I took this to mean come in. The furniture was broken. On the floor lay a teddy bear looking like he’d been mugged at knife point. I closed the door, walked over and sat down at the table, which was littered with cassette tapes, a stack of fliers for a rock club called Acid House, a bag with the sick looking remains of some Mexican takeout food and a few white tablets the size of pencil erasers with crosses etched on them. Street speed.

“Dead,” the woman repeated in a sleepy voice. “That’s heavy. I thought she was over at her boyfriend’s.”

“How long has she been gone?”

She pulled the nightie around her body as though she had just realized she was naked. “You a friend of hers? She had some weird friends, but I don’t remember you.”

“I’m a friend.” I realized that I almost felt this lie was true, unlike all the others I had told so far that day. I was beginning to feel Cathy Vega was someone I had known, and the memory of her in the torn underpants wouldn’t leave me alone. “Tell me how long she’s been gone.”

She tilted her chin defiantly at me. “You might be a cop.”

“No, if I was a cop, I’d want to know where you got these amphetamines.” I picked up one of the tabs from the table, then dropped it so it bounced onto the floor.

Apparently what I had said made sense to her, because instead of arguing she sighed deeply and shuffled around in a pile of flyers until she found a small manila packet. She opened the packet and tapped white powder onto the table. Picking up a razor blade, she started chopping coke as though I weren’t there. She snatched a straw out of the sack of Mexican food, stuck it in her nose and took two hard hits. “Hmmm, that’s better.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “Couple weeks ago, I don’t know. Around the time we were going to do a gig at the Scream.”

The same time Carmen Luzano had left town.

“You two in a band together?” The receptionist at the agent’s had said singers and dancers.

She laughed. “Cathy couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Just me. Moral Standards, ever heard of it?”

I shook my head.

“Before that I was in Bad Pussy.”

I shook my head again. “What about Cathy? Was she working lately?”

With both hands the woman pushed her stiff hair back from her face and then leaned suspiciously toward me. With the black circles around her eyes, she reminded me of a lunatic raccoon. “Working? What’s that got to do with it? Why are you asking all these questions? I thought you said she was dead.”

“She is.”