“Within the last month or so. Yeah, I guess she had to hustle around to get the money for them. Cathy didn’t want a straight gig or a day job. She had to be able to go to auditions. I don’t really know how she was getting money, but she told me she’d done some work and gotten five thousand dollars.”

Working in a dance hall? I wondered to myself. That was a lot of dances. A lot of heavy petting. Was it the truth? She hadn’t told the truth about the revue she said she was rehearsing on Carlos Avenue. The photographer’s name was on the back of the photo. Rudy Sancerre, with an address on Third near Vermont. Sancerre, like a bottle of bad wine. Rudy. Same name as the man who had called Cathy’s agent for the modeling job in the loft downtown.

“I want this photo, ok?” The top of my pecs ached, and I felt like she wasn’t listening to me.

“I don’t know. She just got them. They’re expensive.”

Then I did something I’ve seen only in the movies. I peeled out some money and laid it on the table. The effect was spoiled a little because I had only two dollars.

“I guess you can have it.”

I was already busy looking through the rest of the contents of the box. An old issue of Variety had Steven Morris’s name circled in red. There was a small worn-out pair of ballet slippers, a program from a high-school play in Kansas City and a lot of little scraps of paper with names and phone numbers that you collect in bars. I didn’t think I’d be able to get them out of the apartment without a hassle, so I left them. There were some surprising photos showing Cathy Vega plump and naked. I managed to slide one of these under the photo I already had. At the bottom of the box was a ream of yellow fliers with an awkwardly executed flag drawn on it. I had enough Latin in high school to figure out what “TIERRA Y LIBERTAD: Partido de Revolución de Guatemala” meant, but it didn’t help me figure out what Cathy Vega was doing with it.

I pointed at the stack of fliers. “What’s this?”

“I never saw it before. Must be some show she was in.”

“Was she interested in politics?” I wondered aloud.

“You mean like a Republican or something? I don’t know. When I first met her, she used to talk about war in Central America, stuff like that. Like a sixties Vietnam thing. But hey, that’s cool. The Byrds, Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane. Those are cool sounds. Me and JoJo, we’re putting some psychedelic licks into our mix.”

I took one of the fliers. It seemed to mean something, because there were so many of them.