We had already talked too long, in front of too big an audience.

“Get in the car,” I told her, and fired up the Plymouth. Pulling out of my slot, we rolled onto the highway, heading south toward the World Trade Center, hooked a deep U-turn, and rolled back north toward uptown. Nobody following.

I motored around for another twenty minutes to make sure. Still nothing. So I drove over to a basement poolroom with the dirty neon sign that said Rooms over the entrance and got out. Told Margot to come with me and keep her mouth shut no matter who said what to her. I handed her an empty attache case I keep in the back seat and said to hang on to it like it was full of money.

We went down the short steps to the basement and stopped by the wire cage, where an old man was watching a small-screen color TV with his back to us. To the right of the cage was a flight of steps leading upstairs, to the left was the basement with the pool tables. I rapped my knuckles on the counter. The old man didn’t even turn around from the TV. “No vacancies, pal.”

“It’s me, Pop,” I said, and he turned around, looked at me, saw Margot, and raised one eyebrow. “It’s business.” I pointed at the attache case. The old man reached under the counter, took out a key with the number 2 on the attached paper tag, and I handed him two fifties. He turned his back to us and went back to the TV set. I motioned Margot upstairs in front of me and we climbed in silence.

Pop only rents rooms to certain people and only for business. The key says #2, but it really means the whole second floor. When you’re finished you leave the key on the hook by the door, leave the door unlocked, and go down the fire escape. The rate is a hundred bucks until the next morning, no matter when you check in. And nobody stays past the next morning, no matter what they want to pay-house rules. Pop uses Max the Silent for evictions, but they don’t happen often.

When we got to the first-floor landing we saw the steel door with no doorknob. I told Margot to wait, and in a few seconds it buzzed and popped open. I pulled it closed from the other side, knowing there was no way to go back through it. If anyone else tried to come through the door legit, Pop would buzz once like he just did and they’d get through. But if someone was forcing him to do it he’d hit the buzzer a few times rapidly. That wouldn’t open the door, but it would seem like he was trying to-anyone in the building would know it was time to split. Even if the law hit the door with the usual fireaxes and battering rams you’d have at least fifteen minutes to get out. More than enough. Pop didn’t allow any dope-dealing in the place, but anything else went, and guys sometimes went up and down these stairs with enough explosives to put the whole block into orbit.

I used the key to open the first door on the second floor, and Margot and I went inside. Large, barely furnished suite of rooms, two bathrooms, convertible couch, empty refrigerator. If you wanted it, you had to bring it. I found an ashtray and lit up. Margot let out what sounded like a groan and sat down on the couch. I looked over at her. “So?”

“I’ve got a job for you.”

“I don’t need a job, Margot. I need to talk to Michelle.”

“I already talked to her. I’ve got a message for you.”

“Which is?”

“First I want to talk about the job.”

“Hey, what is this crap? Just tell me what Michelle said.”

She took off her glasses again, gave me a dead smile to go with her eyes. “Don’t be tough, Burke-don’t be a hard guy. Don’t threaten me. I’ve had everything that can be done to a person done to me except killing and I don’t care about that. Don’t threaten me, just listen to me, okay?”

I said nothing, smoking. Margot lit one of her own.

“Something has to be done about Dandy.”

“Your pimp?”

“My pimp.”

“I don’t know him, never heard of him.”

“He’s from Boston. He just came down here.”

“What has to be done?”

“Murder.”

“You’re talking to the wrong man. That’s not me.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Then you heard wrong.”

“How much?”

“Forget it. You’re a fucking dummy-you don’t want this creep, get on a bus and split.”

“I can’t leave.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s not bullshit-first he has to die.”

“Don’t even tell me about it.”

“Would five thousand do the job?”

I got up from the couch and walked over to the window. Layers of filth made it impossible to look through, even in the daylight. I still needed that message from Michelle, so I gave Margot some free advice. She listened like it was worth what I was charging. “Look, dummy. You pay a man five G’s to knock off some halfass pimp and he takes your money and says thank you and never does it. Then what the fuck do you do?”

“I earn some more money and now I have a list of two people.”

“At that rate you’ll be on social security before you find someone who’s for real, and he’ll want a million dollars for your whole list.”

“I can make a million dollars if I have to-I got my money-maker right here,” Margot said, slapping herself on the rump and smiling her dead smile. We were getting nowhere.

“Look, I don’t do that kind of work. Just leave him and be done with it.”

“He has to be dead first.”

“Because he’ll come after you or what?”

“The first.”

“If I could-and I’m not saying I can-arrange it so he never comes near you again in life, would that do it?”

“You don’t know him.”

“Yes I do.”

“I thought you said you’d never heard of him.”

I blew an attempt at a smoke ring at the ceiling, went back over to the couch and motioned her to come over and sit next to me. Margot hesitated, biting her swollen lower lip. “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” I asked her. “You come into a strange place with a strange man, you ask him to kill someone, and now you’re afraid of a couch?”

It didn’t even get a smile out of her, but she did walk over and sit next to me. And listened.

“Look, let’s say a man works in a maggot factory. You know, where they dig up maggots from under rocks and put them into little containers for people who need maggots, like fishermen and scientists and abstract artists or whatever. Okay, he works in this factory for twenty years, right? He watches maggots work, he watches them play, he watches them breed. He sees them individually and in groups. He observes their every fucking characteristic, all right? Now you find a man like this and you ask him if he knows your personal maggot. And he says no. But he knows maggots, you understand? And one maggot’s not a hell of a lot different from the other maggots? Okay?”

“Yes.”

“So I never heard of this Dandy.”

“I got it.”

“Okay, now what’s the message from Michelle?”

“Wait. You’ll do something with Dandy?”

“For five thousand dollars. But I won’t kill him-and you’ll have to participate.”

“Why? How?”

“The why is so you don’t end up testifying against me and my people. The how I don’t know yet.”

“This is straight?”

“You tell me.”

Margot looked into my face like there was something she could learn. There wasn’t, but she was satisfied, I guess. She nodded okay.

“Now…”

“This is the message from Michelle, word for word. She said, ‘Tell Burke that the man who knows the Cobra made a movie star out of a corpse.’ That’s all.”

“That’s the whole thing-that’s all she said?”

“That’s it. She made me say it twenty times until I got it down perfect.”

“What’s she think I am, Sherlock-fucking-Holmes?”

“Burke, I don’t know. That’s what she said. Not like it was a riddle but like you’d understand.”

“Okay.” I told her I’d drop her off wherever she wanted.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to be off the streets for a few hours. I’ll tell Dandy I turned a freak trick for two bills. That’s what he wants anyway. He says that’s where the money is.”