"No, but it wasn't the morality of it. He thought making the movies — what's the word? — diminished me. That's what he said. That it was holding me back from being great. It dulled me creatively. Like drinking or drugs. I thought about it. He was right. I told him, though, I couldn't afford just to quit cold. I wasn't used to being poor. I said I'd have to be crazy to quit what I'm doing. Crazy, or dead.

“He said, 'So, die.' Well, I thought about disappearing the way Gauguin did. But every city that was big enough to have good theater would also have a porn market; there was a risk I'd be recognized. Unless...” She smiled. "Unless I was actually dead. A week later, that religious group set off the first bomb in the theater. The news report said some bodies had been unidentified because the blast was so bad. I got into fantasizing about what if someone had mistaken that body for me. I could go to San Francisco, L.A., even London...

“I began to obsess over the idea. It became a consuming thought. Then I decided it might actually work.”

“You got the bomb from Tommy's army buddy? In Monterey? The one who was court-martialed with him?”

Shelly cocked a single eyebrow. It was hard to see her as a brunette. Blonde had definitely been her color. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“Connections.”

“He sells black-market munitions. He'd been a demolition expert. I paid him to make me a bomb. He explained to me how it worked.”

“Then you waited. For someone like me. A witness.”

She didn't speak for a moment. The park was ahead of them, off to their left; couples were walking through the trim grass and oaks and maple trees. “Then I waited,” she said softly. “I needed someone to see me in the room where the explosion was.”

“You tried to get me to tape it. I remember you asking that. Then it went off. Only you were gone and the body that Andy Llewellyn'd gotten for you was next to the phone.”

Shelly smiled, and Rune thought it was a smile of admiration. “You know about him? You found that out too?”

“I saw his name on your calendar. Then I saw a story in the paper the other day about a murder. It mentioned that he was a medical examiner. I figured he'd be a good source for a body.”