“Body?”

“Aguedo. Are they going to bury him? Cremate him? What do villains do with dead bodies?”

“Do you really want to know?”

I nodded.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat on the bed and Gloria sat beside me. She placed her hand on my thigh with a strange, gentle pressure. “Aguedo fell through the floor into what we call the shark pool. We call it that because it is a pool filled with sharks. Mako sharks, to be precise.”

“And they ate him?”

“Well, no. The sharks are pretty well fed, but they like to tear things apart. I’m certain they ate some of him, but he pretty much drowned and will decompose in the pool. The catfish will eat him in time.” She observed my face. “You asked.”

“I suppose I did.” I looked at Gloria’s face. She looked suddenly younger. “What’s your story? How did you get here?”

“What do you mean?”

I thought I had put forward a rather clear question, so I asked it again, slower. “How did you get here?”

“Sill found me at Caltech. I was there doing graduate study in geoscience, in particular working on the Chandler wobble. As you can imagine, I was bored to death. That’s when Mr. Sill showed up and asked me if I thought I could manufacture an earthquake. You have to admit that’s an intriguing question.”

“That’s one way of seeing it,” I said. “What did you tell him?”

“That is when Mr. Sill showed up and asked me if I thought I could manufacture an earthquake.”

“I heard you.”

“I said I didn’t think I could and he asked if I wanted a more exciting career. I said yes and here I am.”

“Before that?” I asked.

Gloria sighed and seemed to relax into herself, as if relieved to have that question. “I grew up in New York. My father was a hardworking man. He worked in a dry cleaners for years and saved enough money to finally buy the store. He opened a second store by the time I was eight. Then another. He did really well. And we moved on up, to the east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky. Yes, we moved on up. We finally got a piece of the pie.”

“That sounds like a familiar story,” I said.

“Those were good times,” she said. “I miss my two brothers. My older brother was an artist. He was shot by a Chicago policeman for standing around being Black.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He used to paint these elongated people like El Greco.” She smiled, shook her head. “And my baby brother. I don’t know where he is now. He was a real little talker, that guy. He really gave my parents a run for their money. My father called him the militant midget.”

I stared at her.

“Man, was it ever cold in Chicago.”

“I thought you said you grew up in New York,” I said.

Gloria cocked her head slightly. “No, Chicago.”