Allison stood and dropped her cigarette. She took two normal steps toward Milo and then two very quick ones, making fists right before she came down on top of him.

Sassy extruded out the middle like a sausage coming out of the grinder. Milo's tea glass toppled off the sofa and shattered on the tiles.

By the time I realized just how ferociously Allison was hitting, it was too late for me to do anything. With difficulty Milo managed to grab both of Allison's wrists and launch her sideways, off her feet and onto the floor, but in that short amount of time she'd done her share of damage.

Milo had a red, fistshaped welt burning under his right eye and another on his temple.

Allison's fingernails had ripped two dotted lines of blood and skin across his neck.

Milo's babyblue buttondown was wrinkled and splattered with tea.

A little stiffly, Allison sat up on the floor. She'd just missed landing on any broken glass.

Her robe had come open and the space between her breasts was tan and lightly freckled. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. She was a little out of breath but her tone was surprisingly calm.

"Soon as I get the agency, it's going to be such a pleasure firing you."

Milo dabbed a finger on his neck. "Sure. In the meantime, we got problems. Tres wants to look around upstairs."

Allison took two deep breaths. She stood up. When she readjusted her robe her fingernails left little bloodstains on the terrycloth.

The maid materialized with a hand broom and dustpan. She walked over and began casually cleaning the broken glass, like this was an event that happened every day about this time.

Allison brushed off her palms and looked at me. Her green eyes still had all the friendliness of a crocodile's. "Sure, sweetie. Excuse me. I'm going to get a gun so I can kill Milo if he's still in my house when I get back."

There was nothing in her tone that even remotely hinted at a joke.

After she left the room Milo sat forward and rested his chin in one hand. Sassy came up to him and started licking a gash Allison had made on his forearm.

"What is it with you two?" I demanded.

Milo looked at me sadly, then decided not to try an explanation.

"Go on, bud," he said, waving toward a staircase. "Take your time."

"And if she comes back with a gun?"

Milo stared at the doorway Allison had gone through.

"Her aim is off. She tends to pull to the left. Don't worry unless you hear more than one shot."

As I headed toward the staircase, the maid was sweeping up the ice cubes and glass shards, offering Milo some Spanish words of consolation that I was pretty sure he couldn't understand.

26

Allison could've been standing in the doorway of Les' room for a long time. I'm not sure. I was sitting at Les' desk with my back to the door; sorting through shoe boxes full of old letters and photographs and getting dizzy from trying to understand Mr.

Saint Pierre.

The task should've been simple. I had the man's whole life in front of me, neatly packaged and labelled in little boxes. Still, I felt like a drunk taking a DUI test. I kept trying to put the old finger on the nose in the centre of my face and I'll be damned if the nose didn't move every time.

Allison watched me at least long enough to identify which shoe box I was pulling letters from.

"That's his 'Gotcha' box," she said.

I'd like to think I didn't visibly jump, but Allison was grinning when I turned around.

She'd changed into a peach polo shirt and black Mylar bike pants and white Adidas.

She wore fingerless net gloves. If you didn't know to look, you wouldn't have noticed the stiffness in her left side where Milo had thrown her to the floor.

I pulled another letter from the box that Les had labelled "Correspondence."

"He's shown you these?" I asked. Allison widened her eyes. "Oh, no, he didn't show me." She came in and sat on the very edge of the bed. From ten feet away, I caught the scent of Halston. Her legs made a V in front of her, only the heels of her Adidas touching the carpet. She looked around with mild interest like this was the first time she'd been in Les' bedroom.

"I'm sorry about downstairs." She sounded like she was apologizing for a random nudge in an elevator. "Milo gets to me." I stared at her.

She tried to mimic my expression—eyes wide, mouth slightly open. "Problem?" "No. I suppose not."

"Look, sweetie, you grow up with four brothers in a little hick town, you learn how to fight. If I sat around acting pretty and taking shit from guys like Chavez I wouldn't have lived past sixth grade."

I decided it was safest to return my attention to the letter I'd been reading.

It was poorly typed on onionskin paper. All the o's were solid black circles and the a's were cocked to the right. It read:

Dear Jason:

I really appreciate what you said you would do for me and I hope you like the songs and your publishing company will decide to take them for your catalogue. I am really willing to work hard as a staff writer and really had a wonderful time with you this weekend too. Please call soon.

Patti Glynn

The letter was dated five years ago. Patti had stapled her picture to the back of it just in case Jason forgot who she was. She was cute—roundish face, feathery brown hair, widely spaced eyes lit up with hope.

There were at least twenty letters like that dated as far back as 1982, many with photos attached, all from different women addressed to a different man's name.

Sometimes they were to Larry the label head and sometimes to Paul the producer.

Sometimes, along with veiled references to nights of passion, they mentioned checks they were sending. One woman wrote that she'd enclosed five hundred dollars because she believed Jason PaulLarry was going to buy just the right birthday present that would put her name in solid with the Artists & Repertoire director at EMICapitol.

I looked up at Allison. "These letters—"

"Sure," she said. "They're all to Les."

"Les had a reputation. He had real connections. If he wanted to use women he didn't have to lie about who he was. Why—?"

Allison paddled the toes of her shoes back and forth a few times. "I never confronted him about it, but I think I know what he'd say. He'd tell you it was harmless fun. He'd say he was weeding the crop of would bes and if they were really this stupid, they would fall for the first con man they met in Nashville anyway so he might as well save them the trip."

I couldn't quite grab on to Allison's tone. It wasn't resentment. More like wistfulness.

"You think it was harmless fun?"

Allison smiled, picking at the netting on her palm. "No, sweetie. I think Les had an addiction. He was hooked on making himself the answer to everybody's problem—at least until you left the room or signed his contract or whatever. The less you mattered to him, the crazier he could afford to get offering you what you wanted to hear, and the more he liked it. Do you see?"

"I'm not sure."

She shrugged. "I guess you'd have to meet him. It doesn't matter. The point is he couldn't have stopped selling confidence if he wanted to. He was a hell of an agent."

"So why would he want to vanish?"

Allison crossed her legs at the ankles and hunched forward, tapping her finger on her chin like she was pretending to think. "Gosh, Tres. Aside from the fact that he could never get out of his job any other way, that he was a naturalborn son of a bitch, that his client list was eroding so bad he had to pin his hopes on unknowns like Miranda, that he was drinking or snorting or popping most of his profits, that he and I fought every time we saw each other—I just can't imagine."