“Mambo—now that works for me. Short, punchy, easy to remember.” He picked up the pencil again and made a note that seemed to satisfy him.

“Who asked for her?” I repeated, leaning forward in the uncomfortable fake Eames chair in which I was seated.

“Guy named Rudy.”

“Downtown?” I asked, sinking back in the chair. “I went down there yesterday, and no one was there.”

He scowled at the folder. “He said they’d be shooting all day. Seven hundred and fifty dollars for the day. That’s what I understood. Guy spoke English pretty good, not too much of an accent.”

“They must have just used her for a test shot and let her go. They’re probably testing a lot of women.”

“They could have done that by seeing her portfolio. He told me they wanted her for the job.”

I could see he was thinking that she’d gone behind his back to cut him out of his ten percent.

“I can’t believe it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. I helped her pick out that name,” he complained. The Pomeranian stirred in its sleep, feet twitching in an atrophied rabbit-chasing dream.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He was already punching a phone number written on a scrap paper in the folder.

From where I stood I was able to read an address on the inside cover of the folder. I couldn’t see the phone number because his hand lay across it. I’ve always been able to read upside down. One of my many small talents. I got up and made like I was headed for the door. It didn’t look as though he knew she was dead.

“Say,” he called after me in a snake oil voice. “Have you ever thought of doing some modeling?”

My grandmother once told me I was lucky to be able to go to law school since I wasn’t pretty enough to be a stewardess. I turned back, but before I could be a smartass, he was talking on the phone. He asked for Rudy a couple of times, then hung up.

“I’ll be damned,” he mumbled, crumbling the paper on which the phone number was written. “It’s a Pioneer Chicken place.”

I closed his door behind myself on the way out. The receptionist had replaced the top on the box of chocolates and was sitting with her fat hands folded on top of a worn-out back issue of The Star: NINE-YEAR-OLD GIVES BIRTH TO QUINTUPLETS FROM OUTER SPACE. She looked bored. The bad skin twins were still there and a couple of new peroxided young men with tight jeans had joined them. There was an air of nervous expectation like in a bar the hour before it closes.

“Psst,” the receptionist hissed sotto voce at me as I was walking past her desk.