I blinked a few times, staring at the picture on top, a mug shot. She was younger than when I’d met her, but rougher, too, her skin worse, her eye makeup thick and cakey and leaking down her face. A woman who had seen too much. But it was her, the Lady Upstairs. I bit my lip, and then, before I could second-guess myself: “Yes, that’s her. That’s the Lady.”

Lafferty and MacLeish exchanged a glance. Finally, MacLeish said, almost gently, “No, it isn’t.”

“She isn’t anyone named Rita Palmer,” Lafferty added, pushing the second photo forward. Another mug shot of the Lady, but this one with the words LOS ANGELES, PROSTITUTION, DAWES, EVE across the bottom. “She’s another lackey, like you, brings us the money every month. We’ve tailed her before, has a nice house in the Hollywood Hills—not the nicest part. But she ain’t your boss, kid. She’s answered these questions, too. And more convincingly, I might add.”

I reached for the water to wash the acid and bile out of my mouth, then thought about my fingerprints on the glass, the DNA from my lips on its rim. Two red lip prints like a smoking fucking gun. I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to keep from shivering. It wasn’t working.

“You’re wrong,” I said.

MacLeish shook his head. “The phone number tracks back to Eve Lowenstein, née Dawes.”

“Eve Dawes,” Lafferty said. “Arrested her, oh, six or seven years ago, working a street corner downtown. She’s an ex–working girl your Lady turned out. There must be someone in her life she doesn’t want knowing about her past.” I thought of that yacht of a diamond ring, and Lafferty went on: “I imagine that’s how your boss keeps her ferrying cash. If you don’t believe me, look her up yourself. She’s not hard to trace. And she’s not your boss.”

She wasn’t the Lady. Or maybe she was, and she was a better liar than I. But the police seemed so sure and that was what mattered—they had to believe I’d given them the Lady, and they didn’t. Maybe there was a Rita Palmer and Lou hadn’t lied to me, but I sure as hell hadn’t found her. Maybe she’d made the name up completely. Christ. I was back to square one. I hadn’t given them anything they could use. My new life with Lou was slipping away, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I shook my head, and once I’d started I couldn’t stop. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said, my teeth chattering. None of it made any sense. “That’s her, that’s the Lady, that’s her.”

“Aw, she doesn’t know anything,” MacLeish said to Lafferty.