After Monica Fullbright left, the air smelled like smoke and expensive perfume, and what I was left with was a feeling that was hard to grasp. It was the feeling that I had not been told the right story. Still, the money was on the desk, and it never hurts to learn something new. I glanced at the retainer agreement I had her sign. I sketched on the yellow pad for a few minutes before I realized that I had forgotten to ask for the one thing I needed if I was going to identify the woman at Immigration. A picture of Carmen Luzano.

Although I hurried down the stairs and out to the street, she was nowhere in sight. There was only the usual motley crew—an elderly black wino on the broken green bus stop bench, a bottle of Tokay in a paper bag trailing from his limp hand; two teenage Vietnamese boys on their way to the video arcades on Western; a hooker standing in the shade of a pepper tree on the corner. I have nothing against prostitution. It should be legalized. But not on my doorstep. Wasn’t I having a hard enough time making a go of it without it looking like I was working out of a house of ill repute? The ridiculous day-trippers. Purple satin hot pants. Ankle strap shoes. Bad wigs. I’d seen this one before. She was young and latin, with long curly hair. She glanced my way without any apparent interest as I walked toward her.

“You been here long?” I asked her.

“You a cop?” Her gaze swept past me out into the street, where a line of cars was approaching from downtown.

“I was looking for a woman.”

She readjusted the purse that swung from her right shoulder. “I’m not into that scene.”

It had been a long time since I’d been to bed with anyone. Never with a woman. Nearly three months since I broke up with Ed Harrison, the monosyllabic commodities broker I met at a bar in the Marina. Once when I was a freshman in college I did wake up in the middle of the night in bed with one of my sorority sisters. It was after a big football game where we beat the University of Virginia. I was still drunk and didn’t remember much that happened after we left the party at the Sigma Chi house. I’m sure nothing happened. Nevertheless, I could feel myself blushing and I could hear my voice getting frosty.

“Neither am I. I’m looking for a woman who just came out of the building. She must have come right past you. Nice-looking woman in a beige pantsuit.”