It was all speculation. No one really knew what happened. And no one was ever charged in the deaths of the three men.

Nothing I read in the Canborough Times’ files indicated what was unusual about the manner in which the three men were shot.

People stopped frequenting the Kickstart. Who wanted to grab a beer where you stood a chance of getting your brains blown out? The strippers quit, found work elsewhere. Before long, Merker bailed on the Kickstart, and wasn’t much heard from again. He left Canborough.

The Comets, it seemed, assumed control of the drug and prostitution trade in the city.

All interesting stuff, but some big questions remained unanswered for me.

Where did Trixie fit into all this? Why didn’t her name even come up? What did she know that had her on the run from Gary Merker? What had she seen?

And there was another question I supposed I had to consider.

What had she done?

Gary was impressed with how you never had to say to Candy, “Get over it.”

He liked that she got over things so quickly. What a trooper.

Her boyfriend Eldon, the father of her kid, gets himself smacked by an oncoming train, she pulls it together. He and all the other guys except Leo, they get a little out of hand one night, treat her, he had to admit, a bit disrespectfully, and she’s back to work a couple of days later.

It must have been the get-well-soon card, he thought. Chicks love cards. He was actually going to bring her flowers too, then, on the way over to her apartment, but he forgot and only got the card, and yet, that seemed to do the trick. He tucked that away for future reference. A card, or flowers, but not necessarily both.

A few months had gone by, and Candy—it was the only name he knew her by—was there pretty much every day, lots of nights too, doing her job. What a fucking relief, letting someone else handle the finances. Those rare times when he’d actually go to a bank machine—not very often, considering there was always plenty of cash around the Kickstart—and take out a hundred, he had to count out those five twenties two, maybe three times, to double-check that he was getting what he was supposed to.

But Candy, she paid the bills, took care of all those invoices, was always on top of things. Never even got that moody. He’d never known a broad didn’t get moody.

Miranda figured she deserved a goddamn Oscar. Meryl Streep never had to work this hard at playing a role.