“Who better to know which of Mark’s buttons to push? Hence Cohiba, adventure, et cetera, all those buzzwords. All the misspellings and grammatical errors to make the essay sound like a bimbo’s literary output. Because Mark always liked ’em dumb and you’d already read his essay—hell, Leona, I wouldn’t be surprised if you worked the keyboard while Mark sat there like the horny old cyberdummy he was. You let him think he’d discovered ‘Mystery.’ After you’d planted Stevie Muhrmann as a gopher at SukRose so he could embed the cues in Mystery’s profile. Elegant, Leona. But the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like going overboard just to play Hitchcock. Then there was the expense of setting Tiara up as Mark’s mistress. Even if you did ride herd on it. Even if Stevie took a big chunk and rebated some back to you. Why encourage Mark in the first place? There had to be more.”

She blinked.

“Want to hear my second guess, Leona? The one that panned out?”

She swiveled toward me. “I should do your work for you, you weaselly little scammer?”

I said, “Gustave Westfeldt.”

“Who?”

I repeated the name.

She threw back her head, laughed. Got back up. “Now I know you’re full of shit. Get the hell out of here.”

“Something funny about Gustave Westfeldt?”

“What’s funny is I never heard of him and you’re utterly full of shit. Out!”

“You do know him, Leona.”

“I don’t need you to tell me who I—”

“Actually you do,” I said. “And you’d better listen hard.”

Her mouth worked. Fingers clawed velour.

“You don’t know him by name, Leona, but you know him. I was a little better informed, had picked up on the Gustave part but had no idea about Westfeldt. Despite all those years of first-rate libations—”

“What the hell are you babbling about?”

“Gustave Westfeldt,” I repeated, as if summoning a deity. “Old guy, curly white hair and a tiny little mustache.” A beat. “Hunchbacked.”

Color drained from her face.