Without warning, the screen went mercifully black. The laughter stopped. And then the Windows 98 main menu reappeared.

Myron gulped down a few breaths. His hands gripped the edge of the desk to the point of white knuckles.

What the hell?

His heart beat against his rib cage as though it wanted to break free. He reached back and grabbed the brown paper wrappings. The postmark was almost three weeks old. Three weeks. This awful diskette had been sitting in his pile of mail since he'd run away. Why? Who had sent this to him? And who was the girl?

Myron's hand was still shaking when he picked up the phone. He dialed. Even though Myron had call block on his phone, a man answered by saying, “What's up, Myron?”

“I need your help, PT.”

“Jesus, you sound like hell. This about Esperanza?”

“No.”

“So what have you got?”

“A computer diskette. Three-and-half-inch floppy. I need it analyzed.”

“Go to John Jay. Ask for Dr. Czerski. But if you're looking for a trace, it's pretty unlikely. What's this about?”

“I got this diskette in the mail. It contains a graphic of a teenage girl. In an AVI file of some sort.”

“Who's the girl?”

“I don't know.”

“I'll call Czerski. You head over.”

Dr. Kirstin Czerski sported a white lab coat and a frown as yielding as a former East German swimmer's. Myron tried Smile Patent 17-moist Alan Alda, post-M*A*S*H.

“Hi,” Myron said. “My name is-”

“The diskette.” She held out her hand. He handed it to her. She looked at it for a second and headed for a door. “Wait here.”

The door opened. Myron got a brief view of a room that looked like the bridge on Battlestar Galactica. Lots of metal and wires and lights and monitors and reel-to-reel tapes. The door closed. Myron stood in a sparsely decorated waiting room. Linoleum floor, three molded plastic chairs, brochures on a wall.

Myron's cellular phone rang again. He stared at it for a second. Six weeks ago he had turned the phone off. Now that it was back on, the contraption seemed to be making up for lost time. He pressed a button and brought it to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Myron.”

Pow. The voice walloped him like a palm blast to the sternum. A rushing noise filled his ears, as though the phone were a seashell clamped against him. Myron slid into a yellow plastic chair.

“Hello, Jessica,” he managed.

“I saw you on the news,” she said, her voice a tad too controlled. “So I figured you'd turn your phone back on.”

“Right”

More silence.

“I'm in Los Angeles,” Jessica continued.

“Uh-huh.”

“But I needed to tell you a few things.”

“Oh?” Myron's Smooth-Lines Fountain-he just couldn't turn it off.

“First off, I'll be gone for at least another month. I didn't change the locks or anything so you can stay at the loft-”

“I'm, uh, bunking at Win's.”

“Yeah, I figured. But if you need anything or if you want to clear your stuff out-”

“Right.”

“Don't forget the TV too. That's yours.”

“You can keep it,” he said.

“Fine.”

More silence.

Jessica said, “We're being so adult about this, aren't we?”

“Jess-”

“Don't. I called for a reason.”

Myron kept quiet.

“Clu called you several times. At the loft, I mean.”

Myron had guessed that.

“He sounded pretty desperate. I told him I didn't know where you were. He said that he had to find you. That he was worried about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes. He came by once, looking like absolute shit. He grilled me for twenty minutes.”

“About what?”

“About where you were. He said that he had to reach you-for your sake more than his. When I insisted that I didn't know where you were, he started scaring me.”

“Scaring you how?”

“He asked how I knew you weren't dead.”

“Clu said those words? About my being dead?”

“Yes. I actually called Win when he left.”

“What did Win say?”

“That you were safe and that I shouldn't worry.”

“What else?”

“I'm talking about Win here, Myron. He said-and I quote-'he's safe, don't worry.' Then he hung up. I let it drop. I figured that Clu was engaging in a little hyperbole to get my attention.”

“That was probably it,” Myron said.

“Yeah.”

More silence.

“How are you?” she asked.

“I'm good. And you?”

“I'm trying to get over you,” she said.

He could barely breathe. “Jess, we should talk-”

“Don't,” she said again. “I don't want to talk, okay? Let me put it simply: If you change your mind, call me. You know the number. If not, have a nice life.”

Click.

Myron put down the phone. He took several deep breaths. He looked at the phone. So simple. He did indeed know the number. How easy it would be to dial it.

“Worthless.”

He looked up at Dr. Czerski. “Pardon?”

She held up the diskette. “You said there was graphic on it?”

Myron quickly explained what he had seen.

“It's not there now,” she said. “It must have deleted itself.”

“How?”

“You say the program ran automatically?”

“Yes.”

“It probably self-extracted, self-ran, and then self-deleted. Simple.”

“Aren't there special programs so you can undelete a file?”

“Yes. But this file did more than that. It reformatted the whole diskette. Probably the final command in the chain.”

“Meaning?”

“Whatever you saw is gone forever.”

“Is there anything else on the diskette?”

“No.”

“Nothing we can trace? No unique characteristics or anything?”

She shook her head. “Typical diskette. Sold in every software store in the country. Standard formatting.”

“How about fingerprints?”

“That's not my department.”

And, Myron knew, it would be a waste of time. If someone had gone to the trouble of destroying any computer evidence, chances were pretty good that all fingerprints had been wiped off too.

“I'm busy.” Dr. Czerski handed him back the diskette and left without so much as a back glance. Myron stared at it and shook his head.

What the hell was going on here?

The cell phone rang again. Myron picked it up.

“Mr. Bolitar?” It was Big Cyndi.

“Yes.”

“I am going through Mr. Clu Haid's phone records, as you requested.”

“And?”

“Are you coming back to the office, Mr. Bolitar?”

“I'm on the way there now.”

“There is something here you might find bizarre.”

When the elevator opened, Big Cyndi was waiting for him. She'd finally scrubbed her face clean. All the makeup was gone. Must have used a sand blaster. Or a jack-hammer.

She greeted him by saying, “Very bizarre, Mr. Bolitar.”

“What's that?”

“Per your instructions, I was checking through Clu Haid's phone records,” she said. Then she shook her head. “Very bizarre.”

“What's bizarre?”

She handed him a sheet of paper. “I highlighted the number in yellow.”

Myron looked at it while walking into this office. Big Cyndi followed, closing the door behind her. The number was in the 212 area code. That meant Manhattan. Other than that, it was totally unfamiliar. “What about it?”

“It's for a nightclub.”

“Which one?”

“Take A Guess.”

“Pardon?”

“That's the name of the place,” Big Cyndi said. “Take A Guess. It's two blocks down from Leather-N-Lust.” Leather-N-Lust was the S &M bar that employed Big Cyndi as a bouncer. Motto: Hurt The Ones You Love.

“You know this place?” he asked.

“A little.”

“What kind of club is it?”

“Cross-dressers and transvestites, mostly. But they have a varied crowd.”

Myron rubbed his temples. “When you say varied…”

“It's sort of an interesting concept really, Mr. Bolitar.”

“I'm sure.”

“When you go to Take A Guess, you never know for sure what you're getting. You know what I mean?”