“A man called her agent and said there was a job for her modeling bathing suits down in the garment district, so she went. Whoever killed her had to know how to arrange it so it would sound legit.”

Emma sneered. “Can’t be Guerrero, then. He’s too stupid. Look, maybe it’s true he thought he was in love with her—”

“Thought he was in love with her?” interrupted Lupe. “What does that mean?”

“He was obsessed with her. He had this dream of remaking her, of making her the ideal revolutionary woman. But what he loved was the idea of taking a bourgeois woman who had been corrupted by all the decadence of the media and purifying her.”

“The madonna-and-the-whore freak types! Shit, I get them all the time.” Lupe nodded at Emma, encouraging her to go on.

“What’d Cathy do?” Lupe asked.

And me, was that what I’d been trying to do with Lupe? Purify her and make her into someone like me? Convince her to get off the streets and become a paralegal or something? I glanced quickly and guiltily at her, but she was looking at Emma Garcia.

“What’d Cathy do?” Lupe repeated.

“At first she was all for it. Cathy wanted to be whatever he wanted. They were sleeping together. Then he started testing her. Making up crazy things for her to do. Dangerous things.”

“Like what?” Lupe demanded breathlessly.

I wondered if any of her tricks had ever made her do anything she didn’t want to do. The pimp, Harold James—what had he done to her? Had he fucked her every which way before he cut her? I felt a sick lump in my throat as I watched Lupe, but she didn’t even seem aware of me. She stood with her hands on her hips, waiting impatiently for Emma to respond.

Emma sighed. “You know the bridge over at First Street?”

Lupe nodded.

“He made her walk across the top of the bridge in the middle of the night once. Another time he took her up to the mountains above San Gabriel and left her there without any provisions for three days to see how she’d survive.”

Angrily Lupe shook her head and began to pace.

“Did he order her to make the trip to Mexico?” I asked. Only two reasons why he’d do that, I thought: if he knew she had the money and if he also wanted to buy guns.

Emma hesitated. After all of this—the bad poetry, the betrayals—she was still in love with him. She couldn’t decide whether to rescue him or turn him in.

“Tell me everything you know about the trip to Mexico or, like I told you on the phone, I’m going to the police.” I didn’t want to wait for her to resolve her dilemma.