“I gotta go,” I said, looking into Trixie’s eyes. “I gotta do this thing. It’s going to be okay.”

She looked away. She had to know I had next to no faith in my own words.

“You were quite a while,” Merker said when I got back into the truck. “I hope you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” I said. “Don’t you think the cops would have surrounded you by now if I’d told them anything?”

“Maybe you’re up to something funny, but it hasn’t gone down yet.”

“Okay, why don’t we sit here and wait and see, forget about getting the money. Why don’t you call Leo, see if everything’s okay there.”

“I did. It is.” He paused. “So what’s the deal?”

“It’s in a safety-deposit box,” I told him. “Downtown. But we have to go to her house first. Get the key, some ID.”

“Yes!” He banged his fist on the wheel again, but not in anger this time. “She say how much is there?”

“Just under three hundred thousand.”

“Fuck! Are you shitting me? What happened to the rest?”

“I don’t know. She had to set up a new life. I guess that cost money.”

“That’s just totally fucking unacceptable.”

“Then why don’t you go in there”—I tipped my head toward the prison—“and discuss it with her.”

“Shit,” he said, more quietly, thinking about it. “I guess three hundred thou is better than nothing.” He turned the truck around, headed south, to the neighborhood where Trixie and I were once neighbors. I hardly needed to give him directions to her place. Surely, even if you can’t remember why you killed someone, you can remember how to return to where it happened.

“So hang on a sec,” Merker said, his nose twitching. “How the fuck we supposed to get into her safety-deposit box?”

“You’re going to have to find somebody. A woman with some passing resemblance to Trixie. Once you put a red wig on her, almost any woman will do.”

“Red wig?”

I told him about the ID with the color photo of Trixie in the wig. That whoever played Trixie, as Marilyn Winter, would have to sign in. Merker was thinking.

“There’s this one chick, I don’t know. Her boobs are about right, and she might pass if she’s got the wig on.”

“Where is she?”

“She works this bar, Leo and I popped in there a couple of times this week. Used to know her up in Canborough, she danced at the Kickstart. Now she waits tables, that kind of shit. Annette, her name is. She could do this.” He grinned. “She can’t say no to me.”

The old neighborhood was coming into view. Merker found his way to Trixie’s house, pulled into the empty driveway.

“Ah, the memories,” he said.