Across the street, a congregation of women gathered on greenery in front of a flat-topped church. I watched her drive away, memorizing her plate number before I felt the eyes of someone else on me—one of the women clustered on the lawn, moving their arms in circles and slow spins, somewhere between kung fu and ballet. A sunglassed dumpling of a grandmother had her face tipped in my direction, and I held up a hand, dazed.

She gave me the finger.

I walked back up the stairs and unlocked the door. The massage parlor had left us with a small waiting area. Behind the front desk, there were three doors that led to separate offices for each of us. At the very back of the office proper, a bathroom, a sink, and a little balcony that afforded a view of dark glossy skyscrapers. At the front desk, a phone that almost never rang was nestled among neatly collated file folders.

At the front desk, I jotted down the license plate number on the back of the envelope in letters as small as I could manage. And then I peeked inside. It didn’t disappoint.

I stood listening to the envelope chatter in my hands, and that was how Jackal found me, pushing open the now-unlocked door. He snarled something rude at me, a word I only liked to be called behind bedroom doors, but it passed over my head. It didn’t matter. We would say and do worse to each other before our dance was over.

“Did you see her?” I asked.

“What? Who?”

“Blue nail polish.”

“Are you still drunk?” He shouldered past me to his office, the massage table long since replaced by a desk, even though his door still bore a trace of a lotus-flower sticker.

“The Lady Upstairs wears blue nail polish,” I said out loud, to no one.

Lou didn’t get to the office until noon, which surprised me: she’d had less to drink than me, and said she was going straight home. But my morning hadn’t gone to waste, at least: one call to Klein’s secretary had confirmed an opening in his schedule—for a prostate exam, which wasn’t exactly a lie—on both Thursday and Saturday afternoons. She’d promised to hold the spots in his calendar while she confirmed with him. I called the St. Leo and booked rooms for both afternoons, to be safe.

I sat at my desk, thinking about how the Lady’s blue fingernails would look wrapped around my throat, when Lou popped her head into my doorway. Her hair was dark and slightly damp, and she grinned at me, fresh and not hungover.

“Guess what!” Lou chirped.

I winced, sliding the Lady’s envelope into my desk drawer. “Good morning to you, too,” I said drily. “Or, I should say, afternoon. You’re in a good mood.”