.

Nobody barks or shouts anymore, they "message" each other from their terminals. The old days, phones in a newsroom never quit ringing even after the final edition was put to bed. Tonight, as most nights, the place is oppressively silent except for torpid electronic bloops from the PCs (most editors favor the tropical aquarium screen-saver option, while the reporters go for intergalactic warfare motifs).

Still, these desolate gaps in the news cycle can be useful. Emma isn't here to circle like a kestrel, and young Evan, the intern, isn't around to dart in and pepper me with questions. Actual fact-gathering is possible. Addictive new technology allows one to sit at a desktop and browse tax rolls, real estate transactions, court files, arrest records, driver's licenses, marriage licenses and divorce decrees, as well as current periodicals, medical journals, trade publications, corporate reports—the bottomless maw of the Internet.

Also accessible are the library banks of other newspapers, large and small; a treasure trove. The only problem is that many papers have come online only within the last decade, and they don't always backfile the morgue stories into computer memory. Consequently, the odds are not so good of locating information about a man who died, say, at least twenty years ago.

But my mother claimed she read it in a newspaper, my father's obituary. And I've nothing better to do than go hunting.

On the keyboard I tap out T-A-G-G-E-R, J-A-C-K.

The joke's on me. Within moments the screen flashes a directory of thirty-six stories, all too familiar. The search engine seems to have locked onto my byline, resulting in an instant and unwanted sampling of my own work. Scrolling through past glories, written before my time on the obit beat, I'm amused to see that several of the Orrin Van Gelder stories popped up, all the way from Gadsden County. Evidently that stands as the pinnacle of my journalism career, at least in electronic dataland. Maybe Jimmy Stoma can change that.

At the moment, though, it's the other Jack Tagger that keeps me plodding through the search directory. But he's nowhere to be found, my father, evidently having died pre-Web. Any record of the event must therefore exist as a yellowed clipping in a musty old folder in some musty old newspaper warehouse. It's likely my mother herself saved a copy, although I doubt she'd admit it. This is some fucked-up game she's playing.

I sign off, lock the desk and head for home. While driving by Carla Candilla's place I see lights in the window and pull a U-turn. I call from a phone booth and she says to come on over, she's all alone and coloring her hair.

"Orange!" I say at the door.

"No, 'Lava,'" Carla says. "Because I'm worth it. Get your ass in here, I'm dripping all over the place."

She's wearing a full-length bathrobe appropriated from the Delano Hotel. I follow her to the kitchen where she toils with her soggy tendrils at the sink. I deliver a compressed but colorful account of my penthouse interview with Cleo Rio, and the celebrity scene at Jimmy Stoma's funeral.

Carla is an avid interrogator.

"What'd she look like?"

"Tan and glassy-eyed."

"The Case of the Suntanned Widow? Was Russell Crowe there?"

"Not that I recall."

"Come on, Blackjack. Rumor has him bonking Cleo."

"I saw no bonking."

"How 'bout Enrique?" Carla demands.

"Enrique who?"

She shrieks from beneath her marinating dome of hair. "How can you be so ... out of if?"

"Cleo's supposedly bonking this Enrique, too?"

"You should've taken me along, Jack. You let me down," Carla teases. "You let me down, you done me wrong."

I feel obliged to inquire about the lava-hued tresses. "For a special event?"

"Saturday night," she says. "Every Saturday night is a special event."

"New boyfriend?"

"Nah," Carla says. "New mood."

She has completed some critical phase of the tinting process. Now we move to the living room where she trowels moss-colored clay on her face. Only eyes, lips and nostrils remain visible.

"So. Blackjack."

"Yeah."

"Think Cleo offed her old man?"

"I honestly can't say. Nobody performed an autopsy and now the body's been cremated so we might never know. Maybe Jimmy drowned just like they said, or maybe he had help. In any case, the widow is making the most of the moment."

Carla says, "I can't fucking believe she sang at the funeral."

"To plug her new CD."

"Skank. What's your story gonna say?"

A damn good question. "Well, I hope it'll say that Jimmy's sister wants a full investigation of the circumstances of his death. I hope it's going to say there are inconsistencies among the witnesses."

"Who are ... ?" Carla asks through her frogskin cast.

"Cleo, of course, and Jay Burns," I say, "one of the old Slut Puppies. He buddied up with Jimmy for the dive."

"What if he backs up Cleo's story?"

"Then I drink myself silly and crawl back to the cave of dead rabbis."

Carla points to her face. "Can't talk. It's hardening."

The phone rings. She signals for me to pickup.

"Candilla residence," I answer in a British butler accent.

"Who isthis?"

"Oh hi, Anne." Voice skips. Heart flops. Tongue turns to chalk.

"Jack?"

"Carla's in her mud mask. She can't move her mouth."

On the other end I hear a familiar sigh. Then: "What are you doing over there?"