Jocelyn was seated at the end of the tunnel, a canvas duffel in her lap, another at her feet. She had chosen a corner bench, as if concrete backing conferred protection from whatever menace she feared. Her teeth worked a thumbnail as she scanned the commuters standing to either side of the tracks.

She spotted me and fol owed my approach. I stayed to the middle of the platform, my pulse louder in my ears than any competing noise. The air was warm and stale, as though breathed and rebreathed by legions of subterranean travelers. I felt an acrid taste and swal owed hard.

Jocelyn watched in silence as I sat on the bench. Her chalky skin looked violet in the artificial light, the whites of her eyes yel ow.

I started to speak but she stopped me with a hand movement.

"I'm going to say this once, then I'm taking off. I talk. You listen."

I said nothing.

"I'm a junkie, we both know that. I'm also a whore and a liar." Her eyes roved the faces lining the tracks, her movements ragged and jerky.

"Here's the mind-fuck. I come from a Girl Scout-summer camp-tuna casserole background just like you. Only somewhere along the way I joined a freak show I can't escape."

Purple shadow turned her eyes cadaverous.

"Lately I've been doing some hard time with hate. I hate everyone and everything on the planet. But mostly I hate myself."

She backhanded a sheen of liquid from below her nostrils.

"You know it's closing time when you can't look in a pond or pass a mirror or storefront because you despise what you see looking back."

She turned to me, the lobotomy eyes burning with rage and guilt.

"Talking to you may get me kil ed, but I want out. And I want these guys to pay."

"What are you offering?"

"Spider Marcotte and the little girl."

"I'm listening."

"It was George Dorsey. He's dead now, so it don't matter." She looked away then focused again on my face.

"Marcotte was Heathen payback for the Vipers blowing up the Vail ancourts. George and a ful -patcher named Sylvain Lecomte took him out. The kid was a mistake."

She braced a booted foot against the duffel.

"George thought the hit was his ticket to stardom. But the Heathens burned George because they thought he was going to give up Lecomte." She snorted and tipped her chin. "George was actual y waiting for me near the Cherokee hit scene. When he got busted by the Carcajou and then set up a meet with you, the Heathen brothers decided to do George before he could finger Lecomte. Big man, Lecomte. Wasted a little girl. Big turd," she spat.

"Anything else?" She shrugged.

"The St-Basile burials. I've been on the scene nine years. I've got plenty to trade."

"Are you talking about witness protection?"

"Money and out."

"Rehab?"

She shrugged.

"What about Cherokee?"