The brunette put one long leg inside the car, saw the man with the bull's–eye tattoo on his hand sitting inside, and climbed in the rest of the way. The door slammed behind her, and the Cadillac pulled away smoothly.

5

I have to make a stop first," Reba said. "It's over on Diversity."

If Cross felt any impatience, his face didn't reflect it.

The Cadillac purred through the empty streets, alone except for an anonymous smog–colored sedan trailing a respectful distance behind. If the driver noticed, he gave no sign.

When the white car pulled to the curb, Reba turned in her seat, facing Cross full on. "Come on," she said. "You might as well see the reason for all this."

It was a three–story brownstone, the polished wood door covered by black wrought–iron grillwork. Reba took out a key, opened the gate, then the door. "Come on," she said again.

Cross followed her up the stairs, reflecting on the wisdom of Keith Gilyard, the ground–zero poet laureate of New York…how true it was that walking up stairs exaggerates female hips…for good or for bad. The brunette was all good.

On the top floor, she used another key to let herself in. A hefty woman with short–cropped brown hair was sitting on an exercise bike, pumping away. She looked up at the entrance, gasped an incomprehensible greeting, and went back to her silent work. Reba Hashed her a smile, walked past the exercise bike down a hall, Cross close behind.

She opened the door to a small bedroom. The walls were a soft pink, decorated with dolls, stuffed animals, a giant poster of some sleek, androgynous individual holding a guitar. A blonde girl was asleep in the single bed, a quilt covering her to her shoulders. Her face, childlike in repose, showed a girl somewhere in that borderland before adolescence. Reba bent at the waist, gently brushed the girl's soft hair from her forehead, kissed her on the cheek. Then she straightened up, took a sweeping look around the little bedroom as though reassuring herself, spun on a spike heel, and walked back into the front room.

The hefty woman was sitting on a futon couch, sipping a greenish–colored liquid from a tall glass.

"You didn't let her watch that damn MTV again, did you, Anna?"

"She did all her homework first," the hefty woman said. "And her yoga too."

"I told you–"

"Come on, Reba," the hefty woman interrupted. "We had a deal. You can't stop her from growing up."

"I can stop her from growing up like I did," the brunette replied.

"Your problem wasn't MTV," the hefty girl said, her voice thick with a shared secret.

"Okay, okay," Reba surrendered. "You're going to bring her by after school, right?"

"She has gymnastics class, remember? How about you come by and watch, take her home yourself."

"You got a deal," Reba said, flashing a smile.

6

That's my Angel," she said to Cross in the backseat.

"She looks–"

"I mean, that's her name," Reba said sharply. "You want to know what she is, she's my life. My whole life."

The woman was quiet on the short drive to her apartment building. Again, Cross followed her, this time through the lobby with its half–asleep doorman, all the way up to the twenty–first floor in a silent elevator.

The apartment was two bedrooms, with a balcony and a view of the lake from the living room. "Make yourself comfortable," she said over her shoulder, walking down the carpeted hall. "I'll be back in a minute."

Cross pulled a flat cellular phone from inside his jacket, punched in a number.

"Anything?" he asked the person on the other end. He nodded to himself at the answer, put the phone back inside his jacket.

Cross looked around the living room for a minute. Finally he shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. He was on his second drag when Reba walked back in, barefoot, dressed in a heavy white terry–cloth bathrobe, hair pulled back, face freshly scrubbed.

"There's no smoking in here," she said. "Take it outside," indicating the balcony.

Cross opened the sliding glass doors, stepped out on the balcony, hands on the railing, looking down.

"Sorry about that," Reba said from behind him. "Where I work, everybody smokes. I come home, I have to really scrub the smell out of my hair. I used to smoke, but Angel went crazy with it…cancer and all. So I promised her I'd stop. That's why I don't allow it in the house–that girl has a nose like a bloodhound."

"It's okay," he replied, taking another drag.

"What do I call you?" the brunette asked, standing against his shoulder.

"Cross."

"I'm Reba. But I guess you know that."

"Yeah."

"About what I asked you…I thought if you could see the reason why, maybe you'd change your mind."

"The kid's the reason?"

"Yes."

"She gonna visit you in the joint?"

"Oh, I'd never let her come in there. Why…?"

"Not the joint where you work. Jail. Prison. You want a cold gun, you want to smoke somebody. You don't know what you're doing, you're gonna go down."

"What do you care?"

"The way it works, you're gonna go down, the Man makes you an offer. Who sold you the gun, girlie' Like that."

"And you think I'd tell them?"

"Sure. If it meant a couple of years off your sentence, a couple of years where you get to be back with your kid, why not?"

"But if I…hired you to…take care of this problem, why wouldn't it work the same way?"

"I don't get caught," the man called Cross said.

7

Angel's eleven," said Reba, sitting at her kitchen table, holding a coffee cup in her hand. "I had her when I was seventeen. The boy who got me pregnant, he got in the wind. Joined the Army or something. I never heard from him."

Cross watched her eyes, not speaking, waiting as a stone waits.

"I was a high–school senior," she said. "And a National Merit Scholar, already accepted to college. I didn't want an abortion. They put me in a group home. It was heaven. When the blood test came back, I was so happy I cried for days. You know why?"

"Because it wasn't your father's baby''

Two bright red dots bloomed on the woman's pale cheeks. "How could you…?"

"From what you and that girl in the apartment said to each other. From what you're willing to do to protect the kid."

"You…Lucinda said you knew things."

"What's important, I do things," he said. "You got the money, I can do this."

"You don't even know what 'this' is?"

"Then tell me."

"When I got out of the group home, I tried working. Flipping burgers, waitressing, a 7–Eleven. I could keep Angel away from the damn Welfare people, but I couldn't give her the things I…

"Anyway, I tried whoring too. Escort service," she said, looking Cross full in the eye. He stared back, unblinking.

"The money was good. Real good. We moved to a better place, I could pay for the gymnastics lessons, get her a great babysitter. But it got too ugly. Kickbacks to the cops, pimps always trying to move in. Freaks who want to hurt the girls. Then AIDS. So I started private dancing. It's pretty clean, all things considered. You rent some space from the owner, pay the hairdresser and the makeup girl. You don't have to hustle drinks…the girls who do that, they do okay too. There's no sex. Unless you want to make some special arrangement for after. You dance on the tables, maybe wiggle around in their laps. You know…?"