In this town that means fuck you. Keep it simple, I said to myself, the bare details. I told him my real name, gave him one of my business cards and said I was looking for Cathy Vega. “I think she may be in trouble.” I made a flourishing hand gesture encompassing the room, meaning big trouble, all of you.

“No, no, no, no. It can’t be. If there was trouble, I’d know about it. This isn’t just a business. We’re family, me and my artistes. “

He actually said that last word. I imagined him being fatherly with the bad skin twins.

“What kind of trouble?” he asked, having completed the formalities.

“She was doing a play....”

Surprised, he looked blank for a millisecond, then cunning, then back to blank. He could not have been a very good card player. “A play? Yes, we had one under discussion....”

“She didn’t show up last night for the opening. She had such a great part. Big.”

“You’re a lawyer, right? Did she have a contract?” He picked up a pen and started to doodle some numbers.

“I don’t think so. It was with an acting workshop.”

He dropped the pen. “So it’s not breach of contract. What is it?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s very simple. She was a witness to an accident. I need to get a statement from her, but she seems to have disappeared. I wondered if something had happened to her. I thought you could tell me if she was around.”

“Don’t they usually send investigators?”

I giggled girlishly. “That’s the usual, but I’m a new lawyer and I’m just starting out. I don’t have the money to hire investigators like the big insurance companies do.” I fished my state bar card out of my wallet and held it in front of him as though it were my proudest possession in the world, giggling all the while like an adolescent.

He waved the card away. “She’s around. I just sent her on a job yesterday.”

“What kind of job?”

He searched among the disarray on his desk and located a file. “Modeling. Cathy Vega. I helped her pick out that name.”

“What’s her real name?”

He shrugged. “Something Mexican. I don’t remember. Nobody ever made it with their real name. That’s what counts in this business: flexibility. You know, Dean Martin, Dino Corsetti. Tony Curtis, Bernie Schwartz. Marilyn Monroe, Norma Jean Baker.”

As I nodded at Bob Alton, the Pomeranian let go of some loud and very unpleasant gas. “What kind of modeling?”

“Swimsuits for a manufacturing company downtown. She’s going to represent a new line called Bahia de Angeles.” He pronounced it badly. “I don’t think that name works—too long. Guess that’s why they wanted a Mexican. When he called, he asked for her.”

I tried not to look excited. “Who?”