“Silly me,” I said, and I laughed. I’d been paying so much attention to his family name, and I’d missed the forest for the trees. “Silly me,” I said again, and I could almost hear Carrigan’s relieved sigh on the other end. “It’s not your constituents who will care. It’s your wife. And her father. Explain to him that not only were you caught playing around on his beloved daughter—the wife who is so devoted to you, she gave you that name that keeps opening doors for you—but that you picked someone who photographed you in the act, to boot. I think their blissful ignorance is worth a little more, don’t you think? Ignorance is such expensive bliss. Let’s call it an even seventy-five.”

“There’s no way I’m—”

“Which do you think would piss Daddy-in-law off more,” I said, drawing out the words, making my voice unhurried and low, a tone Jackal would’ve called my fuck me voice, “your cheating or your stupidity?”

“Jesus,” he said again, “what a bitch you are,” and there was something almost admiring in his tone.

“By tomorrow,” I said. I gave him an address—Lou’s tiki bar—and told him to meet me there by 8 p.m. I said I’d prefer cash.

“How do I know you’ll really destroy the photographs? How do I know you won’t keep digital copies floating around somewhere?”

I flipped the closest photograph over on my desk so I didn’t have to stare at the blank look on my face. It made me queasy. I didn’t want to keep them any more than he wanted them sent to the newspaper.

“I guess you can’t trust me,” I said. “But I don’t want them. I really do not.”

The hours had gotten away from me while I’d searched Rita Palmer’s name. It wasn’t the most common name, so I’d counted on finding something, but there were no records of a Rita, or Margarita, Palmer in Los Angeles in recent years and certainly no one who looked like the woman I’d seen at the office. Lou had either lied to me or been lied to, and I didn’t like that I wasn’t sure which was right.

I also didn’t like that I hadn’t heard from Lou this morning—not a call or a text. If she was upset at how I felt about the Lady, I could deal with that. If she regretted kissing me . . .