Ellen Lang folded up and sat down like she'd just been told the biopsy was positive. "Oh, God, I can't do anything right."

I watched her a moment, then took a long breath in through the nose, let it out, and said, "Simms?"

Simms' eyes flicked my way. Flat, bored eyes. Street-cop eyes.

I brought him aside. "She thinks it was her husband," I said. "It's a domestic beef. They're separated."

Simms said "Shit" under his breath and called out the front door for Eddie to wait. He stood in the living room, one thick hand on his gun butt and one on his nightstick, looking around the place like he was standing hip deep in dog shit. The older girl came back in, saw her mother crying, and looked disgusted. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Mother." She went back down the hall. Maybe she wanted to grow up to be Janet Simon.

Ellen Lang cried harder. I went over to her, put my hand on her shoulder, and said, "Stop that" into her ear. She nodded and tried to stop. She did a pretty good job.

Simms said, "All right. Do you want to report anything missing?"

She shook her head without looking at him, either.

"A lot of this stuff is ruined," he said. "You could maybe file a vandalism claim with the insurance, but only if we file a report, and only if we can't prove it's your husband. Okay, even if we forget your husband, the detectives still gotta come out here and file a vandalism report. That's the insurance company, see?"

"You're okay, Simms," I said.

He ignored me. Ellen blew her nose on a little bit of Kleenex and shook her head again. "I'm very sorry for the bother," she said.

Simms frowned around the room. "Husband, huh?"

Janet Simon said, "Ellen, you should have this for court." I felt Ellen Lang tighten like a flexed muscle.

"Forget that," I said.

Simms stood there a second longer, breathing heavily, then nodded and walked out.

Nobody moved for a long time. Then Janet Simon pulled out another cigarette. "You're a dope."

Ellen Lang began to tremble. I felt it deep in my chest and up through my arm, a high-strung from-the-lonely-place resonance that left the tips of her collar shaking like leaves in a chill breeze. "You want me to stay?" I asked. "I can bunk on the couch."

Ellen lifted off her glasses, wiped at the wet around her eyes, and sniffled. "Thank you, no. We're going to stay the night with Janet."

I gave Janet a look. "Gosh, I was hoping I could. I'm into pain." Janet ignored me, but Ellen Lang smiled. It wasn't much of a smile, but it was real.

I told her I'd be back tomorrow to look over the bills and bank statements and that she should gather them. I let myself out. The chill had a bite to it now and I could smell a eucalyptus from a neighbor's yard along with the jasmine. There were times when I thought it might be nice to have a jasmine and a eucalyptus to smell. But not always.

I woke up just before nine the next morning and caught the tail end of Sesame Street. Today's episode was brought to us by the letter D. For Depressed Detective. I pulled on a pair of tennis shoes and went out onto the deck for the traditional twelve sun salutes of the hatha-yoga, then segued smoothly to the tai chi, third and eighth cycles, Tiger and Crane work. I started slow the way you're supposed to, then increased the pace the way you're not until the tai chi became a wing chun kata and sweat trickled down the sides of my face and my muscles burned and I was feeling pretty good again. I finished in vrischikasan, the second-stage scorpion pose, and held it for almost six minutes.

The cat was waiting in the kitchen. I gave him the big smile and a cheery hello. "Held the scorpion for six minutes," I said. Proudly.

The cat thought about that, then licked his scrotum. Some people you can never please.

I made us eggs. His with tuna, mine with a couple of shots of Tabasco. We ate in silence. After the meal I phoned General Entertainment Studios.

A young woman's voice said, "Casting."

"Patricia Kyle, please."

"Who's calling?"

"Elvis Cole."

"Pardon me?"

"Don't be cruel," I said.

"I'm not. I-oh." A giggle. "That Elvis. Hold on."

Patricia Kyle came on the phone, voice loud enough to be heard in Swaziland. "You got me pregnant, you bastard!" That Patricia. What a kidder.

I said, "I need to pump you."

"Oh, no!"

"For information."

"That's what they all say." She told me that she would be there until lunch, that there would be a drive-on pass at the main gate, and that I should come by anytime.

"That's what they all say," I said. And hung up.

Forty minutes later, showered, dusted, deodorized, and dressed, I was on the GE lot walking toward the casting offices.

GE has one of the few remaining old-time studio lots. Huge gray sound stages packed belly-to-butt with bunkerlike offices, navigable only by a grid of narrow streets usually fouled with the big semis production companies employ to carry cameras and lights and costumes to location. On any given day you could see almost anyone walking those slim tarmac streets. As a tour bus passed I waved and the people waved back. Ah, the land of make-believe.

I went in a door that said Emergency Exit Only and took the first flight of stairs I came to, turned down a short hall and passed seven of the most beautiful women on Earth, strolled past the casting office receptionist like I owned the place, went through a glass door and down another short hall past a man and a woman who were arguing softly, and stopped outside Patricia Kyle's door. She was on the phone.

I said loudly, "Have the abortion. It's the only way." I looked at the man and the woman. "Herpes." Then a hand yanked me into Patricia Kyle's office and the door slammed amid a gale of red-faced laughter.

"You nut, that's my boss!"

"Not for long."

She picked up the phone and cupped the receiver. "Business. I'll just be a second."

I took a seat in a chair beneath a wall-sized poster of Raquel Welch from the movie 1,000,000 Years B.C. Someone had taken a Magic Marker and drawn a voice balloon over her head so that Raquel was saying, "Mess with me, buster, I'll gut you like a fish!!!"

Patricia Kyle is forty-four years old, five-four and slim the way a female gymnast is slim, all long, lithe muscle and defined curves, with a pretty Irish face framed by curly auburn hair. When we met four years ago she weighed in at one seventy-three and had just gotten out of the worlds worst marriage. Only her ex didn't see it that way. He'd show up all hours, drunk and stumbling around, knocking over the garbage cans, doing Stanley Kowalski. To prove how much he loved her, he put a brick through the rear window of her BMW and used an ice pick on the tires and that's when she called me.

I took care of it. She dumped the weight and quit smoking and took up Nautilus and started running. She got the job at General Entertainment. Things were looking up.

She apologized into the phone, told whoever it was that GE and the producers really wanted their actor but couldn't pay more than Top of the Show, that she knew the actor's wife had just had a baby and so he'd probably want the work and the money, and that he'd be just so right for the part she really wished he'd do it. She listened, then smiled, said fine, and hung up.

"He's going to take the role?"

She nodded. "It's twenty-five hundred dollars for two days work."

"Yeah, but those guys earn it."

She laughed. I've never heard Patricia giggle. It's either a smile or a full blown laugh, but nothing in between. I gave her the once-over. "Nice," I said.

She put a thousand watts out through her teeth. "One-twelve," she said. "I ran in my first Ten-K last week, AND I've got a new boyfriend."